Colts 27-0 Loss to Jaguars: My Gameday Experience

We’re all hurting right now as Indianapolis Colts fans. Our coach is on the brink of being fired, though there’s little empathy for him in that regard. Our quarterback won’t get the ball out of his hands on time, our line won’t block for him consistently, we’ve lost Malik Hooker for the season and the woes keep coming.

Yesterday was not a good day to watch the Colts play football. It was a really bad day to go to the game and see it live. If you thought your day went a little sideways because of the game, mine started from the moment I woke up and headed off to the game.

So, a few weeks ago I bought some good tickets to the game — in the north end zone, the second row — for myself and my oldest son. Originally, I assumed that would be prime time for a possible Andrew Luck return and we may be able to see his first game back of the season. Obviously, we knew well before Sunday that that wasn’t going to be the case.

Anyhow, we were still going to see a divisional matchup in which the Colts had a chance to get another ‘W’ against an up-and-down Jacksonville Jaguars squad with some exciting pieces. Almost weird to say that I was more than happy to drop the scratch on a game against the Jags — I know.

Fast forward to Sunday morning with my alarm going off. I grab my phone, intending to hit the snooze. Instead, I knock my phone off of the stand, it falls to the floor and the charger plugged into the port snaps off. I’ve got another one — no big deal.

Now, envision yourself getting your things ready for the day and it’s just one of those days. My contact goes into my eye beneath my eyelid and folds up, dropping things all morning, the coffee maker isn’t working — yeah, one of those days.

I pull it together and we leave. Amazingly enough, I didn’t forget the tickets, my extra phone charger or anything for that matter.

In our short journey, all was well, and we stopped for lunch before heading into Lucas Oil Stadium. As we leave the establishment, it’s already getting a little warm out so I take off my hoodie and put it in the backseat before we take off.

I pull out onto Michigan Rd. and I hear something hit my vehicle. I look into the side-view mirror and I see my phone roll off the top of the car and land on the road behind us. Being the expert driver that I am, I pull into the median, reverse about 150 feet back to my phone only to watch a mid-size truck with a trailer attached run over it.

I got out, picked it up, it’s still good to go — that’s why you buy a quality phone case ladies and gentlemen. Feeling pretty lucky, we finish our trek to LOS.

We make our walk from the lot we parked in towards the stadium and I saw this debacle walking ahead of me and felt obligated to let Twitter know what I’d just seen.

(Note: I could have used his cargo shorts today — pockets are good — just sayin’.)

Possibly, the subconscious part of my mind was feeling a little arrogant that I’d just made it through this much of my day without wrecking my car, or something along those lines after the start of my day. Now, fast forward to the game. My son saw some of the pictures of the fans in attendance and wanted me to take a selfie of us using the hashtag to get on the ‘jumbotron’ — for lack of a better word — so I did, but we didn’t make the cut (nor did I necessarily expect us to.

(Note: If the fact that it was a beautiful day for football isn’t enough to open the roof, I don’t know what is. The reception in that place is awful with it closed, delaying this tweet more than 20 minutes.)

Naturally, It wasn’t easy to see the Colts give up a touchdown on the Jaguars’ first drive. Then to see the Colts shoot themselves in the foot on their initial possession, made me anxious, but still relaxed with a lot of game left to go.

Let’s go through the next succession of plays real quick: 52-yard pass from Blake Bortles to Keelan Cole, then a short run from Chris Ivory and a 5-yard scramble from Bortles. But, the next play just added to the way my day had gone thus far.

Bortles takes the snap, throws a jump ball to the back corner of the end zone to Marcedes Lewis and he comes down with the catch and a touchdown over Matthias Farley. This play was directly in front of us, and initially, I didn’t think Lewis got his body down in bounds.

Let’s look at the tape:

See what I mean. Didn’t look like that knee came down first and I thought his body came down on the white. But, did you catch that last part? Yep, that’s my stinking phone. Yes, the same possessed piece of electronics that forced me to scour my house for the extra charger, jumped onto my vehicle then jumped off as we left our lunch destination, and now the same phone that found its way onto the freaking field.

Let’s look from another angle:

There’s the play and that’s your boy waiving ‘incomplete’ — and there’s that phone jumping right out of my hand. That wasn’t exactly how I pictured that going.

Let’s take another look:

So, what’s worse? The Colts allowed another touchdown and were already down 14-0 early in the game? The fact that it’s impossible for me to have any sort of “that ain’t me” defense due to my jersey being clear as day? Or the fact that maybe, just maybe, I only looked like a complete fool in front of those around me only to find out otherwise?

Take your pick. But, as I would soon find out it, wasn’t just the 300-400 in my direct area who saw my fail. Behold.

I became a ‘Dopey Colts Fan’

But, my comrade Jake Arthur tried to lift my spirits with this one.

It didn’t hurt my feelings folks, I’ve got a sense of humor, but it was crazy how much this little toss of the phone would catch on.

So, let’s just say some people saw it. Like I said, it was pretty funny, but for me, it was just my day to that point. And then I looked to the positive side of things.

• I had another charger
• My phone was RUN OVER BY A TRUCK and it looks like I just took it out of the store
• I tossed my phone onto the field, and I didn’t get kicked out and I got it back
• My son and I made it home in one piece

With all that went wrong Sunday, I didn’t lose out on anything other than some hard earned money for those 27-0 tickets. The Colts played about as bad as they possibly could. Jacoby Brissett looked bad, the offensive line was putrid, the receivers couldn’t win in the first three seconds after the snap, the defense couldn’t tackle, cover or keep anyone healthy — disastrous.

But, finding the bright side of the day was easy. There’s no way on this Earth that Pagano is the Colts’ coach in 2018 (if he’s not fired today), Chris Ballard is in the infancy of building this roster, and Andrew Luck hasn’t taken a sack all season.

Brighter days are ahead!