Indianapolis Colts 2026 Outlook: The Team That Has Cost Believers The Most
Indianapolis has finished 8-9, 8-9 and 9-8 across the last three seasons, and its last playoff berth in the site's records is the 11-5 team of 2020. Shane Steichen is the head coach, Chris Ballard the general manager. That is the backdrop for a club that has become one of the most expensive teams in our database to believe in.
Here is the shape of Colts punditry as the site holds it: 93 takes about their quarterbacks, 93 about their receivers, and five about their cornerbacks. Two about defensive tackles. The picture below is what pundits choose to talk about, not what decides games.
Quarterbacks
The starter is settled and everybody says so. Tom Pelissero wrote on February 26 that "everything is tracking toward Daniel Jones being ready for week one" — graded 100 for accuracy, and a skill delta of exactly 0, because the naive assumption said the same thing. That is the honest character of most of this section: depth-chart calls across the site grade 93.5 accuracy on 415 graded takes, and the Colts' own depth-chart file sits at 96.5 accuracy with a skill delta of +0.69. Being right about Daniel Jones starting is not an achievement, it is arithmetic.
Bucky Brooks ("I think he's the starting quarterback for the Colts") and Andy Furman said it in March. Gregg Rosenthal predicted on March 3 that "Daniel Jones is going to stay with the Colts." Rich Eisen on May 11: "the Colts are not on Anthony Richardson time right now, and I think Daniel Jones is starting week one." Frank Schwab, on August 12: "Jones is without any question the Colts' starter." The lone dissent on record is Anita Marks on March 1, floating that "maybe Gardner Minshew is going to be the starter for the Colts" if Jones isn't ready. It is ungraded.
The genuine competition is behind him, and the field cannot agree. Kevin Patra, August 12: "Riley Leonard has the inside track for the No. 2 QB gig over Anthony Richardson." John Breech, August 14 and again August 17: "if Thursday night was any indication, Leonard might have just fallen behind Anthony Richardson." Andrew Moore, August 30: Richardson "should be viewed as the favorite for QB2." Jared Dubin, August 31, has Richardson third, behind Jones and Leonard. Four calls, three different depth charts. None is graded yet.
Richardson's exit has been predicted repeatedly and never resolved. John Middlekauff on May 1 said he is "never going to play another game again for the Colts." Eisen, ten days later: "as good as gone. But he just isn't yet." Jason Fitz: "I think he's going to get cut. I don't think he's going to get traded." Dubin's August version is the opposite — "he'll be sticking it out for the final year of his rookie contract." And Douglas Clawson has a genuinely bold one on the board: "The Colts will trade for Mac Jones."
Fantasy has Jones as a bargain almost across the board — Andrew Erickson, Mike Fanelli ("should be drafted significantly higher than the 26th quarterback off the board"), Josh Shepardson, FantasyPros' consensus. The counterweight is Michael Moore, who is avoiding him: "a quarterback recovering from a major lower-body injury and missing his top three receivers in some form or fashion." All pending.
The receiver room
This is where the graded record turns ugly. Thirteen graded Colts receiver takes, 45.6 average accuracy, a skill delta of -18.5 — worse than a naive guess.
The 2026 room reads as reshuffled. Fanelli notes the club "traded away Michael Pittman Jr., making the former Cincinnati star the team's new clear-cut No. 1 wide receiver." Ralph Vacchiano, ranking all 32 skill groups, is blunt about Alec Pierce: "The problem is he's Indy's No. 1 receiver now, and it's unclear if he can carry that load." He calls Josh Downs "a strong No. 2."
Downs is the consensus breakout. CBS's 13-writer All-Breakout team named him with five votes — "Downs playing in two-receiver sets could lead to his first 1,000-yard season" — and FantasyPros argue "WR41 is going to look a lot more like his floor than his ceiling." Nathan Jahnke's PFF work puts Keenan Allen at Z with Downs in the slot; Pat Fitzmaurice agrees Downs "is still going to be the Colts' primary slot man." Note Jahnke has just one graded take on the site — treat the projections as reporting, not as a record.
The outlier is worth flagging: Brooks, on August 30, on Keenan Allen — "Keenan Allen is a newbie to the Colts. They don't have a long-term tie. I would think that probably could lead to his dismissal." That runs against Derek Brown, Evan Tarracciano and others treating Allen as a playable WR3/4.
The running back room
Twenty graded Colts running back takes, average accuracy 20.2. Almost all of that damage is Jonathan Taylor awards punditry: Eisen's MVP and Offensive Player of the Year calls, Chris Brockman's MVP call, Richard Sherman's OPOY call — every one graded 0. Award picks across the site average 21.2 accuracy, so this is a general disease, not a Colts one. The positional-finish calls did better in accuracy (83.33 for Eisen and Brockman naming him the league's best back) but negative in skill, because he had already finished fourth the year before.
The best-scored Taylor take on the board is a fade that failed: Mike Harmon's Week 18 "no, thank you, Houston" bust call graded 0 accuracy and -106 skill, with Taylor finishing RB1.
For 2026, Tom Strachan is fading him at the top of drafts — "do you deserve to be drafted with the third overall pick when your quarterback is coming off said Achilles injury and is also named Daniel Jones?" — while calling him a target at 1.08, where "there's a very real world where Taylor is a top-two back this season." Behind him, seventh-round rookie Seth McGowan (pick 237) is the near-unanimous RB2: Fitzmaurice, Jahnke ("the current favorite for the backup job"), Noah Compton, and Derek Brown all the way back on May 3 — "I think he's gonna be the automatic car back two for the Colts." No fullback takes exist.
The tight ends
The best-graded unit on the team, and by a distance: 10 graded takes, 75.1 accuracy, +79.52 skill delta.
Tyler Warren is why. Three 2025 sleeper calls — Joe Pisapia, Chris Welsh, Fitzmaurice ("It's like George Kittle and Jeremy Shockey had a baby") — each graded 100 accuracy and +200 skill against a TE12 bar, with Warren finishing TE7. Kyle Brandt in October 2025 said the Colts "may already have the best tight end in the league in a rookie": 66.67 accuracy, +41.75 skill, with Warren fifth in receiving yards. The pre-draft mocks were sharp too — Kyle Crabbs and Rosenthal both put Warren at 14, graded 100. The offsetting misses are the Offensive Rookie of the Year picks (Manti Te'o and the Move the Sticks panel), graded 0 when Tetairoa McMillan won.
2026 has the field piling on. Derek Brown, September 1: "Warren is a top-five tight end this season, but his week-to-week volatility increased somewhat with the addition of Keenan Allen." Rob Rang: "a legitimate contender to lead all tight ends in receptions in 2026." Walt projects 84 catches, 900 yards, six touchdowns. One caveat on Brown, whose overall MissedTakes Score of 35.62 puts him third on the leaderboard: his positional-finish calls specifically grade 12.85 accuracy across 19 graded takes.
The offensive line
Thin, and only at tackle: eight takes, six graded, 61.1 average accuracy. Everything points one way. Rosenthal predicted in February that Braden Smith would hit free agency with Jalen Travis replacing him (83.33 accuracy, -8.33 skill), and by May had hardened: "I don't think it's a question about who's the right tackle. I think it's Jalen Travis." PFF's Gordon McGuinness agrees Travis "takes over as the starter at right tackle in 2026."
Interior line — guard and center — has no checkable takes in the database at all. Fourth-round guard Jalen Farmer has not been the subject of a single graded or pending call.
The defensive line
Seven takes, two graded, both mock-draft picks. The 2026 material is projection rather than prediction: McGuinness has "Arden Key set to start opposite Laiatu Latu on the edge," and Vacchiano's AFC breakout list picks Latu, calling double-digit sacks "a lock for the 2024 first-round pick" — the only Colts defensive-line statistical claim on the board. Compton says Day 3 ends George Gumbs Jr. and Caden Curry "have essentially forced their way onto the Colts' initial 53-man roster."
DeForest Buckner's only graded appearance is Rosenthal's February note that he was not getting cut: 100 accuracy, 0 skill. Nobody has said anything checkable about how good this group actually is.
The secondary
The least-covered unit on the roster. One graded cornerback take in the site's history — a 2025 mock-draft pick — and two graded safety takes, one of which is Dalton Feely's Jevon Holland-to-Indianapolis call, graded 0 when Holland signed with the Giants.
The 2026 calls, all pending: Compton names "the Colts' starting trio of Sauce Gardner, Charvarius Ward Sr., and Justin Walley," with Cam Taylor-Britt as next man up; Drake Wally puts Taylor-Britt "arguably the CB3 or CB4"; Rang says Walley "will have first crack at the open nickel position." At safety, Compton has third-rounder A.J. Haulcy having "seemingly earned the Colts' opening at strong safety." Four takes on the entire back seven's coverage group is not enough to grade anyone on.
Special teams
Four takes, all about the kicking job, all ungraded, and they disagree. Compton on August 5 and August 16 had Blake Grupe separating — "at this point, it's Grupe's job to lose." Andrew Moore on August 30: "Shrader has clearly been the best in this category and should win the kicking job." There are no punter, long-snapper or return-game takes in the database. That is the whole section.
The rookie class
Ground truth first. Indianapolis had no first-round pick and made eight selections: LB CJ Allen (53, Georgia), S A.J. Haulcy (78, LSU), G Jalen Farmer (113, Kentucky), LB Bryce Boettcher (135, Oregon), DE George Gumbs Jr. (156, Florida), DE Caden Curry (214, Ohio State), RB Seth McGowan (237, Kentucky) and WR Deion Burks (254, Oklahoma).
The pre-draft mocks got the shape right and the names wrong. Daniel Jeremiah said on March 24 that Ballard was "going to try and take a linebacker in the second round," naming Jacob Rodriguez — graded 100 on pick placement, since Rodriguez went 43rd, and directionally correct on the position: the Colts took Allen with their second-rounder. Jaime Eisner mocked Gabe Jacas to Indianapolis at 47 (70.71) and Keith Sanchez mocked Malachi Fields there (31.05). Neither landed in Indianapolis.
Allen is the one rookie the field has committed to. Rosenthal in July picked him as a rookie who will "immediately step in and start"; JP Acosta in April framed it as dependence — "you're relying on CJ Allen, who I think is a very good rookie and maybe Bryce Boettcher to play at both of your linebacker spots"; McGuinness's PFF linebacker rankings put Indianapolis last of 32 while still projecting Allen as a starter next to Akeem Davis-Gaither. Compton has Boettcher with the inside track to start alongside him. Haulcy, McGowan and the two rookie ends are covered above. Burks is the only pick with a negative call attached — Compton, on cut day, had him "still on the outside looking in." Farmer has nothing.
The overall outlook
The site has no graded win-total consensus for 2026 yet — win_total_consensus for this season returns nothing, so what follows is individual calls and last year's grades.
The 2026 numbers on the board are wide. Nick Wright twice, on September 2: "The Colts are at 7.5. I have the Colts going 7-10." Rosenthal, same day, went the other way: "I'm going Colts over seven and a half... Ultimately, I think their mean season is eight or nine wins." Moe Moton projects 5-12. Simon Hunter: "this feels like a five win team if you have a quarterback coming back too early off injury." On the postseason, Aaron Schatz's FTN model has them "making the playoffs more often than not," Middlekauff has them in his field again, and Brockman picked them to win the AFC South back in May.
Now the receipts, which are brutal. Nine graded division-winner calls on the Colts in the database. Average accuracy: 0. Eisen three times ("they're absolutely gonna win this division"), Colin Cowherd three times ("I think they're going to run away now with this division"), Brockman twice, Matt Hasselbeck once, and Dan Pizzuta back in 2020. Playoff picks: eight graded, 12.5 average accuracy, average skill delta -138.13 against a site-wide playoff-pick average of 59.5 accuracy. The only hit is Pizzuta's 2020 call.
Win totals were kinder but still unprofitable. In 2025 the Colts finished 8-9 against a naive baseline of 8.25 wins. Brady Quinn's 4-13 graded 20 accuracy and -150 skill. Rosenthal's under 7.5 and Middlekauff's nine-to-ten wins each graded 80 accuracy and -30 skill. Three different opinions, all beaten by doing nothing.
For context on the men making this year's calls: Eisen's division-winner record is 30.26 accuracy across 45 graded takes; Wright's is 12.5 across 14, with season win totals at 43.63 accuracy and a -10.42 score across 50 graded. Rosenthal's win totals run 48.5 accuracy and +8.04, right around the site-wide 49.2. Nobody in this conversation has earned the benefit of the doubt on the AFC South.
The pattern is consistent enough to be the story. Punditry likes this team — the quarterback narrative, the tight end, the running back — and the grading says the affection has cost more than it has earned. Warren is the exception the field should be proud of. The division picks are the ones it should stop making.