The 2025 Colts Offensive Line
 

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When I was in 6th grade during the War of 1812, Mr. Martino asked the class ...... "Which part of the team do you start with when you are building a new squad ???" He said that you don't start with the quarterback ...... you don't start with the special teams ..... you don't start with the running backs ...... you don't start with the pass-rushers ...... you start with the offensive line, because without the offensive line, you have nothing.

I still believe that to be true. With a few very rare exceptions, if your team has a bad offensive line, they have nothing. Perhaps if you have a Fran Tarkenton, a Michael Vick, or a Randall Cunningham running around like a maniac, or if you have a Dan Marino with a super-quick release you might be able to get away with having a bad offensive line and still manage to be a contending team ...... but generally speaking, you have nothing with a bad O-Line.

I've said before that good teams find ways to win games when they play badly. The Colts have played 2 bad games this year, winning one of them (against the Cardinals), and losing one of them (against the Steelers.) And the biggest difference in those 2 games was that the Colts' offensive line had its usual solid game against the Cardinals, and they had what was by far their worst game of the year against the Steelers ...... so they managed to win the game in which their defense played badly (against the Cardinals), but they lost the game in which their defense played much better (against the Steelers.) And I find that to be no coincidence (again, going back to the performances of the offensive line.)


There was a time when the motto/phrase for the Colts was, l "So goes Bert Jones, so goes the Colts." l The motto for this 2025 Colts team may very well be, l "So goes the offensive line, so goes the Colts."

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(vs. FALCONS, 11/09)


The run-blocking today was better than it was last week against the Steelers, but the pass-blocking was very bad.

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Possibly, one of the most important things for the team to figure out during the bye week is their offensive line protection. It is night and day different from the first eight weeks to the last two weeks.

Need to get that figured out.

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Shane Steichen on Why the Colts Are Giving up Sacks, and What He’ll Do About

(By Nat Newell)

https://www.indystar.com/story/sport...s/87203436007/





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Colts head coach Shane Steichen said Monday he “doesn’t have a huge level of concern” over his offensive line and quarterback surrendering 12 sacks, three QB fumbles and a tipped-ball interception in its last two games.

“I think when you see the stat line of sacks, I think every sack has a story to it, and I always look at myself first,” Steichen said Monday, a day after his team gave up seven sacks to the blitz-happy Falcons defense, following a seven-game start to the season that included just six sacks of Daniel Jones. “There are certain calls I could have called better to put our guys in better position so those don’t happen.

“So that’s on me. Those things happen in the game. I’ve got to do better for those guys.”

For all the historic positives produced by Indianapolis’ run game Sunday in Berlin – 323 total yards on the ground, 244 of those from MVP candidate Jonathan Taylor, the second-most in his career and the team’s history – the passing game saw a series of highs and lows. At his best, Jones, who threw for 255 yards on 19-of-26 throwing the ball – the second quarterback to eclipse the 200-yard mark this year against the NFL’s top passing defense – was spot-on for three big-game throws.

His 37-yard connection to Alec Pierce in double-coverage, placed in a spot only the fourth-year wideout could high-point it, gave the Colts an early 13-7 lead. Jones' pair of late-game connections to rookie tight end Tyler Warren – an all-or-nothing fourth-and-2 with Warren facing blanketed man coverage and another in overtime for a leaping 23-yarder that sparked the game-winning touchdown a few plays later – were highlight reel-worthy.

And Jones found his way out of the pocket for runs several times that extended drives or gave them hope – the most pivotal a 19-yard scramble on third-and-21 sandwiched between a sack and the ensuing 10-yard fourth-down strike to Warren. Jones totaled 53 yards on seven rushes – nearly double his previous season-high (four rushes for 27 yards in Tennessee.)

But a team that had fumbled just once, thrown three picks and surrendered nine sacks in its first eight games in 2025 now has four fumbles, seven picks and 21 sacks two games later.

“I think (Jones) has been doing a really good job. I mean, we talk about moving the football up and down the field. I think, obviously, just having two hands on the ball in the pocket moving forward is a big part of it for us, and he understands that,” Steichen said. "We just got to keep improving and getting better.”

Of the Colts’ next four opponents – road trips to the Chiefs (Nov. 23), Jaguars (Dec. 7) and Seahawks (Dec. 14) and a home matchup with the Texans (Nov. 30) – only Seattle ranks in the top-half of the league in pressure percentage on drop-backs (7th). The Seahawks are tied-for-second-best in total sacks (32.)

Earlier in the season, the Colts offense largely faired well against a sack-happy list of opponents, surrendering one to Denver (tops in the league in sacks), one to the Chargers (7th-best) and two to the Rams (9th-best), but that metric has tailed off over the past two weeks against the two of the top-5 defenses in the league this year in taking the quarterback to the ground.

“I think it just depends on the play type – what’s going on around (Jones), how the pocket is, if it’s collapsed on him, if he has space to get out and make a play. Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you do,” Steichen said of the disparity in his quarterbacks successes on runs out of the pocket and his high number of sacks Sunday. “There’s some situations that I could’ve done a better job of putting him in on some of those plays.”

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Not surprised Smith is struggling with guys on the edge. Been an issue for a while and RT probably needs addressed in the off season. Am surprised with BR getting beat so often lately on the outside.

Jones does seem to struggle with awareness in the pocket. It looked like to me on both strip sacks in Pittsburgh he had plenty of time and room to slide up in the pocket. Even if it was just to get rid of the ball.

I am not that concerned about the sacks. It is a multifactorial thing that teams can go through in a season. I have confidence we will figure this out. I am also happy to have an owner that listens throughout the game and knows a ton more about what exactly happened and why than any of us here. Makes me comfortable that the correct decisions are being made. For me the fumbles are of much greater concern.

I don't know where we're getting the idea that we need to get rid of Smith. Unless we're stuck on him having a rough game at PIT. But by that logic, Raimann needs to be replaced.

On both of the sacks at the end of regulation against the Falcons, he could have avoided them by moving up in the pocket. I noticed that last night rewatching the game.

They faced two of the best pass rushing teams that have the second and third highest blitz rate in the NFL and still put up an average of 25.5 points per game. Most teams don't have the pass rushers to pull off what the Steelers and Falcons did, and it didn't even work all that well. If the Colts hadn't had 3 fluke turnovers against the Steelers, they likely score 30 and win that game as well. If the Colts face any more teams with 3 quality pass rushers and ~40% blitz rates, I'll be concerned about the pass protection. Otherwise, I'll assume the first 8 weeks of the season were more informative of the pass protection we can expect than the last two.

He's on the final year of his contract, he's 29, and currently the Colts don't have much cap room in 2026 and have to retain a QB. Now, there are several levers the Colts can pull to create cap room and retain Braden among others, but those are not readily apparent to the average fan.

No, I get the cap casualty possibility. More of a broad comment about this sentiment I keep reading lately that Smith needs to be replaced due to his play. Not necessarily on this site too much...

I take in a lot (too much?) Colts content and I browse discussions to see what general thinking is... Smith has been underrated for years, really.

My thinking is that Braden Smith is not a liability, and for the most part is playing pretty well. He's had a few hiccups vs TJ Watt though. No shame in that.

As for the salary cap implications. We are in a difficult situation for 2026. We gotta re-sign Jones, Pierce and Cross. That will not be cheap. But, someone will have to go to do that. The top two expensive candidates would be Smith and Zaire Franklin. Smith would have to sign a team friendly contract to stay.

We will certainly not re-sign Kwity Paye though. Believe it or not I would like to see MOC come back.

I would rank Braden Smith ahead of Alec Pierce in terms of who the Colts need to resign the most. The reason for that is there are more starting caliber WRs available in free agency than starting caliber RTs, plus the Colts have 2 starting WRs without Pierce. Ideally, I want both resigned, but if I have to pick one, it's Smith. Jones and Cross are 1 and 2 in priority for me.

I would not get too hung up on cap implications.

I know that Ballard has been very concerned with the cap through his time as GM thus far....however:

A. It appears that he thinks the time is now. Trading two 1st round picks for a blue chip player at the trade deadline is SO FAR outside Ballard's normal MO that you know something is up.

B. Ballard has seen what the league is doing with void years most prominently done by the Eagles. He knows that the league has figured out how to push money into the future in a way that the piper will not come due for upwards of a decade. In the old days before void years, the piper came due in 3-6 years. Now, it is a lot longer.

C. If he believes the window is open, and evidence shows that he does believe that with the Sauce trade, then I think he has an owner in CIG that will allow him to manipulate the cap however he needs to in order to keep the "core" of the team in place for a run now over the next couple of years.

We will wait and see but when I look at our future cap and player contracts, I see zero reason to believe that we cannot retain whoever we want and sign just about whoever we want in the next 2-4 year window. The only real limitation is the amount of cash CIG has to hand out in up front bonuses and with selling Jim's collection.... :)

At some point in the future, there will be a reckoning but if you have a SB ring or two, that is the price you pay.

The Over the Cap website has a fun and informative tool they call the cap calculator that allows you to manage every aspect of the cap, including resigning internal free agents, signing external free agents, trading players, and renegotiating and restructuring existing contracts.

I've run several scenarios on the calculator where market value extensions are given to Jones, Smith, Pierce, and Cross and still have room to bring in pretty much any free agent the team might want on a market value deal, so I know it's possible.

Gotta disagree with you here. Ballard has shown he knows how to draft offensive lineman and lineman that can start immediately. We have proven we know how to develop those lineman with our coaching staff. Pierce is a unicorn. He can take the top off a defense better than anyone in the league. He is young and improves every year. Agree about Cross and am almost there on Jones (I want to see how he handles the rest of the season first).

The Colts have already locked in to Jones by trading their next 2 firsts for Sauce. I would say Cross is the next most important piece. Smith is ahead of Pierce for me because the team is locked in to Jones. Jones does not hold up well under pressure, so having the best OL possible is a necessity. I'm not denying Pierce is valuable, but Pittman, Downs, and Taylor are currently free agents in 2027, and that's if you roll with Pittman’s $29 million cap hit for 2026. I want to keep Pierce, but not at $20+ million AAV, which could be his price tag.

I hope things work out that way. I guess we shall see.

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(vs. JAGUARS, 12/07)


It's up to you, boys ...... your work is cut out for you, as clear as can be.

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