The Colts are heading into a season where the pressure is no longer subtle. Shane Steichen is in a hot-seat year, Chris Ballard is feeling it too, and ESPN’s latest projection only adds to the unease in Indianapolis.
ESPN’s Mike Clay, Aaron Schatz and Seth Walder ranked the Colts with the 20th-best roster in the NFL, placing them firmly in the bottom half of the league. That doesn’t exactly scream a team ready to break through in a division where the Jacksonville Jaguars and Houston Texans are viewed as the stronger clubs.
For a franchise stuck in a five-year playoff drought, that kind of ranking lands hard. Ballard had hoped Steichen’s arrival would be the answer, but three seasons in, the Colts still haven’t gotten past the regular season and into the playoffs.
Last year briefly looked different. Indianapolis raced to an 8-2 start before Daniel Jones’s untimely injury changed everything, and the Colts never won again after Jones went down.
Now Jones is back at quarterback, healthy and on a new deal, and that brings both hope and expectation. The problem is that the margin for error is tiny. If the Colts finish as the third-best team in the AFC South, as many expect, and still miss the playoffs, the fallout could reach both Steichen and Ballard.
The roster does have pieces on offense that can make life easier for Jones. Alec Pierce, Josh Downs, Tyler Warren and Jonathan Taylor give Indianapolis a real set of weapons, and if Jones plays like he did before the injury last season, the offense has a chance to score in bunches.
Defense is where the picture gets murkier. The depth is better than the star power, and that may not be enough right now. The Colts believe some of the draft picks from this summer could grow into excellent players over the next few years, and the future on that side of the ball looks brighter with Sauce Gardner and other key players in the backfield and Lou Anarumo running the scheme.
But that future is not the present. Right now, the projection is clear: Indianapolis may have enough talent to look interesting, but not enough to be taken seriously as a playoff team.
In that sense, Steichen’s best allies next season are obvious - Daniel Jones and a clean bill of health. Without both, the Colts don’t have much of a path forward.
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