OAKLAND – The anger in Mike Adams was obvious.
Rarely one for short answers, Adams was at first short with the media following the 33-25 loss that ended the playoff hopes for the veteran safety and his fellow Colts.
If Adams' words didn't give off the representation of his feelings, the dejection in his face was a dead giveaway.
Adams was tense and furious, knowing that another chance at making a playoff run was gone for the 35-year-old safety.
"I apologize for my tone," Adams said to the media, "but I'm just a little frustrated, as everybody should be.
"It stings. It hurts."
In a locker room filled with players a decade or more younger than Adams, a man that's played in a Super Bowl before was offering real perspective to what had just hit him minutes earlier.
"Us older guys, we don't have many chances (left)," Adams said. "That's the reality. That's what it is. That's the nature of this business so we have to take and seize opportunities when they present themselves and we didn't do that at all this year."
Similar thoughts were heard all around the visiting locker room on Saturday evening.
Two weeks ago, the Colts had about as good of a chance as they could have hoped for after starting the season 1-3.
With the Houston Texans at Lucas Oil Stadium on Dec. 11, a win from the Colts would push them above .500 for the first time all season and give them coveted control of the AFC South with three weeks to go.
That loss, a 22-17 defeat, meant the Colts must rely on help (and a lot of it) if the postseason was going to be achieved this season.
"It's pretty much unacceptable," Erik Walden said of missing the playoffs in consecutive years.
"An organization like this, it's like a requirement to get to the postseason and we haven't been able to do that, this year and last year."
For a player like Robert Mathis, his first 13 years in the NFL saw him as a postseason spectator just one time.
He's now about to do it for the second time in two years.
"Nothing is just given, so you have to come in every year, every week, every whatever," Mathis, an upcoming free agent, said of the failed attempt at making the playoffs.
"When opportunity presents itself, you have to seize the moment (and) when you don't, changes happen."
