The Colts are in trouble with Daniel Jones out for the season — How will it affect your fantasy football team?
The Indianapolis Colts were one of the feel-good stories in the first half of the NFL season. They were on a historic offensive pace from a points per drive standpoint and held the best record in the AFC at 7-2 in the first nine weeks of the season. The organization decided to go all-in on that version of the team and made a big swing to get cornerback Sauce Gardner at the NFL's trade deadline heading into Week 10.
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Everything has gone horribly wrong for the Colts since that moment. After narrowly escaping their Germany meeting with the Falcons via an overtime win, the Colts returned from their Week 11 bye to drop two games to AFC contenders in the Chiefs and Texans before their nightmare finally came to a head on Sunday in Week 14.
In the first quarter of their loss to Jacksonville, quarterback Daniel Jones went down with a non-contact injury on the opposite leg from the broken fibula he was playing through and slammed his helmet on the turf, signaling that he knew the worst outcome had been realized. The team quickly ruled him out with an Achilles injury on Sunday and announced on Monday that he was out for the season with a torn Achilles.
It's a devastating injury all the way around. This is brutal for Jones, who has struggled with other injuries in the past and now has his career-rebirth season cut short by another setback. The Colts' season, for all intents and purposes, ended on Sunday with their third-straight loss. The Athletic's Playoff Simulator now gives the Colts a mere 30% chance to make the postseason with games against the Seahawks, 49ers, Jaguars and Texans - all of which are playoff teams if the season ended today - down the stretch. They'll enter the offseason with questions about what to do with Jones, an impending free agent coming back from a major injury, without a first-round pick in either of the next two drafts.
Where do the Colts go from here?The Colts will be set to play out the string, staring down familiar questions about who will be under center for them the rest of the season. You can't even use this as a silver lining excuse to get a look at Anthony Richardson Sr. again because he's on IR with a fractured orbital bone injury he suffered in pregame warmups weeks ago, and doesn't sound close to getting back on the field.
That leaves sixth-round rookie Riley Leonard as the man who relieved Jones on Sunday and is the favorite to start at QB going forward, but even he is dealing with a knee injury that head coach Shane Steichen said leaves his status for Week 15 unclear. Seventh-year journeyman Brett Rypien is on the practice squad but they'll likely add another quarterback here in short order. Rookie tight end Tyler Warren, who has taken three snaps as a quarterback this year and thrown one pass, is the emergency quarterback. I certainly feel like everything I've written in the last few paragraphs is outlining some level of an emergency state.
Let's just, for the moment, assume it's Leonard who starts on Sunday and holds the job the rest of the season. Maybe he gets one look before Week 18 wraps up but based on the reporting around Richardson, Leonard being the guy down the stretch outside of injuries sure seems like the most likely outcome.
I'd categorize Leonard's debut in Week 14 as well, it could have been much worse." Leonard averaged -0.09 EPA per dropback on Sunday, which ranked 19th among 26 qualifying quarterbacks; not good, but not a disaster. He had a couple of moments as a scrambler, including a touchdown. We know, dating back to his college days, that he can take off and run.
As a passer, the goal was to get the ball out and win in the quick game. He averaged just 5.9 air yards per attempt and a 2.65 time to throw. A whopping 92 of his 145 passing yards came on throws of 10 or fewer air yards. That's likely the formula going forward for Leonard, who doesn't have the arm talent of Jones to push the ball deep and outside the numbers as well as Jones did this year. However, it's worth noting that Leonard did have one such throw on a back-shoulder touchdown to Michael Pittman Jr. that was called back due to a questionable OPI.
How Daniel Jones injury will impact Colts offenseHOW IS THAT AN OFFENSIVE PASS INTERFERENCE ON PITTMAN?!
- HiMyNameIsJC (@HiMyNameIsJC_) December 7, 2025
THAT'S A TOUCHDOWN!
WORST OFFENSIVE PASS INTERFERENCE CALL EVER?!#ForTheShoe
pic.twitter.com/2g4G9an6SL
Still, it's safe to expect the quick game and RPOs to be the main diet of the passing game under Leonard. On those throws of 10 or fewer air yards, Pittman led the way by a wide margin with a 38.5% targets per route run and Josh Downs was second with 25%. Pittman caught eight of 10 targets for 55 yards. If anyone is going to survive this switch at quarterback, it's likely Pittman on those quick in-breaking targets. That's especially true heading into Seattle this week, as the Seahawks play two-high at the eighth-highest rate in the NFL, per Fantasy Points Data. Pittman has been the guy in the receiver room against those looks.
Colts pass catchers' targets per route, percentage of team yards, and yards per route run when they face two-high vs. single-high coverage, per @FantasyPtsData.
- Matt Harmon (@MattHarmon_BYB) November 24, 2025
It can be tricky with these good and crowded rooms, but at least there is some clarity on who gets the boost based on... pic.twitter.com/MifWLwt6xt
Alec Pierce may stand to lose the most in the receiver room. Pierce has evolved his game this year beyond just the deep shots but he still makes his plays on vertical routes outside the numbers. He has amassed 171 yards on just six catches with a whopping 21.5 air yards per target on targets outside the numbers. That's just going to be difficult to maintain without Jones. He goes from a low-end WR2 with some volatility in fantasy football to an extremely boom/bust WR3, at best.
Warren may indeed take some gadget work under center but the primary base of his value going forward will be on short targets and dumpoffs to the flat. He's garnered plenty of looks in that area already, and leads all the main pass-catchers in yards after catch per reception this year at 7.0. He's still a TE1 but there is much less juice here with the downgrade in the offense.
That bring us to Jonathan Taylor. There's not actionable advice here; if you have Taylor you're playing him and that's an open and shut case. However, as much as the talk in NFL circles will be that they need to just get the ball in his hands as a runner as much as possible, he just can't maintain what he did at the start of the season if the offense goes from a historic pace to below average, much less if it bottoms out. He'll go from an unfair advantage in the first half to a mere mortal high-end fantasy back. It is what it is.
Finally, we need to address the twist this story took late on Monday evening. With Jones officially out for the season, the Colts reached out to an old friend of the franchise and Steichen. The team will have 44-year-old Philip Rivers in for a visit Tuesday.
There are plenty of jokes available to make in the wake of this headline, and that may be all we get out of this news. Reportedly, neither the Colts nor Rivers have even decided whether they want to bring him out of retirement to start for this team. He also has to take a physical, and who knows how that will go for a player who hasn't seen the field since the COVID season in 2020.
If this move happens, we can react to it then. Frankly, I'm not even sure what I'd add to the equation other than if we're expecting the offense to be quick-game focused with Leonard under center, that's essentially what the Colts primarily did with Rivers under Frank Reich in his final season. Perhaps the once-star quarterback can provide a better version of that and get the ball to Pittman with heavy volume underneath; the two played together in the wideout's rookie year. Then again, I don't even feel like the same human being I was back in 2020, much less am I ready to proclaim Rivers can be anything close to that still-good-but-diminished version of himself back in that lone season with the Colts.