Shane Steichen's time with Colts feels like it's running out, but it's not his fault

Indianapolis Colts head coach Shane Steichen addressed his future with the team on Friday, and it became clear that the writing may be on the wall for the second-year head coach.

When asked if owner Jim Irsay had told him he'll be back with the team next season, Steichen declined to say, according to Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk.

“I’ll keep our conversations private,” Steichen said. “I do have really good conversations with him weekly.”

The coach acknowledged the frustration of another season sitting just below .500, as well.

“It’s a frustrating season, the ups and downs of it, obviously didn’t go the way we wanted as a football team,” Steichen said. “We’ve got one more opportunity to go out there as a football team and finish it the right way.” He added that he thinks the Colts are "really close" to a breakthrough, but ultimately, it might be too late for him.

This is the second year in a row Indianapolis has hovered around .500; after going 9-8 and narrowly missing the postseason last year, they're likely heading for either 7-10 or 8-9 and another narrow playoff miss. Making matters worse, neither the offense nor defense have improved from last season.

The defense ranks as one of the NFL's worst, sitting 27th in points allowed and 29th in yards, after ranking 28th and 24th last season. The offense has remained firmly middle of the pack, sitting 16th in scoring and 15th in yards after ranking 10th and 15th last year. More troubling is the lack of development of quarterback Anthony Richardson, who cannot stay on the field, and continues to make the same sorts of mistakes he did last year.

But putting the blame solely on Steichen for the Colts' troubles is unfair. General manager Chris Ballard constructed one of the strangest rosters in the NFL, with talent in that has failed to live up to expectations at virtually every position. It was Ballard who drafted Richardson, and likely a combination of Ballard and Irsay who elected to handle him so strangely this season.

There is not a single viable tight end anywhere to be found on this roster, and the defense still has pretty glaring holes at numerous positions. Richardson's development hasn't progressed in the way they'd hoped, sure, but the quarterback still doesn't have a full season's worth of starts under his belt, and was always going to be a project.

More troubling than that is Richardson's revelation that he's been dealing with chronic back pain, and has been since eighth grade. That's absolutely something that should have come up during the scouting process, especially for an organization that lost its last franchise quarterback, Andrew Luck, to recurring injury issues.

While the clock seems to be running out on Steichen's tenure with the Colts, this season has also proven that if Irsay really is committed to building a winning team in Indianapolis, the head coach shouldn't be the only one leaving.

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Shane Steichen's time with Colts feels like it's running out, even if it's not his fault

By Sam Westmoreland | Jan 3, 2025