Insider: How Tony Sparano Jr. rebuilt the Colts offensive line
INDIANAPOLIS — The Colts placed a risky bet on the offensive line last offseason.
Or, at least, it felt like a gamble to just about everybody else.
Fully aware of the role the offensive line played in lighting the fire that consumed the franchise, Indianapolis general manager Chris Ballard decided to run it back with essentially the same personnel that ended the season.
“The group that walked into that room again was pretty beaten and feathered and tarred,” center Ryan Kelly said.
Ballard believed he’d seen something, a flash of light among the utter darkness of the Colts’ complete collapse in the final months of the 2022 season.
He’d played a key role in the offensive line’s shocking slide to start the season. He gambled that he could shift in-house pieces to prop up two spots on the NFL’s highest-paid offensive line but it ultimately led to cracks in the entire structure.
But the mistakes of Matt Pryor at left tackle and Danny Pinter at right guard ended up leading to Bernhard Raimann and Will Fries. Even though both players struggled at times, Ballard saw enough out of the young offensive linemen that he decided to gamble again, his only major offseason addition to the offensive line being a fourth-round pick on rookie offensive tackle Blake Freeland.
The Colts believed they’d found the right five players up front.
But they needed a coach who could get them there.
“It really starts with Tony,” right tackle Braden Smith said. “Something we had been lacking is leadership from an o-line coach like that.”
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'It’s not about what we did last week or last year'
The hiring of Tony Sparano Jr. seemed like another gamble.
Sparano had his father’s famous name and more than a decade of experience in the NFL, but he’d never run his own offensive line room, and the road he’d traveled to Indianapolis — Jacksonville to Carolina to New York — wasn’t exactly littered with the game’s best offensive lines.
But Shane Steichen was convinced he’d found the right guy. When Steichen went searching for his offensive staff, he put them through the ringer in interviews, and a marathon X’s and O’s session with Sparano left Steichen excited about the young coach’s mentality, his acumen and the way he wanted to attack defenses.
When Sparano looked at the Indianapolis offensive line, he saw what the Colts believed they were seeing.
“We are really, really lucky to have great players here,” Sparano said. “I said that in the spring, and I said it because I believed it, not just because it was something cute to say.”
Before the 2022 season, few would have disagreed with Sparano’s assessment, but the offensive line’s collapse — the Colts gave up 60 sacks, the second-worst mark in the NFL, and a running game that dominated the NFL in 2021 finished just 23rd in the league in yards per carry — ended up tarnishing the three pillars that made up the foundation.
Perennial Pro Bowler Quenton Nelson openly admitted after the season that he didn’t believe he’d played to his standards.
Kelly, the team’s longest-tenured blocker and a veteran of multiple offensive line makeovers, was the subject of trade calls last offseason. Smith played solid football, but the Colts tinkered with moving him to right guard in an effort to find an answer.
From the outside, the other two spots were harder to project. Raimann, a third-round pick, had all the physical tools but understandably struggled after getting thrown into the fire as a rookie; Fries had been something of an afterthought in the draft, a seventh-round pick championed for his versatility as a potential backup.
But as battered and beaten down as the Indianapolis offensive line had been, the Colts players felt the same sense of optimism in the final eight games that Ballard saw on tape.
“Obviously, we didn’t live up to a standard last year, and obviously, there was a lot of moving parts,” Smith said. “But there was a time during last year where we found our group.”
That group was questioned repeatedly during the offseason, and as much as the Colts try to ignore the outside criticism, it was impossible to avoid all of it.
Until the Colts were inside the offensive line room.
“Regardless of what was said about us in the preseason and the offseason, he really kept us away from that,” Raimann said.
Sparano refused to talk about the previous season, publicly or privately.
“The focus for this group was never about last year,” Sparano said. “I know that sounds cliché, but it wasn’t, it never has been, and it won’t be when I’m here. It’s not about what we did last week or last year; it’s about building the dynamic how we wanted to build it.”
Together
A key tenet of Sparano’s philosophy is togetherness.
Five offensive linemen playing as one, another phrase Sparano knows can be a cliché, but a truth that marks the core of a coaching philosophy first instilled by his father, Tony Sr., the rare offensive line coach who impressed enough that he got a head coaching shot.
“I’m different, maybe, than most. … It sounds simple, but I promise you, it’s what I believe: It’s group dynamic,” Sparano Jr. said. “I think that a lot of the time, the mistake can be to focus on individuals where the offensive line is concerned, and those five guys have got to function as one. They do. When they get that right and they play together, it can elevate the level of everybody.”
The opposite happened to the Colts offensive line in 2022.
Ballard replaced Eric Fisher and Mark Glowinski with Pryor and Pinter, respectively, two linemen asked to play out of position relative to the spots they’d already had success in the NFL. When those two players struggled, the effect snowballed, leaving Kelly and Nelson, in particular, trying to put out too many different fires at one time.
Then the Colts started shuffling players in and out of the lineup, desperate to find the right individual to plug holes.
From the moment he arrived, Sparano Jr. elevated the group over any individual, preaching togetherness inside and outside of the Colts’ meeting room. Sparano Jr. told the offensive line he expected them to be together even when they weren’t at practice, even if he couldn’t be there.
“An underrated aspect of the whole thing is the time you invest in one another outside of this building,” Sparano Jr. said. “I think it’s really, really critical. I don’t think you can get real far faking relationships. I think it’s got to be genuine, and I think the only way you can have a genuine relationship with somebody and want to play for that person is to invest in them personally outside this building.”
Inside the building, Sparano Jr. treated the offensive line as a collective, rather than a collection of individuals.
“I feel like Tony did a good job never overvaluing or undervaluing a player,” Smith said. “Everyone’s important in the room, so whenever your number is called, you’re just as prepared as the guy in front of you or behind you. When there were other guys out there, we didn’t miss a beat.”
'Making sure we’re all on our (expletive)'
When the Colts offensive line talks about Sparano Jr., about the impact he had on the room this season, there is a lot of talk about the intangibles, the way he built the room.
But intangibles are obviously only part of the story.
One of the reasons Steichen hired Sparano Jr. was the way the offensive line coach saw defenses and how he planned to attack them, and although the current Colts coaching staff does not like to reveal a lot of offensive philosophy, it’s clear Sparano Jr. made technical and stylistic changes that paid dividends.
“He brought a lot of fire to the offensive line group,” Raimann said. “In practice, he’s very passionate about attention to detail, making sure we’re all on our (expletive), basically.”
From a football standpoint, Raimann’s development played a key role.
The Austrian native has only been playing offensive tackle for four seasons — he made the switch from the tight end position halfway through his career at Central Michigan — and he took a big step forward this season.
The late-game mistakes that plagued him as a rookie were whittled down to two or three rough games in an entire season, and the Colts increasingly left Raimann in one-on-one situations outside, allowing the coaching staff to help out elsewhere.
By the same token, Fries blossomed into a bona fide starter at right guard, bringing the nasty streak to the offensive line that Glowinski provided to the previous Indianapolis group, albeit with better pass protection.
Nelson and Kelly played like Pro Bowlers again.
Smith missed seven games due to injury, but when he was in the lineup, he was a difference-maker.
“Braden is important to our football team,” Ballard said. “When he doesn’t play, it hurts us.”
For the most part, though, when the Colts didn’t have Smith in the lineup — or Kelly, who missed three games, or Raimann, who missed two — the offensive line refused to crater the way it had in the early games of the 2022 season, even though Freeland had rookie moments at tackle and Wesley French isn’t a decorated veteran like Kelly.
Sparano Jr.’s message of togetherness served as the glue that kept everything together.
“When their number was called, they were ready,” Smith said. “They don’t get the praise they deserve. It was a group effort.”
'It’s the best room I’ve ever been a part of'
Under Sparano Jr.’s leadership, the Indianapolis offensive line played like its price tag in 2023, and outside of Steichen’s knack for game-planning, the big guys up front probably deserve the most credit for the Colts’ offensive resurgence this season.
A complete reversal of the way the disastrous 2022 season played out in Indianapolis.
“As an offensive line, you kind of carry the team on your back,” Raimann said.
The Colts needed the big guys to bear the weight in Steichen’s first season.
Indianapolis lost rookie quarterback Anthony Richardson five games into the season, didn’t have running back Jonathan Taylor at his best for roughly half the season and faced a never-ending string of injuries to other position players.
But the Colts finished 11th in scoring, even though backup quarterback Gardner Minshew ended up 23rd in the NFL in passer rating.
Indianapolis gave up 40 sacks, tied for 16th in the NFL — and a number that’s misleading, given Minshew’s tendency to scramble into trouble at times — and finished the season ranked 10th in the NFL in rushing.
“I think we did a really good job this year proving people wrong,” Smith said. “It’s easy to kick a man while he’s down, but how do you respond to that?”
In one season, the Colts offensive line has gone from a position of need to a position of strength; Indianapolis does not have any glaring holes up front heading into the offseason.
“Our room is (expletive) insane,” Kelly said. “It’s the best room I’ve ever been a part of.”
Those are strong words coming from Kelly.
Kelly was part of the Indianapolis offensive line that led the NFL in sacks allowed in 2018, the Colts offensive line that saw all five starters play every game in 2019, the one that paved the way for Taylor to post the best season an Indianapolis running back has ever produced in 2021.
But he knows what he’s saying.
“(Anthony) Castonzo, Glowinski, me, Braden and Q played a lot of games together, and it was incredible,” Kelly said. “But I think the turmoil that happened last year, to rebound and to play well, play together and have a coach, Tony, that believes in us, it just means a lot.”
This time, Ballard ended up winning his bet. Indianapolis had the right five players up front.
They just needed the right coach.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts: How Tony Sparano Jr. rebuilt the offensive line
