Colts Have 'Found a Way' To Get Much Worse in 2026

Indianapolis Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon made the unpopular decision to run it back with head coach Shane Steichen and general manager Chris Ballard after the team finished 8-9 last season. While it was a tough sell to a fanbase that had endured nine years of ineptitude from Ballard (and three years of .500 play at best with Steichen), there was some sound reasoning in her judgment. 

The 2025 Colts were one of the weirdest teams in recent memory, looking like the best team in football for the first half of the season and spiraling out as one of the worst to close out the year. Part of this is due to the injury to quarterback Daniel Jones, but they still managed to battle legit playoff teams to one-score games with Philip Rivers at quarterback. They simply kept finding ways to lose. 

To put some numbers to this, the Colts finished 2025 with the seventh-best offense in terms of Expected Points Added (EPA) per play and ranked sixth in overall success rate. Even the defense, which felt like one of the worst units in the league at times, ranked 17th in EPA per play and 23rd in success rate. 

Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) is a stat created by Football Outsiders that measures a team’s efficiency by comparing success on each play to the league average. It’s been an outstanding tool for a long time, and it helps to decipher some of the noisy stats out there into a more effective model. Aaron Schatz wrote this about the Colts last season in his final DVOA rankings of 2025:

The Colts shocked everyone with their hot start. They peaked at 7-1 and first in DVOA after Week 8. Then they collapsed, but they still finished fifth in DVOA for the season (essentially tied for fourth with Houston). As a result, the Colts finished with the best DVOA ever for a team with a losing record.

So, even though I disagreed with the decision to run it back, I completely understood the process involved behind it. Every metric said that the Colts were a playoff team that just couldn’t finish games last year, so another year of observation made sense to see what was truly real. The early returns on 2026 are not what anybody in the organization wanted to see, though.

Through five games, the Colts sit at 2-3 and are in second place in the AFC South. That’s relatively modest placement considering who they have played, but remember the process is what matters here. If the advanced stats saved everybody’s job last year, they should be fatal this year. The Colts’ offense has plummeted in efficiency, dropping to 22nd in EPA per play and 21st in success rate. 

The defense, a unit that made major changes in the offseason in order to be more competitive, has also taken a step back, falling to 27th in EPA per play and 26th in success rate. DVOA, the metric that kindly ranked them so highly last season, has them 20th this season. They also boast the worst turnover differential in the NFL, and Jones has taken a major step back from his first half of 2025 play. 

If last year’s Colts were better than their record indicated, this year’s team might be worse. They are being propped up by outstanding special teams play and special teams coaching, but that can only go so far. The Colts’ offense and defense keep getting obliterated on Sundays, and coordinator Brian Mason’s excellence can only do so much. 

The simple fact of the matter is that the 2026 Colts aren’t going to be good enough to save anybody’s job. The offseason moves didn’t work, the defense has plummeted to one of the worst in the league, the offense has lost the magic, and the team simply looks apathetic on Sundays. 

There was some merit to running it back one more time, but it’s safe to say that we have our final answer now. The Colts are not going to find a way into the playoffs this season. The only thing that they’ve managed to do is find a way to regress across the board. The only hope left for fans is that there will finally be some real changes here in 13 weeks.