What now with Ballard and Steichen? I say it's time to punt them both

I know injuries have knee-capped this year's once-formidable team, but the results never seem to change in this lost decade of Colts football.

Now that it’s unofficially official, now that the Colts have roughly a 2 percent chance of making the playoffs after Monday night’s embarrassing 48-27 loss to the Niners, it’s time to talk about the men who run the Indianapolis Colts, Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen.

The argument could be made, and it will, that the Colts were 7-1 and 8-2 with a 98 percent chance of reaching the playoff for just the third time in Ballard’s 10 years at the helm. At which point, it all fell apart, largely due to injuries – to Daniel Jones, to Sauce Gardner, to DeForest Buckner, to Charvarius Ward. If Carlie Irsay-Gordon isn’t quite ready to blow it up, she can lean on those sets of circumstances, tell herself, “Well, we were the best team in the league through 10 games, and then, well, you know…”

Which brings me to this question: How many get-out-of-jail-free cards does Ballard get? He got one after Andrew Luck suddenly retired, leaving the Colts high and dry in August of 2019. Does he get another one for the way this season went down? I mean, it’s a collapse, five straight losses and six of seven, but at a certain level, it’s not a true collapse in the sense that the Colts fell to pieces with a full complement of players.

As always with Ballard s, there are extenuating circumstances.

But it’s been 10 years. They haven’t won an AFC South during that time, have reached the playoffs just twice and won just one playoff game.

And if you sat through Monday night’s defensive atrocity, you know he didn’t get a lick of help from several players he selected at the top of the draft.

I present to you Kwity Paye, a 2021 first-round selection, who was supposed to give the Colts their first edge presence since Robert Mathis. Well, he’s been a bust. Watch a game closely and tell me how often Paye sniffs a quarterback. Sometimes, statistics are misleading, but not in this case; Paye has four sacks this season. This is his fifth season. It’s not good enough.

I present to you Laiatu Latu, last year’s first-round selection, who, again, was supposed to give the Colts their first edge presence since Robert Mathis. He hasn’t been around long enough to call him a bust, but again Monday night, the pass rush rarely if ever put pressure on Niners quarterback Brock Purdy. It was essentially a 7-on-7 game. The Colts were thrilled when Latu, the first defensive player selected in that draft, fell to them at No. 15, but by his second year, he should be showing ample signs of being a game-changer. Hasn’t happened. May never happen. Stay tuned.