Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - Indianapolis Colts: Anthony Richardson + Shane Steichen, Now What?

Starting point is 00:00:00 The Colts had a huge laundry list of things they needed to accomplish this offseason in order to get back on the right track. So now that the meat of the offseason is pretty much through, how'd they do? Let's get to it. You are Locked On Colts, your daily Indianapolis Colts podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Hey, what's up everyone? Thanks for tuning in and making us your first listen of the day. This is your daily podcast covering your Indianapolis Colts,

Starting point is 00:00:47 part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. And today's show is brought to you by FanDuel, the official sportsbook of the NFL. Make every moment more. Visit FanDuel.com slash Locked On today to get started. I am Jake Arthur, rolling solo today. You know me from Horseshoehuddle.com. I'm the resident credentialed media member there, bringing you the inside scoopage there from the building with players, coaches, what have you. This week is actually really special because the

Starting point is 00:01:18 rookies are now intermingling with the veterans. The off-season program continues. The rookies are back, allowed to be back in the building. So later in the week, I'll have more on that, let you know how things are going there. But as for today's show, we're going to kind of remap the Colts offseason. It was obviously very chaotic when things got underway in January, coming off yet another terrible season, 4-12-1. So amid the chaos, what have they done to address their issues?

Starting point is 00:01:50 What did they even need to do? And then now, what is next? So first and foremost, head coach was a big issue. They let go of Frank Reich after a 3-5-1 start to the season. They had just taken another beat down down this time to the Patriots. It was, I think their third game that season to that point under Reich where they had scored 10 or fewer points and things just needed to change. The same issues that caused them to miss the playoffs at the end of 2021 had bled into 2022 and the team just looked really unprepared to play.

Starting point is 00:02:23 Ultimately, you have to really look at coaching when that happens. Now, in hindsight, maybe they should have waited until after the season, which brings me to my next point, which is because they replaced Reich with Jeff Saturday, the Ring of Honor member, former center pro bowler. Everyone in the city loves him. But the guy had only coached football at a high school level for a couple years and even then he wasn't you know he wasn't winning championships and things uh so really odd choice and now that we look back at it afterwards not great still uh the colts were on the business end of history uh on a couple couple disappointing moments to say the

Starting point is 00:03:03 least gave up the biggest comeback in NFL history against the Vikings. Allowed them to come back from 33 points. They also against the Dallas Cowboys. As storied of a franchise that is, the Cowboys set a franchise record, scoring, again, 33 unanswered points against the Colts in the fourth quarter for a win. So some really dark moments for the Colts happened under Jeff Saturday. So they kind of needed to wipe the slate clean and look forward to something else. And that kind of leads us to quarterback. Ever since Andrew Luck retired in 2019,

Starting point is 00:03:36 they'd been treading water. They had to throw Jacoby Brissett in there. Then they got Phillip Rivers, Carson Wentz, Matt Ryan. And the reason they did those things, getting guys who appeared to be at the tail end of their careers, was they thought they were just a quarterback away from being able to compete and get back in the deep playoff hunt, which obviously, now that they've had to do some soul searching, was incorrect. So as far as quarterback goes, they needed to find their future because what they were doing just wasn't working. Also, on the offensive side of the ball, they had a couple bigger free agents. Paris Campbell and Ashton Doolin were set to hit free agency. On the face of it, that doesn't seem like such a big deal.

Starting point is 00:04:18 But if you take them away, then what do you have outside of Michael Pittman Jr. and Alec Pierce. Also on the offensive line, the offensive line really started to kind of cause the destruction of the 2022 season. Matt Ryan turned into a shell of his former self. Jonathan Taylor wasn't effective, and it really took them until about midway point of the season to figure out the correct starting five. Credit to Jeff Saturday for that, because the Colts did ultimately the correct starting five credit to Jeff Saturday for that because the Colts did ultimately get their starting five which appears to be the same group heading into this season but a big issue last year was they really lacked depth and they didn't know who to play so they they kind of needed to look at that as well heading into this offseason defensively figure out what's going on with edge Yannick Ngakwe was a free agent,

Starting point is 00:05:06 and he led the team with nine and a half sacks last season. But over the last several years, he's bounced from team to team to team to team to team. So were the Colts going to be the ones to stop that slide and allow him to stay somewhere for consecutive years, or would they be moving on as well uh also at cornerback really slippery slope there uh stefan gilmore played at a pro bowl level in his first season with the colts last year uh but is on the wrong side of 30 i think he's gonna be 33 uh kenny moore your your other top cornerback we didn't even think he would be here with the colts at this point of the offseason at the end of the year when he was talking to media, he really sounded more like a player who

Starting point is 00:05:49 was reflective on his time in Indy rather than someone who is going to be coming back. And then Brandon Faison as well, your fourth cornerback, he was a free agent. So three of your top four cornerbacks in the league that's now built on passing and stopping the pass with big question marks, that was going to kind of be an issue. So next, we've now talked about what the Colts needed to do to get better. So how did they respond? What did they do to all those things that we said they needed to do? But first, a word from our friends over at FanDuel. Guys, go make a fast break to FanDuel during the NBA playoffs. It's really heating up. It's getting really nice.

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Starting point is 00:06:59 And everydayers, make sure you hang with us the rest of this week. As I mentioned, rookies and veterans now mixing together. We'll have a lot of content involving that. Also, I'm going to send out a call for questions from you guys on Twitter here in a bit. So if you guys want us to do a little Q&A session, now that it's kind of time to reset and regroup and see what this team looks like moving forward, be sure to respond to that tweet that I put out and send us your questions. So the Colts had some big needs. How did they address them? At head coach, very exhaustive search, probably the heftiest head coaching search we've seen in quite some time.

Starting point is 00:07:39 Ultimately, they interviewed a dozen or more candidates, went into second and third rounds of interviews with some of these guys. But the thing is, with your head coach in sight, it depends where your team is when you're hiring a head coach. The Colts are a lot closer to rebuilding than they are competing for championships and the needed quarterback. So with that in mind, you might as well jump on the bandwagon of what the rest of the league is doing and look for a progressive, young, offensive-minded head coach, which they ultimately found in Shane Steichen. Steichen has a good track record with quarterbacks, worked with Phillip Rivers with the Chargers. Rivers highly recommended Steichen for this job. He spoke with Jim Irsay about it. Steichen helped get Justin Herbert to the 2020 Offensive Rookie of the Year.

Starting point is 00:08:28 He got Jalen Hurts to an MVP frontrunner if Patrick Mahomes didn't exist in just his second or third year playing there. So his track record with quarterbacks is really good. So the Colts, with the fourth overall pick, knew they'd be getting a quarterback. They want the quarterback guru in the league, one of them at least, to kind of be able to handpick his guy, which leads us to that next subject at quarterback. So the Colts, first what they did was they kind of made a wise decision and went and got Gardner Minshew as a free agent from the Eagles.

Starting point is 00:09:01 Minshew played with Steichen for the last couple years there in Philadelphia. It was a good decision because ultimately you want him to be the backup, but if he has to start a handful of games, he's more than capable of doing so. When I saw him filling in for Jalen Hurts last year, I was pretty impressed. It was at least better than anything the Colts were putting out on the field. So I thought that was a pretty smart move, but at the time it didn't mean they weren't going to go for a rookie in the draft, which they then did with Anthony Richardson with the fourth overall pick. This pick has been met with really high praise.

Starting point is 00:09:35 It's, it's kind of a way for Steichen to get his hands on a Jalen Hurts type again, except for Richardson is probably the most physically gifted quarterback prospect we've seen yet. As far as pre-draft athletic testing and everything and his size measurements, we've really never seen a guy with that blend of it all. The closest guy you can think of in terms of size and athleticism is probably Cam Newton, honestly. So bright future there ahead if they can really get this thing rolling richardson has the mental makeup and the want to to do it to match those physical attributes so

Starting point is 00:10:13 fingers crossed that you know this pair marries together and gets the most out of of their relationship really as far as receiver goes uh camp Campbell did leave in free agency to go to the Giants. Got a nice deal out there that the Colts really could have matched, but it seems like maybe both sides were ready to just move on, perhaps. His deal did come with some elevators that he could meet based on playing time and statistics and things like that. It was a little disappointing because the Colts were patient with him over the first four years of his career. He finally played a full season and looked really good, but they ultimately did not bring him back.

Starting point is 00:10:53 They did bring back Ashton Doolin, however. That's not the biggest deal in the world. He's probably your fifth receiver, but he's also a core special teamer and one of the better gunners in the entire league. He's been an all- pro on special teams before. So that's pretty good get there. They also brought in Isaiah McKenzie from the Bills, a pretty nifty slot receiver. He's not someone you're going to want to pour a ton of snaps into because he's pretty inconsistent.

Starting point is 00:11:22 But he can make some plays for you regardless. Now, the receiver move that they made that has a lot of people buzzing right now is Josh Downs. because he's pretty inconsistent, but he can make some plays for you regardless. Now, the receiver move that they made that has a lot of people buzzing right now is Josh Downs. They got him in the third round of the draft, and it's kind of one of those things looking back, you know, post-draft grades. A lot of people give this a really, really high grade. Downs is kind of a prototypical slot. You know's five five ten shade under 510 uh really light under 180 pounds but he's he could be devastating in that short area stuff really good route runner knows how to use his body and he's just a technician at the receiver position if he was six foot 190 he probably would have been a first rounder is what it sounds like

Starting point is 00:12:04 uh guys like steve smith and reggie way Wayne have sung this guy's praises before the draft, said he might be one of the best ones out there. So that's really high praise coming from a couple of real legends, honestly. As for the offensive line, this is an area I still think the Colts have some work to do. Honestly, we'll get to it in a little bit later. But, you know, they're coming in with that same starting five, which is fine because that group ended the season pretty strong. But the depth is still probably an issue there.

Starting point is 00:12:38 They've only drafted a couple offensive linemen. Blake Freeland, who could probably play pretty quickly. But Jake Witt is someone who is probably a little more, he's going to take a little more time to adapt, it sounds like. As far as the defense goes, we talked about edge defender. They replaced Yannick Ngakwe with Samson Aboukham from the 49ers. This seems like potentially a little bit of an upgrade for the Colts. And Gawkway was getting far too many early down snaps,

Starting point is 00:13:10 which caused issues in run support. And that's easily his biggest area of weakness. And even though he had nine and a half sacks and he gets you eight sacks per season, he could be really inconsistent. And he just lacks that power. So if he doesn't get a great jump off the snap or get underneath the tackle's reach, he's probably not getting there. inconsistent and he just lacks that power. So if he doesn't get a great jump off the snapper, get underneath the tackles reach, he's probably not getting there. But a book comes tape is a lot more consistent. He doesn't necessarily have the numbers. He hasn't learned quite yet how to

Starting point is 00:13:35 finish, but he's very, very disruptive both against the run and pass. So if he can find a way to finish plays, that could be a huge pickup for the Colts. And even if he doesn't put up big numbers, disruption is huge. So his contract could still pay for itself in that regard. And then the Colts re-signed Tyquan Lewis. He's been a pretty good player for them throughout his career. Obviously always injured, though. I think he's played one full season in his career. He's coming off back-to-back seasons ended by patellar knee injuries,

Starting point is 00:14:08 which are brutal to come back from. But he did it last season before suffering another one. So we'll see how that goes. Really anything he gives you is icing on the cake. And then for cornerback, it got worse before it got better. They traded Stephon Gilmore away to the Cowboys for a fifth round pick. So then you're you're without your your top cornerback there and then face on left and free agency as well. So then they were at the point where you knew they were obviously going to do something at the position because they could not.

Starting point is 00:14:41 They literally could not enter the season how it was going. Kenny Moore, Isaiah Rogers, and Dallas Flowers would have been your top three guys with Tony Brown as your fourth cornerback. But what they did was they mended fences with Kenny Moore. We've talked to Kenny Moore recently, and it doesn't seem like the contract is a huge issue. And he said they had some really tough talks with Gus Bradley, Chris Ballard, Shane Steichen, I believe also. And they just kind of came to a common understanding. So Moore is kind of re-energized and ready to go, which helps. But what they really did to boost things up was they drafted three really big cornerbacks. They got Juju Brents in the second round, Darius Rush, and then Jalen Jones on day

Starting point is 00:15:26 three. And those were three really, really good moves. Guys, all three over 6'1". They're just Gus Bradley cornerbacks through and through. These are really long athletic guys. The Colts are really excited to have gotten them. So they're going to take a little time. Obviously, you can't replace Stephon Gilmore with rookies and think that it's just going to work automatically. So we'll have to be patient with those guys. That's kind of what the Colts are asking for right now is some patience with these young guys because the future is bright, but they have some growing to do initially.

Starting point is 00:16:04 So next up, what's next for the Colts? We've talked about what they needed to do, what they did do. So what should they do moving forward? Okay, so we have heard the Colts talk about Anthony Richardson ad nauseum so far. And the biggest question, I guess, is, is he going to start week one? We know he's going to be playing eventually, but when does that start? So from Shane Steichen and Chris Ballard, Ballard is usually a little more muted and wants to set lower expectations for things, but it really sounds like they want him to play by week one. They're not going to force

Starting point is 00:16:43 it if he's not ready, but it sounds like they'll give him every opportunity to earn that role going into week one if he earns it. Now, how are they going to divvy up first team reps in the offseason and training camp between Minshew and Richardson? I don't know. We'll see. If I had to guess, Minshew's probably going to start out getting the first team reps, and then as they see Richardson getting a grasp of the playbook and just doing more and more of the right things, then he'll probably start to earn most of those snaps. So if he's not the first team quarterback right away, it's not a big deal.

Starting point is 00:17:17 They'll try and get him there. So your big thing this season was you got Shane Steichen and you got Anthony Richardson. So let's work on marrying this thing together. And the future starts now. You got your head coach, you got your quarterback, handpicked for each other basically. So let's get to work. Let's figure out what's going to get Richardson rolling.

Starting point is 00:17:40 And to maximize him the earliest, Zach has done a ton of content so far on what it would take to get Richardson moving initially. So only thing left to do on that part is to do it. It's the off-season program now, so they're establishing the offense, they're installing things. So this is where that work is being put in. Next up, I think, you know, establish your offensive plan and make sure you can execute it. You can have a plan for what you want to do with Richardson, Jonathan Taylor, all this and that, but, you know, you have to be able to execute it. And to me, that really comes back to the offensive line. You have to figure out the depth. Chris Ballard tends to

Starting point is 00:18:21 be a guy who, you know, we can harp all offseason on something that's a glaring issue, and then it winds up being a problem when the season gets there, and then he'll kind of overcompensate for it the next offseason, or he'll address it heavily, to say the least. Offensive line, that has not happened yet. Something they could do is probably sign a veteran right guard for some insurance to compete with Will Fries, maybe even someone else to compete with Bernard Ryman as well. But last year they showed us they were confident in the starting five they had, and it went terribly. Now we've seen this starting five in action before, and it went better,

Starting point is 00:19:02 but I'm still uncomfortable with the fact that there's not as much competition. I think they've really got to do that because this offense, you know, at its, at its potential in year one, I think build around the Anthony Richardson and Jonathan Taylor combination, you know, run the offense through that. And then the rest will, will find its way, but the offensive line has to be strong in order for that to happen. Next up, I think you have to find the pecking order of this secondary, both at cornerback and safety. So, like I mentioned, you have your Isaiah Rogers and Kenny Moore,

Starting point is 00:19:37 Dallas Flowers. Those are kind of your veteran corners right now. But where are the snaps going to come in for Brents and Darius Rush and Jalen Jones? Jones is probably really going to be a special teamer in year one, late round pick. I'm not really going to factor him on the defensive side of the ball yet, but I imagine the plan is for Brents to start at some point this season. So figure out what that pecking order is because Brents and Rush are both outside guys. Kenny is obviously an inside guy.

Starting point is 00:20:06 Got to figure it out. Where's that going? Same thing for safety, and the biggest X factor in all of it is Nick Cross. Right now, I think the Colts will have to reevaluate. Gus Bradley will have to reevaluate how he deploys safeties, which we've kind of talked about with him a little bit recently, because he likes to have that classic free safety and strong safety and they have their roles and there's not a lot of mixing up. Last year, that was Rodney McLeod at strong safety and Julian Blackman at free safety.

Starting point is 00:20:35 Blackman did have some injuries, which put Rodney Thomas in there. And that ultimately showed us that Rodney Thomas is ready to play and needs to be having a significant role moving forward. So McLeod is gone and it's just Thomas and Blackman are your top two guys right now. That's your two guys you played at free safety last year. Now for my money, I think Blackman could play just about anywhere in the secondary. You could put him at strong safety, but Nick Cross is a guy you drafted in the third round last year to be a huge part of your defense moving forward and he is a natural strong safety so what's the pecking order are you going to be a little more flexible with these guys roles so you could get them all three out there at the same time or just get all three of them playing time because I think honestly I think that's necessary

Starting point is 00:21:22 and then linebacker depth I think they could use another player who's capable of playing right away. They might feel they already have that, if you look at guys like JoJo Doman or Cameron McGrone or something. But right now, we don't know what is Shaquille Leonard's future. We just don't. Until he's out there playing, you cannot count on him being out there. And the Colts offseason playing at linebacker kind of showed confidence in him being out there. So I don't know.

Starting point is 00:21:50 You know, you have Zyra Franklin and EJ Speed are your guys right now. Luckily in this league, most of the time, you're really only rolling with one or two linebackers at a time in the passing game. But if they need a third one, who is it? That's something they're going to have to figure out. So let me know what you guys think about all that, you know, what the Colts needed to do, what they did and what they still might need to do eager to hear your guys'

Starting point is 00:22:14 thoughts on that. Every dayers again, remember to stick with us this week as we keep tackling what the Colts are up to. We're going to send out that tweet on the lockeded on Colts Twitter for some Q&A stuff coming up on the upcoming episode. If you don't already, follow at Locked on Colts, at Jake Arthur and at Zach Hicks too on Twitter. Also subscribe to the Locked on Colts YouTube and wherever you listen to podcasts.

Starting point is 00:22:38 We love your ratings and reviews as well. That helps us move up the charts, helps us get more eyes and ears out there which we of course would appreciate it other than that we'll see you guys later

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Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - Indianapolis Colts: Anthony Richardson + Shane Steichen, Now What?

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