Colts: Colin Cowherd Refers to Franchise as a “Dumpster Fire”
By Kyle Nishida
The Herd’s Colin Cowherd is never shy about sharing strong opinions. Wednesday, he built a NFL pyramid based on how well each NFL team has been run in the past five years. He was not kind to the Indianapolis Colts.
Cowherd’s pyramid split the league into four different groups of organizational success. He labelled his top category “exceedingly well-run.” The level below was “mostly well-run”, followed by “run well enough” and lastly “dumpster fire.” The Colts fell into that last category.
Cowherd described the dumpster fire category as “they (the franchise) don’t know what they are doing in ownership, too impulsive, they can’t get quarterback right, or they’re poor at drafting.”
Under that definition, is Cowherd right? Are the Colts a dumpster fire? There is plenty of evidence to suggest he is.
Of Cowherd’s four “dumpster fire” pillars, there out of four accurately describe the Colts. Obviously, the one point that does not match them is the quarterback position. They have Andrew Luck, who Cowherd phrases on a daily basis.
Unfortunately, the franchise noticeably struggles with the other three pillars: ownership troubles, too impulsive, and poor drafting.
Although he has well-intentions, Jim Irsay meddles a lot with the success of his team. He will speak about contract dilemmas publicly and try his best to defend his decisions, even when they are not working. Case in point, he still gave Chuck Pagano and Ryan Grigson multi-year extension when they clearly were not working well together.
The extensions also show Irsay being too impulsive. It was clear Pagano and Grigson were never going to have a solid working relationship. However, Irsay like both guys and hired psychologists to try to fix the problem. In the end, it wasted him money and the entire 2016 season.
Finally, poor drafting is what hits hard the Colts hard. Grigson was a notoriously bad drafter. He loved the flashy guys (like receivers) and often ignored the substance guys (offensive linemen) until it was too late.
Consequently, the Colts’ roster got worse each year. Irsay could have done something about this in 2015, but his friendship with Grigson probably clouded his judgment.
No one like referring to their team as a “dumpster fire.” However, Cowherd is right. The Colts have been a “dumpster fire” over the past five years.
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They probably would have been in the “run well enough” category from 2012 to 2014. However, it is pretty easy to think of them as a “dumpster fire” after mediocre 2015 and 2016 seasons. Hopefully, the Colts change course and achieve better results in 2017.