As the NFL season draws to a close, let’s look at highlights and lowlights from the year.
All NFL teams experience highs and lows throughout a NFL season. Even whoever wins between the Eagles and Chiefs tomorrow will be able to reflect back on the experience and see that everything wasn’t always easy. That is the nature of professional sports when everything is built on winning and losing. That is unavoidable. With that said, however, the Indianapolis Colts experienced more than their fair share over the course of 2024. Let’s take a look at a few of the highlights and lowlights from the season.
Starting out of the gate at 0-2 is the first major lowlight that comes to mind. This franchise has made a habit out of slow starts over the last decade and losing the first two followed that pattern. The most unfortunate aspect about the 0-2 start was that it set them behind in the divisional race from the beginning, and they were never able to recover from that as the Texans led from start to finish. Additionally, losing to a Packers team without their starting quarterback was also extremely deflating. It was certainly not the start fans wanted to see.
Fortunately, things turned around in the next two games as the Colts were able to claw back to within .500. The Bears and Steelers were off to good starts and brought plenty of their own fans to Lucas Oil, but the Colts prevailed. That was the positive. The negative was that Anthony Richardson got hurt early against the Steelers and proceeded to miss the next few games. It was a theme that Colts fans, and Richardson himself, were hoping was more of a fluke from the year before. An injury prone quarterback was the fear with Richardson and seeing another instance of him missing extended time was turning that fear into a reality.
During his absence, the team fell to the Jaguars yet again in Jacksonville. It was clear this wasn’t going to be the season for ending unfortunate streaks. It put the team into another hole. Fortunately, the Colts rattled off wins in their next two against the Titans and Dolphins. We even saw the return of Richardson from injury, and things were looking better than ever with the Colts sitting over .500 for the first time on the year. It was an uneven path, but the Colts had positive momentum moving into the hardest part of their schedule, one that would be fraught with even more extreme peaks and valleys.