'I wanted a challenge': Colts defense has sunk under the weight of an incompetent offense
DALLAS -- Isaiah Rodgers Sr. dove to the turf and slid his hands underneath a football, like he'd been dreaming of all season. He sprung to his feet and sprinted up the left sideline and out of bounds. He turned to celebrate with his teammates, only to see the man in the white and black stripes wave his arms incomplete.
His first interception could have felt like a game-changer for a team that needed a season-changer. The Colts were once in this game, down 21-19 in the third quarter, when Rodgers Sr. made a play that got a sideline jumping.
"I wasn't surprised that they called it incomplete. I feel like that's what home-field advantage is going to do," Rodgers Sr. said. "I felt like I caught the ball. I wanted a challenge, but we didn't get it. It changed the whole game. I have to stop that touchdown at the end of the drive."
That ruling started the unraveling -- from Zaire Franklin's personal foul to Michael Gallup's touchdown over Rodgers Sr.'s head to the 33-0 run that crashed like an avalanche upon a Colts team that had its season officially break on national TV with a 54-19 loss to the Cowboys.
"I was still frustrated, and it showed," Rodgers Sr. said. "I didn't give up a touchdown all season."
The sequence became emblematic of a season of missed opportunities. And though the unraveling of a defense to allow 220 rushing yards and 54 points was uncharacteristic, it is what can best be defined as a breaking point.
"It's a game of inches. It's a game of momentum," defensive end Yannick Ngakoue said. "That's not our standard."
Every human being has a breaking point. For as much as Colts players talk about blocking out the noise and focusing on the task at hand, they're aware of their record and the standings and the point at which it feels too far gone.
An eighth loss was always going to be that point. Teams don't make the playoffs at 8-8-1 when they don't have a path in the division.
All season, the Colts defense has had to hold the team in games as the offense turned the ball over and failed to score points. They beat the Chiefs when they harassed Patrick Mahomes with a pass rush and then picked him off on a final drive. They beat the Broncos when their offense scored 12 points because they shut down Russell Wilson and forced critical errors in the clutch moments.
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But over time, when an offense continues to be what it is and never changes, when it switches out the quarterback and offensive coordinator and play caller and offensive line combinations and scheme and it's still a unit that goes into a dome in Dallas and turns it over five times, the players around them start to feel that.
They become victims of a moment that feels like a nightmare played on a never-ending loop. The Colts have turned it over 26 times this year and are averaging 16 points per game.
It doesn't leave the defense blameless. They failed to close out leads over the Commanders and Eagles in low-scoring games. They've not turned teams over the way they have in the past. And on Sunday night, they slipped enough early on to get the Cowboys running game into a groove with Tony Pollard and Ezekiel Elliott trading drives and CeeDee Lamb surprising on end-arounds, to where they could finish with 220 rushing yards on 6.5 yards per carry.
"That's just bad football," cornerback Stephon Gilmore said.
But the Colts defense has always held its team in the game to give Matt Ryan a chance to lead a fourth-quarter comeback. He's led five of them.
But it's only happened once in the past seven games. The issues with the offense, in pass protection and protecting the ball and creating explosive plays and scoring touchdowns, never got fixed. It left the Colts with a reality that the weekly product is who they ultimately are -- as an offense, as a team.
Sunday night, the dam broke.
This game, and this season, can be summed up by turnover differential. The Colts are -14 on the season.
On Sunday, the Colts forced one Cowboys turnover and gave it away five times. They were in a 21-19 game in the second half when they thought they forced a turnover, the momentum shift they've been searching for, only for Lucy to pull the ball away one final time.
Contact Colts insider Nate Atkins at natkins@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter @NateAtkins_.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts: The defense has sunk under the weight of an incompetent offense
