Colts special teams must be better in 2024

INDIANAPOLIS — For most of general manager Chris Ballard’s tenure, the Colts special teams units have been an asset, outside of the team’s inability to find a reliable replacement for Adam Vinatieri after age caught up to the great kicker.

The rest of the kicking game has typically been strong, a combination of the leadership by former coordinator Bubba Ventrone and Ballard’s devotion to finding players with special-teams ability.

Ventrone is gone now, replaced by former Notre Dame coordinator Brian Mason, and the results on special teams were something of a mixed bag in Mason’s first season.

Indianapolis finished 15th in the special-teams rankings annually compiled by longtime NFL writer Rick Gosselin after three consecutive top-10 finishes with Ventrone at the helm. The Colts also finished an ugly 29th in the NFL in special teams DVOA, a statistic designed to evaluate a unit as a whole while accounting for opponent and situational factors.

In short, Indianapolis has some work to do in the kicking game.

“Good and bad moments on teams; I think we’ll continue to grow in that area,” Ballard said at the end of the season. “The Tennessee game, they win it. We did some other consistent, really good things, and then some things we need to get better at, and I can help them with personnel, too. Don’t blame it all on them.”

The Indianapolis coverage units were hit hard by both injury and ascension in 2023.

For starters, the Colts lost rookie safety Daniel Scott, a fifth-round pick expected to be a core special teamer, before he ever got to play a snap, and then Indianapolis lost one of the NFL’s best gunners, Ashton Dulin, to a torn ACL in training camp.

Electric kick returner Dallis Flowers was promoted to a starting cornerback role before a torn Achilles tendon ended his season. E.J. Speed followed Zaire Franklin’s path from a long-time special teams ace to starting linebacker.

“We had a lot of new players on special teams, some younger guys,” Ballard said.

A handful of those players were not particularly suited for their roles.

Veteran wide receiver Isaiah McKenzie was given the team’s primary return role, a position he’d held sporadically during his time in Buffalo, and failed to provide the spark of a Flowers or Nyheim Hines. Indianapolis ended up finishing 18th in the NFL in both punt and kick return yardage.

McKenzie also fumbled three times on punt returns, critically losing two. If there is one spot the Colts should improve this offseason, it’s at returner, a spot that should be reliable at the minimum and capable of providing a game-changing play at best.

On the other side of the return game, Indianapolis was 15th in the NFL in punt coverage and 26th against kick returns, although it can be debated how important kickoff coverage remains in today’s game, given the rule that allows return men to fair catch any ball.

“What special teams boils down to today: Punt, punt return, field goal and field goal block,” Ballard said.

For the most part, Ballard is correct, although it should be pointed out that a big kickoff return can still be crippling, even if it’s the only time a team returns a kick all game. Indianapolis returned just nine kicks all season, and opponents returned only 15.

The other two pillars of the kicking game went in opposite directions this season.

Ballard finally addressed the kicker position with a big swing last offseason, signing veteran Matt Gay to a four-year, $22.5 million deal, the second-largest of any kicker in the NFL.

And it looked like a great deal in the first half of the season.

Gay made 16 of his first 18 field goals and turned in one of the best games a kicker’s ever had in the NFL, burying four field goals of 50-plus yards on a misty day in Baltimore to beat the Ravens.

Then the season turned. Gay missed six field goals and an extra point in the final eight games, finishing at just 80.5% on field goals for the season, far below the numbers he’d produced in three years with the Rams.

Three years remain on the veteran’s contract, and even if the Colts were thinking about making a move, it would cost Indianapolis a million dollars more than the $5.9 million cap hit he’ll carry if kicking for the Colts in 2024 to release him.

But it does not sound like that move is being considered.

Indianapolis believes an injury led to Gay’s rough second half.

“I’m glad we have Matt,” Ballard said. “He had a little hip there at one point and had some stuff going on, but we’re happy to have him. He was unbelievable early. He got into a little bit of a, i wouldn’t say a rut, but his expectations are to never miss. We’re fortunate to have him.”

Gay’s running mate, punter Rigoberto Sanchez, had the opposite season.

Finally back after a torn Achilles tendon claimed his entire 2022 campaign, Sanchez started out slow, then found his form halfway through the season and produced career highs in distance (48.3 yards) and net punting (42.3), all while becoming the only punter in the NFL to finish the season without a single touchback.

And he didn’t have Dulin at gunner all season.

Sanchez is a free agent, but he’s still only 29 years old, and he fills two key roles on the team —Ballard believes Sanchez is one of the better holders in the NFL. A return seems likely.

“I think a lot of Rigo,” Ballard said. “He had a good year. Things started off a little slow, but once he got going, he was Rigo.”

In some ways, the Colts special teams in the post-Ventrone era hope to have a similar trajectory.

Things started off a little slow this season.

Indianapolis needs to get going again.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts special teams must be better in 2024