The 1991

Indianapolis Colts The Indianapolis Colts are a professional American football team based in Indianapolis. The Colts compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) South division. Since the 2008 ...

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pol ...

was the 39th season for the team in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the ...

(NFL) and eighth in

Indianapolis Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...

. The team was looking to improve on the 7–9 record they had recorded in

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of Humankind, humanity on Earth, Astroph ...

. Instead, the Colts put together a campaign that ranked as one of the worst in NFL history. The Colts only recorded one victory in sixteen games, becoming the fourth team since the extension of the NFL's regular season to sixteen games to accomplish this. To date it is their worst full season record in the entire history of the franchise, and the second worst overall record in team history. The 1991 Colts’ futility was beaten only by the 1982 Baltimore Colts squad, where the team failed to record a victory in the strike-shortened season and finished at 0-8-1. The Colts’ poor performance cost sixth-year head coach

Ron Meyer Ronald Shaw Meyer (February 17, 1941 – December 5, 2017) was an American college and professional football coach. He is best known for having been the head coach of Southern Methodist University, the New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts ...

his job after the Colts’ fifth consecutive loss to open the season. Meyer had been with the Colts since Week 14 in 1986, when he replaced the fired

Rod Dowhower Rodney Douglas Dowhower (born April 15, 1943) is a former American football player and coach. He was the head coach at Stanford University and Vanderbilt University; in between he was the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts of the National Footba ...

after the Colts had lost their first thirteen games of the season. Defensive coordinator

Rick Venturi Rick Venturi (born February 23, 1946) is a former American football player, coach and current broadcaster. He served as the head coach at Northwestern University and as longtime National Football League assistant coach known for his defense. ...

was promoted to interim head coach; he would lead the team to its only win, a one-point victory over the New York Jets on the road. The 1991 Colts are one of three 1-15 teams to win their lone game by one point; the others are the 1980 New Orleans Saints and 2000 San Diego Chargers. The Colts scored the fewest points up to that point (143)The 1991 Colts’ total is now second-lowest of all-time, behind the 140 points the

Seattle Seahawks The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football team based in Seattle. The Seahawks compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) West, which they rejoined in 2002 as ...

put up in 1992. of any team in NFL history in a sixteen-game schedule,The league switched from a 14- to a 16-game schedule in 1978. scoring in the single digits in 11 games. The Colts never scored more than 28 points in any game (doing so in their lone victory), scored less than ten points eleven times, were shut out twice, and failed to score one single touchdown in nine of their sixteen games, which remains the largest proportion of games without scoring a touchdown since the 1977 “Zero Gang”

Tampa Bay Buccaneers The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are a professional American football team based in Tampa, Florida. The Buccaneers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) NFC South, South divisio ...

did not score a touchdown in eight of fourteen games. Statistics site '' Football Outsiders'' said of the Colts 1991 season: Their futility was mentioned in a Thanksgiving edition of

Bill Swerski's Superfans "Bill Swerski's Superfans" was a recurring sketch about Chicago sports fans on the American sketch comedy program ''Saturday Night Live''. It was a prominent feature from 1991 to 1992, and its characters have made various other appearances since ...

, a recurring ''

Saturday Night Live ''Saturday Night Live'' (often abbreviated to ''SNL'') is an American late-night live television sketch comedy and variety show created by Lorne Michaels and developed by Dick Ebersol that airs on NBC and Peacock. Michaels currently serves a ...

'' sketch. The four characters, all

Chicago Bears The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) North division. The Bears have won nine NF ...

fans, commented on how some cities aren't as fortunate as Chicago to have a good football team, citing Indianapolis as an example. Coincidentally, six days before the skit aired, the Bears defeated the Colts 31–17 at Indianapolis.

Offseason

NFL Draft

Personnel

Staff

Roster

Regular season

The Colts were victorious only once in the regular season, finishing last in the AFC East, and their fifteen losses tied an NFL record that was initially set by the 1980 New Orleans Saints and tied by the 1989 Dallas Cowboys and 1990 New England Patriots in the previous two NFL seasons. The 1991 Colts had a much weaker schedule to play than either the 1990 Patriots or 1989 Cowboys, playing eleven games against teams with non-winning records, as against only five for the 1990 Patriots and four for the 1989 Cowboys. The Colts lost nine consecutive games to start the season before rallying to defeat the playoff-bound New York Jets by a single point in Week 11. The win against their division rivals came at Giants Stadium; the Colts went 0–8 in the

Hoosier Dome The RCA Dome (originally Hoosier Dome) was a domed stadium in Indianapolis. It was the home of the Indianapolis Colts NFL franchise for 24 seasons (1984–2007). It was completed at a cost of $77.5 million, as part of the Indiana Convention Cen ...

. (Incidentally, the Jets would become the next team to finish 1–15, doing so five years later.) Since the Colts finished with the worst record in the NFL, they won the right to draft

Steve Emtman Steven Charles Emtman (born April 16, 1970) is a former professional American football defensive end who played in the National Football League (NFL). He played college football for the University of Washington and was selected first overall by ...

, a defensive lineman from Washington whose career was derailed by injuries. It would take them until 1995 to reach the playoffs again, and the Colts did not become consistently successful until Peyton Manning joined the team near the end of the 1990s.

Schedule

Game summaries

Week 11: at New York Jets

Week 16

pro-football-reference.com
Retrieved 2020-Jul-19.

Jim Kelly James Edward Kelly (born February 14, 1960) is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 11 seasons with the Buffalo Bills. He also spent two seasons with the Houston Gamblers of the United Stat ...

and

Frank Reich Frank Michael Reich Jr. (; ; born December 4, 1961) is an American football coach and former quarterback who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 14 seasons, primarily with the Buffalo Bills. He played college football at Maryland a ...

managed just thirteen completions, but four of them were touchdowns as the Bills romped 35–7.

Jeff George Jeff is a masculine name, often a short form (hypocorism) of the English given name Jefferson or Jeffrey, which comes from a medieval variant of Geoffrey. Music * DJ Jazzy Jeff, American DJ/turntablist record producer Jeffrey Allen Townes * ...

was benched after completing just 83 yards and

Mark Herrmann Mark Donald Herrmann (born January 8, 1959) is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback in the National Football League (NFL) for twelve seasons during the 1980s and 1990s. Herrmann played college football for the ...

was even worse, throwing three interceptions. The win secured the #1 playoff seed for the Bills.

Standings

Notes

References

Indianapolis Colts seasons Colts {{Americanfootball-season-stub