The 2025 Indianapolis Colts are quite a story. Typically, at the end of the season, every NFL team gets their annual yearbook video. A 30-minute recap that makes your team look great even if they were 2-15 (“Oakland may have been the worst team in the NFL in 2006, but the star of incoming rookie quarterback JaMarcus Russell shines a ray of light on the future of this once-proud Raiders franchise.” You get the idea.
Well, the Colts might need an hour for their complete 2026 yearbook. Coming into the season, league observers chuckled at the situations of head coach Shane Steichen and general manager Chris Ballard. Their Indy futures were firmly attached to some combination and/or permutation of free agent Daniel Jones and former first rounder Anthony “we’re pretty sure at this point that he can’t play” Richardson. In short, very little was expected.
Then, they rocketed to the number one seed in the entire AFC! Whoa! And not just after like one week or something. Then they came back to Earth a bit, then Jones fractured his leg, then Jones tore his Achilles, then the team signed Philip Rivers, then they dropped to 8-7 following a Monday night pasting by the San Francisco 49ers 48-27.
In fairness, it wasn’t Rivers’ fault. This team has legitimate issues. So, how did this happen?
Indianapolis Colts demise starts with the quarterback
Ben Solak of ESPN did a nice piece this morning taking a look at what happened to a few teams that went from lighting the NFL world on fire to becoming dangerously close to also-rans.
Many had thought that the Colts were toast when Jones went down. Well, true and not true says Solak.
“Of course, there are layers,” Solak writes. “The cracks in the facade started to show long before Jones got hurt. As I wrote in Week 9, Jones’ play under pressure had gone from historic QB1 numbers to league worst in a two-game stretch. An absurdly small sample … but maybe a portend of things to come?
“The Colts sure thought it was. I still don’t understand the impetus, but after seven weeks with a pressure-to-sack rate of 7.1% (tippy-top elite number), Jones had three straight weeks with a pressure-to-sack rate of at least 27.8%. He quadrupled how often he took sacks.”
You see where this is going? It’s easy to blame the Jones injury (and let’s be honest, it was a death knell), but this things was going south before he went down.
The problems are really with the Indianapolis Colts’ defense>/h2>
This isn’t all about the quarterback situation. The Colts defense has been suspect since August and Ballard really went for it with the Sauce Gardner trade. He gave up a pair of first-round picks to the Jets, which many thought was way too steep. But, it was a calculated risk and not necessarily a bad one given the wide-open nature of the Chiefs-less AFC field.
Still, Solak thinks this is the side of the ball that really needs to be examined.
“This is really what you have to shrug your shoulders at,” Solak writes, inexplicably ending that sentence in a preposition that reminds me more of someone who barely completed tenth grade than a professional writer. “The Colts understandably pushed their chips to the middle with the Sauce Gardner trade and got handed about the worst possible runout. CB2 Charvarius Ward suffered his third concussion of the season, leaving the Colts with coverage liabilities even when Gardner was healthy; Gardner strained his calf and hasn’t played in three games; star defensive tackle DeForest Buckner returned from a Week 9 neck injury in Monday’s loss to the 49ers. Too little, too late.
“The theory behind the Gardner trade was sound. He’s a field-altering player who would unlock their defense’s ability to play man coverage and create turnovers in zone coverage. When Jones’ struggles occurred, the defense was expected to do its part to mitigate the damage. But Gardner got hurt, Jones got hurt, and the other star defensive players who could have been difference-makers during this five-game losing streak got hurt, too. That’s just how the cookie crumbles sometimes.”
Where does this all leave the Colts? Without two first-round draft picks, likely with no quarterback for next year (what would a new Jones injury deal look like and how good will he be coming back?) and a suspect defense. From darlings to disaster indeed.
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