• BRIAN T. SMITH SIZES UP RIVALRY, SUCH AS IT IS.
The Texans and Colts are two peas in a pod, waging semiannual battles to escape AFC South blandness
They deserve each other. The franchise that in Year 15 still hasn’t figured out how to win games that matter. The organization that has never been the same since giving Peyton Manning away.
Only the Texans could be publicly humiliated by a combined 58-13 in New England and Minnesota yet still lead the worst division in the NFL as the “Sunday Night Football” bus rolls into Houston.
Only the Indianapolis Colts could screw up the Andrew Luck Era, turning one of the NFL’s few contemporary sure-thing quarterbacks into a constantly battered one-man show with no defense to back him.
It shouldn’t even be this close. But they’re made for each other, these Texans and those Colts. And this is what you get when two entities exist only to drag the other one down.
Think this year’s presidential offerings are deplorable? Let the cream of the AFC South’s crop lift your depressed spirit.
Indianapolis was supposed to annually wrap up its watered-down division war years ago, when Luck was chosen No. 1 overall in 2012, then carried the Colts to the conference championship game two seasons later.
As Luck would have it
But everything since has been deflating, at best. Indy’s brain trust makes the Texans look like Patriots South incarnate. And there was no greater indictment of the Colts’ chaotic ways than general manager Ryan Grigson — be thankful for Rick Smith, Texans fans — recently having the gall to say something this clueless and idiotic.
“We have a defense that is a work in progress. … Once we paid Andrew what we did, it’s going to take some time to build on the other side of the ball,” said Grigson, apparently not realizing that all 32 teams are confined by the same hard salary-cap restrictions and Indy also lacks an offensive line.
Of course, a proud Stanford and Stratford product is too smart and worldly to even acknowledge such public stupidity.
“I guess the nice thing about having a job is you just have to worry about your own job. I have no thoughts on that,” said Luck, when asked about Grigson’s comments.
Indy went 11-5 in each of Luck’s initial three years. The best the Texans have done since their 12-4 peak in 2012 is 9-7 back-to-back. But Bob McNair’s team stole the South last season and is still the smart favorite in 2016. And as we await Texans-Colts XXIX, the organization with a 23-5 mark in this lopsided rivalry is somehow trailing the Texans again.
“Every week is a reminder of how hard it is to get a win in this league,” Luck said. “From our perspective, it is a tough division. Every team brings it each time. Houston, certainly, as the defending champs, are the leaders of the division right now. We would like to get back to that spot, but it’s always tough.”
I don’t know about that whole “tough division” tease, Andrew. There’s a reason 9-7 was good enough to capture the crown last year.
Five of the previous six Texans-Colts games were decided by seven points or less. Case Keenum once briefly rose. Gary Kubiak collapsed on the sideline. The last “thriller” required four backup quarterbacks and ended with McNair erecting a statue of Brandon “I won in Indy for the first time” Weeden on Kirby Drive.
This time, the Texans should be 4-2 by the time Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth sign off. And if they hold a twogame division lead the week before Brock Osweiler flies back to Denver, they’ll be led by a $72 million QB who was drafted 56 spots behind Indy’s second chosen one in 2012.
That elusive consistency
Simply having Luck should guarantee the Colts as AFC South favorites every year. See: New England, Pittsburgh, Green Bay and the rest of the NFL’s elite, who almost always have a premier QB zeroed in on their Super Bowl sights.
But while these Texans try to figure out who they are in Bill O’Brien’s third year — and how not to be blown to bits when a TV nation tunes in — the 2-3 Colts are still madly kicking their own teeth in.
“We think we have a chance to be a good football team. But consistency is the key,” O’Brien said. “You look at the standings. There’s one 5-0 team. There’s a bunch of 4-1 teams. There’s 3-2 teams, 2-3 teams. There’s one team that’s 0 and whatever. It’s an 8-8 league. That’s how the league is set up.
“It’s the team that becomes the most consistent over the last … 11 weeks of the season that’s going to end up being where they want to be. … It’s kind of a race to see who can improve the fastest and who can become the most consistent.” This race already could be over. Have Luck, should win. But little goes right or makes football sense in the AFC South. And two teams that can’t live without each other are trying to win the division by attrition again.