ESPN’s latest roster rankings put the Colts in the middle of the pack, and not in a way that screams playoff push. Mike Clay, Aaron Schatz and Seth Walder slotted Indianapolis at No. 20 overall, a placement that reflects a team with real strengths, real questions, and plenty still riding on how a few key pieces hold up in 2026.
The clearest bright spot is still Jonathan Taylor. ESPN pegged running back as the Colts’ biggest strength, and it’s easy to see why after his 2025 season.
Taylor led the NFL in carries and touchdowns, finished top three in touches and rushing yardage, and even carved out a bigger role in the passing game. He ranked in the top 10 among backs in routes, targets, catches and receiving yards, with career highs across the board.
That production took a hit after Daniel Jones suffered a season-ending Achilles injury in Week 14, but Taylor still gave Indianapolis one of the league’s most reliable offensive engines.
The other side of the ball is where the concerns start stacking up. ESPN pointed to off-ball linebacker as the Colts’ biggest weakness, noting that the team didn’t do as much as expected to upgrade a group that was already attached to a defense that ranked 30th in pass rush win rate at 29.1% and 25th in run stop win rate at 29.2% last season.
Zaire Franklin and Germaine Pratt are gone, and the replacements are Akeem Davis-Gaither, plus rookies CJ Allen and Bryce Boettcher. Davis-Gaither has mostly been a situational player over six NFL seasons, and all three will be fighting for every-down snaps.
Walder’s X factor for the season is Jones, and that makes sense given how much of Indianapolis’ outlook depends on him. In the first eight weeks of last season, Jones was playing at a high level: second in QBR, second in yards per dropback, fourth in turnover rate, sixth in completion percentage over expected and third in sack rate.
The running game helped, but the efficiency was real. Then came the drop-off, first with a fibula injury and then the torn Achilles in early December.
The question now is which version of Jones shows up after the injury, because that answer could define the Colts’ 2026 ceiling.
Schatz’s nonstarter to know is cornerback Justin Walley, the 80th pick in the 2025 draft. Walley turned heads in training camp before tearing his ACL during a joint practice with the Ravens.
He played outside corner in college, but he’s expected to compete with Mekhi Blackmon for the starting slot job, with his lack of length part of the reason for the move. His ball skills stood out in college, too: he was eighth in the FBS with 12 passes defensed in 2024.
There’s still a case for optimism around this roster, especially if some of the injured starters get back on track. That includes Jones, Alec Pierce and DeForest Buckner. But the Colts are also coming off an 8-2 start before another late-season collapse, which means they’re asking for a lot to go right just to get back to where they were in the first half of 2025.
The edge group looks like a bigger worry than linebacker at the moment. Laiatu Latu remains one of the better young pass rushers in the league, but Indianapolis lost both Kwity Paye and Samson Ebukam in free agency.
Arden Key was a useful pickup on a team-friendly deal, though he looks more like a rotational piece than a starter opposite Latu. The Colts are also banking on Jaylahn Tuimoloau, their 2025 second-round pick, to make a major jump after a quiet rookie year.
There’s also the receiver situation, which feels thinner than expected after Michael Pittman Jr. was traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers for salary cap reasons. Indianapolis signed Nick Westbrook-Ikhine, but he looks more like depth than a locked-in WR2.
He’s competing with Ashton Dulin for the open starting spot opposite Pierce. That’s a lot to ask from a position group that could have used another impact addition.
The bigger picture is simple: the Colts need a lot of things to break right if they’re going to end their playoff drought, which dates back to 2020. And with the Houston Texans and Jacksonville Jaguars still standing in the way, it’s fair to wonder whether Indianapolis is even the third-best team in the AFC South under Shane Steichen.
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The Colts spent the offseason acting like a team that believes its window is open right now, and the front office backed that up with a pair of multi-year commitments to Daniel Jones and Alec Pierce. Indianapolis also made a notable move on the receiver side by sending Michael Pittman Jr. to Pittsburgh, then turned to the draft to add linebacker CJ Allen and safety A.J. Haulcy as part of a defensive refresh.
Not everyone bought the approach. NFL.coms Matt Okada handed Indianapolis a C- for the work it did, calling much of the free-agency activity more lateral than transformative and questioning whether the roster actually got meaningfully better for a team trying to stay in win-now mode. The Colts clearly see themselves as competitive enough to keep pressing forward, but the early reaction suggests the league is still waiting to see whether this offseason was bold enough or simply expensive. [Read more 🡒]
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The concern is less about whether Gardner can cover and more about how complete his game looks when he is on the field. He was limited by a calf injury after arriving from the Jets in 2024, and his brief run in Indianapolis left the usual mix of praise and skepticism intact, with teams still weighing his length and ball skills against questions about tackling, zone consistency and whether the Colts will get enough healthy snaps to see the full version of him. [Read more 🡒]
ESPN Just Singled Out A Young Colts Corner Fans Can't Ignore
A young cornerback has become one of the more intriguing names in the Colts secondary conversation, and ESPN analyst Aaron Schatz recently pointed to him as a key nonstarter who could still wind up playing a major role this season. The expectation is that he can handle the nickel spot, which would put him in the middle of a defense that needs reliable coverage help and some immediate answers from a player whose college rsum already showed strong ball production and pass deflections.
Justin Walleys path to this point has not been smooth, with his rookie year interrupted by a knee injury before he could fully get going, but he has been back in offseason work and has clearly kept the staffs attention. The Colts have seen enough to believe there is real upside here, and the buzz around him is not just about surviving camp or filling a spot, but about whether his development can keep moving fast enough to match the teams expectations. [Read more 🡒]