{"id":712094,"date":"2026-01-28T18:44:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T18:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/712094\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T18:44:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T18:44:11","slug":"ot-jalen-travis-selected-as-colts-breakout-candidate-for-2026-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/712094\/","title":{"rendered":"OT Jalen Travis selected as Colts’ breakout candidate for 2026 season"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jan. 28, 2026, 12:51 p.m. ET<\/p>\n

In an early look ahead to the 2026 season, who is a breakout candidate for the Indianapolis Colts<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Dalton Wasserman of Pro Football Focus<\/a> recently selected a breakout candidate for each NFL team, and when it came to the Colts<\/a>, he selected offensive tackle Jalen Travis.<\/p>\n

Travis was the Colts’ fourth-round pick in the 2025 NFL draft. He didn’t see extensive playing time until Week 14, when he took over for Braden Smith.<\/p>\n

In those games, Travis held his own, allowing one sack and 12 pressures over 175 pass-blocking snaps. He also graded out well as a run-blocker by PFF’s metrics.<\/a><\/p>\n

“In those five games, four of them at right tackle, he earned a solid 72.1 PFF overall grade while allowing just one sack,” Wasserman wrote.<\/p>\n

Expert NFL picks: Exclusive betting insights only at USA TODAY.<\/a><\/p>\n

With Smith set to be a free agent<\/a> this offseason, it’s possible that Travis will enter 2026 as the Colts’ starting right tackle.<\/p>\n

As a collective offensive line unit, PFF ranked the Colts very highly<\/a>. However, through the second half of the season, this unit did struggle to create consistent running lanes for Jonathan Taylor. That lack of a run game did not help the offensive performance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jan. 28, 2026, 12:51 p.m. ET In an early look ahead to the 2026 season, who is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2059],"tags":[95878,2005,7,2004,392,2381,6,49915,95900,95882,95903,95901,95896,95888,95895,95899,95883,95881],"class_list":{"0":"post-712094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indianapolis-colts","8":"tag-accessfree","9":"tag-colts","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-indianapolis","12":"tag-indianapolis-colts","13":"tag-indianapoliscolts","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-sstssportsnflcolts","16":"tag-sstsncolts","17":"tag-tagamerican-football","18":"tag-tagindianapolis-colts","19":"tag-tagjonathan-taylor","20":"tag-tagnational-sports","21":"tag-tagnfl","22":"tag-tagnfl-hub","23":"tag-tagoverall-neutral","24":"tag-tagsports-news","25":"tag-typestory"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115974207616342025","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}