Stampede Blue
According to CBS Sports’ Tyler Sullivan, the Indianapolis Cotls ‘best-and-worst-case outcomes’ both involve starting quarterback Daniel Jones:
Indianapolis Colts
Best-case: Daniel Jones is ready to roll for Week 1 despite suffering an Achilles tear last season, and the Colts quarterback picks up where he left off. Jones continues to enjoy his late-career revival in Indy and has the team atop the AFC South standings for the first time since 2014, when Andrew Luck was playing quarterback.
Worst-case: The resurgence Jones enjoyed before his injury last season never returns. He isn’t able to rekindle the magic from the first half of 2025, and it shakes confidence in him as Indy’s long-term option at quarterback. The organization falls out of the playoff race and finds itself in the familiar position of wondering whether its franchise quarterback is even on the roster.
Jones, who earlier this offseason was re-signed to a lucrative 2-year deal, worth up to $100 million deal in earned incentives, is seemingly progressing well in his ongoing recovery from a season-ending torn Achilles.
Specifically, Jones was already participating in 7-on-7 drills during veteran minicamp last week, and the realistic expectation is that he’ll be medically cleared for 11-on-11 drills during the early stages of team training camp in a few weeks when late July’s team training camp officially kicks off.
The hope is that’ll be ready for the regular season opener, when the Colts host the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday, September 13th, a little over 9 months after tearing his right Achilles tendon in Jacksonville.
The Colts have a lot of conviction that Jones, even coming off the Achilles, can be the guy again. With him behind center, Indianapolis’s offense was clearly buzzing, with a historically elite league offense and him in the midst of a career year. It was only after injuries to Jones, capped off by Jones’s season-ending torn Achilles in Week 14, where their season ultimately collapsed, losing 7 straight games after beginning the year so promising at 8-2.
The Colts ownership clearly believes Jones can regain his prior form, as can the team, which is why general manager Chris Ballard and head coach Shane Steichen have been run back—along with Jones’s re-signing.
It’ll be interesting to see whether Jones is closer to the quarterback we saw in the first half of the 2025 campaign, or the inconsistent, oft-injured enigmatic quarterback we saw throughout his career with the New York Giants.
