The Colts have been a successful NFL franchise since they joined the league as the Baltimore Colts in 1953. In Baltimore, the Colts won three NFL Championships (1958, 1959, 1968) and one Super Bowl championship (Super Bowl V in 1971). The Colts moved to Indianapolis in 1984.
Like many others in my lifetime, I know the Colts best for the Peyton Manning era: 1998-2011. The Colts drafted Manning with the 1st pick in the '98 NFL draft and the rest is history. In Indianapolis, Manning led the Colts to two Super Bowl appearances (XLI in 2007 and XLIV in 2010) and one Super Bowl win (XLI). In his 14 seasons with the Colts (13 if you don't count the 2011 season in which he sat out due to neck surgery), he led the team to 11 postseason appearances.
Individually, Manning is as decorated as they get: Super Bowl XLI MVP, five-time NFL MVP (four times as a Colt: 2003, 2004, 2008, 2009), and a 14-time Pro-Bowler. Manning holds the NFL records for most passing touchdowns in a season (55) and most passing yards in a season (5,477). However, those records came in 2013 when he was a Denver Bronco.
The peak Manning-era years for the Colts were under head coach Tony Dungy: 2002-2008. With Dungy at the helm, the Colts never missed the playoffs. Dungy led the team to six consecutive AFC South Division Championships (2003-2007) and the Super Bowl championship in '07 (2006 season). Needless to say, both Manning and Dungy are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
As someone who grew up a Wake Forest sports fan, I've always thought it was interesting how the Colts hired former Wake head coach Jim Caldwell to succeed Dungy beginning in 2009. Up to that point, Caldwell's only college or pro head coaching experience was going 26-63 (.413) at Wake. I understand he worked for Dungy in the NFL beginning in 2001, so he had eight years of pro experience as an assistant entering the 2009 NFL season. But, to hand over the keys to an established, championship-winning team with an all-time great QB, just like that, still boggles my mind a bit.
Don't get me wrong, I like Jim Caldwell. To his credit, he did coach the Colts to Super Bowl XLIV in 2010, but it was with a team that Tony Dungy and Peyton Manning largely helped establish. Caldwell later ended up as head coach of the Detroit Lions where he coached my favorite player, Calvin Johnson, in his last two seasons (2014-2015): https://www.yelp.com/biz/detroit-lions-detroit.
Since Manning's last game for the Colts in an AFC Wild Card Playoffs loss to the New York Jets on January 8, 2011, the team has had almost a grab bag of starters at QB. There have been 12 different starting QBs in Indianapolis since 2011. The most prominent has been four-time Pro-Bowler Andrew Luck, but like Manning, Luck had to sit out an entire season (2017) due to injury. He ultimately retired "early," at the age of 29, due to his recurring injuries. 2018 was Luck's final season.
The lack of continuity at the QB position, along with other factors, have hurt the Colts' performance in recent years. In the last seven seasons, Indianapolis has only qualified for the playoffs twice and they have only one playoff win: in 2019 in the AFC Wild Card Playoffs over the Houston Texans. read more