Colts fans are blaming the wrong guy for season-ending loss to Texans

The Indianapolis Colts lost to the Houston Texans on Saturday night, thus eliminating them from playoff contention. Houston, with a rookie quarterback in CJ Stroud, will make the postseason. To make matters even worse, it was the Colts who lost to Houston at the end of last season to secure the No. 2 pick for the Texans, which they used on Stroud.

Stroud and Houston deserve a ton of credit for their improvement this season, as well as head coach DeMeco Ryans, who is in his first season with the Texans (as a coach).

Indianapolis was well within striking distance late in the fourth quarter, but faced a fourth-and-short with under two minutes remaining. Gardner Minshew threw a short pass to Tyler Goodson, who dropped the pass. Colts fans were stunned in disbelief, and blamed Goodson as a result.

Colts fans are blaming Tyler Goodson for playoff loss, but Shane Steichen blew it

First-year head coach Shane Steichen deserves plenty of credit for getting the Colts to this point with backup quarterback Gardner Minshew. However, his play-calling on the final series of the 2023-24 season deserves some criticism.

Steichen opted to run the ball with Jonathan Taylor the first three plays of the series. In doing so, the Colts were just one yard short of moving the chains. Indianapolis also had three timeouts remaining prior to lining up on fourth down.

Unfortunately, the first-year coach used his first timeout to discuss his fourth-down play, which would have been fine had Minshew completed his pass to Goodson. Instead, they failed to convert and lost a chance to stop the clock. Even worse, Goodson shouldn't have been in the game in the first place.

With the season on the line, Taylor sat on the bench and watched another running back drop a critical fourth-down pass. One could argue that a fourth-down run from Minshew was even a more optimal play call, but at the very worst Minshew should have been throwing the ball to the Colts best player, period.