Second-year head coach Howard Schnellenberger was fired after three games,[1] after an argument with owner Robert Irsay over whether Marty Domres or Bert Jones should start at quarterback for the Colts.
Rookies in italics All-Pro linebacker Ted Hendricks signed a future contract with the World Football League, and was then traded by the Colts to the Green Bay Packers by general manager Joe Thomas.
(Hendricks never ended up playing for the bankrupt WFL, and made four more Pro Bowls in his career.)
In an autopsy of the Colts 1974 season written for Street & Smith's Pro Football Annual, Buffalo Evening News writer Larry Felser observed that the patience of Baltimore fans was waning, with the perennially sold-out Memorial Stadium had failed to crack the 40,000 mark at the gate on multiple occasions.
[3] "When Joe Thomas arrived on the scene as general manager in 1972, he promised to tear down a decaying team and rebuild it into a champion," Felser wrote.