1986 Jeno's Pizza - 31 - Rick Volk and Leroy Kelly

The 1971 Baltimore Colts

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 ...

was the 19th 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 ...

. Led by second-year head coach Don McCafferty, the Colts appeared to be on the verge of winning the AFC East again after beating the

Miami Dolphins The Miami Dolphins are a professional American football team based in the Miami metropolitan area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member team of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The team p ...

14–3 in the penultimate game of the regular season. However, the Colts lost the final game of the season at home to the New England Patriots, dropping them to 10–4 and the wild card berth. They lost to the Dolphins in the

AFC Championship The AFC Championship Game is the annual championship game of the American Football Conference (AFC) and one of the two semi-final playoff games of the National Football League (NFL), the largest professional American football league in the world. ...

game. The Baltimore defense gave up a total of 140 points for 14 regular season (10 PPG) & in their four defeats, they lost by 15 points total. This was the final season under the ownership of

Carroll Rosenbloom Dale Carroll Rosenbloom (March 5, 1907 – April 2, 1979) was an American businessman. He was the owner of two National Football League franchises; he was the first owner of the Baltimore Colts, and later switched teams, taking ownership of the ...

, who traded franchises with the Los Angeles Rams in July

1972 Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using mean solar tim ...

, with players and coaching staffs remaining intact.

Offseason

NFL Draft

Personnel

Staff/Coaches

Roster

Regular season

Schedule

Game summaries

Week 1

Standings

NFL 2001 Record and Fact Book, Workman Publishing Co, New York,NY, , p. 297

Postseason

The team made it to the

playoffs The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be eit ...

as a No. 4 seed and traveled to

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

to play the

Cleveland Browns The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (A ...

in the divisional round. The Colts led 14–0 at the half and would cruise to a 20–3 win. They then traveled south to play the

and tried to make it to their second consecutive Super Bowl. Colts QB Johnny Unitas was intercepted three times as they were shut out 21–0.

References

Baltimore Colts 1971 Baltimore Colts {{Americanfootball-season-stub