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Most of them didn’t even know.
DeForest Buckner sat at his locker, picking a scab from his knee, trying to stop the blood from trickling down his shin.
“Shoot, I’m in disbelief, man,” the defensive tackle said. “We preach the word ‘FINISH’ all the time around here. But we don’t finish.”
Across the room, Quenton Nelson slumped in his seat, his eyes fixed on the floor, his mind lost in thought. The Pro Bowl guard sat silently, trying to process what he’d just been a part of — the biggest blown lead in the 102-year history of the NFL, a humbling reality he and most of his teammates didn’t have the faintest clue about until they were asked about it after the game.
Amid a season that’s been crumbling for months, this felt like a new low, one of the most unfathomable afternoons of football this franchise has ever been a part of.
“I’m shocked,” Nelson said. “I mean, that was insane.”
How does a team blow a 33-point halftime lead?
“Speechless,” cornerback Isaiah Rodgers chimed in.
Seriously, how?
“An embarrassment,” safety Julian Blackmon called it.
Embarrassment. After Vikings 39, Colts 36, that word feels appropriate. Because that’s what this was: an utter and incomprehensible embarrassment, the latest and loudest punctuation mark on a humiliating season that’s been doomed from the start, and furthermore, a damning indictment on a flailing franchise that feels more lost, more dejected, more despondent than it has in decades.
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