According to ESPN’s Seth Walder, the Indianapolis Colts will have a surprising, yet recently familiar face, as their 2026 opening starting quarterback—only it’s not Daniel Jones, Anthony Richardson Sr., or Riley Leonard.
Rather, it will be 2023 Colts Pro Bowler Gardner Minshew, who Walder projects to return to Indianapolis and initially start in the interim until a presumably re-signed Jones is ready to return during the early season’s going:
Early Season Injury Stand-In
Indianapolis Colts
Predicted 2026 starter: Gardner Minshew
The Colts are in an interesting bind, having found success with Daniel Jones last season but:
Let’s start with the first point. I suspect the team wants to bring Jones back but would likely prefer to sign him to a multiyear deal considering he is unlikely to play until late 2026 at the earliest. But the Colts have some leverage. As much as they might need Jones, they also offer him a better path to starting again in a situation where he’s had more success than anywhere else. Indianapolis would probably offer him more money than anyone else due to that success.
But if the Colts bring Jones back, they’ll need another QB to start the season. And they would want it to be someone they can win with in the short and medium term — but probably not someone who would cost too much or to whom they would have to commit beyond 2026.
Enter Minshew. The journeyman had more success playing for Shane Steichen in 2023 than at any other point in his career. Steichen got much more out of Minshew — who recorded a 60.4 QBR that season — than he has out of Joe Flacco (50.0) or Anthony Richardson Sr. (44.4). That 2023 earned Minshew $15 million fully guaranteed from the Raiders the next offseason, but it went so badly in Vegas that he played for the Chiefs for just $1.2 million last season. It was feared that Minshew had torn his ACL in December, but he did not.
Because Minshew’s star has fallen, he would be a cheap option for the Colts to pair with second-year QB Riley Leonard while they wait for Jones to heal.
Jones, who is currently rehabbing from a torn Achilles, is optimistic—along with his camp, that he’ll be ready to go for this late summer’s training camp—with the Colts or elsewhere. However, it’s not a foregone conclusion that Jones will be ready for even next season’s regular season opener given the lengthy recovery timeline, as having suffered the Achilles injury in Week 14 of this past season, it would be well less than a full year of recovery.
Insert Minshew, the jorted man and cowboy hat donning quarterback who in relief of Richardson Sr., made 13 starts back in the 2023 campaign. He completed 305 of 490 pass attempts (62.2%) for 3,305 total passing yards, 15 passing touchdowns, and 9 interceptions during that span—almost surprisingly guiding the Colts to the playoffs.
Minshew played so well that as a free agent the following offseason, he earned a 2-year, $25 million deal to challenge for the starting quarterback job for the Las Vegas Raiders.
While Minshew would last just one season in Las Vegas, making 9 starts, before becoming Patrick Mahomes backup in Kansas City a year later, and making a start before being lost to a season-ending tibial plateau fracture in 2025, there’s no doubt that he had his greatest success when paired with Colts head coach Shane Steichen.
If Jones can’t go in Week 1, it makes sense for the Colts to consider an early season veteran stopgap, especially if their top brass doesn’t think that either Richardson Sr., if even still in Indianapolis (and if they sign a veteran backup, he wouldn’t be), or Leonard is ready for the job.
When or if the Colts re-sign Jones this early offseason, and all signs point to his priority re-signing soon, Indianapolis medical staff should know better than anyone just when exactly Jones could likely return.
If this is the route they go, I would just hope as far as veteran stopgaps go, that they’d aim a little higher than Minshew. He performed about as admirably as you could’ve expected in 2023, entering the year as Richardson’s top backup, but it also seemed like down the stretch, particularly in the Colts’ Week 18 home finale, with their season on the line, that Indianapolis didn’t trust him to throw the football offensively.
I know the Colts have a long track record of collecting late in their career retread quarterbacks, but if given the alternative, give me a trade for New Orleans veteran quarterback Derek Carr, who may unretire, instead.
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