Ten weeks into the NFL season, the Indianapolis Colts were the surprise of the league.
After a 31-25 win over the Atlanta Falcons in Berlin on Nov. 9, the Colts were 8-2, tied for the most wins in the AFC, and had a legitimate chance to be the No. 1 seed in the conference headed into the playoffs.
But just one month later, Indianapolis is 8-5, loser of three straight and owner of a murky future after a risky trade and a catastrophic injury.
Things started going downhill with a losing streak that included two close defeats.
The Colts had a 20-9 fourth-quarter lead on the road against the Kansas City Chiefs in Week 12, only to give up the final 14 points of the game and lose in overtime. The next week, Indianapolis was tied 13-13 with the Houston Texans in the fourth before losing 20-16.
The wheels came off Sunday in a loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Not only was Indianapolis blown out 36-19, but quarterback Daniel Jones — an early-season MVP candidate and one of the feel-good stories of the year — also tore his right Achilles, ending his season.
“That’s our team leader, our team captain,” wide receiver Alec Pierce told reporters after the game. “It’s brutal.”
After the loss to the Jaguars, Indianapolis went from tied for first place in the AFC South to out of the playoff picture entirely, and it now faces issues on multiple fronts.
Having lost four of their last five games, the Colts are in danger of missing the playoffs entirely. Indianapolis has four games left, all against teams that would currently be in the playoffs. (The .692 winning percentage of the Colts’ remaining opponents is the highest in the NFL, per Tankathon.)
In addition to the injury to Jones, backup quarterback and rookie Riley Leonard is dealing with a knee injury, head coach Shane Steichen said Monday. Steichen added “the hope” is that Leonard can play Sunday, though there is no guarantee.
The only other healthy quarterback on the team is Brett Rypien, who is on the practice squad. Anthony Richardson, the No. 4 overall pick in the 2023 draft, has thrown only two passes in garbage time this season and is on injured reserve with an orbital fracture.
How severe is the situation? Indianapolis reportedly will work out 44-year-old Philip Rivers on Tuesday. Rivers last played in the NFL for the Colts in 2020 and announced his retirement in January 2021. He has since been coaching high school football in Alabama.
In his lone year with Indianapolis, Rivers went 11-5, completing 68.0% of his passes for 4,169 yards, with 24 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. He also has experience with Steichen, who was an assistant coach with the then-San Diego Chargers from 2014 to 2019 while Rivers was on the team.
Meanwhile, the injury to Jones puts Indianapolis in a tricky situation with regard to the team’s future at quarterback.
Jones is on a one-year contract that pays him only $14 million. He was almost certainly in line for a massive raise before the injury, though he had cooled off after his hot start to the season.
Now, the Colts will have to make a decision on Jones without the valuable information that could have been gleaned from his play down the stretch and in the playoffs. Indianapolis will also have to figure out how much to pay a player coming off a significant injury and whether Jones will even be ready by the start of next season.
On top of all that, it’s possible an even more desperate team could outbid the Colts for Jones’ services.
Indianapolis certainly seemed committed to its current build around Jones, so much so that in November it traded first-round picks in 2026 and 2027 for cornerback Sauce Gardner, who missed the loss to Jacksonville with a calf injury. That means that even if the Colts wanted an option to move on from Jones in the near future, they won’t be able to draft a quarterback in the first round until 2028 unless they make another trade.
How to move forward will be a series of high-stakes decisions for Indianapolis. The best-case scenario, almost regardless of what happens the rest of this year, is for Jones to come back in time for next season and resemble the player he was for much of 2025.
What started as a season of surprise has turned into disbelief at how quickly the Colts have been given an uncertain future.
