Scott Horner/IndyStar
I. THE LOW POINT
They were undressed that afternoon, embarrassed, exposed. Pretenders, they were called. Paper lions. “The Jaguars took the Colts’ milk money,” one story read, “and then they laughed about it.”
Hard to argue. The Indianapolis Colts rolled over and played dead that day. Tony Dungy’s team was skidding, skidding hard, skidding fast, crumbling at the worst time of year. A ho-hum 9-0 start dissolved into a distant memory; Indy had suddenly lost three of four. The low point arrived on a sunny December afternoon in Jacksonville.