For your 2017 Indianapolis Colts preview, I had an imaginary conversion with myself.  Enjoy.

So the Colts, huh.  Didn’t they used to be good?

The Indianapolis Colts, né Baltimore Colts, have quite a storied history.  The team began as the Miami Seahawks of the All America Football Conference in 1946 and were the first major sports franchise in South Florida.  At the end of their first season, the Seahawks were $350,000.00 in debt, so the AAFC approved a move of the team to Baltimore.  Rumor has it that the players were PISSED, because Baltimore sucks.  Upon the move, the team was renamed the Colts as an honorific to the annual Preakness Stakes triple-crown horse race, held at nearby Pimlico Race Course, where shit like this happens all the time.  After a few years of dicking around with poor financing and via the merger of like 75 crappy regional leagues, the Colts finally played their first season in Baltimore in 1953.

The Baltimore Colts won the NFL Championship in 1958 and 1959 and Super Bowl V in 1970.  They were led by Johnny U, who had a haircut you could set your watch to. They also lost Super Bowl III to Joe Namath in his one good year that earned him a place in the Hall of Fame because of East Coast bias (people forget that). Those Baltimore Colts teams of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s were beloved by Baltimorians . . . Wait, Baltimoreñeos? . . . Baltimoreons?  That’s it, Baltimoreons . . . because they were good.

Then, in 1972, Bob Irsay became the owner of the team, and everything went to shit.  The drunk asshole, citing the failure of the City of Baltimore to give him a free stadium and poor attendance, moved the team to Indianapolis and the Hoosier Dome under the cover of darkness on March 29, 1984.

It’s funny that Irsay cited bad attendance as a reason for moving.  The Baltimore Colts had eight straight losing seasons before they left, mainly due to mismanagement and poor drafting.  I’m glad the Indianapolis Colts don’t have that problem!

After they moved to Indianapolis, they were pretty bad for a few years, and then had some success with this guy in the ’80s:

And this guy in the ’90s:

But they didn’t win anything until the ’00s when this guy showed up:

I would be remiss if I didn’t remind everyone that Manning, while statistically magnificent, only won one Super Bowl while in Indianapolis, against Rex Grossman, in a monsoon.

The most recent version of the team peaked in 2014, when they came back from a 38-10 deficit to the Kansas City Chiefs to win a divisional playoff game, which propelled them to a banner-raising conclusion to the year:

All right, asshole, thanks for the history lesson that no one cared about. How are the Colts these days?

Uh, the Colts are not very good!  Bob Irsay drank himself to death in 1997, and the team was inherited by his son, Jim, a sentient bottle of Vicodin who tweets out porn and is one of those rich pricks who buys up classical guitars that the deceased musicians would never want him to own. The team is coached by #CHUCKSTRONG, a cancer survivor who every Colts fan wishes was actually replaced his temporary Kangol-wearing, paint-drinking former offensive coordinator.

Last year, Captain Percocet fired Ryan Grigson, a moronic ex-football player who openly hated #CHUCKSTRONG and traded a bunch of picks for Trent Richardson (Look at this guy; You can hear the mouth-breathing through the photo), and hired Chris Ballard, a paradox of a human being who is so laid-back that he wears flip-flops to work (he’s so casual!), but is so HARD FUCKING CORE that he wants the Colts to beat the shit out of each other in training camp.  Also, Ballard is hamstrung with #CHUCKSTRONG for at least this year, which always works out well for a new GM.  So, yeah, management . . . it’s . . . it’s not good. It stinks.

But they still have Andrew Luck, right?  He’s good, isn’t he?

Luck is still here, and he is still good, but he’s gone Stone Temple Pilots (Get it? He’s half the man he used to be? HAHAHAHAHAHA . . . Sorry).  Seriously, look at the guy:

Because Grigson (who was an offensive tackle at Purdue, ironically) provided his quarterback with less protection than a drunk sixteen year old girl on a Kid Rock tour bus, Luck has suffered the following injuries in his 5 year career:  A grade 1 concussion, a grade 3 concussion, an abdomen muscle tear, a shoulder labrum tear, and a shoulder cartilage tear*.  The shoulder labrum tear occurred on September 1, 2016, and Luck just got around to repairing it this offseason.  Luck is on the PUP list, and no one on the Colts seems to know when he will return.  Luck has spent his down time becoming emaciated, recommending the only three good Indiana breweries to Peter King, and, of course, writing letters to his dearest Abigail from the front lines of the battlefield at Antietam.  Sadly, Luck may have further injured himself in the war, based upon this report form the field.

*Edited to add a lacerated kidney (thanks, RTD!).  Feel free to add additional Andrew Luck injuries in the comment section below!

Who is Luck’s backup anyway?  And the rest of the offense is pretty decent, right?  

Luck’s backup is former Wisconsin quarterback and apparent SuperCuts enthusiast Scott Tolzien.

His preseason has been described as “unimpressive”, “lackluster”, and “dismal”, which has led #CHUCKSTRONG to suggest that he will review his depth chart at quarterback.  The other quarterbacks on the roster include witness protection participants Phillip Walker and Stephen Morris.  This would seem like a good time for the Colts to consider Kaepernick, but the super racist citizens of central Indiana will not let that happen.  God forbid a columnist even suggesting it.  Take WHTR.com commentor Parker, for example.

NO ONE WANTS THAT MUSLIM LOVING AMERICAN HATER HE WOULD BE THE DEMISE OF THE COLTS AND EVEN THOUGH IT’S PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE YOU AREN’T TO BRIGHT HOW CAN YOU EXCUSE WHAT HE DID. YOU ARE A DIRTBALL BUT THAT IS EVEN BELOW A DOUCH BAG!!!!! CAN’T STAND YOU NEVER HAVE LIKED YOU.

Fucking fat humps.

The rest of the offense is either old or bad.  Last year, Frank Gore was the first running back over 33 years old to rush for more than 1,000 yards since John Riggins, so he might not do that again.  T. Y. Hilton is in his prime at 27, but Donte Moncrief, their number 2 receiver, plays like number 2 and is constantly hurt.  Phillip Dorsett is the number 3 wideout, but he is pretty much a bust.  Austin Collie is presumably living in Western Canada, where he thinks he is Trent Green.  As noted above, the offensive line is an anonymous cast of rejects and journeymen.  Also, one of Ballard’s first moves was trading decent tight end Dwayne Allen to the Patriots, where he will certainly win a Super Bowl and have a career year.  The Colts replaced him with Jack Doyle, who is described as “hard-working” and “gritty”.  Surprising no one, he is white, and I predict that his jersey will be a top seller in Indy.

Yikes.  That doesn’t look promising.  What about the defense?

The defense, ranked 30th last year, is made up of players from that Key & Peele sketch:  Denzelle Good, Jabaal Sheard, Barkevious Mingo, etc. The secondary should be halfway decent, with Vontae Davis and newly drafted Malik Hooker.  But their linebackers and line look to be atrocious, especially with the retirement of Robert Mathis at the end of last season.

What happened to their punter?  The one who was kind of funny?

Pat McAfee?  That asshole retired to work at a blog.  I think that pretty much sums up the 2017 Colts.

Wow, you kind of gave up on this post about halfway through, didn’t you?

Yeah. The Colts are going to suck this year. I predict 7-9 and third place in the AFC South because Jags.  If Luck doesn’t play much or is injured further, I think it will be much, much worse.

Wait a second, you’re a Bears fan.  Why are you doing this preview?

I have a deep connection with Indianapolis.  I went to a Metallica and Guns n’ Roses concert in ’92 at the Hoosier Dome.  I also went to Broadripple once in college with friends, and it sucked.  I’ve gone to St. Elmo’s and had the shrimp cocktail, which also sucked.  The only redeeming thing about Indiana is Indiana University, and even that is filled with racist shitbags from Mooresville and Kendallville and Merrillville and whatever other -ville that leads the Midwest in lynchings.  Furthermore, Monkey Business died on the way back to his home planet and Derek from Muncie doesn’t know how to read, so they weren’t available.

Besides that, writing about the Bears makes me want to kill myself, so I’ll defer to more qualified and sane people to do that.

Well, that was bleak.  Can’t you at least end on positive note?

Sure, in honor of Andrew Luck and today’s celestial event, I give you Pink Floyd:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVQ3-Xe_suY]