When speaking with reporters following the Indianapolis Colts’ season finale win over the Jaguars, quarterback Joe Flacco was asked how close this team was to taking the next step and getting over that playoff hump.
As an upcoming free agent, Flacco could have given the cliché answer, detailing how close the team is and if a few things went differently the season could have ended up being more successful.
But that isn’t the route Flacco went. Instead, he was upfront and highlighted the proper mindset that the Colts need to have going forward.
“When you’re 8-9, there’s probably a ton of spots where you could look and convince yourself that we were almost there,” Flacco said. “I don’t necessarily think that’s the right mindset. I don’t think we should be trying to trick ourselves into thinking that we’re almost there. I think we should acknowledge, ‘Yeah, we are almost there, but we’re not there.’ I think when you acknowledge that, you free yourself up to get better and take that next step.”
I think it’s probable that Joe Flacco played his last snap with the Colts today. But he hit all the right notes in this quote. Even without leadership changes, his words still apply. This is basically the mistake they made after 2024.
Story: https://t.co/SbQrTt3MVe pic.twitter.com/bKccRQ0f6y
— Stephen Holder (@HolderStephen) January 6, 2025
While Flacco was asked about the 2024 season and what’s ahead in 2025, his answer highlights what went wrong this year as well.
Coming off a 9-8 season in 2023 where the Colts again missed the playoffs, GM Chris Ballard chose to keep the status quo and ran back basically an identical team in 2024.
Rather than really honing on what kept the Colts from being a playoff team in 2023, the focus seemingly was, as Flacco described, on all the areas where Indianapolis felt close. And the result was not a step forward this season, but a step backwards.
In order to avoid the same thing happening again in 2025, as I wrote about recently, Ballard and the Colts need to lean heavily into creating competition on this roster, which hopefully sparks growth instead of regression.
