Looking deeper at Colts GM Chris Ballard’s end of year press conference and what it all means going forward.

What Ballard said and what it all means.

On Friday January 10th 2025 Indianapolis Colts general manager Chris Ballard sat down in front of the media and answered questions until the questions ran out. You can find other accounts of the press conference but these are the questions and answers I found most telling when considering the future of the Colts, specifically what will happen during the 2025 offseason.

On Anthony Richardson moving forward

That was part one. They like AR but there are absolutely concerns. Here’s part two:

The team is excited to have Richardson healthy this offseason. And then they drop the bomb that they’re going to have competition at the position. Now he did mention that they’re concerned with his health and Richardson has proven he can play 17 games. But he didn’t say “depth” he said competition. That’s very interesting to monitor going forward.

On his philosophy and bringing everyone back a season ago

He acknowledges that DeForest Buckner’s comments about the roster, the complacency and ego were correct. That he created complacency via his roster building approach a year ago. Part two:

This statement is setting the stage for the rest of the offseason, they won’t be running it back again this year. Chris Ballard wants to make the locker room uncomfortable. He wants to create competition so that everyone knows their spot on the field isn’t a guarantee.

On Free Agency

Ballard says the team isn’t close and they need to do a better job bringing in players in other ways, including through free agency.

More on Free Agency

He’s asked if Jim Irsay is willing to pay to bring in whatever free agent he signs and Ballard confirms he is. He’s then asked if he’s committed to bringing in multiple free agents this offseason. This was a tough question because there’s no way they have any idea what free agency is going to look like a month from now. But the follow up to that answer was telling. The reporter asked “I’m not asking you to go “hog wild” I mean you didn’t add a single starter, I mean that’s kind of a baseline. Every team that’s in the playoffs added at least one.” Ballard thought and then simply said “I screwed that up. You’re right. I did.” Which was a less direct way to commit to bringing in multiple free agents.

On Pat McAfee’s comments

Ballard gives Pat McAfee credit for telling the truth about last season. This is interesting because those comments have absolutely helped inform his strategy this offseason.

More on his philosophy and how things will change via free agency

He’s telling us he’s going to dip into free agency and probably letting some guys go this offseason.

This was just a great question from James Boyd

It doesn’t tell us much about what’s going to happen going forward, I just wanted to highlight the question.

On Gus Bradley not being with the team and how the roster impacted that

He mentioned the secondary, specifically the cornerbacks.

This question had so much promise, it was so close to telling us a lot about the DC search

The reporter asked him if they would consider not using a “four man front” I think Ballard understood what he was really asking but took the opportunity to talk about a modern defenses with five defensive backs on the field most of the time. The reporter gave him an out. Ballard won’t always answer questions when asked but he also won’t outright lie about it either. Had the reporter asked if they would be willing to go to an “odd front” when they’ve typically always been an “even front” team, he might have gotten the answer he was looking for. He was asking “you’ve always been a 4-3 defense, would you go to a 3-4?” but because he said “four man front” Ballard took his opportunity to not really answer the question. So close.

Stephen Holder was close with his question too

It’s super easy for me to sit here after the fact and say “this guy should have said this instead” when in the shower tonight I’ll probably finally think of the perfect comeback to that one thing my boss said during that one argument we had three months ago. So I don’t mean this as a pointed criticism, just an observation. But had Holder been more direct asking about defensive coordinators who liked to bring pressure with more than five rushers, he might have been able to get more out of Ballard than he did. Typically Holder asks great questions that solicit equally great answers, so I think this question was one that came to him in the moment after the previous coordinator question was asked.

On what he’ll do different in free agency and if he’ll go “all-in” in free agency considering his uncertain future.

This tells us a lot about what Ballard is planning to do in free agency this year.

“…and we’ve actually done things in the past…”

During this presser he also mentioned the trade for DeForest Buckner, signing Philip Rivers and Justin Houston. He didn’t mention these but he also signed players like Denico Autry, Stephon Gilmore, Eric Ebron and Xavier Rhodes. He went out and found players who fit the system well that weren’t always household names, or maybe they were formerly and flamed out or they were a little past their prime.

He also signed Devin Funchess to a deal that was a fairly large one year deal at the time, this one absolutely did not work.

But it seems that Ballard is drawing back on what he had done in the past with free agency that worked. Ballard used to use free agency pretty well, bringing in good players that fit in a role and didn’t break the bank. Sure it wasn’t as exciting as “winning free agency” every year but during his first few years in Indy it was effective and when paired with his solid drafts, he was able to build a solid roster. Then he just… stopped. It seems like Chris Ballard is telling us that he plans to return to his old free agency philosophy. He also tells us he’ll never be a guy who “wins free agency”.

He tells us that he created competition at receiver last year and Alec Pierce excelled

This does confirm everything Ballard said up to this point about creating competition across the roster. He did it with the receiver room and it brought out the best in the guys in that room. He also tells us that Ad Mitchell is a young player with promise that’s going to have to earn it. Nothing about this tells me that they’re going to look to add to the receiver room in any major way.

On Anthony Richardson’s accuracy

Playing quarterback at a high level is a lot about pattern recognition. Given that Richardson just hasn’t seen those patterns very much, it does make sense that part of his game will improve with playing time. Chris Ballard believes as the game slows down for Richardson, his accuracy will improve naturally. Given his explanation, this makes sense.

On his defensive line being a “disappointment” and what caused the defense to be bad

This tells us that Chris Ballard does not believe the defensive line needs to have major resources invested into it to be successful moving forward. I tend to agree with that assessment but a mid-level free agent addition, wouldn’t shock me. He then goes on to lament his teams tackling ability.

On if those tackling issues can be improved

I found it particularly interesting that the very first thing Ballard mentions when discussing improving tackling is “getting bodies to the ball” given the noted poor effort running to the ball the defense showed this season.

On his previous free agent addition

I would love to know the “reasons” Ballard mentions when he talked about why the team fell apart in 2021.

When asked about the secondary

Chris Ballard is explicitly telling us he’s going to be adding to both the cornerback and safety positions this offseason. It doesn’t get much more clear than this… I mean it can and it will, shortly, but this was pretty clear.

On Steichen’s messaging to the media

This doesn’t have much to do with the offseason to come but it will be interesting to monitor how Steichen deals with the media moving forward. He created a lot of unnecessary headlines via poor messaging this season. Let’s see how he handles the media in the future.

On Zaire Franklin and his podcast

“You can’t win with distractions. Can’t win with them. Can’t create distractions.”

Keep this answer in mind when you consider the next two answers he gives.

Chris Ballard on culture

When discussing team culture, “Anything you do can’t get in the way of winning… all the outside noise, we got enough things that try to tear us apart as a team” after just telling us “You can’t win with distractions. Can’t win with them. Can’t create distractions.” after previously telling us that a lot of what Pat McAfee said was right… whew. Zaire Franklin’s apology after week 18 seems like it wasn’t a request…

On creating depth

“If they’re not playing well enough no matter their stature or status they go to the bench and somebody else goes into the game.”

I’ve spent some time rolling this line around in my mind and who had the “stature or status” at a position with not enough depth to bench a guy playing poorly and the QB did get benched, that doesn’t fit. Jonathan Taylor wasn’t great in the passing game but they didn’t have a problem rotating him out situationally, that doesn’t make sense. The receiver room was as deep as any position on the team, so not that one. TE would make sense because they couldn’t produce in the passing game, but no one in that room has “stature or status” and the offensive line played well when they were healthy.

Ballard just got done praising the defensive line. So it’s likely not them. Both linebackers are on their second contract and despite the fact that all-pro voting doesn’t seem to understand the linebacker position both Franklin and EJ Speed had bouts of poor play this season but the depth was such that, they couldn’t be benched.

At cornerback, Kenny Moore is the only guy with “stature or status” but he played well, certainly not poorly enough to warrant benching. And the safeties were made up of a third year pro starting for the first time in his career and an oft-injured multi-year starter who couldn’t land a free agent contract and had to come back home to Indiana for a one year prove it deal. While Julian Blackmon played poorly, I don’t think he fits here. f

I think, all things considered, he was talking about the linebacker room with this line. Yikes.

On Tight Ends

Remember when I said it doesn’t get much more clean than when he said the corners and safeties needed to get better? Well this is it. He’s literally telling everyone that they’re going to add a receiving threat at the tight end position.

And for good measure he was asked… again… about his failure to create competition

More is expected for guys on their second and third contract.

So what did we learn?

This time last year Chris Ballard told us “we like our guys” and then he went out and re-signed all of their guys. He ran back a wildly inexperienced secondary and commented on them comparing them to the offensive line from 2022, saying that they improved over the back half of the season and that he wasn’t going to do much to the room… and then he did exactly what he said he was going to do.

When Chris Ballard tells you what he’s going to do, you should believe it. Today he told us he’s going to create competition across the roster. He feels like it forced Alec Pierce to reach his potential and he’s likely hoping it will do the same everywhere else. He said (repeatedly) he didn’t do a good enough job bringing guys in and that he would be bringing in guys via free agency to bolster the roster. He told us that he’s not going to hand out massive free agent contracts but that we can expect to see the kind of smart mid-level free agent deals he used to lean so heavily on but went away from. And he told us that he’s going to add to depth along the offensive line, he is going to add to both cornerback and safety and he practically told the world they’re already clearing a spot in the locker room for their new tight end. If you read through a few lines, it also seems pretty clear the linebacker room is in for some changes. I wouldn’t expect to see EJ Speed in town next year. In fact I would be surprised if he was.

I know plenty of people are ready to move on from Chris Ballard and his words will ring hallow. He himself said as much during his press conference but one nice thing about Chris Ballard is that every year he tells us exactly what he’s going to do, if we pay attention to what he says, maybe we can adjust our expectations accordingly.

Maybe that’s asking for too much.

Go Colts.