Indy Sports News

Indy Sports News

The Colts need a culture reset

by

Syndication: The Record
Julian Leshay Guadalupe/NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

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.

Chris Ballard actually set an NFL record this season. According to this Redditor, “Chris Ballard is the longest tenured non-multi role General Manager (i.e. not an owner, CEO, principal etc) since 1988 to have a losing record and not have multiple playoff wins or a conference championship appearance. If he finishes out this year without a playoff win, he will beat out Ladd Herzeg of the Houston Oilers as the longest tenured GM of any team in NFL history to fit that same criteria.”

Ballard, in fact, finished the season with a losing record and without a playoff win, so he is now an obscure NFL record holder. What that record showcases is extreme mediocrity, which is never rewarded in the NFL. The fact that Ballard has managed to keep his job, especially after the Wentz debacle, is incredible. The Colts need a new man at the top choosing players.

Shane Steichen doesn’t know how to win big games. It’s that simple. In the last two years, the Colts played in a few big, playoff impacting games:

They lost all three of those games, with the last two coming in extremely embarassing fashions. On top of that, the Colts are 1-3 against the Texans over the past two seasons, with two close losses this season. It, once again, shows that when the Colts are playing a good team in a close game, they don’t find a way to win.

It’s worth mentioning that Gus Bradley also deserves a lot of blame for what went down this season, especially in the Giants game where his defense laid a big egg. Malik Nabers completely torched his secondary. He put Nick Cross on him in single coverage, which is a mistake and throughout the game, Nabers was left in single coverage and he killed all the defensive backs (Moore, Womack, Jones and Cross). The irony is that all those players were Ballard selections who he felt very comfortable with at the beginning of the year, but in this case, it was Gus Bradley’s lack of a plan that led to their demise. He will almost certainly be fired, so there’s no need to dive into him much more.

Back to Steichen, an article from The Athletic came out disclosing a lot of issues inside the Colts’ organization. A couple of screenshots below are from the article:



To me, this shows that the veteran players do not believe in the leadership. If that’s the case, why would they bring back the man who is directly leading the players? Because it would be better for Richardson in the short-term because he doesn’t have to learn a new offense? That might be a benefit to Richardson in the short-term, but it’s worth remembering that Richardson has barely shined with Steichen as the play caller. If it weren’t for the occasional flashes of absolute brilliance, I’d question whether he were a quarterback at all! Richardson deserves another year with the Colts, but with a new offense, play-caller and leader. That is the best way to know if Richardson is for real or not, because if he performs poorly next year with Steichen, then many will question whether Steichen or Richardson is the issue. Eliminating Steichen puts all the pressure on Richardson to perform and if he doesn’t, then you’ll know he’s not capable of being an NFL starting quarterback.

Then, the players don’t know how to win. The supposed leaders of the defense, Zaire Franklin and EJ Speed, can be seen jogging and missing tackles in the biggest moments (on third down no less) of the most important game of the year.

DeForest Buckner recently spoke about getting to the Super Bowl, ultimately falling short and it highlighted something very important: the Colts have no players with serious winning experience on their team. No Super Bowl appearances ouside of DeForest Buckner, not many with even National Championship experience. Almost all have never seen a title championship game and most have never seen the playoffs, let alone as a starter.

No winning impact players have been brought in and they don’t even draft winning players from winning universities in college. It isn’t a coincidence that star players in the NFL come from winning programs. The Colts need winners leading the way, players who have playoff experience and players who have a history of making impact players in crucial moments of the game. It doesn’t necessarily have to happen in the NFL, it could be from college as big college games and moments translate well to the NFL.

Ex-Colts players Pat McAfee and Marlin Jackson both had resounding statements after the Giants loss.

Both of them highlight many effort and discipline related issues. Simply put, when teams have that it stems from a poor culture. Culture starts with the head of the organization Jim Irsay, through Chris Ballard via his selection/addition of players and then with Shane Steichen who instills the core values of the team directly to the players and finally the captains of the team have to police the team. Some of the captains are more concerned about their podcast…

In my opinion, the entire coaching staff and Chris Ballard need to go. I would also go as far as saying that Jim Irsay should step aside and let his daughters take more control of the organization. My argument for Chris Ballard is simple: he has not built a roster that wins and there are still way too many holes and question marks. My argument for Steichen is that he’s not a winner and a leader; he has failed to show that in his first two years and his Richardson benching debacle should be proof of his inability to be a proper leader. While keeping him would be better for Richardson in the short-term, it’s not beneficial in the long-term, which is what really matters. My argument for Irsay stepping aside is also simple: he’s had too many health issues, he’s a loose cannon and his daughters have accrued enough experience for them to take over.

The reset button needs to be slammed hard in Indianapolis.