Baltimore Sports History: The Colts

November 21st, 2024 by The Professor

by Andrew Ciofalo, host of After The Whistle

The Indianapolis Colts we’re once Baltimore’s beloved football team. For 40 years the Colts pranced Old Memorial Stadium where legends like Johnny Unitas and Gino Marchetti. From being a championship contender regularly in the first 18 years to barely sniffing playoffs in the ladder half of the Colts’ stay in Baltimore, where did it all go wrong? That can be chalked up to one name: Robert Irsay. Let’s explore the good times before the extremely distasteful ending.

The Baltimore Colts first year was in 1953 and they finished 3-9 as well as in their 1954 season. The early years were tough going for the new franchise, it wasn’t until 1957 when they finished with a winning record as they finished 7-5. The year prior was a crucial year for the Colts, their starting quarterback George Shaw went down with an injury in the Colt’s fourth game in ’57. From there, backup Quarterback Johnny Unitas would start the rest of the year. Johnny Unitas would turn out to be the greatest thing to happen to the Colts as he would go on to be their franchise guy and one of the best in the game for years to come.

1958 was Unitas’ first year starting and boy was it a fantastic one. The Colts would finish the year with a record of 9-3 and win the NFL Championship against the New York Giants with a score of 23-17. Johnny Unitas threw for 349 yards and a touchdown in the game and receiver Raymond Berry caught 12 of his passes for 178 yards and caught that said touchdown. The game was back and forth and with just over 2 minutes to play in the 4^th with the Colts down 17-14, the Giants punted the ball away to the Colts where they’d start their attempt to tie the game at the 14 yard line. Unitas and the Colts would manufacture a drive that brought them to the 13-yard line of the Giants where kicker Steve Myhra would kick the game tying field goal as time expired. This type of drive would be soon commonly known as the 2-minute drill.

In overtime, Unitas drove the Colts down the field again to put his team in position to win. On the 1-yard line, Colts running back Alan Ameche would punch the game winning touchdown to win the first overtime/sudden death game in NFL playoff history. The game would go onto be known as the “Greatest Game Ever Played.”

The Colts would finish the next season nearly the same way. With a 9-3 record, the Colts once again faced the Giants in the 1959 NFL Championship and won with a more convincing score of 31-16.

1960 started a 4-year streak of non-playoff making teams, ending .500 or barely better each season. In 1963, a young Don Shula became the head coach for the Colts. Shula played defensive-back for Baltimore from 1953 to 1956 before getting waived in the training camp of the 1957 season. He was picked up by the Redskins for the season but retired at the of 1957 after 7 years in the NFL. Shula took over the head coaching job for Baltimore after Weeb Ewbanks had 3 sub-par years in a row. Don Shula would coach to a record of 71-23 in Baltimore and had 7 consecutive winning seasons. On top of that, Shula lead the Colts to an NFL Championship win in 1968 when the Colts beat the Cleveland Browns 34-0. After the 1969 season, Shula and Colts’ owner Carroll Rosenbloom’s relationship had boiled over and Shula excepted the head coaching job for the Miami Dolphins as well as being his own general manager. Shula would go on to coach the Dolphins for 26 years and become the winningest Head Coach in NFL history, winning a total of 347 wins across his time in Baltimore and Miami, with postseason games included.

The season following Shula’s departure for Miami, the Baltimore Colts won its first and only Super Bowl for the city under new head coach Don McCafferty.

The History of the Colts from 1972 to 1983 was very cloudy. Carroll Rosenbloom was the owner of the Baltimore Colts until 1972, tensions between him and the city of Baltimore rose as he was unhappy of the state of Memorial Stadium. He had ideas to build a new stadium in the suburbs and even move the team to Tampa until in 1972 when He and the owner of the Los Angeles Rams at the time did the unthinkable: a complete franchise swap. Robert Irsay became the owner of the Colts in 1972 and Rosenbloom the owner of the Rams. The years of Irsay’s ownership playing wise wasn’t much to talk about either, the team had a winning record in only 3 of 12 seasons under Irsay in Baltimore.

Finally, we get to the reason why the Colts left Baltimore for Indianapolis. Robert Irsay too had the same ambitions as Rosenbloom before him. Unhappy with the city of Baltimore and the lack of support for Memorial Stadium lead to Irsay wanting to re-locate the team. The only difference between Rosenbloom and Irsay? Well, Robert Irsay was just a bit more extreme in his ways. Irsay demanded a lot from the city and rightfully so. By this point, Old Memorial Stadium was really showing its age and almost falling apart. Among other things, Irsay would repeatedly lie to Baltimore and Colts fans saying that he wasn’t looking to move the franchise, even though it was clear he was exploring other opportunities in Jacksonville, Arizona, and Indianapolis to name a few. Irsay pulled the trigger in the middle of night, moving the Colts franchise to Indianapolis on Mayflower moving vans and leaving behind only the telephones in the Owings Mills facilities.

The Baltimore Colts will always be remembered among Baltimore natives as the team that was ripped away from them. Baltimore would go 12 years before they saw a new NFL franchise to call their city home.