Inside the Colts locker room after a heartbreaking end to an improbable year

INDIANAPOLIS -- Zaire Franklin leaned back in his locker stall, eyes pointed somewhere above the lights and the cameras to a place only he can see. The Colts captain is reflecting on the past as the questions come about the future, but all he can do is hold tight to the present.

It's slipping through his grasp, much like that final defensive possession against C.J. Stroud and the Texans, one drive before a 23-19 loss became final and ended their season at 9-8.

"No part of me saw us losing today," Franklin said. "I had the upmost confidence in our team and our plan and everything we had going in.

"Just the abruptness of the end of the season, it's done now. I guess I'm just not ready to deal with that yet."

Across the locker room, Jonathan Taylor stood feet from a tear-filled Tyler Goodson as his backup reached for the words to explain the fourth-down pass that slipped off his fingertips, right before he pounded the turf. Taylor just enjoyed a superstar performance, fighting through another ankle injury to rush for 188 yards and a touchdown on 30 carries. But he couldn't help but feel what Goodson felt, to take his eyes to the same place, which started to look moist in the glisten of the last lit locker room of the year.

MORE: 10 thoughts on the Colts' heartbreaking loss to the Texans to end the season

"We scratched and clawed to get to that moment, and you want to wrap it up. You want to wrap it up and put a bow on it because you did so much to get there," Taylor said.

"It's like getting to Christmas and Santa didn't bring you any gifts. You were good all year and Santa didn't bring you any gifts."

They're reaching for something they can see and taste and smell but can't quite feel.

This part of the season -- the 17-game week-to-week grind -- was always going to end against the Texans at Lucas Oil Stadium. Last year's did, too. But the totality of the 16 games that came before it made this year the inverse of last year, a moment where 60 minutes on a home turf could make them feel like the world was in their fingertips. All those dreams as children. All those cliches and PowerPoints and fist bumps and claps in a tight huddle.

DeForest Buckner believed in that. He bet on it, too. A year ago, the All-Pro defensive tackle stood here after a last-second loss to the Texans dropped the Colts to 4-12-1 and swayed about his desire to come back to this franchise, which had just run through two head coaches and three offensive coordinators and three starting quarterbacks like a ship arranging furniture in an effort to soften the landing of the first chip of ice.

A long heart-to-heart with general manager Chris Ballard started to open his eyes to something happening here. Then Shane Steichen arrived off of a narrow loss in the Super Bowl to Patrick Mahomes, a depth Buckner could relate to in his gargantuan bones.

"The culture change was a big thing for me," Buckner said. "You need the right coach each and every week to compete. I feel like the year prior, we would go into weeks where guys didn't have the right mindset. This year, I didn't feel that at all."

This is what makes the present so hard to leave behind. The future isn't uncertain this time around. It revolves around Steichen and Anthony Richardson and Taylor, which is enough to excite anyone who has prospects of playing here next season.

This isn't the end of something concrete beyond a season and a specific team and chapter -- and it's one they just didn't want to end.

Unlike last Colts season, when free agents were booking trips out of town and an entire offense couldn't bring itself to react to an opponent performing snow angels next to its injured quarterback, this is a team that fell in love with the concrete their feet walked on.

A first-time coach with a brain in hyper-speed and an unmatched love of play designs met a squad of Pro Bowlers and young players who just needed direction to meet the roles they were drafted and signed to do. A general manager who'd fallen into his worst habits could double down on his best traits. A quarterback drafted in the top five could inspire them all for the future, and for the right now.

The adversity flew at them like those Stroud laser beams across the middle of the field. There was Richardson's season-ending shoulder injury in Week 5, and Taylor's contract standoff that kept him off the field until that week. There was the decline and departure of linebacker Shaquille Leonard, and the suspension of Grover Stewart, and the injuries to Braden Smith and Dallis Flowers and Jelani Woods.

There were those controversial penalties against the Browns and the way they helped drop them to 3-5. They had times when nobody seemed to believe but them, and those words spun inside a circle of helmets and echoed until they became a reality they felt giddy to show the world, which they did on an international stage in Germany when they beat the Patriots and on national TV in a beatdown of the Steelers.

"Sometimes in life, you don't know why, but things happen," Steichen said. "Winning and losing is part of this game. You learn from it. You grow from it.

"To the guys that are coming back: Just remember this feeling in the locker room."

It's over now. The present, that is. And it stings in different ways, like in the words Tyquan Lewis can barely push out, in the ones Dayo Odeyingbo and Samson Ebukam can't seem to find as they sit in silence beside each other one last time. It's in the embrace between Goodson and Josh Downs, two teammates at North Gwinnett High School in the Atlanta area who dreamed of teaming up again for huge moments but not to have them go like this.

It's in the way Segun Olubi sat on a steel chair and stared at the floor, still in his shoulder pads, unwilling to take them off for the final time.

But it's a beautiful sting in some ways, too. Because it happened, and they were there for it. Because they survived, despite moments where their bodies made them doubt whether that was in the cards, too.

There's a dream setting in in the silence, and it manifests on the stage they just walked off of. Home playoff games with Richardson running out of the tunnel and into the end zone for a 360-degree spike, with Steichen designing the plays that make heads spin and star players entering their prime cashing in on the moment.

They can taste that dream and smell it and hear it, too. But they can't reach out and grab it just yet, and that's why they continue to stare until the lights go out.

Contact Nate Atkins at natkins@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter @NateAtkins_.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts: Inside the locker room after a heartbreaking end