"Sounds like y'all didn't know much," smiled Daniel Jones.
It was a charming response to Evan Washburn as the sideline reporter admitted to a hint of 'surprise on the outside' at the sight of the Indianapolis Colts and their rampant start to the 2025 NFL season. Washburn quizzed the quarterback on what football had needed to know that it didn't about Shane Steichen's team coming into the year.
A lot, apparently.
Washburn was not exactly wrong. But neither was Jones, whose soaring Colts are laying out their answer to the aforementioned question on the field every week right now.
No crystal ball envisioned Colts success, quite the opposite, in fact. Daniel Jones vs Anthony Richardson had failed to peak interest as an uninspiring training camp battle between a New York Giants outcast and a difficult-to-trust occasionally-infuriating third-year quarterback who excelled in the jaw-dropping spectacular while failing to nail down the routine stuff.
As Steichen favoured what was seemingly deemed the 'safer' option in Jones, a familiar fear of more Colts quarterback purgatory and another year of irrelevance resurfaced.
And yet here they sit, with an NFL-best record of 6-1 as the story of the season behind the latest of many recent and unlikely quarterback career-resurrections.
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Indiana Jones
Once Danny Dimes, now Indiana Jones. Even the nickname is an upgrade in pizzazz and charisma, with which Jones is dropping as a reborn shoulders-back killer playing with more confidence and conviction than ever before in his NFL career. So famously soft-demeanoured and delicately-spoken as the focal point for scathing Giants criticism, he has injected some stick-it-to-them rah-rah and swag bred by a professional and polished environment in which he is playing like one of the best quarterbacks in football.
Should we be surprised? Perhaps not. Quarterback comebacks have emerged as a trend in recent years. Baker Mayfield has thrust himself into MVP contention in Tampa Bay after the written-off former No 1 pick rebuilt his career alongside Dave Canales and Liam Coen; Jared Goff, another former No 1 pick, steered the Detroit Lions out of long-time pain and into Super Bowl contention in unison with Ben Johnson having been shipped off to make way for Matthew Stafford in Los Angeles; Minnesota Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell killed the ghosts of Sam Darnold's past to inspire the former No 3 overall pick's own staggering revival that would culminate in a bumper pay-day with the Seattle Seahawks last offseason.
Coincidentally, Jones, the No 6 overall pick out of Duke in 2019, also spent the second half of last season with O'Connell after being released by the Giants.
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Sometimes it comes down to smart coaching and the right quarterback-head coach marriage. Steichen has been perfect for Jones, who is attacking tight windows, spreading the ball, diagnosing the field, thriving under pressure and punishing defenses with shots downfield at the most efficient and clinical rate of his career.
"Once he got here, I really saw the complete opposite of what everybody was making him out to be," said Colts receiver Michael Pittman Jr. "Having our own experiences with him, he's been the same guy since Day One. I don't know why the media portrayed him out to be a guy he's not."
Jones has completed 152 of 214 passes for a fifth-ranked completion percentage of 71.0, a fifth-most 1,790 passing yards and 10 touchdowns to just three interceptions with a second-ranked quarterback rating of 80.2 and a ninth-ranked passer rating of 105.9. When it comes to advanced metrics in down-to-down efficiency, he sits fifth in EPA+CPOE composite (expected points added plus completion percentage over expected), first in EPA/play and first in success rate.
He has recorded a passer rating of 100-plus in six of seven games. Say what you like about the expertly-drilled scheme around him and the MVP-contending running back adjacent to him, Jones has been exceptional.
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Among the chief criticisms of a much-maligned Giants offense had been Jones' reluctance and inability to take on splash plays downfield, albeit behind the league's worst offensive line and within a basic, uninventive system short of reliable separators on the outside. Already this season he is averaging a career-high 8.4 air yards per pass attempt, having never before finished a campaign with a yards per attempt average above the 6.8 he managed in 2022, his only playoff campaign. A career-high 30.8 per cent of his attempts have been 10 yards or more this season, speaking to Steichen's three-level passing concepts and the success at which he is blending short-to-intermediate chain movers with knockout haymakers downfield.
Contrary to his time in New York, devoid of clean pockets, he is blunting the pressure coming his way. Jones currently has a 91.8 quarterback rating when pressured, which would represent the highest in a single season since it became an official stat in 2006, according to Pro Football Focus. A standout sample came against the Nik Bonitto and Jonathan Cooper-led Denver Broncos defense, which leads the NFL with 34 sacks while ranking second in pressure rate, as Jones was blitzed on a career-high 71.1 per cent of dropbacks, against which he completed 16 of 25 passes for 265 yards - the fourth-most in any game in the Next Gen Stats era (since 2016).
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The Colts are averaging a league-high 33.1 points per game having posted 232 points across seven games, with Patrick Mahomes the only other quarterback this century to help his offense put up 230 or more points across his first seven starts for a team. Nobody saw this Jones coming. Nobody has seen THIS Jones since he entered the NFL.
Jacoby Brissett, Brian Hoyer, Philip Rivers, Carson Wentz, Matt Ryan, Sam Ehlinger, Nick Foles, Gardner Minshew, Anthony Richardson and Joe Flacco have all started at quarterback for the Colts in their bid to find a long-term answer to Andrew Luck's shock retirement before the 2019 season. Who would have thought Jones would be their best shot yet at discovering a solution?
A dominant supporting cast
With Jones' hot streak is the latest nod to the power of a cohesive scheme tailored to its personnel and merged with perfectly-orchestrated balance. Steichen is giving his quarterback every opportunity to be successful, and Jones has largely answered the call with seamless execution.
Jonathan Taylor has exploded out the blocks to mount an MVP run as the most dangerous running back in the NFL alongside Atlanta's Bijan Robinson. And while you might argue Jones had the benefit of playing alongside a world-beater in Saquon Barkley in New York, the former Giants duo were never blessed with the same elite-calibre of offensive line - behind which he has been sacked just six times this season - nor did the system ever set them up for sustained meaningful production.
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Taylor just put up 132 yards from scrimmage and his third three-touchdown game of the season on Sunday as the Colts beat the Los Angeles Rams 38-24. In doing so he became just the third player in the last 20 seasons to score three-or-more rushing touchdowns in a season, while improving to a league-leading 697 rushing yards, 10 touchdowns and 37 first downs as well as a third-ranked 882 scrimmage yards.
"I mean the things JT is doing is kind of crazy," added Colts receiver Pittman Jr. "He's a threat to score anywhere, like on the field. Like we'd be backed up, we could be in the red zone, like JT is going to get the ball and he's going to go. So, it just keeps us going."
He is the staple of a fluid and versatile Colts running game that has flourished on its ability to hop between concepts according to opponent, again aided by the blocking in front of him. Steichen has in turn blended the consistent threat of Taylor with a heavy play-action use of Jones and his offense's three-level passing concepts in creating conflict for defenses stuck in limbo as to how they take Indianapolis on. It has become something of a mirror for Steichen's previous work alongside Jalen Hurts in Philadelphia, where a cocktail of option offense, unpredictable run concepts and spread looks fuelled his young quarterback's development.
Taylor, too, has also notably credited Jones for several smart and decisive decisions on check keepers in the option game this season. The chemistry has been immediate.
"I think we're just hitting on all cylinders right now," Taylor said.
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Steichen isn't overcomplicating his concepts, but instead providing multiple disguises and interpretations to keep opponents guessing. Rookie tight end Tyler Warren has been a defining ingredient by combining a traditional tight end role and alignment with snaps on the outside and in the backfield; he has taken direct handoffs as a ball-carrier, he has broken free into sail routes on flood concepts from out of the backfield, he has made catches in traffic. Warren is a modern offense's dream do-it-all cheat code. As much has continued to provide easy reads to Jones, who is winning against both zone and man coverage.
Warren has made 33 catches from a team-high 45 targets for 439 yards and three touchdowns, with his 255 yards after the catch good for fifth most in the entire league. On the outside a healthy Pittman Jr has become one of the most trusted pair of hands among NFL receivers - including an excellent contested catch option - while Alec Pierce is thriving as the main beneficiary of Steichen and Jones' aggression on deep throws with a second-ranked yards per reception of 19.8, and Josh Downs has emerged as a crucial slot contributor. It is beautiful spread offense chaos at times.
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On the other side of the ball Lou Anarumo is proving he remains one of the most frustrating defensive coordinators to decipher for opponents. The Colts continue to survive through multiple injuries to be one of the stingiest defenses in the league, averaging the eighth-fewest points allowed.
His unit is producing the sixth-highest pressure while blitzing at the 12th lowest rate, and is the only defense to force at least one turnover in every game so far this season. Nick Cross and Cam Bynum have become key disruptors in Anarumo's brain-jamming defense at safety as the Colts' 'Mad Scientist' and his menu of smoke-and-mirrors looks work back towards head coaching contention.
Jones and the Colts are the undoubted surprise package of the campaign, boasting the best record in the league approaching the half-way point of the season. They are playoff bound, Jones is flirting with an unforeseen new multi-year contract, Steichen is a firm Coach of the Year contender, Taylor is threatening to end the run of quarterback MVP winners and football has a new contender during a season in which nobody wants to run away as favourites.
The Baltimore Ravens, missing Lamar Jackson and marred by a porous, injury-stricken defense, look out of the picture. A Cincinnati Bengals team minus Joe Burrow is not the same threat, and the Buffalo Bills have questions to answer. The Colts having visited the playoffs since the 2020 season. Are Jones and co. the team to tackle Kansas City's AFC dominance?
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