PITTSBURGH — All Braden Smith could do was watch. The mistake was made. The damage was done. The carnage laid before him.
Daniel Jones was on the ground, the ball was gone, and Smith was partly — if not mostly — to blame. The Indianapolis Colts’ starting right tackle had been lined up against Pittsburgh Steelers defensive end T.J. Watt, one of the best pass rushers of his generation. He showed why in the second quarter on Sunday, when he dipped under Smith’s arm, pulled Jones to the ground and snatched the ball away from him, too.
“I have to look at it a little bit more on the film,” Smith said of the sack he gave up in Indy’s 27-20 loss. “But I needed to get a little bit more depth. Gave a little bit of a short edge (to Watt), and you can’t do that. Obviously, he made a play, and that’s what he does.”
After the turnover, Watt popped to his feet and pounded his chest. Thousands of Steelers fans waved their signature Terrible Towels in approval, a fitting gesture amid the Colts’ terrible, turnover-filled day. Indianapolis’ loss snapped a four-game winning streak, and it gave fuel to all the pundits who believe everything that came in the season’s first eight weeks was a mirage.
“It’s the NFL, sometimes these things happen,” said running back Jonathan Taylor, who was held to a season-low 45 yards on 14 carries. “But the great teams find a way to figure out how to overcome this.”
The doubters, though, have all they need at the moment. They’ll point to the Colts’ six turnovers — their most in a game since Peyton Manning threw six interceptions in a loss to the then-San Diego Chargers in 2007. Great teams don’t do that.
They’ll point to Jones committing a career-high five turnovers, bringing back memories of the jittery quarterback the New York Giants jettisoned. MVP candidates don’t look like that (granted, that Manning guy turned out to be pretty good).
They’ll even point to the Colts’ schedule. Five of their seven wins this year have come against teams with losing records. Real contenders don’t just beat up on the bottom dwellers.
“Losing makes you better in the long run as long as you f—ing learn from it,” star left guard and team captain Quenton Nelson said. “And that’s what we’re gonna do. I think our preparation has been really good throughout the whole entire year, and there’s nothing I would change that we did during the week. The game plan is good and everything (else). We just gotta go out there and execute better.”
Nelson has plenty of reason to believe Indianapolis will rebound, regardless of how anyone on the outside feels, because flukes usually don’t keep popping up for this long. Entering Sunday, the Colts offense was operating at a historic level. Their 3.46 points per drive was the second-most by a team this century through its first eight games (behind only the Tom Brady- and Randy Moss-led Patriots in 2007).
Asked if Sunday’s loss changed his opinion of his team, and particularly its offense, wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. dismissed the notion.
“Winning is tough. You come to a place like this, with a hostile environment, versus a tough team, I mean, it’s really tough to win 17 (games),” said Pittman, who tied fellow receiver Alec Pierce for the team high with 115 receiving yards. “And honestly, I think that the adversity is good. I wouldn’t want to go into the postseason 17-0. There’s only been one team (the 1972 Miami Dolphins) that’s actually done that and won.”
A perfect season has been off the table ever since Indianapolis’ first loss, against the Los Angeles Rams in Week 4. But if there is a lesson to be gleaned from the team’s second defeat, it’s the same one every team in the NFL already knows: Turnovers can uplift you or they can bury you, and on Sunday the Colts threw a lot of dirt on themselves.
“(If) we don’t turn the ball over, I think we’ll be moving the ball up and down the field and scoring a lot of points again,” Colts coach Shane Steichen said of his team’s performance. “I got a ton of faith in our offense and our guys, for sure.”
For what it’s worth, Indianapolis totaled 368 yards of offense, 143 more than Pittsburgh, but its six turnovers — the most of any team in a single game this season — were too much to withstand. Wide receiver Josh Downs coughed up the first on a muffed punt in the first quarter. The ball bounced off the Acrisure Stadium turf and hit him in the chest as he tried to get out of the way, and cornerback Brandin Echols recovered it to put Pittsburgh at Indianapolis’ 11-yard line. The Colts’ defense forced a turnover on downs to mitigate the damage, but that trend wouldn’t hold up.
The Steelers scored touchdowns on the Colts’ next three turnovers, with Jones at the center of it all. The veteran QB finished 31-of-50 passing for 342 yards and one touchdown, plus another 1-yard rushing TD on the Colts’ first drive. But he also threw three interceptions and lost a pair of fumbles on strip-sacks. The first interception was arguably the worst of the bunch, as Jones failed to diagnosis the coverage and threw it straight to linebacker Payton Wilson.
That was one of Jones’ worst passes of the season, especially considering he’d thrown only three interceptions though his first eight games, but it’s worth acknowledging how often he was under siege. Jones was pressured a season-high 18 times, completing just six of his 13 passes for 88 yards and two picks when under those circumstances, per Next Gen Stats. He was also sacked five times — he was sacked only nine times through his first eight games.
“Obviously, that’s on me. I gotta protect the ball better and make sure we’re giving ourselves a chance,” Jones said. “I thought we did some good things at times, but just turnovers and some of those things, I gotta clean up.”
The Colts are still 7-2, but the narratives are coming, about a quarterback whose troubling past isn’t too far behind him; a team that hasn’t won the AFC South since 2014; and a franchise trying to return to “the upper quartile of winners,” as former Colts owner Jim Irsay once said.
The only way to extinguish the doubt is to respond. Indianapolis’ next opportunity will be in Berlin against the Falcons. On Sunday, Atlanta lost by a point to the Patriots, who are tied with the Colts for the best record in the AFC.
“(We’ll) come back to work a little pissed off,” Nelson said. “And like I said, losing is a part of life, and it makes you better as long as you learn from it.”
