SB Nation Reacts: Confidence in Colts wanes ahead of Week 13 matchup; Are Colts legitimate contenders?

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts where SB Nation gets fan reactions from the previous week’s results, as well as asking questions about the coming week’s slate. We also take a look at the weekly changes in confidence level from the team’s fans.

The Indianapolis Colts are preparing for another AFC South matchup, this time with the Houston Texans, after being thumped by the Tennessee Titans in Week 12. The Colts being out three of their best defenders and a couple key pieces on offense certainly contributed to their inability to stop the Titans, but the team’s situation got considerably worse when Anthony Castonzo left the game.

The Colts will be without their stalwart left tackle against Houston, but the vast majority of the bunch that missed Week 12 will be back to help get the team back on track with the playoffs looming. However, the confidence in the team has dipped between weeks after being at 90 percent heading into Week 12.

Naturally, allowing 200 rushing yards will have that affect on a team’s fans.

The fan’s confidence in the team heading into their Week 13 meeting with the Texans now sits at 75 percent which still shows that the majority of fans haven’t jumped ship quite yet. With their remaining schedule, the Colts are going to need that confidence from the fan base.

A win would appease most fans, but a loss against the Texans (4-7) would send fan’s confidence down the drain.

The next part of this week’s survey falls along the same lines as the team’s dip in confidence, as the question begins to become more pertinent by the day. Are the Colts legit contenders sitting at 7-4 with five games to play?

The Colts are fighting to regain control of the division as well as the Wild Card race, and they need to finish strong to have a shot at either to be perfectly honest — laying an egg to end the season isn’t an option for this team to squeak into the post season.

While the majority of Colts’ fans feel that the team has enough to earn a playoff berth, it’s the lack of trust in this team to win a game without first winning the division. The Colts would currently be in real trouble crawling in at the No. 7 seed.

And it appears that the rest of the national audience feels similarly. Only 42 percent of NFL fans feel that the Colts are real contenders at this point. This actually feels about right. The Colts could challenge.. with everything going right, but with an offense that’s touch and go from week to week, it lends to the distrust in the Colts to win multiple playoff games.

The great news is that the Colts will get DeForest Buckner and Denico Autry back on the defensive line in attempt to wrangle Deshaun Watson, and hopefully for the remainder of the season.

This brings us to our last part of the survey, and that’s the Week 13 fan picks. The good news is that the Colts are being picked to win in Houston. The bad news? Well, the Titans are also being picked to outlast the Cleveland Browns.

Here are the remainder of the Week 13 fan picks: