Source: Cooper Neill / Getty
INDIANAPOLIS – The final Ryan Grigson draft pick still with the Colts wasn’t 100 percent sure he’d be in Indianapolis for an 8th season.
Kelly heard the trade rumors, but never from his agent. Once Kelly had a conversation with Shane Steichen, upon the new head coach’s hire, any nerves about the veteran center being moved subsided.
At 30 years old, Kelly is second oldest player on the Colts roster (long snapper Luke Rhodes is 6 months older than Kelly).
For an 8th straight year, the Colts center will be Kelly.
And he will be snapping to a new quarterback, again.
“The reality is, it’s another quarterback that I’m going to have to get used to,” Kelly said back in the spring, before the team drafted Anthony Richardson. “It has been kind of my M-O since I’ve gotten here. I think that there’s enough great positivity around the building and around the offense especially that that person, whoever comes in, they’re going to be new, probably going to be young. The better you can veteranize, if that’s even a word, the offense, I think that makes his job a lot easier. Certainly excited, whoever it is, to pick their brain. I’ve always appreciated that relationship because I’ve taken something from each of those guys.”
”Will be a little different when he’s 21 or 22 years old. Might be at different points in our lives. I’ve always heard (Adam) Vinatieri say that the best thing about this game is that as the guys get younger, it keeps you more hungry, keeps you more willing and more happy to come in every day and learn from something new and keeps you young. From that relationship, I’m very excited about it. It’s a clean slate, which is awesome every year.”
A clean slate is welcomed for Kelly, too.
Despite playing all 17 games last season, Kelly was among those that struggled along the Colts offensive line.
That’s why the whispers were there about the Colts trading Kelly, or even cutting him with two years left on his contract.
But the Colts have made it clear this offseason they feel the offensive line issues were not personnel based from last season.
Kelly sums it up by pointing to too much “miscommunication.”
New offensive line coach Tony Saparno Jr. is now leading a unit that appears to have the same starting group that ended last season together.
“You look back at a lot of the good things we did, some things that we were just missing on here and there and I think a lot of the negative kind of clouded our memory of how the year went,” Kelly explains. “For good reason, there was a lot of stuff going on. The eye-opening thing watching the film was like we did a lot of great stuff too. Some of it was outside of our control, some of the stuff we can control ourselves and just do better, but just miscommunication here and there. It’s not that we’re not talented players, that we’re all not going out there and putting our best foot forward. It’s just not on the same page. I think that was just highlighted last year.
“I came into the league at a time when the Colts offensive line, for lack of better words, kind of got (expletive) on, right? In ’18, we kind of turned it around. It wasn’t anything other than like believing in ourselves, believing that we still have this, we can still do this. I think Tony from Day One has definitely emphasized that. So, that’s definitely a big thing for us and just little things here and there. Just things to clean up and maybe it’s a different way it’s talked about, different way it’s coached, and each guy brings differently to get to where we want to go. I know that we can do it.”