Carlie Irsay-Gordon finally pulled the plug on Chris Ballard on Monday, and my only problem with the execution is that she forgot to pack Shane Steichen and Daniel Jones into the same cardboard box. Ten seasons, zero AFC South banners, a 72-82-1 regular-season record, and 14 different starting quarterbacks later, the longest-running front-office grift in the AFC is officially dead. Yet instead of grabbing a blowtorch and clearing out the entire Lucas Oil Stadium bunker after blowing a 13-0 halftime lead to an 0-5 Tennessee Titans squad, ownership handed out a pink slip to the architect while ordering the rest of the building to pretend this 2-4 roster has a pulse.
Look at the statement Irsay-Gordon released to justify keeping the train on the tracks. “I also want to be clear: this decision does not change our goals for the season,” she wrote on Monday. “We have a lot of football in front of us, and I expect us to compete, improve, and win football games.” Compete with what, exactly? You just coughed up a halftime lead at home to Robert Saleh’s winless Titans in a game where your defense couldn’t stop bleeding and your special teams let a punt get blocked and returned for a touchdown.
The scoreboard says 26-20 Tennessee, and the box score reads like a crime scene. Indianapolis outgained the Titans 399 yards to 186 and piled up 24 first downs to Tennessee’s 11, yet still found a way to lose because the roster Ballard left behind is built on quicksand. When you hand out six sacks, cough up three turnovers, and let Joey Slye kick you into a grave in your own building while the home crowd chants for the general manager’s head, you do not have a playoff team. You have a corpse in shoulder pads.
Ballard Torched the 2027 Draft on His Way Out the Door
Nobody should shed a single tear for Ballard’s tenure. After starting 8-2 in 2025 and becoming the first team in NFL history to finish with a losing record after sitting six games over .500, Ballard went full desperation mode to save his own skin. He inked Daniel Jones to a two-year, $88 million extension and shipped two first-round picks plus Adonai Mitchell to the New York Jets at the 2025 trade deadline for Sauce Gardner. That is a war crime against the salary cap and the draft board, committed by an executive on the last year of his deal.
Now the bill is on the counter… and the Colts don’t even own their own tank. The 2027 first-round pick Ballard mailed to New York currently projects inside the top 10, while Gardner has been inconsistent on the field whenever he manages to stay out of the training room. Every loss Indy stacks between now and January only fattens up the Jets’ war chest, leaving interim personnel boss Ed Dodds staring at an empty cupboard.
And then there is the $88 million quarterback who couldn’t beat an 0-5 division rival with a two-score halftime cushion. According to Next Gen Stats, Jones sits tied for 24th in expected points added per dropback out of 28 quarterbacks with at least 100 pass attempts. On Sunday, he went 22-of-42 for 269 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions while taking six sacks, turning a dominant 399-yard offensive afternoon where Jonathan Taylor ran for 94 yards and a score into a masterclass in empty-calorie football. Jones has negative aura in the pocket, holding the ball until the pass protection caves in and turning winning box-score margins into back-breaking mistakes.
Steichen Is Next on the Chopping Block
Steichen stood at the podium on Monday and tried to shield his former boss with classic coachspeak solidarity. “I don’t think it completely falls on Chris,” Steichen told reporters. “I’m the head football coach. It takes all of us. Coaches, scouts, everybody, and we gotta put our best foot forward moving forward.” He is right about one thing: this disaster belongs to him, too. Steichen is 27-30 overall since Ballard hired him in 2023, and Sunday’s second-half collapse is the reason the fans were booing so loud that Steichen admitted afterward, “I don’t blame them for booing one freaking bit.”
Even the locker room veterans have hit their breaking point with the front office’s perpetual treadmill. “I’m sick and tired of the same song and dance every year,” defensive tackle DeForest Buckner said in the locker room on Sunday after dropping to 2-4. “They’re upset. We lost to the Tennessee Titans, who were 0-5, and now they’re 1-5.” When your franchise cornerstone is publicly calling out the organization’s Groundhog Day mediocrity after five straight missed postseasons, keeping the coaching staff intact to report directly to ownership is just delaying the inevitable funeral.
Look at the three-week gauntlet staring Indy in the face: the undefeated 5-0 Minnesota Vikings come next, followed by the 4-2 Jaguars and the 2-4 Cowboys. If Dodds doesn’t start liquidating movable veteran contracts before the trade deadline to recoup the draft capital Ballard lit on fire for Gardner and Jones, how many more quarters of Daniel Jones getting blitzed into the turf will it take before Carlie Irsay-Gordon realizes she only fired half the problem?
