The Colts re-convened at the Indiana Farm Bureau Football Center on Wednesday still holding a playoff spot, and (mostly) controlling their postseason destiny – even after losing by 19 points on Christmas Eve to the Atlanta Falcons.
And as players began preparing for Week 17’s home date with the Las Vegas Raiders, they took a hard look in the mirror to figure out what went wrong last week and how to avoid another defeat down the stretch with little margin for error.
“People really just looked within themselves — how did I approach the week, how did I approach every single rep and knowing, did I do everything possible in my power because you only have a limited amount of opportunities,” running back Jonathan Taylor said. “And then once they start to dwindle — especially when you have an opportunity to do something special that hasn’t been done in a little bit, it’s, we need to figure out a way in order to make that happen. Whatever it takes.”
The Colts know they need to find consistency after oscillating between big wins (over the Titans and Steelers) and three-score losses (to the Bengals and Falcons) in December. And a Week 16 postgame message from quarterback Gardner Minshew II hit at that point: Don’t take this opportunity to make the playoffs for granted, and don’t worry about scoreboard watching or doing schedule math.
“Let’s just take advantage of these games,” linebacker Zaire Franklin said. “We can’t control what happened before, it already happened. Highs and lows, we don’t let our successes or our failures affect us too much. We just take everything in stride and I think we’ve done a good job of doing that. We just gotta keep building, keep trying to get this win.”
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