Sure, Let’s Keep Doing This

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We should all long for a boss like Jim Irsay.  A boss where it doesn’t matter if the annual performance is stagnant or underachieving.  A boss where seeing little to no growth year over year, even regression, isn’t a cause for change.  No division titles?  No playoffs again?  A fractured locker room?  A fed-up fan base?  Former players speaking out?  There is seemingly no bottom that can be reached for Jim Irsay to move on from Chris Ballard and so, here we go again!

Year 9 incoming!

And what a year it should be!  The Colts will enter 2025 with another year of Chris Ballard being on the hot seat (in most peoples’ minds that aren’t Jim Irsay, at least) and you’ll add to that critical Years 3 for both head coach Shane Steichen and quarterback Anthony Richardson, neither of which have shown enough in two years to warrant a ton of confidence in the fan base either.  Gus Bradley has already been labeled the fall guys for the Colts’ failures.  He’s a problem but he’s not the root of what has kept the Colts from being relevant as of late.  Their issues are so much deeper than Gus Bradley.  The search for a new defensive coordinator begins but what quality candidate is going to take a chance on a franchise with a hot seat GM/HC/QB trio that could all be gone after one season?

You can keep your Robert Saleh or Brian Flores pipe dreams to yourself.  There is no chance either of those guys or someone else with any sort of clout is coming to town unless they have some assurances that they are the head coach in waiting if Steichen gets launched (and what kind of atmosphere would that give a locker room already in shambles?) or the Colts back up the Brinks truck with the most lucrative contract a DC has ever had, even then it wouldn’t be enough to convince those folks.

So what is something positive for fans to hang their hat on in 2025?  Something that a die-hard fan, despite everything that’s transpired, can say “Well, at least there’s (insert positive vibe)!”  I am not saying this just for the sake of this article but I honestly can’t come up with one.  I don’t have confidence that Ballard will all of a sudden change his approach in Year 9.  I haven’t seen enough from Shane Steichen that makes me think he can handle being the voice at the front of a room or what I’ve seen from a gameplan perspective that puts him a step ahead of any opposing coach.  I certainly haven’t seen enough from Anthony Richardson that makes me at all confident he’s going to be able to increase his accuracy to NFL-acceptable level.  That he’ll be able to stay on the field for a full season or see all of his statistical numbers climb significantly to warrant a fifth-year option getting picked up or talk of a lucrative extension.  If you’re Jim Irsay you are hoping that in 2025 all three of those men have career years simultaneously in make-or-break seasons.  I just don’t see it.

I hate that this hasn’t been a more uplifting read, but if you’re reading this you already know the state of things with the Colts.  We’ve been asked to once again be patient and to trust that the folks in charge of making football decisions actually know what they’re doing, identifying the issues and resolving them.  Call me pessimistic, but we’ve all been burned enough to warrant our skepticism.

So, let’s run it back in 2025. Sure, why not?  And when we’re turning the calendar to January 2026 and discussing the same issues and refreshing social media for an Adam Schefter tweet regarding the Colts, I won’t be surprised but I will be pissed off that the Colts have wasted yet another year on something that is so clearly broken that they refuse to correct.