2026 Off-Season Thread

[AlwaysSunnyinIndy]

Originally Posted by Oldcolt

I have no doubt that Irsay was all in on AR. I have heard zero that Ballard wasn’t, not a peep that Ballard wanted to go another way. Not then not since. Maybe Irsay trusted his draft evaluation team who he spent millions putting together. It felt at the time like the entire organization had talked themselves into AR. We will probably never know for sure

By their actions, I don't think the Colts were "all in" on any of the QB's in that draft - otherwise they would have moved up from the fourth spot. Each of the top three QBs drafted had their weaknesses and I think that Irsay + the front office thought that Steichen and the coaching staff could work with any of the three and hopefully game plan around and minimize their shortcomings.

However, it was clear that Irsay wanted the Colts to draft a QB.

And it would be interesting to see how the front office actually ranked those QBs - although as I stated, clearly they didn't think it was worth it to move up to select their top ranked choice...they stayed put and selected whoever was still on the board.