Insider: Colts To Send Away Star Player in Free Agency
Indianapolis Colts quarterback Gardner Minshew is set to be a free agent after the season. Can the Colts hold on to him?
Gardner Minshew and the Indianapolis Colts aren’t thinking offseason right now. They’re in the middle of a race for the AFC South and an unlikely-playoff spot after a disastrous 2022 season.
While the Colts and Minshew might be focused on the Atlanta Falcons this week, there are a host of teams already looking towards next season. Those teams, and the media who speculates on them, look at Minshew as one of the top-free agent targets of 2024.
ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler and Dan Graziano speculated on Minshew’s future and think despite interest from other teams, the Colts may just be the right fit for him.
“I know Minshew wants to be a starter again, and he has surely shown this season that he can handle the job. But I also wonder if Indy might be the perfect spot for him,” wrote Graziano on ESPN+. “Starting QB Anthony Richardson will still be in his development phase even once he’s back and healthy (shoulder) next year, and I think it could be in the Colts’ best interests to keep Minshew around in the role they envisioned for him this season. That feels like a win-win, unless there’s a team out there willing to promise Minshew a starting job.”
There may be a team willing to give Minshew a starting job, including the Colts’ next opponent who have yo-yo’d Desmond Ridder and Taylor Heinicke as starters this season. It’s Heinicke again by the way, after the Falcons benched Ridder for a second, and most likely final time.
“Minshew has been awesome, but it’s hard to see him as more than a high-level No. 2 or a bridge starter at this stage — a really good one, to be sure,” wrote Fowler. “He’d be perfect in a situation where the team drafts a quarterback in the first round but wants to sit that rookie for a year, which I know doesn’t happen much anymore.”
It didn’t happen in Indianapolis this year. Richardson won the starting job in August, but wasn’t the starter for very long. He started just-four games this season and only finished one.
Richardson will need to learn how to protect himself before he can be relied on as a starter for the full season. The Colts have had a lot of success this season under Minshew including winning five of their last six games.
They’d be smart to make him an offer he can’t refuse with the promise to compete for the starting position again. Minshew is on a one-year, $3.5-million contract. Doubling that would be a good start and still remain affordable.
Gardner Minshew might be smart to take it. Afterall, it does look like the perfect situation for him under head coach Shane Steichen.
Colts’ Shane Steichen Shows “Run to Win” Mentality vs. Steelers
The Indianapolis Colts moved forward into a new era of football this past Saturday, as the team exorcised past demons against the Pittsburgh Steelers in blowout fashion. The Colts handily won this game 30-13 against a team that they failed previously to beat since 2009.For the Colts, this game was more than just a late season match-up in a tight AFC playoff race. This game was about establishing a new precedent under the now-Head Coach Shane Steichen.
Steichen made his philosophy on offense quite clear this past offseason as being one built around, “throwing to score points and running the ball to win.”
My philosophy is we’re going to throw to score points in this league and run to win. We’re going to throw to score points and run to win. Now, that can look different each week. Sometimes I’ve went into games saying we’re going to throw it a bunch and then we end up running it 45 times. Flow is going to dictate that. I know we have some pieces in place to get that done and we should be ready to roll.
Saturday’s win over the Steelers was the perfect example of this philosophy in action, as quarterback Gardner Minshew attempted 27 passes in the first three quarters of the game before taking a backseat to the rushing attack in the fourth (he attempted just one pass the entire fourth quarter).
Minshew was on fire in this game, tossing three touchdown passes and having another two near-scores through the air. Despite this potentially career-best outing from the veteran quarterback, Steichen opted to stick to his offseason philosophy late in the ball game.
With the Colts leading by 11 late in the third quarter, the team introduced old school, smash mouth football to the hapless Steelers’ defense. The Colts embarked on a 14 play drive that would eat up nearly nine minutes of game clock to put this game away late. The unique part of this drive? The Colts ran the ball on 13 straight plays.
No matter the down or the distance, the Colts were running the ball on this drive. The remarkable aspect in this equation is this wasn’t the Colts feeding their bellcow back in Jonathan Taylor or their 2023 workhorse in Zack Moss, this was a drive led by reserve backs Trey Sermon and Tyler Goodson.
Behind the tough running of Sermon and the explosive play of Goodson, the Colts were able to produce 70 yards of offense on 13 rush attempts. The Colts faced four third downs on this drive as well, converting three of them on the ground (only failing on the lone pass attempt at the end).
As the dust settled at the end of the drive, the Colts were staring down a two touchdown lead halfway through the fourth quarter. The Steelers were simply smacked around by a Colts’ offense that was imposing its will.
“You can see the will being sucked out of them,” Colts center Ryan Kelly said to Nate Atkins of the IndyStar in a recent article. “They don’t want it. Thirteen straight run plays? They’d rather rush the passer on 3rd-and-long.”
This wasn’t the remnants of the Frank Reich-led “Run The Damn Ball” era in Indianapolis, this was something entirely different. This wasn’t running the ball because it was the team’s only option, this was running the ball to reward the offensive line and impose a punishment on a defense.
The core of Steichen’s run to win philosophy is that reward for the offensive line. Give the quarterback enough room to work early to score points and the offensive line will be rewarded with run blocking late in the game. The Colts’ offensive line took this reward and ran with it all the way to the finish line.
The Colts are in good hands with Steichen as their signal-caller for the foreseeable future. Not only is he an innovative, young coach but he is a man that stays true to his word.
He promised Colts fans in the offseason that he would throw to score points and run to win. Well, the Colts did that on Saturday en route to a massive victory over the Steelers.
hello there and thank you for your info – I have certainly picked up anything new from right here.
I did however expertise some technical issues
using this site, since I experienced to reload the web site
lots of times previous to I could get it to load properly.
I had been wondering if your web host is OK? Not that I am complaining, but sluggish loading instances times will
very frequently affect your placement in google and could damage your quality score if advertising and
marketing with Adwords. Anyway I’m adding this RSS to my email
and could look out for a lot more of your respective fascinating content.
Ensure that you update this again very soon.