![\"Daniel](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/GettyImages-2235424260-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nPHOENIX \u2014 The work never stopped.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Even on the Tuesdays after Jones went down, which is the players\u2019 day off, Colts coach Shane Steichen recalls Jones and Rivers reviewing game film and dissecting the team\u2019s offense for hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re right across from Reggie (Wayne\u2019s) office, and Reggie\u2019s like, \u2018Man, it was like Starbucks,\u2019\u201d Steichen said Tuesday during the NFL\u2019s annual meeting at the Arizona Biltmore Resort. \u201cThey were just in and out of there all the time. \u2026 So I can only imagine the conversations. I\u2019d pop in there from time to time on the off day, but they were studying like crazy in there.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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 \u2014 albeit for just over half a season \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
Colts general manager Chris Ballard never entertained another option this offseason. Jones was Indy\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The GM\u2019s 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\u2019 starting quarterback.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven going back and looking at his New York tape, sometimes perception is not always reality,\u201d Ballard said Monday. \u201cHe played pretty good football in New York.\u201d<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t 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\u2019s office and the two quickly dove into a lengthy conversation about the offense. The running joke these days inside the Colts\u2019 facilities is that Steichen and Jones have developed a bond so tight that they\u2019re basically clones of one another. They view the game \u2014 and the preparation required to play it at its highest level \u2014 through the same lens.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat chemistry that a quarterback needs to have with their head coach (is invaluable),\u201d Colts owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon said Sunday. \u201cI\u2019m not gonna name names, but there are other situations where if your head coaches don\u2019t believe in your quarterback, you\u2019re kind of screwed. And I think Shane and Daniel really align.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Daniel Jones\u2019 working relationship with coach Shane Steichen is a big reason the Colts chose to sign Jones to a new contract. (Michael Hickey \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Ballard said Monday that his team\u2019s hot start in 2025 was firmly in the past, a sentiment that Steichen agreed with Tuesday. Both, however, still conceded that they can\u2019t fully dismiss what they witnessed from Jones. When healthy, he was a Pro Bowl-caliber quarterback, and they\u2019re 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\u2019s targeting, would be about nine months after surgery. That is a very optimistic timeline, though Steichen thinks Jones\u2019 career has built a defiant resolve in his QB.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been through so many different things in his career so far that I don\u2019t think anything is gonna faze him anymore,\u201d Steichen said. \u201cHe\u2019s been heavily criticized in New York. He\u2019s had an injury here. He had another injury (in New York). So I think he\u2019s been through the fire pretty good, and I think that\u2019ll make him stronger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, Jones\u2019 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\u2019 health will be paramount to Indy\u2019s success in 2026, but she also made it clear that bringing him back wasn\u2019t just a front-office decision. Jones\u2019 peers stamped him as their quarterback and that respect, Irsay-Gordon explained, carries weight.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you know that there are guys that are like, \u2018I want to play with this guy,\u2019 to me, you still have to ultimately decide, but I think you ultimately have to listen to those people because they\u2019re the ones who have to do it,\u201d Irsay-Gordon said. \u201cIf you were like, \u2018Oh, too bad, you\u2019re gonna have this guy,\u2019 and he\u2019s a jerk and doesn\u2019t show up to meetings \u2014 I mean, sometimes you have to just make do with what you have. \u2026 But I think you need to have, especially at the quarterback position, you need that consistency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether the Colts\u2019 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\u2019s more, Steichen reaffirmed sixth-round pick Riley Leonard as the team\u2019s backup Monday, while briefly noting that Anthony Richardson Sr.\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Steichen said, \u201cwe\u2019ll see,\u201d regarding Richardson\u2019s status. The coach also said he hadn\u2019t spoken to Richardson when asked if he\u2019d talked to the 23-year-old about the possibility of him staying away from the team if he is not traded before the Colts\u2019 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\u2019t be on the field just yet. But that potential development still won\u2019t be much more than a newsy footnote.<\/p>\n
The Colts are Jones\u2019 team, and all of their actions this offseason prove it.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s obviously gonna be in all of the meetings, locked in, ready to go mentally,\u201d Steichen said of Jones\u2019 early offseason plan. \u201cSo I think there\u2019s gonna be a lot of conversations that take place this spring, and hopefully he\u2019s ready to go in training camp. I think Year 2 in the system, obviously a very cerebral guy, Daniel is, so we\u2019ll have those conversations and constantly be evolving.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHOENIX \u2014 The work never stopped. Not after Daniel Jones tore his right Achilles tendon. Not after he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846799,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2059],"tags":[2005,7,2004,392,2381,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-846798","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-indianapoliscolts","13":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116328838628643579","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846798","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=846798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846798\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}