The Indianapolis Colts are having one of the most meager finishes to the 2025 season after spending the first two months as the belle of the ball.
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The team started off red hot, going 7-1 when most people thought they would not win seven games all season. RB Jonathan Taylor was an MVP candidate, and QB Daniel Jones was showing the best version of himself since his playoff run with the New York Giants in 2022.
General manager Chris Ballard and head coach Shane Steichen felt so confident in the team’s potential that they even made one of the biggest moves of the 2025 NFL trade deadline. They traded young wideout Adonai Mitchell and first-round picks in 2026 and 2027 to acquire New York Jets All-Pro cornerback Sauce Gardner.
The move came after the Colts first showed cracks in a turnover-filled 27-20 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in Week 9. But they were still 7-2 and bullish on their chances. They won the following week against the Atlanta Falcons, but needed overtime to get it done. Since their Week 11 bye, the Colts have gone 0-5 and lost Jones to a season-ending injury.
At 8-7, they are out of playoff contention, which certainly has to make one wonder why in the world they felt the need to swing two first-round picks in a midseason “all-in” trade? As Mike Herndon said, this might be the worst “all-in” trade in NFL history.
“The Colts are 1-5 since trading for Sauce Gardner and are now almost certainly out of the playoffs. I can’t remember seeing an “all-in” trade backfire this hard this fast,” Herndon tweeted.
The Colts are 1-5 since trading for Sauce Gardner and are now almost certainly out of the playoffs. I can’t remember seeing an “all-in” trade backfire this hard this fast.
— Mike Herndon (@MikeHerndonSk1) December 23, 2025
And that’s not to say acquiring Gardner in a vacuum wasn’t a smart move. He’s a great player at an ideal age and position. But a team without a clear direction or a clear-cut franchise QB needs to hold on to as much draft capital as possible. Now, the Colts won’t have a first-round pick until 2028.
The team was clearly pushing their chips into the middle of the table with the Gardner trade. That plan unraveled when Gardner went down, and Jones soon followed. To be fair, Jones’ play had already begun to falter somewhat after his red-hot start to the season.
It’s unlikely that Danny Dimes will be Indy’s long-term answer at quarterback as well. Which is unfortunate, as the franchise has been searching for stability at the position since Andrew Luck shocked the world by retiring in 2018. Whether over-the-hill veterans or failed top picks, the Colts have not found consistency under center since Luck.
And now, thanks to what in hindsight was one of the most short-sighted trades in NFL history (it’s not up there with some of the worst just yet, but time will tell on that), the Colts won’t be able to find their next Luck until 2028 at the earliest.
