Having officially been knocked out of playoff contention again, the Indianapolis Colts (8-7), and specifically team owner and CEO Carlie Irsay-Gordon and her two sisters, will face some tough decisions this upcoming offseason.
Chief among them is expected to be the job security of longtime general manager Chris Ballard, along with other key leadership positions such as head coach Shane Steichen and the status at starting quarterback, where incumbent Daniel Jones is recovering from torn Achilles surgery
and is a pending league free agent.
Among the leadership trio, Ballard’s seat is expected to be among the hottest, after what was already expected to be a critical season for the Colts top brass, but saw yet another late season collapse, after such a promising hot start—featuring what once was the league’s most prolific offense before critical injuries struck.
Coming back 8-2 from Berlin in Week 10, and having recently acquired former All-Pro cornerback Sauce Gardner ahead of the league’s trade deadline and playoff hopes clearly riding high, the Colts would go on to lose their next five games and be eliminated from postseason contention.
Certainly, starting quarterback Daniel Jones’s diminished production playing through a fractured fibula, only to suffer a season-ending torn Achilles in Week 14 contributed, but the Colts’ routine inability to find a long-term starting quarterback since franchise cornerstone Andrew Luck shockingly retired ahead of the 2019 season required them to hitch their 2025 hopes to Jones, who wasn’t exactly an ironman for the New York Giants, can’t be glossed over either. This has been a persistent organizational failure, and it’s continuously plagued the Colts.
In 2017, Ballard initially proclaimed it would never be about one guy, then franchise quarterback Andrew Luck, but rather about trying to build a strong enough supporting cast to consistently win regardless. However, so far, it has been, and specifically rather, the Colts’ routine inability to replace him.
At starting quarterback, the Colts have since shuffled through the likes of Philip Rivers, Carson Wentz, Matt Ryan, Sam Ehlinger, Nick Foles, Anthony Richardson, Gardner Minshew, Joe Flacco, and Daniel Jones, but so far, none of them have stuck long-term. (The Colts probably shouldn’t have moved on from Rivers after 2020 in retrospect, as it would’ve saved a lot of headaches and potential draft capital).
It’s also worth noting that despite investing two first round picks (Laiatu Latu, Kwity Paye) and four second round picks (Kemoko Turay, Tyquan Lewis, Ben Banogu, and JT Tuimoloau) into the edge group during Ballard’s lengthy tenure, the Colts have still struggled finding consistent impact outside pass rushing.
The fiscally prudent Ballard actually made an about face and was aggressive during this past year’s free agency, landing the likes of Cam Bynum, Charvarius Ward, and Jones among others, but in the end, it didn’t matter.
The Colts haven’t made the playoffs since 2020 (which is the franchise’s second longest drought since 1988-94) during the COVID-19 campaign, the last time longtime veteran Philip Rivers started for them. Now five years later, with a 44-year-old Rivers shockingly behind center again, they still won’t be playing in the postseason, despite a valiant pinch-hitting late season effort from the grizzled unretired veteran quarterback.
Having arrived ahead of the 2017 campaign, over his 9 seasons, Ballard has compiled a 70-76-1 record with o division titles, three playoff games, and one playoff win. During that same span of the Colts’ divisional crown drought, every other member of the AFC South has won the division at least twice.
Typically, an NFL general manager is given 3-4 years to right the ship, but Ballard has seemingly been provided a unique NFL eternity, almost entirely under late team owner Jim Irsay, who preferred franchise continuity and stability, and obviously had confidence that his embattled general manager would improve and turn it around prior to his unfortunate passing in May of this past year.
Yes, the Colts do not have first round picks in either 2026 and 2027 as a byproduct of the Gardner trade, but it’s questionable to see what reasonable justification there is for providing Ballard another crack at things regardless.
Bringing in a new general manager would provide him an extra year to evaluate the roster and potentially head coach Shane Steichen and his coaching staff, who had brought out Jones’s best prior to a season-ending injury, and had been calling plays for a historically prolific league offense. It’s hard to necessarily overlook that, although Steichen admittedly does need to improve with his late game play-calling and clock management.
At this point, Ballard has a long enough track record to know what kind of general manager he is. Since winning PFWA Executive of the Year in 2018, his draft classes have declined in more recent years, and he has yet to lead this team to consistent meaningful success. He’s also shown little confidence that he and his scouting department know how to evaluate a starting quarterback, when the Colts still desperately need to find one bigger picture.
At a certain point, and for a cat that seemingly has 9 lives, going on 10, there has to be some degree of accountability, and results should matter.
It’s a little surprising that Ballard survived even ahead of the 2023 offseason when the Colts were looking to hire a new head coach and draft a new franchise quarterback hopeful, where it would’ve made sense to start fresh at all three leadership positions (and especially let the new head coach and general manager start together with their pick of the other and a clean slate). However, the increasingly declining health of the late Jim Irsay may have contributed to that, as the Colts kept Ballard on for added stability and for his then valued decision-making throughout those evaluation processes (particularly for head coaching candidates, which was a uniquely thorough vetting process).
One could arguably make the case that you could do worse than Ballard, and that’s probably true (especially given the organizational dysfunction and abysmal draft classes we’ve seen elsewhere), but it also seems reasonable for me to believe that given the long track record of average to underwhelming results as of late, the Colts could also do a lot better—and it’s worth taking that swing to potentially advance the franchise forward and get back to our long overdue winning ways again?
What exactly do we have to lose?
The recent status quo simply hasn’t been good enough, and Colts fans long for playoff football again, much less trying to win the AFC South—which unfortunately, has gone from an annual season expectation during the prolific Peyton Manning era of Colts football of prior glory years to now a pipe dream.
