INGLEWOOD, Calif. – Over the last 10 seasons, NFL teams are 12-58 when committing three or more turnovers and being penalized 11 or more times.
The Colts, in their 27-20 loss to the Los Angeles Rams on Sunday at SoFi Stadium, committed three turnovers and were penalized 11 times. They're now the 58th defeat in that stat.
And that the Colts were playing a team largely considered to be a Super Bowl contender in Sean McVay's Rams only exacerbated those miscues in Week 4.
"You're playing a good team, and all those plays, when you hurt yourself, self-inflicted stuff, turning the ball over, penalties, all that stuff is going to be magnified in a game against a good team," quarterback Daniel Jones said. "We fought and went back and forth, but ultimately I think we shot ourselves in the foot."
Jones threw his first two interceptions of the 2025 season, which came on the Colts' first and final drives of the game. On the first one, Jones said he needed to throw a better ball down the field toward wide receiver Adonai Mitchell and let his receiver run under it. The second one came with a minute left and the Colts – who had all three of their timeouts left – needing a touchdown to tie the game. Jones looked toward wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. deep down the near sideline, and safety Kam Curl jumped in front of the pass for what was effectively a game-sealing interception.
"Just a force I think at that point in the game, no need to force that," Jones said. "We got timeouts and time, I think just understanding that."
Mitchell’s fumble, certainly, was a critical moment in Sunday's game, but it was far from the only miscue the Colts had.
With the game tied at 20 and the Colts on the Rams' 48-yard line just before the two-minute warning, Taylor was tackled for a three-yard loss on a first-and-10 run. Left tackle Bernhard Raimann was then flagged for a false start; while the Colts were bailed out by a pass interference flag on Rams safety Quinton Lake, a holding call on Mitchell nullified a 53-yard Taylor touchdown on the next play. Facing a first-and-15, Jones threw an incomplete pass, was strip-sacked for a loss of nine and then handed off to Taylor for an 11-yard run.
The Colts punted the ball back to the Rams after the two-minute warning. On Los Angeles' first snap of their ensuing drive, the Colts only had 10 players on the field, and wide receiver Tutu Atwell flashed open for an 88-yard catch-and-run touchdown.
"Credit to the Rams, they found a way to win it at the end," head coach Shane Steichen said. "We got to be better. Obviously we hurt ourselves in a lot of situations with penalties, we got to take care of the football and that starts with me."
There were a few other missed opportunities in the fourth quarter, too. After cornerback Mike Hilton forced a fumble on a dodgy exchange between quarterback Matthew Stafford and running back Kyren Williams, the Colts took over at the Rams' 17-yard line holding a four-point lead with about 11 and a half minutes left.
Tight end Tyler Warren was called for offensive pass interference on the next play, negating a 12-yard catch that would've got the Colts down to the Rams' five-yard line. Instead, the Colts faced a first-and-20 at the Rams' 27-yard line and weren't able to re-start their offense, leading to kicker Spencer Shrader connecting on a 38-yard field goal that brought the score to 20-13.
Then on the Rams' ensuing possession, Los Angeles didn't face a third down until a third-and-13 at the Colts' 20-yard line. Stafford completed an 11-yard catch-and-run pass to wide receiver Puka Nacua, leading to a fourth-and-two – and Stafford again found Nacua, who had 13 catches for 170 yards, this time for a nine-yard game-tying touchdown.
"Execution, the things that we can control like penalties — all those little things, they creep up and that's what got us today," defensive tackle DeForest Buckner said. "Also, obviously the Rams are a good team and they executed in critical moments, and we didn't."
The Colts left SoFi Stadium on Sunday feeling like they beat themselves with that avalanche of self-inflicted mistakes. In the moment, that's a tough reality to digest – had the Colts avoided a handful of critical mistakes, they might've been heading back to Indianapolis with a 4-0 record. But the Colts also don't feel like this 27-20 loss is a defining one for this team; the view from 30,000 feet is the Colts probably should've beaten one of the NFL's better teams in the Rams.
"Obviously this was a good opportunity to see how we stack up with some of one of the better teams in the league," Buckner said. "Coming out of it, obviously upset we lost, the fact that we beat ourselves. We just need to learn from our mistakes and continue to build."
And if the Colts can hang with a team as good as the Rams, they can feel confident in their ability to beat anyone on their schedule – so long as they, collectively, learn from the mistakes that led them to lose in Week 4.
"One game doesn't define anything," Pittman said. It's a 17-game season. Good teams lose. It's pretty tough to go 17-0. We're not going to hang our heads on it, and we're going to get back to work and come back next week."
