The former special teamer turned six-time team captain (2020-2025) has spent all eight of his seasons in the NFL with the Colts, racking up a total of 738 tackles, 34 tackles for loss, 10 sacks, 8 interceptions, 10 forced fumbles, and 26 passes defended.<\/p>\n
Indianapolis is looking to get cap compliant before the new year begins next week on March 11th, as they currently sit at $4.7m over the cap following the transition tag of quarterback Daniel Jones<\/a> earlier this week. While this is certainly an immediate move to become cap compliant, moving on from Zaire Franklin may speak more to a schematic fit (or lack thereof) under defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo<\/a>.<\/p>\n Zaire Franklin currently has two years left on his contract, according to Spotrac \u2014 a $8.255m cap hit for the 2026-27 season before growing to a $10.255m in the final year of his deal. Trading Franklin would save $5.755m against the cap, while leaving $2.5m in dead money.<\/p>\n Franklin becomes 30-years-old later this summer, but still has plenty of productive ball ahead of him. Leading the league in tackles (173) in the 2024-25 season, Franklin earned Pro Bowl honors to pair with his first All-Pro (2nd Team) nod. He logged 125 tackles, 2 sacks, 7 tackles for loss, 5 passes defended, and 1 forced fumble this past season.<\/p>\n The writing has been on the wall, but it\u2019ll be tough to see a homegrown talent like Zaire Franklin go. A former seventh-round pick (235th overall) from the 2018 NFL Draft, Franklin epitomized the overused \u2018rags to riches\u2019 saying during his time in Indianapolis. Going from a camp body rookie wearing #97, to leading the NFL in tackles isn\u2019t a coincidence. It may have gotten a little loud toward the end, thanks to podcast mics, but Franklin\u2019s story is a commendable one no matter how you shake it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former special teamer turned six-time team captain (2020-2025) has spent all eight of his seasons in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":795968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2059],"tags":[2005,7,2004,392,3562,2381,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-795967","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-indianapolis-colts","8":"tag-colts","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-indianapolis","11":"tag-indianapolis-colts","12":"tag-indianapolis-colts-news","13":"tag-indianapoliscolts","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116181903861496761","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795967","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=795967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/795967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/795968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=795967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=795967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=795967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}