‘We’re not close’: Colts GM Chris Ballard acknowledges roster-building failures, vows change

Chris Ballard began his end-of-season news conference Friday morning the only way he could: by falling on the sword. The Indianapolis Colts general manager apologized for another fruitless season and acknowledged he’s been “hardheaded and stubborn” in his team-building approach.

The 55-year-old also said he still believes he can turn the franchise around, though he knows his words don’t mean much after another uninspiring season. The fans have heard this all before.

“I don’t blame them for being pissed and questioning,” Ballard said. “They should. They should question — means they care, but that also means they’re not happy with our performance. … I need to earn their trust back.”

Through his first eight seasons, Ballard is 62-69-1 with just two playoff berths, one playoff win and zero AFC South titles. The Colts’ last playoff win came six years ago. Their last postseason appearance was four seasons ago. Something must change, and it starts with a GM who’s rarely delivered.

“I’ve got to own all of that, I do,” Ballard said of his middling resume. “I’m not gonna run from it, but I’ve definitely gotta own it because it’s real. It is the truth. I’m disappointed. I think y’all know me well enough to know I’m extremely hard on myself. I care deeply about this organization, this city. I want to do well for them.

“There’s definitely a sense of guilt for not getting it done at this time.”

Despite his failures, which Ballard himself laid out again during his news conference, Colts owner Jim Irsay announced hours after his team’s 8-9 finish in 2024 that Ballard would be retained for a ninth campaign.

Irsay’s message to his GM? “Fix it,” Ballard repeated Friday.

And there’s a lot to fix.

“Right now, we’re not close,” Ballard said. “Close is losing on the last play of the Super Bowl. That’s close. Going 8-9, that’s not close — no. I’m not saying we won’t be closer when we get closer to the season, but right now sitting here today, we’re an 8-9 football team and we gotta own that.

“We are not good enough.”

The issues are layered.

Ballard has failed to build a winning roster. Coach Shane Steichen has failed as the team’s public spokesperson. And starting quarterback Anthony Richardson has failed, so far, to be “stamped” the team’s franchise quarterback.

Starting with Ballard, the GM acknowledged “it was a mistake” to run it back at the start of the 2024 season with a league-high 81.7 percent of the team’s players from 2023, per Over the Cap. He hinted the Colts need to be more aggressive in the upcoming free agency to acquire more talent, which fell in line with what team captain DeForest Buckner said just days earlier about not having enough competition throughout the roster. Aside from retaining their own players, the Colts’ biggest free-agent signing last year was backup defensive tackle Raekwon Davis.

Ballard said the Colts have to do a better job of “closing the deal” on free agents. Last year, Ballard acknowledged Indy tried to sign edge rusher Danielle Hunter before he ultimately chose the Houston Texans. The four-time Pro Bowler finished with 12 sacks during his first with the Texans, and the Colts didn’t have any defender finish with double-digit sacks.

“At the end of the day, it’s about competition and achievement. That’s essentially what it boils down to,” Ballard said. “I didn’t create enough competition on the roster for it to want to achieve in the way it needed to achieve. … There has to be real stress within that locker room, an uncomfortability that if I don’t play well enough, my ass will not be on the field playing.”

But any message Ballard shares about patience, regardless of where it falls in his team-building approach, can’t be fully trusted. He knows he’s burned through his goodwill, and the only reason he’s back for a ninth season is because the team owner believes in him a lot more than most others do right now.

Asked whether he’s earned the opportunity to continue being the Colts GM or whether the opportunity was simply given by Irsay, Ballard toed the line.

“The quarterback position has been the biggest albatross for us, getting that stability,” Ballard said. “But we’ve also done some good things in the past, so there’s a partial earn there, too. I’m gonna say that I’m grateful to the (Irsays) for giving me another opportunity.”

Evaluating Richardson

Ballard knew drafting Richardson would be a “roller coaster.” Richardson started only 13 games at Florida, and his completion percentage was just 53.8 during his final college campaign before the Colts selected him at No. 4 in the 2023 NFL Draft.

A lot of Richardson’s play-style issues have persisted in the NFL, which Ballard anticipated to some degree, but what’s made it harder to evaluate and develop Richardson is his inability to stay healthy. The 22-year-old has missed 17 games due to injury through his first two seasons — 13 came on one injury to his throwing shoulder as a rookie — and he missed the last two games of this season with a back injury Richardson said “might be chronic.”

Ballard thinks Richardson’s back “will be fine” as he heads into the offseason, but the GM was more candid than he’s ever been about Richardson’s availability.

“The No. 1 thing we have to figure out, and what Anthony’s got to work through, is staying healthy,” Ballard said. “He’s got to be able to stay healthy. That is probably the biggest question right now, because now we’re going on two seasons in a row where he’s dealt with injuries.”

Due to Richardson’s injuries, it will be paramount for the team to bring in another starting-caliber quarterback to challenge him this offseason, Ballard said.

“We’ve got to have competition at the position, just for one, for the fact that competition makes everybody better,” Ballard said. “And then two, he’s not proven he can play 17 games.”

The next item on the Richardson to-do list is helping him become a more consistent passer. The GM still believes his young QB, who finished with a league-low and Colts franchise-low 47.7 completion percentage in 2024, can improve his accuracy. Ballard noted Richardson can sometimes overthink when he’s processing the field, and that can cause him to miss routine throws. The hope is that with a relatively healthy offseason, unlike last year when Richardson spent months relearning how to throw after shoulder surgery, he can spend a lot more time honing his passing skills.

The elephant in the room, though, is how Richardson will mature as a leader. The QB tapped out of a Week 8 game against the Texans because he was “tired” and was subsequently benched for what Steichen vaguely described as a lack of preparation. Richardson returned to the starting lineup in Week 11, though Ballard acknowledged Friday he wishes the two-game benching would have lasted longer. Poor play from backup Joe Flacco in back-to-back losses forced the Colts to go back to Richardson, who impressed in his return against the New York Jets but tapered off the rest of the season.

But still, why Richardson — who was voted a two-time team captain by his peers — even needed to be benched for off-field issues in the first place is a question he and Steichen danced around during the season. Ballard, who said Richardson was “drowning” before being demoted, was asked the same question Friday.

“(It’s like) with your kids — and look, he’s a young man — you expect them to do things, and they don’t do them,” Ballard said. “Like ‘Hey, clean your room.’ They don’t do it. … Not doing the things consistently that needed to be done, that (critique) is correct, and it was part of the learning. It’s just part of the growth in learning.”

Pushed again on why the team’s interventions with Richardson didn’t get through to him until he was benched, Ballard fiercely defended his QB.

“It wasn’t like it was just this constant (issue) … and he’s making all these mistakes all the way, no,” Ballard said. “He had really good moments, and then he kind of took a step back. That happens, it does. It’s life. People make mistakes. … And to live in a world that you can’t (make mistakes and) all of a sudden you get branded because you make a mistake and you do it on the grand stage, and we ostracize him for it — no.”

Changing the culture

After the Colts lost to the lowly New York Giants in Week 17, a defeat that eliminated Indianapolis from playoff contention for a fourth straight year, former Colts punter turned TV show host Pat McAfee blasted his former team in a scathing social post that questioned the franchise’s culture and professionalism.

Ballard said Friday he didn’t agree with everything McAfee said, but there was “some truth” to his criticism.

“You can’t fool players. You can’t do it,” Ballard continued. “I tell our team all the time, like players in that locker room, they can BS the media; they can BS their family; but they cannot BS each other. Pat was on good teams. Pat was a great player. Pat knows what it looks like. So, he saw the cracks.”

A few of the cracks?

Steichen’s tight lips, Zaire Franklin’s podcast and an anonymous Colts player who voiced his frustrations to the media.

Steichen’s refusal to offer any transparency regarding Richardson’s benching and his latest back injury created two PR messes for the team to clean up. Steichen didn’t say Richardson was benched for a lack of preparation until he was reinserted into the starting lineup two weeks later, which allowed rumors to run rampant. Steichen also initially said Richardson’s back was just “sore” before he missed the team’s must-win game against the Giants, only for Richardson to say days later he couldn’t walk due to severe back spasms. Ballard said he’s spoken to Steichen about delivering clearer messaging, and he will “help him do that.”

Franklin’s podcast featured several unflattering moments, including and perhaps most damning, his trash talk about the Giants. The linebacker said in October that the Colts would “spank” the Giants only for Indy to lose at New York in December with a playoff berth on the line. Ballard said he would keep his conversations with Franklin, a five-year team captain, private but said players “can’t create distractions.”

Lastly, Ballard slammed the anonymous Colts veteran who recently told The Athletic the team has “no vision.” The GM called that player a “chicken s—” for not putting his name behind the quote and said it was “a damning” indictment of the culture that’s developed under his watch.

“That is losing football,” Ballard seethed.

By the end of his nearly hourlong news conference, Ballard concluded his yearly signoff the same way he started it: by pointing the finger squarely at himself.

“A good culture has some friction in it, because there’s some accountability within that challenges each other and never walks by a mistake, and we’ve got to get there,” Ballard said. “That was not done this year, and that’s probably my biggest disappointment.”