It’s put up or shut up time for some of the Colts’ top leadership entering a critical 2025 campaign.
According to CBS Sports Cody Benjamin, the Indianapolis Colts are among his four desperate teams facing a ‘make or break’ 2025 campaign:
Indianapolis Colts
Like Gannon in Arizona, Shane Steichen is coming off just his second season as a head coach. Unfortunately he’s gone backward, if only slightly, since coming out from under Nick Sirianni’s wing with the Philadelphia Eagles. After a 9-8 debut, his Colts dropped to 8-9 amid a flurry of messy quarterback swaps in 2024. Even worse: His offense hinges on a near-miraculous leap from either incumbent youngster Anthony Richardson or former New York Giants castoff Daniel Jones under center. General manager Chris Ballard, meanwhile, is even riper for reevaluation; he’s survived two coaching changes while cycling through countless quarterbacks post-Andrew Luck. The Colts have won precisely one playoff game in the eight years of Ballard’s direction. They’re overdue.
While the Colts ownership can’t fire themselves, there’s no question that longtime general manager Chris Ballard, 3rd-year head coach Shane Steichen, and 3rd-year quarterback Anthony Richardson are facing critical 2025 seasons—all of whom are firmly on hot seats.
Ballard somewhat surprisingly survived this offseason, and entering his 9th season (62-69-1) with the Colts, he has to achieve meaningful results—as he has no AFC South titles and just one playoff win during that same lengthy span (which is an eternity for a modern NFL GM).
Having a turnstile at the starting quarterback position since franchise quarterback Andrew Luck retired with Philip Rivers, Carson Wentz, Matt Ryan, Sam Ehlinger, Nick Foles, Anthony Richardson, Gardner Minshew, and Joe Flacco, Ballard won’t get another crack at the apple—should Richardson and veteran free agent addition Daniel Jones ultimately falter this year.
It’s highly questionable whether the quarterback room of Richardson and Jones will prove to be enough—and that could very well cost Steichen (17-17) his job too, who regressed a bit this past season when it came to handling the media publicly and his locker room internally.
The saying goes something like, “If you have two quarterbacks, you have no quarterbacks.”
Fortunately, all 3 men of the Colts’ top leadership likely know the high stakes headed into the 2025 season regarding their continued future job security.
If they don’t achieve significant improvement from last year (i.e., at least a playoff berth, which the Colts haven’t achieved since 2020), someone else may very well be replacing them come next offseason—and rightfully so.
