INDIANAPOLIS – Indianapolis Colts general manager Chris Ballard typically uses his end-of-the-season news conference to unburden himself.
This year was no different.
With the Colts finishing 8-9 and out of the postseason picture—another disappointing season for a GM whose teams have been to the playoffs only twice since 2017—Ballard fell on the sword.
“Just disappointed, extremely disappointed. I hear the criticism, and it’s warranted, and a lot of that falls on my shoulders,” he told reporters Friday.
By his own admission, Ballard’s biggest mistake was his approach to building the roster last offseason, when he awarded multiple players extensions and brought in two just outside free agents.
Ballard thought a 9-8 football team that narrowly missed the playoffs in the 2023 season would come back with a vengeance for the 2024 campaign.
Instead, complacency set in. Players, he realized all too late, arrived with a sense of entitlement. There was little competition for certain spots, and the hunger he anticipated from his incoming squad didn’t materialize.
“That was a mistake,” Ballard said of the approach. He pointed to comments from veteran defense tackle DeForest Buckner, who suggested “ego” had prevented this year’s Colts team from achieving its potential.
“His assessment was right, and it falls on me,” Ballard said.
“I didn’t create enough competition on the roster for it to want to achieve what it could achieve. There’s got to be some stress. There has to be some real stress within that locker room,” he said. “[There has to be a sense that] if I don’t play well enough, my a** will not be on the field playing. That directly falls on my shoulders.”
He conceded it was a “crappy lesson” to learn and blamed his own stubbornness for failing to see the need to change.
“I was wrong.”
How close are the Colts?
With the Colts having finished a combined 17-17 in the last two season (9-8 in 2023 and 8-9 in 2024), it’s tempting to believe they are “close” when it comes to being a contending franchise.
Ballard rebuffed that idea.
“Right now, we’re not close. I’m gonna make this really clear. Close is losing on the last play of the Super Bowl. That’s close. Going 8-9, that’s not close,” he said.
“I’m not saying we won’t be closer when we get to the start of the season, but right now, sitting here today, we’re an 8-9 football team and we gotta own that. We are not good enough. We’re not.”
It could signal some changes in how Ballard approaches his job.
“We’ve got to be able to address and identify the right avenues to acquire the right players that can move the needle. Haven’t done that in the last four years.”
On Anthony Richardson
In a different world, a team could afford to sit Anthony Richardson and allow his on-field play to catch up with his raw physical ability.
But that’s not the reality of the National Football League.
“We have zero patience in this league with quarterbacks,” Ballard lamented.
Some quarterbacks simply need some time, but the pressure to win is immense, and that means putting the development cycle on overdrive.
Ballard conceded he got too excited about Richardson’s talent
“In a perfect world, a young quarterback would sit. We weren’t living in a perfect world. You’d have a vet quarterback who’s winning and you could sit a guy for 2-3 years and then let him play,” Ballard said.
“But that was not a luxury that we were afforded. I even told [head coach] Shane [Steichen] that I wish we would have sat him no matter what. But we didn’t, we played him, he got hurt [last season]. Did that set back his development? Yes. Did he get to watch football? Yes, but it’s different when you’re preparing to play.”
Ballard thought, while Richardson was still learning the ins and outs of the position, he was playing with poise. That changed during the Colts’ second loss to the Houston Texans, when the young quarterback looked overmatched and “tapped out” for a play.
He feared the second-year signal-caller was “drowning” and decided it was time for a change.
“Mentally, it was going fast for him and he needed to take a step back,” Ballard said. “We knew he needed to take a step back to get him to calm down a little bit also to prepare, all the little things you need to do, let’s take a reset, let’s take a step back.”
Ballard conceded he would’ve preferred the “step back” to last a little longer. But veteran Joe Flacco struggled, and that prompted another shift.
“We had a meeting with leadership, which Anthony is in, where there were honest conversations about where we were and what we needed to do and about Anthony. Players let it be known that these are the expectations we expect from you and what we need to get done. and when we decided to move back to him, I thought we saw some really cool things.”
After his two-week benching, Richardson responded with clutch plays in wins against the Jets and Patriots that kept the Colts’ flagging playoff hopes alive at the time.
Richardson was, as coach Shane Steichen had alluded to during the season, lacking in some of his preparation. The general manager viewed it as an area in which Richardson has plenty of room to grow.
“He’s a young man. You expect them to do things, and they don’t do them,” Ballard said. “And not doing the things consistently that needed to be done, that is correct. That is part of the growth in learning. Do you wish they all came in and were perfect pros? Of course you do.”
In the long run, Ballard expected Richardson to put in the work. He’s relying on the young quarterback to stay on the field and find consistency down after down.
“The good news is, you know, he’s going to go into the offseason healthy,” Ballard said. “That’s going to give him a chance to work on some things going forward.”
He vowed to bring in competition at the position to push Richardson as the starter and said not all mistakes are bad.
“Failure can be a good thing if you learn from it.”