Chill out, Colts fans. It was a six-turnover anomaly, not the beginning of the end.

For the first time all season, the Colts' historically productive offense got shut down. And give the Steelers credit: They made the plays, especially on defense.

PITTSBURGH -- It was a matter of time. The question was not if the Colts would play a stinker of a football game, but when it might happen. For eight weeks, they were the best versions of themselves, an offensive juggernaut unlike anything we’ve seen since the Tom Brady-Randy Moss 2007 Patriots. They only turned the ball over four times all season, playing brilliant complementary football for two full months.

And then they came here, to the banks of the three rivers, a personal house of horrors where the Colts haven’t won a game since 2008.

To add insult to injury, the Steelers chose this weekend to honor the 2005 Super Bowl-winning team, marking the most painful and unlikely loss in the Peyton Manning Era. Remember Nick Harper? Mike Vanderjagt? That was the very best Colts team of that era -- I guess the 2009 team could have an argument -- a team with clear designs on a championship, and then the Steelers came into Indy and broke their hearts.

But enough about the old days...

This is about the present, which didn’t look all that appealing during the Colts’ 27-20 loss to the Steelers at Acrisure Stadium.

Let’s not overreact. It was bad, it was awful. Jonathan Taylor, the league’s leading rusher, managed just 45 yards on 14 carries. Daniel Jones, one of the league’s preeminent passers, threw four picks and got strip-sacked after throwing just four interceptions all season. The special teams stumbled, Josh Downs replacing the injured Anthony Gould and muffing a punt deep in Colts territory. (The turnover didn’t result in a score thanks to the defense). You know all the things the Colts did to run out to a 7-1 record, the best in the NFL? Well, they did none of those things Sunday. Even the offensive line, normally impenetrable and dominant, let the Steelers game-wreckers, notably T.J. Watt and Alex Highsmith, wreck the game.

You can comfort yourself and say they beat themselves, but that misses the point entirely. The Steelers were the better team all afternoon, full stop. Yes, they were out-gained by 143 yards, but a good portion of that came in garbage time. The Steelers forced the Colts into mistakes, dominating the line of scrimmage, the first time we’ve seen this all year.

The Colts, who came into the game averaging 33.8 points and 385 yards of offense per game, got their yards (368) but not the points. This game was lost on the offensive line, which gave up five sacks and saw two passes batted up in the air at the line of scrimmage, both resulting in interceptions.

Think about it: Six freaking turnovers.

For you history buffs, the last time the Colts turned it over six times is when Peyton Manning threw six picks against the Chargers in 2007. And the Colts still would have won that game if Adam Vinatieri hadn’t missed a short field-goal try.

“Losing makes you better if you learn from it,” left guard Quenton Nelson said in a quiet post-game locker room. “A lot of times, we beat ourselves.”

Said receiver Michael Pittman: “You come to a place like this, it’s hard to win. But some adversity is good. I wouldn’t want to go into the playoffs at 17-0 and having not faced adversity.”

(I didn’t have the heart to mention that 17-0 was unattainable after the loss to the Rams. But you get the idea.)

Look, they played nearly perfect football for the better part of eight weeks, separating themselves from the rest of the pack with their inspired, efficient play. It wasn’t going to continue. It couldn’t continue, not in a league that promotes parity. Stated simply, they were due. The offensive line, impenetrable for two months, got tossed around. Taylor never got unleashed and disappeared in the second half once the Colts had to play catchup. And Jones, so good for so long, he fell to earth with a resounding thud.

“We’ll certainly be eager to correct the things we didn’t do well, but as far as our confidence level or who we believe we are as a team, I thing that’s strong and we’re sure of that,” Jones said. “We’re sure of who we are. We understand, if you turn the ball over, that’s going to happen.”

Are we to worry that Jones morphed into the guy who struggled so much in New York? No, not at all. We’ve seen him through nine weeks; we have a pretty good idea of who he is, what he is as a starting quarterback and how well he operates Shane Steichen’s offense. We’ve seen what he can do when Taylor is going off and the offensive line is protecting him. None of those things happened Sunday, and you saw the result.

This, ultimately, was an anomaly.

As Mike Tomlin said after the game, “It’s a fine line between drinking wine and squashing grapes in this business.”

I have no idea what that means in the context of a football game, but it sounds quite profound.

Steichen didn’t mention wine or grape-squashing Sunday, but he did note earlier this week that the real NFL season begins in November. Now it’s going to get really hard and really challenging, with games against the up-and-down Falcons, the surging Chiefs, the Seahawks and the 49ers in the next month-and-a-half. We’ll know what they’re really all about over these next four-to-six weeks. Who knows? With the Patriots moving to 7-2 Sunday, the Colts and Patriots may be on a post-season collision course. Wouldn’t that be something?

It was one game, just their second loss. As Aaron Rodgers used to say, “Relax. R-e-l-a-x. Relax.”