PHOENIX — The work never stopped.
Not after Daniel Jones tore his right Achilles tendon. Not after he underwent season-ending surgery. Not after the team brought in Philip Rivers for the last month of the 2025 season.
Even on the Tuesdays after Jones went down, which is the players’ day off, Colts coach Shane Steichen recalls Jones and Rivers reviewing game film and dissecting the team’s offense for hours.
“They’re right across from Reggie (Wayne’s) office, and Reggie’s like, ‘Man, it was like Starbucks,’” Steichen said Tuesday during the NFL’s annual meeting at the Arizona Biltmore Resort. “They were just in and out of there all the time. … So I can only imagine the conversations. I’d pop in there from time to time on the off day, but they were studying like crazy in there.”
It’s that dedication from Jones, even after his resurgent season in Indy was cut short by injury, that earned him the opportunity to be more than a stopgap. Last year, he signed a one-year, $14 million prove-it deal to join the Colts. This year, after playing some of the best football of his career — albeit for just over half a season — he signed a two-year, $88 million contract to become the long-term QB the Colts have been searching for since the days of Andrew Luck.
Colts general manager Chris Ballard never entertained another option this offseason. Jones was Indy’s unquestioned leader long before he put pen to paper in March. Placing the transition tag on the veteran before reaching a multiyear agreement was simply a means to an end, Ballard said.
The GM’s belief in Jones, once a New York Giants castaway, has been there since the beginning. Even before Jones took a snap in Indy, Ballard compared Jones to Alex Smith, whom Ballard worked with when they overlapped with the Kansas City Chiefs. Smith began his career with the San Francisco 49ers before being traded to the Chiefs and blossoming. Ballard envisioned a similar career arc for Jones, despite his 24-44-1 record as the Giants’ starting quarterback.
“Even going back and looking at his New York tape, sometimes perception is not always reality,” Ballard said Monday. “He played pretty good football in New York.”
It didn’t take long for Steichen to get on board, either. In fact, when Jones initially signed with the Colts last year, he was late to his introductory news conference because he stopped by Steichen’s office and the two quickly dove into a lengthy conversation about the offense. The running joke these days inside the Colts’ facilities is that Steichen and Jones have developed a bond so tight that they’re basically clones of one another. They view the game — and the preparation required to play it at its highest level — through the same lens.
“That chemistry that a quarterback needs to have with their head coach (is invaluable),” Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon said Sunday. “I’m not gonna name names, but there are other situations where if your head coaches don’t believe in your quarterback, you’re kind of screwed. And I think Shane and Daniel really align.”
Daniel Jones’ working relationship with coach Shane Steichen is a big reason the Colts chose to sign Jones to a new contract. (Michael Hickey / Getty Images)
The results, at least early on, were hard to argue with. The Colts started 8-2 last season while averaging a league-high 32.1 points per game. Jones was the orchestrator, throwing for a league-high 2,659 yards and posting a 101.6 passer rating during that span.
Ballard said Monday that his team’s hot start in 2025 was firmly in the past, a sentiment that Steichen agreed with Tuesday. Both, however, still conceded that they can’t fully dismiss what they witnessed from Jones. When healthy, he was a Pro Bowl-caliber quarterback, and they’re confident he can get back to that level as he continues rehabbing from a torn right Achilles. A return in Week 1, which Jones said he’s targeting, would be about nine months after surgery. That is a very optimistic timeline, though Steichen thinks Jones’ career has built a defiant resolve in his QB.
“He’s been through so many different things in his career so far that I don’t think anything is gonna faze him anymore,” Steichen said. “He’s been heavily criticized in New York. He’s had an injury here. He had another injury (in New York). So I think he’s been through the fire pretty good, and I think that’ll make him stronger.”
Of course, Jones’ injury history is hard to ignore. In addition to his ruptured right Achilles, he suffered a season-ending neck injury in 2021 and a season-ending torn right ACL in 2023. Irsay-Gordon, along with Steichen and Ballard, acknowledged that Jones’ health will be paramount to Indy’s success in 2026, but she also made it clear that bringing him back wasn’t just a front-office decision. Jones’ peers stamped him as their quarterback and that respect, Irsay-Gordon explained, carries weight.
“When you know that there are guys that are like, ‘I want to play with this guy,’ to me, you still have to ultimately decide, but I think you ultimately have to listen to those people because they’re the ones who have to do it,” Irsay-Gordon said. “If you were like, ‘Oh, too bad, you’re gonna have this guy,’ and he’s a jerk and doesn’t show up to meetings — I mean, sometimes you have to just make do with what you have. … But I think you need to have, especially at the quarterback position, you need that consistency.”
Whether the Colts’ faith in Jones pays off with their first playoff berth since 2020 is to be determined. But as the 2026 season creeps closer, Indianapolis has left no room for confusion about its direction at quarterback. What’s more, Steichen reaffirmed sixth-round pick Riley Leonard as the team’s backup Monday, while briefly noting that Anthony Richardson Sr.’s future in Indy remains murky after his trade request. The 2023 No. 4 pick lost his starting job to Jones last year and has started just 15 games in three years.
Steichen said, “we’ll see,” regarding Richardson’s status. The coach also said he hadn’t spoken to Richardson when asked if he’d talked to the 23-year-old about the possibility of him staying away from the team if he is not traded before the Colts’ offseason program begins April 20. If Richardson is still around when the team gathers in a few weeks, it may be a little awkward to see him taking snaps while Jones, presumably, won’t be on the field just yet. But that potential development still won’t be much more than a newsy footnote.
The Colts are Jones’ team, and all of their actions this offseason prove it.
“He’s obviously gonna be in all of the meetings, locked in, ready to go mentally,” Steichen said of Jones’ early offseason plan. “So I think there’s gonna be a lot of conversations that take place this spring, and hopefully he’s ready to go in training camp. I think Year 2 in the system, obviously a very cerebral guy, Daniel is, so we’ll have those conversations and constantly be evolving.”