Stampede Blue
The Colts are about to finish the offseason with some post-draft free agency moves, marking the 10th offseason under Chris Ballard. The decade of Ballard’s management has been a wild rollercoaster ride, albeit not all of it due to Ballard himself. But after this Ballard decade, how does the Colts roster stack up from 2026 compared to 2016, the last year of the Grigson era?
In this position by position series, we breakdown each spot of the Colts roster to see if the Colts are better or worse than their counterparts from a decade ago. If you want to find our previous entries of this series, you can find them below:
We are going over Centers next!
There is another position of parallel’s between 2016 and 2026 counterparts. Both then-23 year old rookie Ryan Kelly and third year 24 year Tanor Bortolini are younger Centers who head into the year with plenty of optimism. Ryan Kelly was highest drafted Center for the Colts since 1956 and the top interior Offensive Lineman in the 2016 class, with expectations to be the long awaited heir to Jeff Saturday. Tanor Bortolini is one of the more athletic Center prospects in NFL history and after being mentored by Kelly himself as a rookie, broke out as the starter in 2025 and could have a big year 3.
This is once again a battle of positions of strength between the two decades of Colts.
In Ryan Kelly’s rookie year as a pass protector, the former Alabama Crimson Tide allowed:
Ryan Kelly was already one of the better pass blocking Centers in the NFL as a a rookie, keeping Andrew Luck very clean up the middle pass rush lanes and allowing 0 sacks despite Luck’s 2.86 Time to Throw being the 8th slowest among qualifying QBs in 2016. A slow release from a QB means either the QB had to buy time a lot for plays downfield to develop and avoid the rush, or they were slow to process. In Luck’s case, it was the former, as the Colts OL didn’t give him a lot of clean pockets.
Still, Ryan Kelley did his part as a rookie to try to give Luck a pocket to step into against pressure.
What held Ryan Kelly back from being considered one of the very best Centers was being around league average as a run blocker in his rookie year. He graded out as a run blocker in 2016:
Ryan Kelly was a decent run blocker, but...
