The Colts put on one of the most embarrassing displays of football you’ll ever see in their 62-7 loss to the Saints on Sunday night, and afterward Colts coach Jim Caldwell took the blame.
“I have to take responsibility for our team and the way that they played. We just didn’t play well,” Caldwell said. “I think the guys fought. We didn’t execute well, but I think the effort was good.”
Colts owner Jim Irsay, as he so often does, took to Twitter after the game to offer up an almost indecipherable message about his team’s performance. Irsay apologized to Colts fans for what he called a “Titanic collapse,” and he promised that the team is actively working on the solutions but that the solutions are “complex in nature.”
One decision Irsay has to make is whether one of the solutions is finding himself a new head coach. Obviously, Caldwell was dealt a tough hand with Peyton Manning’s neck injury, and one bad year when the quarterback goes down ordinarily wouldn’t be enough to get a coach fired. But what the Colts are experiencing is more than just a bad year. It’s an absolutely pathetic year.
And for Caldwell, taking responsibility could mean losing his job.