The Colts finished the NFL's strike-shortened 1982 season without a victory, finishing with eight losses and one tie in their nine games. The Colts became the third team since the league’s expansion era began in 1960, after the1960 Dallas Cowboys andthe 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the second team since theAFL-NFL merger to finish a regular season winless. Since then, the2008 Detroit Lions and the2017 Cleveland Browns have posted winless seasons; the Colts are the only one of these five teams that did not do so in a full, uninterrupted season (the Cowboys played twelve games, the Buccaneers fourteen, and the Lions and Browns sixteen, as per the league standards of the time). The Colts are also the only winless team to not have a winning percentage of .000 due to the tie giving them a percentage of .056 which is the worst non-zero win percentage for a team in post-1900s North American sports history. It would be the final season the Colts tied a game for40 years. This record is only breakable by an NFL team going 0–16–1 (.029) in a season, an MLB team going 8–154 or worse, an NBA team going 4–78 or worse, or by an NHL team finishing with 9 points or fewer.
As mentioned above, the NFL's 1982 season was disrupted by astrike by the league's players. In the Colts’ first game after the end of the strike on November 21, they were shut out by theNew York Jets 37–0. The following week, they were shut out by theBuffalo Bills 20–0, in a game in which the Colts’ offense never crossed the 50-yard line.[2] Nevertheless, the week after that, they lost by only three points to the playoff-bound and defending AFC championCincinnati Bengals.
^abMiami finished ahead of Cincinnati based on better conference record (6–1 to Cincinnati’s 6–2).
^abPittsburgh finished ahead of San Diego based on better record against common opponents (3–1 to Chargers' 2–1). Conference tiebreak was initially used to eliminate New York Jets.
^abc Pittsburgh and San Diego finished ahead of New York Jets based on conference record (Pittsburgh and San Diego 5–3 against Jets’ 2–3)
^abcCleveland finished ahead of Buffalo and Buffalo ahead of Seattle based on conference record (4–3 to Buffalo’s 3–3 to Seattle’s 3–5).
