INDIANAPOLIS -- The NFL season is just two weeks old and starting 0-2 wouldn’t be a be a new thing for the Indianapolis Colts. They dropped their first two games last season -- the only time Andrew Luck has lost back-to-back regular-season games -- and rebounded by reaching the AFC Championship Game.
What is a new thing, though, is the Colts' needing to manage expectations. And there are a lot of them this season.
That’s why an 0-2 start this season would have a completely different feeling from last season. Another uninspiring performance by the Colts on Monday Night Football against the New York Jets would brighten the spotlight on coach Chuck Pagano, who is in the final year of his contract, and general manager Ryan Grigson, who signed four new starters over the age of 30 during the offseason.
“It's a marathon, not a sprint," Pagano said. "When you win, everybody writes great things about you and when you lose, they come from all corners. You’re going to get a barrage from everywhere. That's just the National Football League. We've got our blinders on, we've got our earmuffs on. Our total focus is on today and getting better today."
The concern started after the Colts, the darling team some picked to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl this season, were outworked and thoroughly outplayed by Rex Ryan's Buffalo Bills in Week 1.
“We probably deserved to get our asses whooped,” Colts safety Mike Adams said. “It was a wake-up call, anybody can be beaten. We didn't play with fire. No one is invincible. Thank God this was the first game.”
The Colts have tried, but things haven't been normal for them. Pagano and Grigson held an unscheduled joint news conference two weeks ago where they tried to squash the rumors of a rift between the two. Owner Jim Irsay sought out the media after the Buffalo game to adamantly deny the rumors. Pagano has grown tired of the questions about his future. He said last week that he'd be glad to "talk about something that’s relevant.”
The questions will continue after each poor performance by Indianapolis. That’s because this season isn’t about simply winning a third straight AFC South title for the Colts. They’ll gladly take another division title, but this season is about taking another step, and that step is reaching the Super Bowl.
That’s why Irsay said he wants to win two Super Bowls in the Luck era. And that’s why Grigson, despite not publicly admitting it, slid his playing chips to the middle of the table by signing veterans Andre Johnson, Frank Gore and Trent Cole.
“There was so much anticipation in the preseason, throughout the preseason,” linebacker D'Qwell Jackson said. “It’s similar to last year where we started off slow and we got back on track. But we don’t want to emulate anything like the first two weeks of last season. It helps everyone to win. The topic of conversation changes once you get the one. Then everyone starts talking about how good you are compared to if you start out the gates slow. That’s when expectations from the outside start creeping in. We're curious to see how good we can really be."
The Colts, according to Adams, had a “let’s go mentality" in practice last week. The focus was doing their own job and not worrying anybody else's job; that happened too often and led to big plays for the Bills in Week 1.
“I don’t want to say there’s pressure because there is no pressure,” Adams said. “It’s just a game. It’s more a sense of urgency. We know who we have on the team. We know the weapons we have on the team. We know what we’re capable of doing and not prove people wrong, but prove to ourselves we can do.”