How does Chris Ballard continue to keep his job?

I don’t know how I continue to write these articles. We’re going on Year 4 of me calling for Chris Ballard’s firing, and somehow he continues to survive. If there is a nuclear war in my lifetime, I would love to live with Chris Ballard because I know I will survive. In 2022, I was saying his team building approach needed to change and in 2024 I was calling for his firing. I finished that 2024 article saying “I have to go with what I see and what I see is an incompetent front office and staff that are guiding this team to nowhere.” Unfortunately two years later, it is the same old crap.

At some point, you run out of excuses. You can blame Andrew Luck’s retirement, injuries, coaching, bad luck, bad quarterback play or whatever else people have used over the years, but eventually the person responsible for building the roster has to answer for the results. Ballard is now in Year 10, and the Colts are still having the same conversations they were having five, six and seven years ago. Who is the long-term quarterback? Where is the pass rush coming from? Why is the roster always one injury away from scrambling for help? Why is this team constantly hovering around .500 without ever actually going anywhere?

That is what makes this different from another article reacting to one bad loss or one bad season. This is about a decade of the same patterns repeating themselves. Ballard has made some good picks, found some good players and built a few teams that looked promising for stretches, and he deserves credit for those things. The problem is that none of it has translated into sustained success. The Colts are always close, always one move away, always one year away, and somehow still in the same place.

After ten years, “close” is not progress anymore; it is the result.

If there is one word that perfectly describes the Chris Ballard era, it is mediocre.

Not terrible. Not historically bad. Not completely dysfunctional. Just mediocre enough to keep convincing people that something better might be around the corner.

Before this season, Ballard’s record as Colts general manager was 70-78-1. In nine seasons, Indianapolis made the playoffs twice, won one playoff game and never won the AFC South. Since Philip Rivers retired after the 2020 season, the Colts have not made the playoffs at all. Their best record over that stretch was 9-8, which they accomplished twice. Nine wins has essentially become the ceiling.

The zero division titles might be the craziest part of the entire résumé. The AFC South has not exactly been some impossible gauntlet over the last decade. Houston has torn itself down and rebuilt. Jacksonville has gone through multiple coaches, general managers and quarterbacks. Tennessee reached an AFC Championship Game, won the division twice and has already gone through another two resets since then. All three franchises have had seasons with more postseason success than anything the Colts have produced under Ballard, and all three have still been willing to start over when things stopped working.

Indianapolis just keeps hovering in the middle. That is almost worse than being terrible. Bad teams eventually get premium draft picks, clear out the building and start again. The Colts have spent most of Ballard’s tenure picking somewhere in the middle because they are usually good enough to win seven, eight or nine games but rarely good enough to accomplish anything meaningful. They never fully bottom out, but they never take the next step either.

The one recent season where they actually did bottom out gave them the fourth overall pick in 2023. They used it on Anthony Richardson.

That is the trap Ballard has built. His teams are usually competent enough to avoid the top of the draft and flawed enough to stay away from January football. Every offseason begins with some version of the same argument: the Colts are close. A couple additions here, better health there, another year of development and maybe they finally break through.

Being close for one or two years is understandable. Being close for most of a decade is just another way of saying you never got there.

Andrew Luck masked plenty of issues early in Ballard’s tenure because great quarterbacks do that. The 2018 team won 10 games and a playoff game, and Luck covered up weaknesses because he was one of the best quarterbacks in football. Rivers then gave Indianapolis another legitimate season in 2020, when the Colts went 11-5 and looked like a team that might finally have some stability again.

Rivers retired, the quarterback carousel restarted, and the Colts went right back to the middle.

This is what Ballard has become exceptionally good at building: average football teams. Teams that are rarely hopeless, occasionally interesting and almost never good enough when the season actually matters.

After ten years, there is no “bad luck”. That is the résumé.

Ballard has built a reputation as a good drafter, and there is some truth to that. He has found quality players throughout the draft and deserves credit for it. Quenton Nelson became one of the best guards in football. Darius Leonard was an All-Pro and Defensive Player of the Year. Jonathan Taylor became one of the league’s best running backs. Michael Pittman Jr. developed into a legitimate starting receiver. Alec Pierce turned into a 1,000-yard player. Tyler Warren looks like another major hit. Braden Smith gave the Colts years of good starting tackle play.

The problem is what surrounds those hits.

Go through the first and second rounds of Ballard’s drafts and there are far too many picks that either failed completely or never came close to providing the return expected from premium draft capital.

It started immediately in 2017 with Malik Hooker in the first round and Quincy Wilson in the second. Hooker had some good moments, but he never became the difference-making safety the Colts expected when they drafted him 15th overall. Wilson was gone after three seasons. A year later, Nelson and Leonard were home runs, but Kemoko Turay never became the pass rusher Indianapolis hoped it was getting in the second round.

The 2019 class was worse. Rock Ya-Sin was selected early in the second round, Ben Banogu followed some picks later and neither became a long-term answer. Banogu in particular was a massive miss at a premium position, finishing his Colts career with just 2.5 sacks.

The pattern continued. Kwity Paye and Dayo Odeyingbo were the first two picks in 2021. Both became NFL players, but neither became the high-end pass rusher the Colts desperately needed. Paye was useful, but a useful edge defender is not what you are hoping to get with the 21st overall pick when the position has been a problem for years. Both were gone within 5 seasons of their draft year.

Then there is 2022, when the Colts did not even have a first-round pick because Ballard had traded it away for Carson Wentz. That pick became No. 16 overall. Wentz lasted one season in Indianapolis. You can call that a trade failure instead of a draft failure if you want, but the result is the same: another premium asset produced almost nothing for the Colts.

Jelani Woods was taken in the third round that year and never developed into the player Indianapolis envisioned. In 2023, Ballard finally had another top-five selection and used it on Anthony Richardson. Julius Brents came next in the second round. Richardson is now the backup quarterback, while Brents never established himself as a dependable starter. The one time the Colts were bad enough to draft near the very top, they missed on the most important position in football and then missed again in the 2nd round.

The recent classes are not exactly helping the argument. Adonai Mitchell is already gone from the 2024 class. Laiatu Latu was selected 15th overall after Ballard called him the best defensive player in the draft, and through 35 games he has looked more like an average starting edge than the impact player expected at that spot. JT Tuimoloau has offered almost nothing so far, and CJ Allen, the Colts’ top pick this year, is currently playing the fourth-most snaps among the linebackers.

Some of those younger players still have time; Latu could become a much better player and Allen is two games into his career. It would be ridiculous to put them in the same category as Banogu or Wilson already.

The larger point is the volume of misses.

Premium picks are where teams are supposed to find their stars. Ballard has found plenty of solid starters and has been particularly good at uncovering players later in drafts, but he has been wrong far too often at the top. And while finding Grover Stewart, Zaire Franklin, Bernhard Raimann or Josh Downs later is valuable, Ballard is not uniquely gifted in that area. Every successful front office finds players outside the first round.

The Colts needed the top of Ballard’s drafts to produce franchise-changing talent. Instead, too many of those picks became players they moved on from, players who never developed or players who were merely adequate.

Nelson, Taylor, Pierce and Warren remain significant successes. Leonard and Pittman were also excellent selections, although neither is still on the roster. There are enough good picks here to prove Ballard can evaluate talent.

There are also far too many bad ones to justify the reputation he has carried for most of the last decade.

And when your entire team-building philosophy has historically revolved around drafting, developing and “liking our guys,” you cannot afford to be this wrong with the picks that carry the most value.

This might be the most frustrating part of the Ballard era because there has never been a clear long-term plan for how this roster is supposed to be built.

The Colts are constantly reacting to problems instead of getting ahead of them.

Michael Pittman Jr. was traded in March. Alec Pierce was coming off surgery and spent essentially the entire offseason rehabbing. That should have made receiver one of the biggest priorities on the roster. Instead, the Colts waited until the middle of August to sign Keenan Allen, less than a month before the season started. Allen has a long track record and the move made sense once it happened, but why did it take until August to address something everyone could see in March?

Then Pierce came back, reinjured the same area two games into the season and suddenly the Colts were signing Darius Slayton a day later. Slayton is actually a logical pickup, especially because he already knows Daniel Jones, but once again the move came after the problem became an emergency.

Adonai Mitchell makes the whole thing look even stranger. I was never particularly high on Mitchell. Maybe there were things happening behind the scenes that we never knew about. My issue is why he needed to be thrown into the Sauce Gardner trade at all. The Colts were already sending two first-round picks, which was an enormous price by itself, and Mitchell was added on top of it. Ballard even said after the trade that he believed Mitchell would have success in New York.

So far, that is exactly what has happened. Mitchell caught 24 passes for 301 yards and two touchdowns in eight games with the Jets after the trade last season, and he has opened 2026 with nine catches for 123 yards through two games. I am not suddenly pretending Mitchell is a star because he has had some success in New York, but look at where the Colts are now. Pittman is gone, Pierce is hurt again, Allen was signed two weeks before the season and Slayton had to be brought in during September. The Colts voluntarily gave away a 24-year-old receiver they had just spent a second-round pick on, and less than a year later they are scrambling to find healthy receivers. That is another example of Ballard creating a problem and then reacting to it after the fact.

That has been the Ballard experience for years!!

The edge-rusher situation is another example. Kwity Paye left, the Colts still did not have a proven high-end pass rusher opposite Laiatu Latu, and the solution was Arden Key, Micheal Clemons and a collection of rotational defensive linemen. Key is a useful player, but Clemens showed nothing and is now on IR. None of that changes the fact that Indianapolis entered another season without fixing a problem that has followed Ballard for most of his tenure. The Colts themselves described their defensive-line additions as adding “depth and versatility,” which is fine, except depth and versatility are not the same thing as finding someone who can consistently wreck a passing game.

Quarterback has been handled the same way. Anthony Richardson was one of the rawest quarterback prospects to enter the league in years, and the Colts immediately made him the starter. They knew he had very little college experience. They knew his accuracy and processing needed a lot of work. They drafted him because of what he might become, then put him in a position where he had to perform immediately. When he looked like a quarterback who needed development, the organization eventually pulled away from him.

What exactly was the plan there?

Even Ballard’s roster-building philosophy has changed depending on the situation. For years, his approach was conservative. Build through the draft. Keep your own players. Avoid spending aggressively in free agency. The phrase Colts fans heard over and over was some version of “we like our guys.” Young players would be given opportunities because Ballard believed in the roster he had built, even when there were obvious outside upgrades available.

That approach did not produce enough winning.

Now the Colts are suddenly more aggressive. Contracts are structured differently. Money is being pushed into future years. Two first-round picks were traded for Sauce Gardner. Veterans are being brought in later in the process when holes become impossible to ignore.

There is nothing wrong with changing your approach when something is not working as good executives adjust. The problem is that it has never felt like the Colts moved from one clear philosophy to another. It feels like they are constantly trying to fix whatever went wrong the year before.

The Rams have an identity. They are aggressive, they trade picks, they chase stars and they are comfortable living with the consequences. Green Bay has historically leaned heavily on the draft, developed its own players and avoided chasing free agents. The Bill Polian Colts had their own philosophy too. Draft well, develop internally, retain the core and rarely depend on outside free agency.

You may not agree with every one of those approaches, but at least you know what the plan is.

With Ballard, what is the plan?

The 2024 offseason might be the best example. The Colts essentially decided to run it back with the same roster and trusted internal improvement to get them over the hump. They went 8-9 and missed the playoffs again. Then the approach changed.

The problem with always believing in Plan A is eventually somebody gets hurt, somebody fails to develop or somebody simply is not as good as you thought. Good roster construction accounts for that. The Colts too often seem surprised when it happens.

There is always another patch. Another veteran signed late. Another young player asked to do more than he is ready for. Another position group everyone knows is thin until the injury happens and suddenly the front office is scrambling.

After ten years, it should not still feel this improvised.

For all the good players Ballard has found, there are two positions that have followed him around for almost his entire tenure: quarterback and edge rusher.

Those are also arguably the two most important positions on the field.

The quarterback problem obviously began with Andrew Luck’s retirement, and Ballard deserved time to recover from that. Losing a franchise quarterback two weeks before the season is not something any general manager plans for. The problem is that Luck retired in 2019. At some point, the grace period ends.

Ballard had three full offseasons after Luck retired before the Colts finally bottomed out badly enough to draft Anthony Richardson fourth overall. In between, they went from Jacoby Brissett to Philip Rivers to Carson Wentz to Matt Ryan. Rivers worked for one year, but when he retired, the Colts went right back into the carousel.

There was never a long-term answer waiting behind him. There was just another move.

Wentz was the first major swing. The Colts gave up a third-round pick and a conditional first that eventually became the 16th overall selection in the 2022 draft. He lasted one season… The Colts then pivoted to Ryan, who was supposed to provide stability and instead became another one-year answer. You would think that with Matt Ryan at the end of his career you would have a developmental player behind him learning… but nope, just Matt and nobody else.

Eventually Ballard got his chance to draft the quarterback himself and took Richardson fourth overall.

That has not worked either.

Richardson was always going to require patience. He barely played in college and entered the NFL with major questions about his accuracy, processing and overall experience. The Colts drafted him anyway, started him immediately and then spent the next few years trying to figure out what to do with him. He is now a backup quarterback after being selected as the player who was supposed to finally end the post-Luck search.

What makes the quarterback issue even harder to excuse is what Shane Steichen has gotten out of other quarterbacks. Gardner Minshew nearly took the Colts to the playoffs. Joe Flacco was functional when asked to play. Daniel Jones looked like a top-10 quarterback for stretches last season before getting hurt.

Steichen has shown he can get competent quarterback play (not defending him for his countless other flaws)., but Ballard has never given him a stable quarterback situation.

The edge-rusher story might somehow be even more frustrating because Ballard has thrown so many resources at fixing it.

Kemoko Turay. Tyquan Lewis. Ben Banogu. Kwity Paye. Dayo Odeyingbo. Laiatu Latu. JT Tuimoloau.

That is years of premium draft capital spent trying to find one difference-maker off the edge. And none of them are playmakers.

All of them are bad or off the roster. The last two are still on the roster but aren’t giving much. Latu is not a bad player, but he’s not offering anything. Tuimoloau is more useless than a solar powered flashlight.

Jared Verse went after Latu and has already looked like the more disruptive NFL edge defender. When Ballard finally spent another first-round pick on the position he had been trying to solve for years, the early return still has not been the star the Colts were searching for.

This is where positional value enters the conversation. Some of Ballard’s greatest hits have been Quenton Nelson at guard, Jonathan Taylor at running back, Darius Leonard and Zaire Franklin at linebacker and Grover Stewart at defensive tackle. Those are very good football players, some of them great ones.

The problem is that the Colts have spent a decade finding good players at positions that cannot compensate for being unsettled at quarterback and unable to consistently rush the passer.

You can build a very good offensive line. You can have an elite running back. You can find linebackers in the middle rounds and interior defenders who play the run well.

If you cannot find the quarterback and cannot consistently affect the other quarterback, you are going to spend a lot of Sundays wondering why all the other good pieces are not adding up to wins.

That has been the Colts for years.

At some point, it stops being about the defensive coordinator.

Matt Eberflus ran the defense first. Then came Gus Bradley. Now it is Lou Anarumo.

Three different coordinators. Three different versions of the defense. Plenty of draft picks and money spent trying to give each one the pieces he needed.

The results have never developed into a consistently great defense.

Eberflus probably had the most success of the three and eventually became a head coach. His defenses had stretches where they played well, forced a lot of turnovers and were legitimately difficult to play against. They still never developed into the kind of dominant unit that could carry a team when the offense struggled.

Bradley was given multiple seasons despite the same problems showing up over and over again. The Colts were too passive, did not pressure quarterbacks enough and repeatedly gave up completions underneath while hoping the front four would get home. When it did not, the whole structure became painfully predictable to the point where we knew exactly which coverage was coming.

Then Bradley was fired and Anarumo arrived with a much more aggressive reputation.

Two games into this season, the Colts have allowed 1,029 yards.

That is the 2nd most yards allowed through the first two games of a season in NFL history.

At some point, the question has to move beyond the coordinators. If Eberflus, Bradley and Anarumo all arrive with legitimate NFL résumés and the defense still cannot become a sustained strength, maybe the common denominator is the person building the roster.

Ballard has invested heavily in this side of the football. He has spent premium picks on the defensive line, linebackers and secondary. He has paid defensive tackles. He has drafted edge rushers over and over again. He then became aggressive enough at cornerback to trade two first-round picks for Sauce Gardner.

Gardner is a great player. I have no issue with Gardner himself.

I question whether that was where the Colts needed to make their biggest investment.

A cornerback can cover his man perfectly for three seconds and still eventually lose if the quarterback is allowed to stand comfortably in the pocket. A secondary cannot cover forever. Gardner, Cam Bynum, Charvarius Ward and the rest of the defensive backs can be as talented as they want, but if the front seven cannot consistently win, eventually somebody gets open and that’s exactly what we have seen through two weeks.

The Colts spent enormous resources building what might be the most talented secondary Ballard has ever had, and the defense is still historically bad because the front seven is not good enough.

That is not Sauce Gardner’s fault. It is roster construction!

After ten years, what exactly is a Chris Ballard defense supposed to be?

It has never consistently rushed the passer at an elite level. It has never been a dominant coverage defense. It has had good run defenders and good linebackers at different points, but never enough pieces working together to become one of the league’s top units.

The coordinators keep changing, but the problems do not.

This is the part I genuinely do not understand.

How does one general manager survive all of this?

The Carson Wentz trade alone is the type of move that gets general managers fired. The Colts traded premium draft capital for a quarterback another organization desperately wanted to move, watched the season collapse with the playoffs sitting right in front of them and moved Wentz after one year.

Fine. Big swings miss sometimes.

Then came Matt Ryan.

Ryan was supposed to be the stable veteran answer after the Wentz mess. Instead, the Colts went 4-12-1, Ryan was benched multiple times and the entire season became one of the most embarrassing in recent franchise history.

At that point, Ballard still survived.

Then came Richardson.

Ballard finally got his chance to pick the quarterback himself. No veteran trade. No inherited situation. No former coach begging for his old quarterback. The Colts had the fourth overall pick and Ballard selected the player he believed could become the long-term answer.

Three years later, Richardson is the backup.

Ballard still survived.

Joe Flacco became another temporary solution. Daniel Jones followed. Jones actually played very well before getting hurt last season, and Ballard deserves credit for that signing. Then the Colts went from 8-2 to 8-9, lost seven straight games and missed the playoffs again.

Ballard survived that too.

How many swings does one person get?

That is not a rhetorical question anymore. Most general managers never get this many or even more than one.

They do not get to trade a first-round pick for the wrong quarterback, replace him with another failed veteran, oversee a disastrous season, draft another quarterback fourth overall, watch that quarterback fail and then start over again while keeping the same office.

Someone usually pays for those decisions.

With the Colts, it is always somebody else.

The quarterback changes. The head coach changes. The defensive coordinator changes. The roster turns over. Players get blamed. Coaches get blamed. Injuries get blamed.

Ballard remains.

I understand why he survived the immediate aftermath of Luck’s retirement. I understand giving a general manager more than one shot at quarterback. I understand that injuries can wreck even a well-built roster.

I do not understand how every explanation somehow buys another season.

There has to be a point where the person making the decisions becomes responsible for the decisions.

Ten years seems like more than enough time.

The part that makes this entire discussion so maddening is that we are not only looking backward.

Look at the team Ballard has built right now.

The receiver room might be the weakest it has been in years. The group as a whole is still thin, banged up and being assembled on the fly in September.

The receiver problem is even harder to excuse considering the Colts voluntarily included Adonai Mitchell in the Gardner trade less than a year ago. Mitchell may never become anything special, but he is currently producing for the Jets while Indianapolis is signing receivers off the street because its depth has disappeared.

The front seven might be even worse.

Ballard knew Kwity Paye was leaving. The Colts knew edge rusher was still a need. They entered the offseason with Latu as their most talented edge player and instead of making a major addition, they brought in Arden Key and Micheal Clemons and acted like adding rotational players was enough to fix the group.

It was not.

The linebacker room is young and uncertain. CJ Allen was supposed to walk into an immediate role after being the Colts’ first selection in the draft, and he is currently fourth in linebacker snaps. The defensive line still has quality veterans in DeForest Buckner and Grover Stewart, but neither is getting younger. What’s fascinating is the Colts moved on from Zaire Franklin, who might’ve been a pain off the field, but was a good run stopper on the field, and they traded him for a player who they cut. Now the linebackers look ost.

This is the front seven Ballard decided was good enough.

Through two games, the defense has allowed more yards than any team except one through the first two games of a season in NFL history.

THIS IS YEAR 10!!!!!!!!

Not Year 2.

Not the first season of a rebuild.

YEAR 10!!!!!

The secondary might be the most talented Ballard has ever assembled. Gardner is one of the best corners in football. Bynum is a quality safety. Ward has played at a high level when healthy. The Colts have invested heavily in that group.

It has not mattered because the front seven cannot consistently hold up.

You do not need to be a football genius to understand the relationship between pass rush and coverage. The longer a quarterback has, the harder it becomes to cover. The better the front plays, the easier life becomes for the secondary.

Ballard spent two first-round picks to acquire a superstar corner without building a front capable of consistently helping him.

One part of the roster gets fixed while another one falls apart.

A hole is patched after another one opens.

The team is forever one offseason away from finally being complete.

Ten years later, we are still waiting.

Here is my prediction.

If this season starts getting away from the Colts, Shane Steichen is going to become Chris Ballard’s final chance at survival.

I do not know what conversations are happening inside the building and I am not pretending otherwise.

I am saying that if I were looking at Ballard’s situation strictly from the perspective of someone trying to keep his job, Steichen is the last card available to play.

Ballard is in Year 10. He is already on borrowed time. The Colts entered this season needing to win, and through two games they are 0-2 after losing their final seven games last year.

The betting market gives Indianapolis roughly a one-in-four chance of making the playoffs. However you want to interpret the exact number, the broader point is obvious: the Colts are much more likely to miss the playoffs than make them.

If that happens, Ballard should be finished.

His only conceivable route to another season would be changing the story before ownership changes him.

That is where Steichen comes in.

Fire the coach during the season, install an interim, hope the team responds and then argue that the coaching was holding back the roster. If the interim catches fire, Ballard can point to the turnaround. If the team does not improve, he can still try to argue that the coaching staff was the problem and that the roster needs another chance under somebody else.

I would not buy it.

My favorite movie is Goodfellas. Near the end, an attorney describes a rat as someone “who will do anything to survive.”

That line keeps coming into my head when I think about where this could be headed.

Ballard has survived everything else. Quarterbacks. Coaches. Coordinators. Failed seasons. A seven-game collapse. At some point, if his job is finally hanging by a thread, I expect him to do whatever he can to make sure somebody else goes first.

Steichen would be the obvious person.

The irony is that Steichen has probably done more to make Ballard’s quarterback decisions look respectable than anybody. He nearly made the playoffs with Gardner Minshew. He got usable football out of Joe Flacco. Daniel Jones looked like a different player for much of last season.

That does not mean Steichen has been a perfect coach. Far from it. I have criticized him repeatedly and still have major questions about whether he is the long-term answer.

I just do not think firing another coach should buy Ballard another reset.

If Steichen goes, Ballard needs to go with him.

One general manager should not get to keep changing the people underneath him until he finally finds a combination that covers up his own failures.

Eventually this stops being only a Chris Ballard problem.

Somebody keeps employing him.

I am not going to spend time ripping Jim Irsay. He is gone, and out of respect for him and what he has meant to this franchise, I have no interest in turning this into a retrospective on every mistake made late in his tenure.

The responsibility now belongs to his daughters.

Carlie Irsay-Gordon and the rest of the ownership group made their first major decision when they chose to bring Ballard and Steichen back after the 2025 collapse.

So far, it looks like a terrible decision.

The Colts had started 8-2 and finished 8-9. They lost seven straight games. Yes, injuries were a major part of it, but the 49ers get hurt more than any team every year and they always survive and are always competitive playoff teams.

Depth is also part of building a football team.

If a roster falls apart the moment a handful of starters go down, the person responsible for constructing the roster does not get completely absolved because injuries happened.

Ownership decided the first ten games mattered more than the final seven and gave Ballard another chance.

Now the Colts are 0-2.

The receiver room is already being patched together in September. The front seven looks weak. The defense has opened the season by allowing yardage at a historic pace. The same questions that followed Ballard into this season are still sitting there.

At what point is enough enough?

Ballard should already be gone.

I do not think ownership will fire him during the season, but I think it should be on the table if this team continues heading in the wrong direction. There is little benefit in letting a general manager everyone knows is on his last chance keep making decisions for a future he may not be part of.

The standard should not be sneaking into the playoffs at 9-8.

We are way past that.

If Ballard wants another season after this one, the Colts should have to make the playoffs and win a game. Anything below that is not enough after ten years.

Another nine-win season is not progress.

Another wild-card appearance followed by an immediate loss is not proof that everything is working.

Another offseason press conference about being close is not acceptable.

The Colts have been close forever.

Close to solving quarterback.

Close to finding the pass rush.

Close to winning the division.

Close to the playoffs.

Close to building the defense.

Close to finally turning the corner.

At some point, “close” stops meaning you are making progress. It means you failed to finish the job.

That is the Chris Ballard era!

He has found good players. He has made good trades. He has drafted stars. He has built teams capable of competing on any given Sunday. I am not going to pretend otherwise simply because I want him fired.

He has also been the general manager for ten seasons without winning the AFC South.

He has one playoff victory.

The Colts have not been to the postseason since 2020.

He has cycled through quarterbacks, coaches, coordinators and roster philosophies without producing sustained success.

That is the résumé and there is nothing left to wait for.

If the Colts somehow turn this season around, make the playoffs and win in January, Ballard will have earned the right to make his argument. I will happily write that article if it happens.

Anything less should finally end this.

The nuclear-war joke at the beginning is funny because somehow, against all logic, Chris Ballard always survives.

It is time for Colts ownership to make sure the joke does not get another year.

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