The trap game

 Quietly, now, you can hear the carousel warming up, as Shane Steichen tells us Joe Flacco is still his guy. The hum of the motor is faint, but it's there. Any second now the calliope music will start up, and damned if it won't fill the world.

Some pickle they're in, these Indianapolis Colts.

First they bench their once-and-perhaps-not-future future, Anthony Richardson, after just ten career starts.

Then they declare 86-year-old* (*39-year-old) Joe Flacco the future of the franchise, or at least of this season.

Now the Colts have lost three straight games, the last two with Flacco as QB1. In those games, Flacco has committed six turnovers. Yesterday, in a dispiriting 30-20 home loss to Buffalo, he coughed it up four times on three interceptions and a fumble.

The first pick was a pick six on Indy's first offensive snap that put the Colts down 7-0 not quite three minutes into the game. The Bills' Taron Johnson was the unintended receiver, and he basically strolled into the end zone with the gift.

And yet ...

And yet, there was Steichen postgame, stickin' with his guy. Because what choice does he have at this point?

If he benches Flacco and puts AR back in again, see, he cranks up the dreaded carousel.

AR comes in, plays awful in another Colts loss, and in comes Flacco again.

Flacco plays awful in another Colts loss, and in comes AR again.

And so on. And so forth.

It's a trap game Steichen and the braintrust have stumbled into, in the sense that they're trapped now by their own bad choices and indecision. It happened because they confused present with future and threw Richardson into the fire from the start, a horrendous decision. Then the AFC South turned into the AFC Sloth, so mediocre even a mediocre club like Indianapolis could sniff the playoffs. 

Patience in bringing Richardson along went poof, in the face of that. And now it is what it is, as everyone likes to say.

In other words, a s***show wrapped in a cluster(bleep).

Random thought: How differently would all of this have played out had the Houston Texans -- expected to dominate the AFC South -- not gotten off to a 1-3 start? Or if Tennessee and Jacksonville weren't so bad the Colts, at 4-6, are still the second-best team in the division? Would Joe Flacco have been throwing pick sixes yesterday?

Would the Colts be in such a fine mess, headed for an even finer mess?