Pat McAfee quote from yesterday’s show about the culture here.

35 comments

1. When Buckner went down the.season was over. It allowed the Z Franklin types to get loud.

2. He’s 100% right. We don’t have a culture of winning. We have a fair weather team that only puts in effort when things are going well. At the first sign of adversity they crumbled completely. I know losing your starting QB is back breaking. But Rivers played well enough to get us at least 2 more wins at the end there. This defense just completely gave up. They had no desire to do anything. And that comes down to Steichen, Anarumo, and the defensive captains. At the very least Franklin and Anarumo should be working elsewhere come September.

3. The culture has become rotten here I think. Remember when Ballard kept harping on getting high character guys that would somehow enable us to integrate other players with character issues? Complete failure it seems.

   Besides that, Steichens excusing of players being late to meetings left a bad taste in my mouth. Overall I worry that this means we can’t fix things by just drafting better or getting better players, since it’s a culture issue as well.

4. Lazy commentary. A lot of teams that suffer what the Colts did this year end up with some locker room stories about them. There can be score settling, there can certainly be people who feel other people didnt try hard enough. All this disgruntlement on season’s end is put in a box labelled ‘culture’ and Fedexed to various media outlets. I imagine McAfee was top of the distribution list.

   Want rid of your GM? ‘Its all part of the same thing’. You do realise that youre bending time with your logic. You’re saying ‘the players didnt play hard this season because the GM and HC werent fired when the season ended’.

   Why not just separate out the remarks? Appraise the GM and the locker room separately. Feels like you’re bundling all your gripes up so they can be laid at Irsay’s door. Which paradoxically reduces the accountability of the locker room coz you’re actually saying none of it is because of them!

5. Pat said it best, we have legitimately good excuses for why we have had issues, whether it be a qb not performing to bad defenses to injuries. You can’t just chalk that up to culture or gm. It’s just bad luck. We’re due for some good luck.

6. There’s clearly locker room cancer and whoever they are (Zaire), I’d love to see them go.

7. Pat is such a fair weather fan/fence sitter. Bro had no complaints about the locker room all season until it’s convenient to have that opinion now. Was vocal about it last season, then when the Colts started out good he’s crickets, but now since it’s convenient he’s criticizing the “locker room” and the “culture” again. If you think the “culture” is the reason the Colts season went south you’re a moron.

8. People like to dunk on pat for his dude-bro persona… but he is a smart dude-bro. He knows what he is talking about. He clearly knows how to be successful, on and off the field. He is someone worth listening to on this stuff.

9. There is no leader on this team. He’s probably right about this. We have some solid talent, but when we are dealt with a little bit of adversity we crumble.

10. I knew that I was in for a good clip when it starts with “mickey house club house” 😂

11. Begins with the owner accepting to judge the season on the first 7 weeks rather than a full 17 game body of work.

    Then the GM who still insists on tying the future of the organization to Daniel Jones who’s gonna be coming off a torn Achilles and has never played a full season.

    Then the HC who preferred calling a 45 yr old off the couch to be the QB rather than think futuristically and check out what his rookie QB who played a National title game last season is capable of vs good NFL defenses.

    They all were waiting for an excuse to NOT win. That includes JT Too

12. Fans a couple months ago downvoting anyone who would even suggest they don’t have the greatest owner without a doubt… now the organization is a failure from top to bottom. Half the fans in here gotta have some serious whiplash from that

13. 58 vs 35

    Those numbers represent the combined total number of INTs, Pass defenses, and forced fumbles over the first 4 years of Darius Leonard’s career vs the first 4 years of Zaire Franklin being the full time “leader” of the defense.

    This defense has never found a replacement for Darius Leonard. He was the identity of the defense and ultimately became the face of the team. Even when it looked dark, D. Leonard was always able to make a game changing play. A bonafide shark on land.

    Z for the most part has played well during his career, but he’s only in the role he’s in because he’s the last man standing of a really good crop of LBs that Ballard has drafted.

    If he stays, we need to be capable of taking him off the field or blitz him exclusively on passing downs. He hits like a hammer but there should never ever be a time when he is in a downfield coverage situation.

14. Why should the organization care when this fanbase calls for tanking in the preseason? This all started with “suck for luck” and the Karma came when said fanbase booed the man. Now they want to tank for arch. Yeah, i know it isn’t the *entire* fanbase, but it seems like a pretty good chunk. Tanking mentality = ok to suck now for an unknown “upgrade” “next year”

15. I hate the whole “bad culture” conversation. There’s no such thing, it’s just winning vs losing. When the team was 8–2, nobody said a word about culture. Then they finish 8–9 and suddenly it’s all about culture again. It’s the same culture as when they were winning. Nobody cares about culture when you’re winning games. Look at Kansas City the past few years, every offseason there’s some drama, but they keep winning, minus this year. When you win, nobody gives a damn about culture.

16. I dont mess with Pat anymore, kind of created weird “bro” space with some awful takes…….. but he’s 100% spot on here. Shane is awesome with the offense but we genuinely might need a Dan Campbell type that shifts the energy and expectations of the team. (on top off shipping Ballard away please)

17. This has been my entire issue with the organization for years. It’s my issue with Ballard for at least the last 5. Zero accountability across the board. Every year it’s a different reason they dont get it done. I really thought Carlie was going to change things, but unfortunately nobody has a backbone anymore here in Indy.

18. Lol yes and that’s the only question I wanted media to press Chris about but media was to busy having a cry session of why are u back wahh wahh.. like he’s back it’s too bad but he’s back ask him about what he thinks about the teams culture and then the subsequent then how do you explain 7 straight Ls? I’m here watching tomlin chince his way to the playoffs without a QB every year. 

    Then again. Our media is like the team amateur and emotional.

19. This is exactly what I meant when I said in posts before this one that they need a culture change and actually hold people accountable for real and not just saying it as long as Chris Ballard is the GM, no matter who the coach is whether it is Shane Steichen or someone else, nothing is going to really change and mediocre players are going to use a ton of excuses to justify their actions and wasting prime years on the best players that are there for every Jonathan Taylor there like 10 mediocre players that pulled the team down to that mediocrity and I blame the owners for not pulling the trigger and move on from what the father did and shape the organization to their image not Jim Irsay’s image.

20. I am a Pats fan. I honestly believe the Colts have been one of the worst run organizations in football for a thirty plus years but they’ve been able to mask it with extraordinary luck in the year they had the #1 overall pick it was a pick you couldn’t fuck up. Broncos had the same team success with Manning at the helm as Colts in less than half the timeframe. 8 years or so of Luck and not a true contender during any of that run. Nothing outside of that.

21. Well yea, we all hate whats going on with the Colts. Theres no leadership, no accountability, nothing. The building is void of any of the characteristics of a winning football organization. The whole thing needs blown up, we don’t have just one or two bad apples. The whole tree is rotten.

22. McAfee before had criticized the culture of the team when Richardson tapped out of the game. Then he began a feud with Franklin after he back his QB on his own podcast. When your GM came in preaching the idea of building a culture, and then it’s obvious after 9 years that it was a failure, he should probably be gone. Then there are even allegations that Taylor was making business decisions in the second half of the season. With how the team is, I wouldn’t doubt it. I wouldn’t even look at the record if I was an owner. If you look at the demeanor of certain players on the field, that’s all you need to know about whether a GM or HC should keep their jobs.

23. Well one of our captains is Zaire Franklin. A guy who quits and is more worried about talking smack on his podcasts.

    That tells me he everything I need to know about culture for these players. They can say there isn’t one but there is with these types of players around.

24. As a non biased NFL fan, it starts with defense. Colts offense was good enough, defense was the weak link. The exact opposite for the texans. Texans offense is average at best, but that defense won them so many games

25. Really good quote from Pat and he is absolutely right.

    This team consistently folds at the first sign of adversity.

26. Pat McAfee has two brain cells.

27. I blame Shane

28. I really hate to think this about my beloved Colts but it’s clearly true. There’s zero accountability.

29. Bootlicker.

30. Shane is great OC and can draw up plays that work, but he isn’t a leader and can’t seem to handle pressure situations, which leads to horrendous playcalling at those times.

31. Fuck yeah. This is what I’m talking about. Straight from the locker room. All of the fucking fan – boys that post regularly on here are full of shit. I’ll be pasting this link every time a conversation steers toward their delusional alternate revisionist version of reality.

32. we had the chance to have Sam Darnold, Baker Mayfield, and Matt Stafford and Ballard didn’t do it that alone should have gotten him fired

33. Its true, the first few weeks (even though it was a cupcake schedule) this team felt different including the chargers game, the last 7 games colts and previous year colts lose that chargers game 10/10 times, but once we got to the chiefs game with Jones fibula injury it just felt like they gave up and accepted losing from that point on, there was no juice or energy in the team

34. That’s an indictment of Ballard and Steichen. 

35. There’s a saying in business: “If you want to change the culture, change the leader.”