10 thoughts on the Colts' 2023 season and where to go with Anthony Richardson and Shane Steichen
INDIANAPOLIS -- Ten thoughts on the Colts' 2023 season, from Shane Steichen to Anthony Richardson to Chris Ballard to where this goes from here:
1. What a calendar year that was. Twelve months ago, Jeff Saturday was still in the building, Matt Ryan was still on the roster, Ballard was embarking on a coaching search with 14 candidates and questions were endless about the direction of the franchise and all of the most important pillars, in an AFC that was starting to feel out of reach.
So much has happened since that 4-12-1 season ended, and not all of it easy: Jonathan Taylor took on the franchise and the running back market and as a result didn’t play the first month of the season. Anthony Richardson arrived and then disappeared from the field after a devastating shoulder injury. Shaquille Leonard fell into a dark place with his play and his playing time. Suspensions came down for two defensive starters, totaling 23 games missed.
And yet, here we are, days removed from the season, and the Colts are in as hopeful a place as they have been since I arrived on the beat midseason in 2021. In fact, it’s as hopeful of a place since 2018. And it’s because of much more than the 9-8 record they just posted.
How Shane Steichen transformed Colts culture
2. The Colts have a coach in Shane Steichen and a quarterback in Richardson who, while still proving themselves, present all the theoretical upside in the world. Offensive creativity meets dual-threat athleticism at the most important position. It’s the hopeful place every AFC team is trying to live.
That hope has already had an effect in the building. A year ago, I had free agents telling me they were open to playing anywhere but Indianapolis. This year, I’ve had some tell me they are praying to come back.
MORE: Inside the Colts locker room after a heartbreaking end to an improbable year
At this time last year, DeForest Buckner was waffling on whether he wanted to go through with this anymore. It’s the same place Stephon Gilmore was in when he asked for a trade and received one to the Cowboys. Buckner met with Ballard, who convinced him to wait on his coaching hire.
Buckner did, and he felt a shift.
“The culture change was a big thing for me,” Buckner said. “You need the right coach each and every week to compete. I feel like the year prior, we would go into weeks where guys didn't have the right mindset. This year, I didn't feel that at all."
3. Steichen was innovative, creative and laser-focused. It made him difficult to connect with on a human level, but we saw his fingerprints on so much of an offense that finished 11th in scoring, from the quarterback run designs with Richardson to the run-pass-options with him and Gardner Minshew, to the trick plays, to the gamesmanship on fourth downs.
I thought his most impressive work came in the growth of Minshew this season. Not only did Steichen have to shift to a quarterback with an entirely different skill set — a choice that was his by recruiting Minshew to Indianapolis, to be fair — but that veteran backup seemed to hit a wall a few weeks later with back-to-back four-turnover games against the Jaguars and Browns and some terrifying plays under pressure.
It’s hard to get a quarterback to evolve after 30 starts if he doesn’t have more physical or athletic dimensions to tap into. But Minshew grew in his willingness to scramble, in his calmness under pressure and in some of the deep shots he took on the move to allow his arm to play with greater life.
Minshew played his three best games in December, fueling wins over the Titans, Steelers and Raiders to give the Colts a shot. Unfortunately, water still found its level at this position when he regressed so massively against the Texans with a rising star quarterback on the other side.
How Steichen erred on the 4th-down call against the Texans
4. One area where I would like to see Steichen grow is in his preference for plays over players. It got him into trouble at times earlier in the season with Minshew and the turnovers — see the double-move from the end zone that Myles Garrett turned into a strip-sack defensive score — and it showed up on the infamous fourth-down play against Houston.
Colts news: Inside the play that effectively ended the Colts' season
I understand why he felt good about the process that allowed Tyler Goodson to get wide open from the backfield for a short depth on fourth down. I find it problematic to try a play like this for the first time in any game at a moment when the season is on the line.
The Colts often preach to their players that stressful moments don’t require anyone to raise their level of play but to resort to their baseline of skills, training and instincts. It requires having a baseline in the first place. Goodson might wind up having a nice career, but he had seen eight targets in two years up to that point. He did not have a touch in this game. And thus, he had zero chemistry with Minshew, and running a play that, while it looks easy to the viewer, is ultimately about chemistry in the end.
The Colts didn’t practice on Wednesday, so they were banking on two days of shared reps in the backfield to get Goodson ready for the biggest play of his life. And it wasn’t just about Goodson. It was about Minshew delivering an on-target throw, which he has not done consistently this season and certainly wasn’t doing Saturday, when he completed 13 passes for 141 yards.
With a new player like Goodson turning back to find a football, the pass needs to be perfectly on-target. It’d be different if it were Michael Pittman Jr., who has worlds of catch radius at 6-foot-4. Or Josh Downs, who has some of the smoothest hands and the ability to leave his feet to time up a catch, like he did to help beat the Patriots.
Play calls are about more than just the design. They’re also about skill sets and chemistry and confidence. And so, despite the openness of the play, I would have preferred to go down swinging either with play-action to Jonathan Taylor and a throw to Downs or Pittman or by slamming Zack Moss behind an offensive line that ran for 227 yards on 6.1 yards per play.
If those plays still fall a yard short, at least you took your shot with the players that got you here. Instead, a player who might not be on the roster was left explaining why the season is over.
5. Ultimately, though, that moment and the shot at the playoffs were gravy. It would have been nice to get a playoff game for young players, and a home playoff game for Indianapolis would be a jolt for a city that has not had much football fun over the past five seasons.
But the important playoff games will be about getting Richardson that experience and allowing a scheme and culture to grow around him.
And, not that they planned it this way, but dropping to the No. 15 pick in the draft and a third-place schedule for next season are decent consolation prizes.
How Chris Ballard rebuilt the roster
6. Of all the returning people who needed a rebound from 2022, Ballard was at the top of the list.
In 2022, he fell into some of his worst habits of banking on internal growth to replace departing starters and passing on free agency as a way to bolster premium positions. He didn’t pay for it with his job, but he admitted that his year was a failure.
This year, Ballard doubled down on some of his best traits. He hired a coach in Steichen who can oversee the side of the ball he’s a little less familiar with, including hiring a rising star in offensive line coach Tony Sparano Jr. to maximize Ballard's highly paid offensive line.
He could pour more energy into the defense, where he found a Tier 2 signing in Samson Ebukam, whose career-high 9.5 sacks helped create the eight-man pass rush Ballard desired. He was able to let some of his developmental draft bets grow into their massive athleticism and play key roles, from Kwity Paye to Dayo Odeyingbo to Nick Cross to Bernhard Raimann. And he was able to find some more Day 3 NFL Draft gems in Will Mallory and Jaylon Jones.
He adjusted in a couple of key areas, such as signing former Pro Bowler Matt Gay to settle down the kicking game and, finally, in taking a swing at quarterback in Richardson. The Richardson pick is the biggest reason his franchise has hope right now. That's what this season was really about.
MORE: Chasing Tim Tebow, idolizing Tom Brady and fighting fires: The making of Anthony Richardson
7. Like Steichen and every human, Ballard wasn’t perfect either.
The one major point of criticism is in his choice not to address the cornerback position with veterans. He drafted three cornerbacks on Days 2 and 3, and though he didn’t know Isaiah Rodgers Sr. would be suspended for the year for gambling, he also passed on finding an answer in free agency in June.
He did so because he saw this as a transition year with a young coach and quarterback, and he wanted to build potential future starters through a trial by fire the way they did for Raimann the year before. But he didn’t allow for the possibility that his coach, quarterback and team might over-perform and have a shot at the playoffs.
It’s not the biggest sin, given Richardson’s injury and the fact that Jones and JuJu Brents will be better off for the playing time they received. But I think this team beats the Browns and maybe the Texans with a one-year starting cornerback like Rock Ya-Sin, and that reality made the cornerback position feel like the pass rush in 2021.
Why Gus Bradley is likely to return as defensive coordinator
8. The Colts knew they couldn't embrace growing pains at a premium position and then blame the coaches for the growing pains. That's why Gus Bradley is likely to be back.
That doesn’t mean Bradley was perfect either. He showed some creative blitzing to score an upset of the Ravens, and I think he could have baked in a few more of those by using the skill sets of Kenny Moore II, E.J. Speed and Cross. He should have made the switch from Rodney Thomas II to Cross earlier, such as after the loss to the Saints, when the concerns with Thomas really came to the forefront.
But mostly, the issues on defense were personnel-related. Rodgers and Grover Stewart missed a combined 23 games to suspension, and the depth behind them was minuscule. Shaquille Leonard couldn’t make it physically back from his second back surgery, which killed the turnovers that were supposed to make up for the plays they allowed in coverage.
It was nothing they were going to solve with high-volume blitzing, which is something teams like the Ravens and Browns do because they can trust their cornerbacks on islands. Bradley's personnel incentivized blitzing as little as possible in the name of not giving up explosive plays.
Bradley’s unit set the record for sacks in the Indianapolis era, and some of that credit should go to a coordinator who took a chance on a young defensive line coach in Nate Ollie and his "attack" approach. Bradley's staff built out a nice role for Odeyingbo, effectively transitioned Julian Blackmon to strong safety, adequately replaced Bobby Okereke with Speed and found a way to get Moore more involved in the path of the ball.
A move from Bradley would be a shift away from the philosophy of single-high safeties and light blitzing. But it wouldn’t be a move for performance reasons relative to expectations. It makes sense to address the gaping roster holes and make next season a prove-it year for the staff.
Free agent decisions on Michael Pittman Jr., Julian Blackmon, Kenny Moore II, Gardner Minshew
9. The Colts will have more than $70 million available under the salary cap this spring, according to OverTheCap.com, which places them in the top five in the league. I expect a chunk of that to go toward extensions for in-house free agents, a list that includes Pittman, Blackmon, Moore, Stewart, Minshew, Rigoberto Sanchez and Moss.
Of those, I think keeping Pittman, Blackmon, Stewart and Sanchez are musts. Pittman will likely cost more than $23 million annually, but with a rookie quarterback and no other spending at the position, it’s a pill they need to swallow to give Richardson a physical mismatch who is open when he’s not open, the way that Stefon Diggs was for Josh Allen and A.J. Brown was for Jalen Hurts. Short of finding some way to trade up for Marvin Harrison Jr., I don’t see a wise alternative given the box Ballard has created for himself at this position. And nor would I sweat it that much given their financial freedoms.
The other signings are all of reasonable costs. If Moore isn’t able to find a bigger deal in free agency, I’d bring him back as well, as his chemistry with Blackmon and the young cornerbacks is excellent.
Moss is an interesting idea, given that a complement to Taylor to ensure his carries and health stay in a good place is a good decision, like what the Browns did by signing Kareem Hunt to play with Nick Chubb. The presence of Richardson in the run game makes it a slightly different calculation, and Moss might want to be a starter somewhere else. The same is the case with Minshew, who could be an option to return as the backup, though I would prefer to look at more mobile options.
The hope for Anthony Richardson
10. All in all, hope is high for the Colts if they can add a cornerback and a pass catcher, re-sign their free agents and find a way to keep Richardson healthy. That last one is the hardest to control but will matter the most in their strive to succeed.
The jury isn’t yet out on Richardson, who has attempted 84 passes. But the skills were so electric and the passion for learning so clear that the bet feels even better than it did on draft night. Teammates were won over by his performance against the Rams, when he led a 23-point comeback.
They're left thinking about the blender they’ll put defenses in when they stack the box to stop the run, only to have to guess which athlete with 4.4 speed has the ball − Richardson or Taylor − or whether Richardson is going to launch it to Alec Pierce or Jelani Woods down the field, or whether he’ll scramble to find a lane or throw late to Pittman or Downs.
MORE: 'It makes you anxious': How Jelani Woods' second season turned into a redshirt year
"It's who do I have and how do I maximize the talent of the guys I have available?" Taylor said. "I think when you have a coach who thinks like that, that's when it gets dangerous.
"You guys can already see the changes from last year to this year. So imagine net year when we have another year under our belt, being able to all work together."
It’s all theoretical. It will require the health and growth of young players, and an offensive line that staves off regression, and a coach and quarterback to continue adjusting. But the pieces are there, so many more of them than this franchise has had over the past five seasons.
And that’s why this feels nothing like that cold, confusing ending a year ago.
Contact Nate Atkins at natkins@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter @NateAtkins_.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts: 10 thoughts on the 2023 season and what to do in the offseason
