Can the Indianapolis Colts accomplish something in 2025 that they haven’t done since 2014?
Sports Illustrated’s Connor Orr thinks so.
Orr recently made one bold prediction for each NFL team this upcoming season. For the Colts, Orr said that they will win their division, and in addition to that, Anthony Richardson will be “dialed in.”
“Shane Steichen was able to get a different kind of offense out of Jalen Hurts than Kellen Moore has and, after a third attempt, will start to get Richardson in the kind of system that will accentuate his strengths,” Orr wrote.
As Colts fans are well aware, Indianapolis hasn’t won the AFC South since 2014. Houston and CJ Stroud will have to be dethroned, but the AFC South isn’t a juggernaut of a division either.
While the Colts did get swept by the Texans last season and certainly have ground to makeup, they did finish only one game behind them in the divisional race.
Accomplishing this starts with how general manager Chris Ballard goes about the offseason. After calling his construction of the 2024 roster a “mistake,” competition is going to be the theme of this offseason. Ballard wants to infuse that element throughout the roster to help elevate play and fight off complacency.
The challenge for Ballard in that regard is that there are a lot of position groups that he could justify adding to, and of course, only so many resources to go around. The Colts currently have seven draft picks and rank 18th in cap space–although they have the means to create quite a bit more room.
With that said, if you’d like to take the optimistic outlook as Orr has, there are good players at each level of the defense with DeForest Buckner, Grover Stewart, Kenny Moore, and Zaire Franklin, not to mention that addition of Lou Anarumo as defensive coordaintor.
On offense, the Colts have Jonathan Taylor and three wide receivers who eclipsed 800 receiving yards in 2024, along with a sound offensive line, assuming Will Fries returns.
When it comes to Richardson, he would complete just 47% of his passes last season and threw only eight touchdowns to 12 interceptions.
But again, the theme here is optimism since the prediction from Orr was that Richardson would be dialed in.
So some positivity that fans can hold on to is that Richardson did improve during the second half of the season after being benched. This included being more efficient and leading two fourth quarter comebacks. Shane Steichen was also better utilizing Richardson’s strengths within the weekly gameplan.
In addition to that, unlike last offseason, Richardson is fully healthy this time around and he’s also working with the same quarterback coach who helped Josh Allen early in his career.
At this incredibly early stage of the offseason, who knows how the Colts fare in 2025, but that’s what makes this a bold prediction from Orr. And for the reasons mentioned, while the path to an AFC South title isn’t clear by any means, you can potentially see a path there, as Orr does, although that’s been the case before for Indianapolis.