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:
The series finishes up the trenches with DTs next!
The 2016 DT room was not a position of strength, in part due to injury. Only Haasan Ridgeway and David Parry played all 16 games in the seasons with Langford missing 9 games, the late Arthur Jones missing 8 games, Henry Anderson missing 5 games, and TY McGill missing 11 games. All 7 DL each played 300+ snaps for the Colts in 2025.
With the 2016 Colts running a 3-4 base scheme, this meant a lot of shuffling on the front for the trio of hand in the dirt linemen across various alignments.
Overall the unit combined for:
The 2026 unit is meanwhile going through a lot of changes, as Neville Gallimore, Eric Johnson II, and Chris Wormley are out as depth linemen but the Colts have added Colby Wooden (via the Zaire Franklin trade with the Green Bay Packers), and former Kansas City Chiefs Defensive Tackles Jerry Tillery and Derrick Nnadi.
And to top it all off, this could be the last year of the dynamic duo of DeForest Buckner and Grover Stewart starting for the Colts since 2020. The two are entering their age 32 and 33 seasons respectively, and Buckner is coming off of a major neck injury. Clock is ticking on both of their times in the NFL and with the Colts, which could make 2026 the last chance to try to develop successors in house before one or both of them depart in Free Agency or retire.
Ultimately this group produced around the NFL in 2025:
Of the Colts backups, there is plenty to note about the depth of this unit as the...
