INDIANAPOLIS - Will Fries can't shake the moment quite yet.
The Colts offensive lineman was laying on his back on the turf at EverBank Field, right at the 50-yard line. He's caught in the middle of the most important year of his football life, but his fibula just snapped, and so that year just turned into a nightmare.
But as he's looking up, he sees a few faces come into view. The terror starts to slip.
"When you have all those guys around you, and you're seeing Coach Tony (Sparano Jr.) and Quenton (Nelson) and Danny (Pinter) and all of those guys ..." Fries said.
As he retold the moment the day after the season ended, he paused to keep from getting choked up. It's an emotional day at the Colts facility, his first as an unrestricted free agent.
He recalled being lifted up onto the cart and it wheeling away from the last moment of his 2024 contract season, and how he lifted that fist to the crowd.
"I just wanted to let them know," Fries said, "I was good."
That's not actually the place Fries returns to most, though. Rather, it's the one a few plays before, when he was stoning defenders in the B-gaps as they twisted and turned and stunted and bull rushed into a 6-foot-6, 305-pound frame that stood like a brick wall to protect the pocket.
Fries had come so far before he fell so hard. He'd risen from the 248th pick of the 2021 NFL Draft, through a rookie season with action in just three games to being thrown into the disaster that was the 2022 Colts offensive line to getting the bounce back he didn't know he would in 2023 to having a chance to trot out there with his best friends for a second straight season of starting, developing and thriving at right guard.
In 22 starts in 2023 and 2024, Fries logged 779 pass-blocking snaps and surrendered just five sacks and 18 blown blocks, according to Sports Info Solutions. He was called for just two penalties.
Colts free agency: Colts C Ryan Kelly might leave in free agency
He became the missing link the Colts searched far and wide for in 2022, the one that could glue together a line of Ryan Kelly, Nelson, Braden Smith and a growing Bernhard Raimann in order to build out general manager Chris Ballard's vision up front.
And since 2022, the story has become the same: The Colts thrive up front with Fries at right guard, and they're not nearly the same without him. The players know that, too, which is why all of them showed up to his home during his recovery to bring him food and why they made a display with his jersey at his locker for the day he could come back.
Back at the start of that Week 5 game, it felt like an easy call to extend him to keep much of the group together. Yes, the Colts had drafted Tanor Bortolini in preparation of moving on from Kelly as he also entered free agency, but Kelly's potential departure would free up more than $14 million for a new offensive line deal.
It was a contract Fries was going to demand in a growing guard market, with his elite pass protecting skill set in a passing league.
But that was before the lower leg injury to a 305-pound man who found himself unable to move for weeks on end.
"Injuries happen all the time and then suddenly, it's you," Fries said. "... I wouldn't wish it on anybody, but it'll make me better going forward."
By that day in early January, Fries was off crutches and walking normally, and he was hopeful he could beat the timelines to return to on-field work.
The timing makes it tricky to determine which team will be willing to take this bet with Fries. On one hand, teams can't do their own medical evaluations until after they agree to terms with an outside free agent, though they can fail the deal based on how their physical evaluation goes. On the other, the injury happened early in the season, and it was the first of Fries' pro career as he enters his age-27 season.
As of January, no team had nearly the medical information on Fries that the Colts did, but they'll be in a similar place of gathering new details in the two months since.
"I know I'm going to be the same player that I was," Fries said. "I have zero doubt about it."
Fries could sign a one-year deal to prove that theory in 2025, which could set him up for a major multi-year deal next offseason. But with how few established guards hit free agency, it's possible he could find that now. ESPN's Matt Bowen ranked Fries as the No. 19 free agent in this class and No. 2 at guard, behind only Kansas City's Trey Smith.
The Colts have a hole and an obsession at his position, as well as more than $28 million in cap space, according to OverTheCap.com. But they've also been burned banking on players to come back from major injuries before.
But it's clear Fries would like to keep it going.
"This place is special," Fries said. "... From coming in here as a rookie with guys having my back when I didn't play much and then getting an opportunity to start and then being able to start the year after that. There's so many good people here.
"All I want to do is repay them with how hard I can work, playing the best I possibly can for those who believe in me and for my family and for myself. That's what it's meant to me to be here."
