1983 Baltimore Colts season
31st season in franchise history; final one in Baltimore
The 1983 Baltimore Colts season was the 31st season for the team in the National Football League (NFL). This would be the franchise's final season in Baltimore as they moved to Indianapolis for the following season. The Colts finished the year with a record of 7 wins and 9 losses, and tied for fourth in the AFC East division with the New York Jets. However, the Colts finished ahead of New York based on better conference record (5–9 to Jets’ 4–8).
Having finished the 1982 season with the NFL's worst record at a winless 0–8–1, the Colts held the No. 1 pick in the 1983 NFL draft and expected to land the nation's top collegiate player to their 1983 roster. The Colts used the top pick on John Elway of Stanford. Elway, however, refused to play for the Colts and even considered joining the New York Yankees baseball organization unless he was traded. The Colts were forced to trade Elway to the Denver Broncos and Mike Pagel retained his position as starting quarterback. The Elway controversy became more interesting when Elway's Broncos visited Baltimore for the second game of the season.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “1983 Baltimore Colts season” is 31st season in franchise history; final one in Baltimore. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Baltimore, Colts and season, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4580931. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1983 and 1982.
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This entry incorporates text from “1983 Baltimore Colts season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.