INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. -- He's unplayable, AD Mitchell is. True, he's got massive talent and is a fine route runner and he's got the requisite physical attributes you want from a wide receiver, but none of that matters today, and it hasn't mattered since he arrived last year as a second-round pick. Once again, his mind-boggling mistakes were THE reason the Colts lost to the LA Rams Sunday, 27-20.
Can't play him.
On second thought, don't play him.
At least Ashton Dulin plays smart football. All he does is make plays. Nail Mitchell to the bench -- or cut him.
I don't mean to be harsh. I understand you win together, you lose together. But he took 14 points off the board in a tight game where the reborn Colts were going toe to toe with Matt Stafford and the Rams in Los Angeles.
All he did was make a remarkable catch on a would-be 76-yard touchdown pass, then hold the ball aloft at the one-yard line, only to lose his grip on the ball and watch it bounce out of bounds out the back of the end zone for a touchback. Look at me, he said, and everybody was looking, marveling at the great catch and run until he started thinking about the endzone celebration. Did he not learn anything from Jonathan Taylor, who made the same mistake in Denver last year?
Let me answer:
No.
"It definitely stings," Mitchell told reporters in Los Angeles. "The ball was put in my hand to make a play for the team. It was a matter of losing focus and just a play that just can't happen. Just unacceptable. I've got to be better for the team...This play hurts. It hurts a lot."
Said head coach Shane Steichen: "It's hard to explain in that situation.. But we've got a lot of faith in AD. This is a bump in the road for him and he's going to bounce back...It's a point of emphasis and I've got to do a better job of emphasizing it more. It starts with me."
That, of course, is nonsense. These are NFL players. Do you really need to emphasize carrying the ball over the goal line? Please.
Alas, Mitchell wasn't done killing the Colts. In the fourth quarter, he committed an egregious and totally unnecessary holding penalty downfield as Jonathan Taylor, locked up for most of the game, was breaking tackles on the way to a 53-yard touchdown that would have put the Colts up 27-20 late in the game.
Some guys can't get out of their own way. Mitchell is one of them. It's been that way since he arrived on the scene last season as a second-round selection.
As one-time Niners coach Mike Singletary once said after sending tight end Vernon Davis to the locker room in the middle of a game, "Cannot play with them, cannot win with them, cannot coach them."
He added, "We're not a charity. We can't give people the game."
That's what the Colts did Sunday. Two turnovers, 11 penalties and two Mitchell mistakes later, the Colts gave LA this game. You can't take 14 points off the scoreboard and hope to beat anybody, and certainly not a Stafford-led Rams team that has serious post-season aspirations.
The shame was, the Colts played well enough to win, even with the mistakes. Remember last year, when Taylor dropped the ball short of the goal line in Denver? Of course you do. The Colts fell completely apart after that mistake, and yes, Mitchell played a role in that too, throwing -- yes, throwing -- an ill-advised pass on a trick play that fooled nobody.
But still, Sunday the Colts persisted and remained in the game until the very end -- or at least until cornerback Mekhi Blackmon got his feet tangled, lost his footing and watched Tutu Atwell get behind him and go 88 yards for a touchdown that made it 27-20.
In the spirit of giving games away, the Colts only had 10 defenders in the game on the play that broke their backs.
Bold strategy, Cotton.
I've never played football at a high level -- St. Killian's Pop Warner team was as far as I got -- but for the life of me, I can't comprehend what the rush is to start celebrating. I don't know if you noticed last week, Taylor almost dropped the ball short of the goal line again, ultimately letting go about a yard into the end zone. It is dumb and it's unforgivable and it's the reason the Colts are 3-1 rather than 4-0.
Alec Pierce cannot come back too soon.
Maybe a week as a healthy inactive will have the desired effect on Mitchell.
Look, he wasn't the only one who had a rough day. Left tackle Bernhard Raimann had a brutal afternoon, playing his worst game since his rookie season. Corernback Xavien Howard, who's been picked on early this season, had no chance of covering Puka Nacua, who finished with 13 catches for 170 yards. It's hard to win when you commit 11 penalties, but still, the Colts were in this game until the end.
They beat themselves.
Mitchell beat them.
There's no way around it.
Bob Kravitz is an award-winning columnist who has been in the sports journalism business for 43 years. He's worked at Sports Illustrated, the Indianapolis Star, The Athletic and other publications, and is now an Indiana-based publisher at Roundtable Sports. You can follow him on X @bkravitz.