Colts’ Rebuilding Process: Culture Reset Marks First Step Towards Brighter Future

I think it’s time to normalize the saying “The Curse of Andrew Luck”. Since Andrew Luck’s first injury in 2015, the Indianapolis Colts have been the face of mediocrity in the NFL. Never good enough to seriously compete and never showing serious potential. Andrew Luck’s sudden retirement in 2018 put the team in a downward spiral, one they have never been able to recover from. A bunch of bandaids were put in place, starting with Jacoby Brissett to Philip Rivers. Then after Philip Rivers retired, the Colts made a move for Carson Wentz, in hopes he would be their longterm answer at quarterback. That was a massive flop and he was gone after a year. The selection of Anthony Richardson was the first beacon of hope the franchise has has since 2018. The past two seasons have been more of the same and the team has seen a lot of tough losses. The team has gotten too comfortable with losing, especially in big moments.

Perpetual losing starts at the top. Jim Irsay has created an organization that fails in many different areas. After they fired Frank Reich in the middle of the season, they hired ESPN analyst Jeff Saturday to become a head coach, despite having no serious experience as one at the college or professional level. He, unsurprisingly, failed. Many comments in the past, such as making some off-putting ones about Peyton Manning in 2013, don’t reflect well on the organization. He has also meddled in many decisions, whether good or bad, which is undermining to the front office and coaching staff. The most successful owners in the league are ones who lay low, hire the right people and keep their mouths shut. When there is a strong, successful leader at the top, everything else falls in line.

Chris Ballard has done an incredible job of creating average football teams. There’s an argument that going 500 every year is the worst type of hell because you’re never in contention for a serious playoff run and you’re never bad enough to get a high draft pick. Ballard does a great job of finding hidden gems and getting good not great players through the draft, especially in the middle rounds. What he fails at is finding a quarterback and consistently hitting on his top picks. He drafted Malik Hooker, Rock Yan-Sin and Kwity Paye with his top pick in three separate drafts. Two of those three are not on the team and Paye has had a decent impact at best, but not one that is worth of a first round pick. He did do well with the Quenton Nelson, Michael Pittman Jr and Jonathan Taylor selections. In recent drafts, his top picks of Alec Pierce and Anthony Richardson are still being evaluated, but their impacts early on have been inconsistent and relatively marginal. Pierce finally flashed some potential in his 3rd season in the league and Richardson has had his moments, but neither are locks to be consistent big impact players or even have second contracts with the team.

It’s hard to find a quarterback, but he couldn’t find one and the jury is still out on if Richardson is the guy and the Colts aren’t in position to keep Ballard around for another couple of years to find it if he finally got something with Richardson. He found two stopgap quarterbacks with Jacoby Brissett and Philip Rivers, which led to nothing. He then took a big swing on Carson Wentz which was an absolute disaster and Jim Irsay forced him to part ways with him after one season (ironically a good decision by Irsay). That alone should’ve been grounds for firing.