Some people are fans of the Indianapolis Colts. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Indianapolis Colts. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.
Your team: The Mayonnaise City Colts
Your 2025 record: 8-9, but that only hints at the story of the 2025 Colts, who were 8-2 going into their bye and 0-7 after it. I’ve seen SpaceX rockets with better trajectories.
Let’s talk about the 8-2 part first. Six of their eight wins were against the Dolphins, the Titans (twice), the Raiders, the Cardinals, and the Falcons. Congratulations, you passed the field sobriety test portion of the schedule. (“It’s harder than it looks!” says Jim Irsay’s ghost).
The 29-28 win in Week 2 over the Broncos looks more impressive in retrospect; at the time, kicker Spencer Shrader missed a 60-yard field goal to lose the game, only for the Colts to be gifted a 15-yard leverage penalty that gave them a second, much easier chance to win. The other “quality” win of their season was a road victory over the Chargers. Wow! It’s not just any team that can go into the Rams’ house and beat the Chargers. Oh, sorry—that was a typo. It is in fact any team that can go into the Rams’ house and beat the Chargers.
There was only one blemish on the Colts record in the first two months of the season: Week 4 at the Rams:
Adonai Mitchell’s fumble wiped out a 76-yard touchdown in a game the Colts lost 27-20. For good measure, Mitchell also got called for holding on what would have been a 53-yard touchdown run by Jonathan Taylor, negating the chance to go up by seven with just over two minutes left. Instead, the Colts punted, Matt Stafford immediately hit Tutu Atwell with an 88-yard touchdown bomb, and Daniel Jones threw a pick to seal the game. I hate the Rams more than car dealerships, but even I had to admire this exquisite feat of pants-shitting.
Following the Colts’ second loss of the season—Week 9 at Pittsburgh—GM Chris Ballard went all-in on 2025, acquiring All-Pro CB Sauce Gardner in a trade that sent two first-round picks to the Jets. Notably, the Colts also tacked Mitchell onto the deal, sending the 2024 second-rounder with a knack for hilarious miscues to the NFL team most suited to his skill set.
In a vacuum, you have to applaud the Colts’ chutzpah in going for it. They were at the top of the NFL standings more than halfway through the season. In the AFC, the Patriots and Broncos were keeping pace, but they were both led by second-year quarterbacks. The Chiefs were swooning even before Patrick Mahomes’s ACL tear, and the Bills’ defense looked shaky. The Colts had the inside track to the AFC’s top seed, and they went out and grabbed a game-changing defensive player. Bravo!
Here’s how that worked out as they came out of the bye at 8-2: The Colts lost to the Chiefs in overtime, with Jones playing through a broken fibula. They lost to the Texans, with Gardner suffering a calf injury that would keep him out several weeks. They got torched by the Jaguars and lost Jones for the season to a torn Achilles. Every quarterback was injured, so they signed 44-year-old grandfather Philip Rivers to save their season. After five years of retirement, Rivers showed up looking like the child of Baron Harkonnen and Beaver Cleaver. With him under center they lost to the Seahawks, the 49ers, the Jaguars again, and the Texans again. But he gave some good quotes to the media, turning the Colts’ historic collapse into a feel-good story. Ah hyuck hyuck! Gawrsh, I sure had a great time piloting this flaming turd into the ground!
The Colts finished the season with the highest DVOA of any team with a losing record. What an honor. Hang a banner!
Your coach: Shane Steichen, whom Jim Irsay extended before he died. Thanks, Grandpa. Say what you will about Irsay—and I’m about to—but there’s something about today’s brazenly evil oligarchs that can make me wistful for a billionaire failson who just wanted to party, baby. A little DWI and the possibility of killing a few innocent people on the road, while reckless, is hardly––
“Look, I am prejudiced against because I'm a rich, white billionaire,” [Irsay] told [Andrea] Kremer. “If I'm just the average guy down the block, they're not pulling me in. Of course not.”
I take it back. Fuck Jim Irsay’s skeleton with a backhoe.
Steichen’s primary assistants are defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, who I admit is competent, and offensive coordinator/Hall of Namer Jim Bob Cooter. HEY MA, GIT OFF THE DANG ROOF! (He’s fine, too.) (It won’t matter.)
Your quarterback: It's Daniel Jones, whose reward for tearing his Achilles in December was a two-year, $88 million contract. Really? Are we sure about this one, guys? Daniel Jones spent most of six years on the Giants and was “good”—I’m using the term loosely—for one of those years. Less than two years ago he was a practice squad player behind Nick Mullens on the Vikings. Are we 100 percent sure that Jones isn’t selling Indianapolis a monorail?
“Danny Dimes” is the stupidest nickname in the sport. Giants fans should be set adrift on windless South Pacific waters.
Still here, somehow, is former fourth-overall pick Anthony Richardson, because the Colts love top 10 quarterbacks that make anyone who watches college football say, “What the fuck are they doing?” Richardson was lousy as a rookie and even worse in 2024 (47.7 percent completion rate on 264 attempts), and we were spared his SCUD-like accuracy in 2025 only because he broke his orbital bone in the preseason while warming up with a resistance band. This is some real Jets shit, Indianapolis. You make a Jetsy draft pick, you get a Jetsy player. Shoulda tossed him into the Sauce Gardner trade.
The Colts clearly would like to trade Richardson, but it turns out that no one wants a quarterback whose biggest problem was vision even before he broke his damn eye bone! What a farce. Biggest draft bust named Richardson since the Colts sent a first-rounder to Cleveland for Trent.
Riley Leonard, who is (barely) sturdier than Richardson but without the cannon arm, is on the roster but probably behind Philip Rivers on the depth chart. Rivers, I should note, is not on the team. Yet.
What's new that sucks: Last year was Carlie Irsay-Gordon’s first year as the principal owner. She raised eyebrows by wearing a headset on the sideline during games, and while I’d love to bag on her for that, I have to grudgingly respect that a third-generation owner/inheritance baby is treating her new role like a job rather than, oh, I don’t know, a birthright to chill in the owner’s booth and wash down prescription drugs with liquor.
Why am I going easy on a billionaire failchild? I admit: I have a soft spot for middle-aged ladies holding it together. And it’s true that my dream woman has always been “Cruella DeVil got ready for the Kentucky Derby at the NFL Team Shop.”
Anyway, tax her into oblivion and use her money to fund arts programs in public schools.
In April, the Colts drafted Georgia LB CJ Allen to replace defensive captain Zaire Franklin, who was sent to Green Bay in exchange for DT Colby Wooden. Allen (no. 53 overall) was their top pick because of the Gardner trade. They also got A.J. Haulcy, a safety out of LSU, to replace Nick Cross, who departed for the Commanders in free agency. The Colts also drafted more defensive guys, a guard, and two 7th-rounders with upside, none of whom I’m going to name because paying attention to the Colts feels like doing my taxes. I just read about them adding defensive ends Arden Key and Micheal Clemons in free agency, and I swear I could feel my hair growing.
In an attempt to be less eye-dryingly dull, the Colts are rolling out not one but TWO alternative uniforms this season. The first of these are the Indiana Nights uniforms. Leave it to Indiana to build something around a lyric written more than 30 years ago by a now-dead Floridian. That’s probably a little too recent for Jim Irsay’s tastes, but it qualifies as timely by Midwestern standards.
If those didn’t set your hair on fire, strap in for the rollercoaster ride that are the Colts throwbacks!
That’s right! Just ONE stripe on the pants instead of … uhhh… however many there usually are! And THREE stripes on the sleeve instead of the usual (image search for “Colts uniform 2025”) two, apparently. Why, these riverboat gamblers aren’t afraid to play fast and loose with the number of stripes on their uniform! Someone slow down this runaway train!
The McCaskeys might just be stupid enough to make the Colts the second-most popular team in Indiana.
What has always sucked: In my lifetime, the Colts have swan-dived face-first into two first overall picks, both of which happened to be in drafts with no-brainer, surefire generational quarterback talents. With Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck helming two consecutive eras, they made it to two Super Bowls, winning one (against Rex Grossman—what a feat!). Manning went 4-8 against Tom Brady and the Patriots as a Colt. Once the Colts discarded him, he won more playoff games against the Brady Patriots in four years as a Bronco than he did in 11 years in Indianapolis. This is only partly why the Broncos, despite being a younger franchise, are the premier horse team in the NFL.
The organizational ineptitude was more keenly obvious with Luck, who played football like he was in a Jackass stunt, both as a personal choice and by organizational design. Did you know Andrew Luck is only 36? He retired EIGHT years ago! He’s younger now than Aaron Rodgers and Matthew Stafford were when they won their most recent MVP awards. You idiots! You louts! You braindead humps! You landed a golden goose and beat it to death with a helmet. You deserve everyone’s derision forever.
Indiana is a bottom-five state. The flatness of the Midwest plus a zealous embrace of Trump-era fascism minus any kind of cultural, culinary, or geographic worth. I went to high school in southern Illinois, a land of cornfields and St. Louis Cardinals fans that I would wish only on my greatest enemies (who happen to be from there anyway), and the lowest insult they could levy was hoosier. You called someone a hoosier if they were stupid, gullible, or too much of a redneck for even an Illinois redneck to tolerate. The notion of my classmates looking down on any other kind of person is truly astonishing—I knew someone who got a 0.0 GPA at SIU-Carbondale in the school of music—but now that I’ve met people from Indiana, they were right to do so.
A lot of folks in sports media have lauded Indianapolis for its ability to host major sports events, and all that says to me is that a lot of folks in sports media are easily impressed by being able to walk from their hotel to the stadium to three mediocre restaurants. “Oh but the shrimp cocktail!” Please. I’ve had the shrimp cocktail: it’s fine. They make the cocktail sauce with fresh horseradish and act like it’s the best thing in 100 miles. Well, it is.
I love historical markers. I will stop and read anything to file away as a fact to bore my children with. Only one historical marker has ever made me angry:
“This guy was born in Scotland, raised and educated in Wisconsin, and is most famous for his love for and preservation of the natural beauty of the American West. But he was trapped in a shit job in Indianapolis for a year!” Ah, the greatest of American success stories: Getting the fuck out of Indiana.
Jon Bois once called Indianapolis "The City By The Land" and "Mashed Potatoes: The City," and my only objection is that the latter is unkind to mashed potatoes.
Pat McAfee being on TV is the Colts’ fault. The world would be a better place if this team never existed.
What might not suck: It was cool when Indiana won the college football playoff. John Green seems like a good egg. I know a very nice family from Indianapolis; they’re my neighbors in California because Indiana was too racist for them.
HEAR IT FROM COLTS FANS!
Seth:
Like they say in Silicon Valley, fail quickly and then move on. Colts are great at moving on from mistakes: Ballard is back for his tenth .500 season, Anthony Richardson is still on the roster, and we are still asking if Andrew Luck will come back. Let's do another Peyton Manning remembrance tribute. Oh well. At least the Colts are now the third-best football team in Indiana behind the Hoosiers and Bears.
Brad:
At least we can be assured all of the personnel decisions this front office makes are getting fed into a low-budget LLM that’s going to produce some really funny results for, like, the Jets in a few years.
Sean:
As a lapsed colts fan, did I only start paying attention to them when they were 7-1, and crow to everyone about how Indiana was the football capital of the world? Yes.
Did I say another damn word the rest of the season? I did not.
Curt Cignetti’s
College Football 26commercial was a better watch than anything the Colts have done the last 15 years.
Rich:
2025 was such a mindfuck that I don't have the usual zest for WYTS this time around.
Last season started with Daniel Jones proving the haters (hand raised) wrong and playing at an MVP level and ended with Grandpa Rivers coming out of retirement to make this year's late season collapse more fun and entertaining. My brain is convinced those two things did not happen in the same season. So is Carlie Irsay-Gordon apparently, because Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen are still here.
Ballard has now been in charge for a decade and the Colts have yet to win the division. Do you know how hard it is to NOT win the AFC South? Houston, Jacksonville, and Tennessee have all done it TWICE.
Ballard celebrated his non-removal by giving a QB coming off an Achilles injury $88M and a WR2 $114M, only for him to immediately need ankle surgery.
And while it looks like 2026 is destined for a disaster, it would be so Colts like for them to finally win the division or make the playoffs, have Ballard and Steichen get extensions and then have everything go to shit in 2027. It will be such a joy.
PS - I apologize for thinking once upon a time that Pat McAfee was cool. A punter having "swagger" should have tipped me off, but the drunken swim in a canal really should have made it obvious that he's just a douche.
Nicholas:
Ballard: It sucks that Danny went down, he was having a career season. It also sucks that Richardson lost to a resistance band, because Riley Leonard is clearly not the answer, and that's on me.
Steichen: Well maybe I can change the offense to suit a pocket quarterb-
Ghost of Irsay, doing lines of Al Davis with Al Davis: WOO LAZERFACE AGAIN
Ballard: Fuck it, we ball
Matt:
Chris Ballard is still employed and that’s everything you need to know about the coming season.
At least IU is good now.
Maeve:
No matter how annoyed I get watching the Colts, by June I am always convinced that this stupid horse team will win the Super Bowl. My fantasy football league treated my optimism with statements like “if the Colts have a winning season I will give you $500.”
And yet despite making Daniel Jones the starting QB, the Colts were 8-2 at the bye week, including wins against past and future playoff teams like the Broncos and the Chargers. I was about to get 500 free dollars!
And then the Colts marched into Arrowhead and it all went to hell. Not even Old Man Philip Rivers in the feel-good story of the season could win that ninth game. I had to watch avid Nelk Boys enthusiast Riley Leonard start a game. And even that sentient cup of raw milk couldn’t get it done against a Texans team that had already clinched their playoff spot. I really could have used that money.
Despite this, I have already put in PTO to go to the Colts-Chiefs game this year (did I mention that I live in KC now? A place where people actively enjoy their football team instead of looking at them with disgust despite having loved them their whole lives?) I will never learn.
Shep:
I know there is a WYTS tradition of making fun of the stupid things fans believe about our team, but I am afraid I can't help with that this year. Even though I live in Indiana, and I'm friends with several other Colts fans, when we are together we never talk about the Colts. For shit's sake, why the hell would we?
Colton:
I should preface this with the fact that I am actually named after this team, a fact that my parents boast proudly. To protect my identity/dignity I should also say the connections do not stop there.
Much like the franchise itself, my parents have a lot to thank for Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck, otherwise my resentment for all parties would be boundless. I gained an expectation of greatness from this team, but ever since Luck made the smartest decision anyone in this franchise has ever made in realizing this is not a team worth dying for, I’ve been met with it’s true face: a mediocre, incompetent hogwash that answers the question “What if the Cleveland Browns had a glimmer of hope once?”
Mediocrity is giving this team too much credit. While our record in the last decade reflects a Jeff Fisher level of middling, the details paint a sadder picture. Our highs make us look like juggernauts capable of dethroning any Super Bowl contender. But when we get low, my god is it in spectacular, idiotic fashion. That dumbass swinging gate, getting knocked out of the playoffs last second by Houston (twice!!), 33-0 (which I’m sure you’ll never forget for the opposite reason I won’t), dogshit bend-don’t-break defensive schemes, resurrecting Grandpa Phil to die against the Seahawks, the list goes on and on. Brain damage from pill use must be hereditary if Carlie Irsay can watch our mid-season collapse and think the best course of action is to run it back. Every single Colts fan knew that run was a fluke, but we drank that blue Koolaid anyway. We will never learn anything.
The fact we are putting all our faith into Daniel fucking Jones is all you need to know about our bleak future. All the talent on this team is aging out. Nelson being a Pro Bowl guard means nothing when there are four other turnstiles Jonathan Taylor has to leap over to break away. Can’t wait to trade him to the Titans for three late round picks and give Cam Ward the ole college try. I’m shocked Alec Pierce picked us over New England, they seem to love their plucky, white slot receivers over there. Every shining light we’ve ever had on defense has had a short, injury riddled career. Sauce is fulfilling this role well so far.
Fuck Chris Ballard, fuck Ryan Grigson, fuck Anthony Richardson, fuck Pat McAfee, fuck Mike Vanderjagt, fuck Sean Payton, double fuck Bill Bellichick, triple fuck Tom Brady, fuck my parents for branding me with this dumbass organization, and fuck me for buying into this horseshit. My Indiana Jones jersey is already in the mail.
John:
For everything that went wrong last year, the Colts did do something no one thought any team would be able to accomplish. They were the first team in NFL history to actually be A Quarterback Away from winning a Super Bowl.
Never mind that 6 of our 8 wins came against teams that finished worse than we did and that the other two happened because of the worst penalty in football (leverage) and the existence of the Los Angeles Chargers. This season proved that with a QB who won One (1) playoff game since the pandemic, The 2025 Colts were the reincarnation of The Greatest Show On Turf. And as soon as that QB got hurt, we made the Hue Jackson Browns look respectable by comparison.
Remember how nice it was when Jonathan Taylor and Jim Irsay got together and hashed out a deal to make him our franchise running back? (despite Jim and Colts management nearly running him out of town in the first place) Well, that’s never happening again now that Carlie Irsay-Gordon is running the show. After we give up every remaining first round pick we have this decade to trade for Maxx Crosby and still finish 7-10, she’s gonna tear this team down to the studs and every decent player we have will leave and win a Super Bowl before we even make it back to the playoffs. Then as soon as we get back to decent, she’ll extort the city for a new shit-ass $10 billion dollar stadium in Noblesville or move the team to St. Louis.
Fuck Mike Braun with Jim Irsay’s prized possession, the shotgun Kurt Cobain used to kill himself.
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