The

1978 Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of Republican People's Party, CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd ...

Baltimore Colts The Baltimore Colts were a professional American football team that played in Baltimore from 1953 to 1983, when owner Robert Irsay moved the franchise to Indianapolis. The team was named for Baltimore's history of horse breeding and racing. It w ...

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's axial tilt, tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperat ...

was the 26th season for the team in the

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...

(NFL). Under fourth-year head coach

Ted Marchibroda Theodore Joseph Marchibroda (March 15, 1931 – January 16, 2016) was an American professional football player and coach in the National Football League (NFL). He played four years in the NFL as a quarterback with the Pittsburgh Steelers (1953, ...

, the Colts finished with 5 wins and 11 losses, tied for fourth in the AFC

East East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that ea ...

division with the Buffalo Bills. Baltimore lost the tiebreaker to Buffalo based on head-to-head series (0–2). This was the first time under Marchibroda that Baltimore did not make the postseason. The Colts' minus-181 point differential was easily the NFL's worst, 50 points behind the next worst team, the

San Francisco 49ers The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners and nicknamed the Niners) are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member ...

. With quarterback

Bert Jones Bertram Hays Jones (born September 7, 1951) is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback in the National Football League (NFL) for the Baltimore Colts and Los Angeles Rams. He was named the NFL Most Valuable Player ...

out for several weeks with a shoulder injury and quickly losing both starting offensive tackles for the year through injury, Baltimore started the season in catastrophic fashion, losing their first two games by a combined score of 80–0. The Colts' first win of the season, in week three over

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

on ''

Monday Night Football ''Monday Night Football'' (often abbreviated as ''MNF'') is the branding used for broadcasts of National Football League (NFL) games that air on Monday nights. It originally ran on American Broadcasting Company, ABC from 1970 NFL season, 1970 t ...

'', is one of the biggest regular season upsets in NFL history. The Patriots were favored by an overwhelming 17½ points, but the Colts scored 27 points in the fourth quarter, including a 90-yard kickoff return by running back Joe Washington with under a minute left to take the lead for good. In the game, Washington became the first player to throw a touchdown, catch a pass for a touchdown, and return a kickoff for a touchdown in the same game.

Offseason

NFL draft

Personnel

Staff

Roster

Regular season

Schedule

Results

Week 3

Standings

References

External links

"1978 - Eagles at Colts (Week 5),"
CBS via YouTube.com, June 16, 2024. (Video.) {{DEFAULTSORT:1978 Baltimore Colts season

Baltimore Colts seasons