DENVER – No, the Colts’ season isn’t over yet.

Sunday’s loss to the Denver Broncos at Empower Field at Mile High in Week 15 did not eliminate the Colts from postseason contention. However, the Houston Texans secured victory in the AFC South, meaning the Colts will not win their division this year for the first time since 2014.

A narrow path remains. We don’t need to go into detail now. More important is how the Colts digested their 31-13 loss to the Broncos, which was marked by self-inflicted mistakes ranging from the mundane (penalties) to the significant (a few turnovers) to the catastrophic (as described here).

“This one hurt the most because we clearly beat ourselves,” linebacker Zaire Franklin said. “No disrespect to the Broncos — I think Sean Payton is a heck of a head coach, I think he’s a heck of a play-caller and (wide receiver) Courtland Sutton is a guy — but man, I just feel like that “We obviously didn’t do it.” “If you play successful football at this time of year, if you do those things, you’re not going to win with the mistakes we made.”

The Colts were penalized eight times and had five turnovers, with those two realities far too much to overcome in a game with massive playoff implications.

“We really needed this and we didn’t get it,” said wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. “I don’t know what chances we have left, but it’s very frustrating that we couldn’t get it.”

“It definitely hurts a lot,” defensive tackle DeForest Buckner said. “We had our chances and just let it go.”

While the Colts still have a 17 percent chance of making the playoffs, according to the New York Times, the focus is not on watching the scoreboard, but rather on starting the 2024 season with a strong finish against the Tennessee Titans (3-11). ), the New York Giants (2-12) and Jacksonville Jaguars (3-11). The Colts could have increased their playoff odds by almost 70 percent on Sunday, but instead they fell significantly. Nevertheless, the chance to end 2024 with a winning record is definitely important for this team.

“It was a great game for us and obviously our chances are slim now,” head coach Shane Steichen said. “But we know we signed up for 17 of these things, and we’re going to keep fighting.”

“The best outcome for everyone would be to finish this season as a winning team,” Franklin said. “Because I think we are good enough to be a winning team, but we didn’t play winning football today.”

The Colts haven’t played the complementary type of football that fuels playoff contenders for most of the 2024 season. There were games where the offense sputtered while the defense held steady, or where the defense was crushed while the offense played explosive and efficient balls. Sunday’s loss to the Broncos was more of the former; The Colts’ defense set new season highs in yards allowed per game (3.2), total yards allowed (193) and interceptions (three).

But Franklin, the loud leader of the Colts defense and the NFL’s leading tackler, wasn’t willing to engage in platitudes about how the defense performed in a loss.

“There will be ups and downs over the course of a season,” Franklin said. “I feel like sometimes it’s too much to blame certain things, like the defense didn’t win the game and then along with the offense we lost too. No matter how we played, the Colts lost.”

“…We are a team. Yes, you may feel decent because you played decently. But at the end of the day we lost as a team.”

Now it’s up to the Colts to finish the 2024 season on their terms, not as individuals or isolated units, but as a team.