If he can’t stay healthy, look out below.

However it plays out – and we’re quickly reminded the Jones hasn’t stayed healthy for an entire season since 2022 – he deserves great credit for working his way back so quickly from a serious injury. At the beginning of the rehab process, the Colts were hopeful but didn’t know for sure that Jones would return in time for training camp. Instead, he was back faster than anybody could have expected, much like Boston Celtics star Jayson Tatum, returning to the fold in time for minicamp earlier this summer. (The same surgeon operated on Jones, Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton; Jones has spoken to Haliburton about what the two have gone through in recent months.)

How’s he looked? Phenomenal. He’s throwing. He’s running. He’s navigating the pocket. If you didn’t know Jones was returning from a major injury, you never would have known while watching him operate during this year’s camp and pre-season.

Now, to quote Carlie Irsay-Gordon, we get to see how the movie ends. It started so beautifully, Shane Steichen and Jones coming together to produce an exhilarating 8-2 start while putting up historically gaudy offensive numbers. Steichen knows it’s a new season and he knows both he and Chris Ballard are on the hot seat. Make the playoffs – or make the playoffs and make some kind of a run – or both men are likely toast, Ballard more so than Steichen.

As Irsay-Gordon said several times during her post-season press conference after last season, she is “pissed” and she doesn’t care who knows it.

“We have been very clear with Chris and Shane that giving them another opportunity means that the sense of urgency for them to deliver and perform has never been higher,” the Colts co-owner said at the time.

The Vegas over-under for Colts victories is 8.5 wins, which sounds about right. I’ll take the over, but not by much. As I mentioned previously, I see them going 9-8. The offense will hum, as long as Alec Pierce returns quickly to form and Jones remains ambulatory. The offensive line figures to be better than solid, Jonathan Taylor, who has a healthy new contract, will do what he always does and if Pierce plays up to his contract, the weapons outside are formidable, if lacking depth.

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“Just a nose,” he said with a wry smile. “I’ve done it plenty of times before.”

Here’s what happened: With 8:24 left in the second quarter, North Texas defensive lineman Udoka Ezeani came on the pass rush, grasped and twisted the IU quarterback’s facemask, the contact opening a bloody gash on Hoover’s his nose. He looked like ancient boxer Chuck Wepner, also known as the Bayonne Bleeder. (Look him up, kids.) As Hoover shook himself off and threw a touchdown pass two plays later, Hoover’s face was a crimson mask, blood pouring from his nostrils and the cut on his nose.

“It looked a lot worse than it felt,” he said. “I didn’t even know it was bleeding like that.”

Asked about his toughness, he smiled.

“Guys are like, `Oh, this guy is tough,’ “ said Hoover, the TCU transfer. “You know, I really didn’t do anything.”

True enough. But it didn’t escape the notice of his teammates, many of whom were here last year when Fernando Mendoza was showing his mettle after the Caden Curry hit early in the Big Ten title game. Yeah, it looked worse than it was – I’m guessing he’ll get it X-rayed at some point – but it made a statement in an otherwise perfunctory IU performance, especially on the defensive side of the ball.

“He looked like he just got done with a boxing match or something,” said running back Turbo Richard, the Boston College transfer who had an effective IU debut running, catching passes and returning kicks. “But, I mean, he’s a warrior. He didn’t let it affect him. I respect that.”

Said linebacker Isaiah “Bones” Jones: “That’s what you want to see from a leader on offense, especially a quarterback. As you can see, he’s tough mentally and physically.”

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Maybe some humility, a little bit of contrition, a hint of remorse a few days after his arrest on an OWI that forced him to spend time in police custody.

Maybe I was harkening back to Pat McAfee’s post-swim press briefing, when the tearfully contrite Colts’ punter fell on his sword and expressed his embarrassment and disappointment after his late-night dip in the Broad Ripple Canal.

Now, I understand Allen can’t say much of anything – I’m sure his lawyers told him to say as little as humanly possible – but you would think, or hope, he would apologize for creating a distraction for the organization less than two weeks before the season opener.

But Allen said…nothing.

Well, close to nothing.

Asked how the last few days have unfolded and whether he’s discussed it with coaches and teammates, he said, “Let’s keep the discussions in house. Just focus on being a good football player.”

Asked a similar question about how he moves forward after the arrest, he said, “Because it’s an ongoing legal matter, we’re not going to discuss it.”

I asked Allen, “What do you want Indy fans to know about you after this was their first impression?”

He answered, “I take my job serious. I’m a good player and a try to be a good teammate.”

“Just a mistake?” I wondered.

He cast a glance my way.

“I’m asking the question,” I followed up.

He shrugged.

Look, I don’t know what happened that night, and as I think back to my reckless younger years, I can’t help but think, “There but for the grace of God go I.” In the pre-Uber days, mistakes were made. Thank heavens nothing horrible happened.

I am more than willing to give Allen grace, especially given his history of good works throughout his former communities, but I thought his brief interview with the media Thursday fell flat. A little bit of contrition, a hint of remorse, go a long way.

Ask McAfee.

I’m thrilled for Anthony Richardson.

After all the injuries and benchings and false starts behind center, Richardson, who had asked to be traded several months ago, is going into this season as the Colts’ No. 2 quarterback over Riley Leonard.

Can you imagine the amazing story Richardson could write if (heaven forbid) Daniel Jones goes down with an injury, Richardson steps in and plays exceedingly well. Now, I’m not saying Richardson versus Leonard was some kind of clash of the titans, but it’s hard to argue against the idea that Richardson performed better than Leonard in the three preseason games. In a sense, this is Richardson’s best/last chance to find his way into NFL playing time. It can’t be easy, navigating a young career in which he already has been cast as a draft bust, but to Richardson’s credit, he’s continued to work, continued to grow, continued to be a good teammate.

And now he’s just a snap away, a snap behind a player, Daniel Jones, who hasn’t stayed healthy for an entire season since 2022.

If you’d have asked me a few months back, I would have sworn Richardson had a foot-and-a-half out the door. But here’s the truth: Nobody wanted him. I mean…nobody. And it’s not like the Colts were holding out for a major return. They would have dealt him for a ham sandwich. But there are still lots of questions about his health, specifically his vision after that terrible and fluky injury last season. Teams weren’t willing to touch him with a 10-foot pole.

So he’s back, probably in the last place him and his agent thought he would be.

“I’ve been pretty consistent with Anthony.,” Ballard said Tuesday. “We forget how young he is sometimes. Really proud of his growth. There was a little bit of rough start against New England with the turnovers. There were two times in camp that I said, `OK, he’s really starting to show some poise. The two-minute (drive) against New England, remember, we’re backed up. I think it was 38 seconds left, he gets us into field goal range to give us a chance to get points. And then during the Atlanta scrimmage, he had a tremendous two minute, so it’s been fun to watch Anthony’s growth.”

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I’m going to say something outlandish…

Not only will the defending national champions be a contender for the national title yet again, I believe they are capable of being every bit as good, every bit as dominant as last year’s perfect team.

Now, does that mean they’re going to repeat at 16-0 and blow out almost everybody on the path to a national championship? Not necessarily. So many things have to go right, just like last year in a season punctuated by Fernando Mendoza’s late-game TD pass to Elijah Sarratt against Iowa, like Omar Cooper Jr.’s toe-tap touchdown in the back of the end zone against Penn State.

But last year was not some kind of miracle.

At the very least – the very least – the sixth-ranked Hoosiers will be back in the College Football Playoff for the third time in Curt Cignetti’s remarkable tenure in Bloomington.

(It amazes me that IU is ranked that low. In the most recent coaches’ poll, IU received the second-most first-place votes from the coaches, but as the No. 6 ranking suggests, several coaches tabbed the Hoosiers as the 14^th team in the nation, or thereabouts. If they were Alabama or Oregon or Ohio State and did what the Hoosiers did last season, they’d be ranked first in the country. Top three at the very least.)

True, they’ve lost several elite players, notably Fernando Mendoza, D’Angelo Ponds, Aidan Fisher, Mikhail Kamara, Pat Coogan and others. But this team isn’t a one-hit, or even two-hit wonder. Once again, they are loaded, having brought in a top 10 portal class to go with the returning players. Consider, IU has eight players who were recognized as preseason All-Americans, including defensive tackle Tyrique Tucker and offensive tackle Carter Smith. Beyond that, they retained their entire assistant coaching staff, most notably offensive coordinator Mike Shanahan and defensive coordinator Bryant Haines.

They’re stacked: Defensive linemen Mario Landino. Linebackers Isaiah “Bones” Jones and Rolijah Hardy. Offensive linemen Drew Evans and Bray Lynch. Wide receiver Charlie Becker. Cornerback Jamari Sharpe. And the list goes on. And they could be even more imposing if the courts rule favorably on the eligibility of defenders Stephen Daley and Kellan Wyatt.

Most important, though, they have Cignetti, the miracle man, who has taken the once-losingest Division 1 program in college football history and turned it into the country’s unlikeliest juggernaut.

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In the end, this team will go as far as Josh Hoover, the fifth-year quarterback from TCU, takes them. Again…very bullish. He arrives in Bloomington as a wildly productive passer who was ranked as the fifth-best quarterback available in the portal. By season’s end, though, I fully expect him to be one of the nation’s elite signal-callers. Why? Because when you play for Cignetti and Shanahan, you put up great numbers and win post-season awards. Everywhere Cignetti has coached, the quarterback has his best-ever season and leads the conference in passing and in other statistical categories.

Can he replicate what Mendoza accomplished last season? I’m not betting on Hoover to win the Heisman like Mendoza did, but I fully expect him to have his best-ever collegiate season and to lead the Hoosiers back to the CFP.

People forget, Mendoza struggled when he arrived in Bloomington. During spring practice prior to last season, Cignetti had questions about the Cal transfer, and remember, Mendoza didn’t play particularly well in the last year’s season opener against Old Dominion.

The argument can be made that Hoover arrives with greater fanfare than Mendoza, who was hamstrung by a poor supporting cast at Cal. Yes, Hoover has had some interception issues during his TCU days, having thrown 24 picks the previous two years. But pair a quarterback with Cignetti and Shanahan, he has a way of becoming the best version of himself.

“We’d like to see him (Hoover) play a little faster at practice with a little more urgency and drive every ball,” Cignetti said. “I don’t know what was asked of him where he came from in terms of practice, but no plays are like a throw off, not even in walk-through. We’re excited about Josh, first of all; let’s be clear about that. But he has a body of work in terms of winning football games, passing yards, touchdown passes. Got to clean up some of the turnovers, obviously, which (TCU) coach (Sonny)n Dykes made light of.

“But when Josh got here, he met his two new best friends: A great defense and a really good run game…”

Hoover’s physical gifts are ample; the question is whether he can replicate Mendoza’s physical and mental toughness, his ability to meet the moment, his resilience and decision-making ability. If past is prologue, Hoover figures to have a career-best season. It’s the Cignetti Effect.

Hoover has another advantage; he’s surrounded by elite playmakers.

As good as the Hoosiers running game was last year with Roman Hemby and Kaelon Black, I fully expect it to be even better this season with Turbo Richard (great name), Khobie Martin and Lee Beebe Jr. They’re so good, I doubt Hoover will throw for 3,400 yards, as he did his previous two seasons at TCU.

And on the outside, well, look out. The Hoosiers have arguably the best one-two punch at wide receiver with Becker and Michigan State transfer Nick Marsh. Both young men are expected not only to be first-round draft choices, they are both viewed as top 10 draftees. I know, I know…better than Cooper and Sarratt? Yes, absolutely. Becker, who had just nine catches the first nine IU games last season, went bananas down the stretch after he filled in for Sarratt, who was injured. He is poised for a monster season along with Marsh, the electric receiver from Michigan State.

How do you improve on perfection?

We’re going to find out soon.

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Enjoy the wild ride.

If you’ve spent any time around training camp, you know this:

Jones looks phenomenal.

It’s extraordinary how quickly and how completelyhe has come back, returning to the lineup without showing a single sign of being limited in any appreciable way. The Colts haven’t had to limit his participation once this entire preseason. It took him just 7 ½ months, roughly 235 days to return to training camp after his Dec. 7, 2025 injury against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Compare that with Boston Celtics star, Jayson Tatum, who took roughly 300 days (just under 10 months) to return to the floor. And if you’re wondering about the Pacers’ Tyrese Haliburton, who also tore his Achilles in the NBA Finals against OKC and was operated on by the same doctor who fixed Jones, it will have been 472 days, or 15 ½ months, before he returns to the floor for the Oct. 7 season opener.

Mind you, Jones has not played a full, injury-free season since 2022, when he led the New York Giants to the playoffs and a post-season victory. Given that troubling history, there’s always going to be questions about his ability to survive the season.

But based on what we’ve seen thus far – Jones ripping the ball, Jones showing elusiveness, Jones scrambling in and out of the pocket – there’s every reason to be bullish about this offense — especially with the addition of Keenan Allen.

“He looks great; I feel like he’s done everything right this camp,” said wide receiver Josh Downs. “…He hasn’t lost a step from last year, so I’m excited to see him going into week one.

“When Jayson Tatum came back pretty quick (last year after tearing his Achilles), I asked Daniel about it. He’s like, `Well, I can probably come back quicker because basketball and football are so different.’ So I knew he was doing everything he was supposed to do, and then when I saw him in the spring taking reps, I already knew he was going to be ready for camp because I was surprised he was even taking reps that early.”

I will, however, tell you what I am worried about with these Indianapolis Colts:

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A few days ago, the self-styled sleuth and podcaster published on X that the Buffalo Bills’ Ed Oliver lost his 2-year-old son in a drowning accident at the family home back in June.

The credentialed Buffalo media, the men and women who are there every day, knew about the Oliver family tragedy this summer, but were asked by the Bills to hold the story until Oliver himself felt empowered to share it himself.

It’s not a whole lot different than our situations here in Indy the last few years. A number of reporters knew Ryan Kelly was missing time to attend to a serious family matter involving his pregnant wife but chose to hold the story and accept the Colts’ designation that he was out for “personal reasons.” Same with Braden Smith: It was no great secret he was seeking help for mental health problems, but again, it was left to Smith to share the story after he returned from treatment. In both cases, the Colts designated the players’ absences as “not injury-related – personal matter” or just “personal matter.” They were honest, or as honest as they cared to be.

Now, I’m not sure how enthused I am about the Bills designating Oliver as having an “unspecified, undisclosed injury” instead of saying “personal reasons,” but the Bills’ staff insisted it pertained to a real injury and not related to him taking time to grieve his personal tragedy. Whatever.

The point remain, Tony Farmer is a sleazebag.

And not only did he publish his tweet to his 24,000 followers, he later castigated Buffalo media publicly on social media and DM’ed several of them to take issue with their universal decision not to share the awful news of the drowning. I don’t know Farmer; I know I blocked him long ago for some good reason, but I have to wonder if this guy has a beating heart. What kind of darkness lurks within?

We’re not talking about Kyle Shanahan getting into a serious pre-season auto accident. That story went unreported for weeks; I would have thought Adam Schefter would have been all over that given his relationship with the Shanahan family. Maybe he knew and held it; I have no idea. But Shanahan is as public a figure as it gets, and while I understand that July is a super-slow time for the NFL with no media availability, you would have thought it would have leaked, especially in a huge market like the Bay Area.

That most certainly should have been reported.

The Ed Oliver family tragedy, no.

There are just some human lines you don’t cross. More and more, fantasy football and gambling have reduced athletes to mere numbers, one-dimensional figures who don’t have families and fears of their own. They’ve been thoroughly de-humanized, there for our entertainment. Farmer did the same thing here, and to what end? I’ve heard the terms “engagement farming” and “clout chasing” – I don’t know what those are – but it sounds about right. I don’t know if it was clickbait; it wasn’t a hot take or anything. Rather, it was some dope who fancied himself as either Woodward or Bernstein and thought he was being a hero for reporting something nobody else was willing to disclose to the public.

I commend the Buffalo media for their restraint.

Look, if Farmer cross-referenced Oliver’s address with property tax records, good on him for doing some investigative reporting.

The question is, what do you do with that information?

This is what I would do and what most decent journalists would do: We’d get the records, ferret out the information and then reach out to the Bills. At which point, the Bills would have appealed to Farmer’s humanity and asked him to hold the story. Or he would have asked the Bills if Oliver was ready to share his story, and then gone from there based on the answer.

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Would Farmer have accommodated the organization?

Based on his actions this past week, I’m guessing not.

Now, let me tell you a story about my scoop of a highly sensitive story and how I handled it — right or wrong:

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Beyond that, there was little to nothing to recommend this dreadful affair, during which the Colts’ special teams continually committed penalties, the offense went nowhere (and added plenty of drive-stunting penalties of their own) and the defense – oh, the defense – gave up 461 yards and 23 first downs while managing just 164 yards of offense and nine first downs.

How bad was it? The Colts didn’t convert a first down until there were 10 ½ minutes left in the game. Until then, they were 0-for-9, finishing 1-of-11. They didn’t reach the red zone until seven minutes remained. By then, there couldn’t have been 15,000 people, tops, left in the cleared-out stands.

Can’t blame them.

• We have a kicker controversy brewing, and while it’s not as fun as a good, old-fashioned quarterback controversy, Blake Grupe versus Spencer Shrader looks like it’s going to come down to the final preseason game next Saturday at home against the Detroit Lions.

Here’s the issue:

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Even at age 34 and entering his 14^th season in the NFL, he hasn’t lost a step.

For a very important reason: He never had a step to begin with.

“Starting out my rookie year, I was slow, so I guess I haven’t lost any speed,” he joked Wednesday at the team’s penultimate practice at Grand Park. “I’m just able to get open, and I haven’t lost any speed. Nothing has really left me.”

He’s not joking. At his pro day at Cal in 2013, he ran twin 40’s in 4.71 and 4.75 seconds. Granted, he was just getting over a knee injury – he said he was only 85 percent during the draft process -- but any way you cut it, that’s really slow for a wide receiver. I mean, really slow. There are defensive tackles who can run that speed.

Despite that, draftniks and NFL scouts still saw something in the big-bodied Allen, who was ultimately drafted in the third round.

“Three months ago, I said that if you watch this kid on tape, if you like him, he’s Anquan Boldin (the former Arizona star),” said Mike Mayock, then a draft analyst for the NFL Network. “If you don’t like him, he’s speed deficient. So I don’t really care what he runs in the 40. To me, on tape, he’s a 4.55 guy all day long…I believe in his toughness and his hands.”

Turned out, Mayock was right. There’s speed and there’s competitive speed, and Allen had competitive speed. He was never going to become a burner who takes the top off a defense, but at 6-2, 210, he was a big body who understood leverage, becoming a huge weapon on third downs and in the red zone. He comes into his 14^th season having played 171 games with 1,055 receptions for 12,051 yards, an 11.4 yards-per-catch average and 70 touchdowns. After a career where he spent 13 years with the Chargers and one with the Chicago Bears, Allen became an alpha receiver despite his lack of top-end speed. Last year, he led the Chargers with 81 catches for 777 yards, four touchdowns and a 9.6 yards-per-catch average.

No, he’s not the receiver he once was, when he produced five 100-plus reception seasons out of seven from 2017 or 2023. The years he fell short of 100, he had 96 one year and missed six games in the other. He’s made six Pro Bowls and eventually will become a candidate for the Hall of Fame.

I know what you’re saying:

“Andre Johnson.”

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Everybody is ready to pounce on the new Pat McAfee album, “Diary of a Polarizing Figure,” because they feel he’s already over-exposed – yes, even more than Peyton -- he’s got a gigantic ego run amok and he’s lost all sense of humility and reality.

This album is his “Melania,” or like Eddie Murphy’s foray into recording - remember “Party All the Time”? – a vanity project because, as the website Awful Announcing put it recently, “Pat McAfee’s music album is the epitome of someone who can’t be told no anymore.”

So maybe he doesn’t have a lot of people – besides his wife and young daughter -- telling him no.

But this dude’s whole life is about refusing to take no for an answer.

It’s why he is where he is.

A story:

My buddy at The Athletic, Zak Keefer, uncovered this story a couple of years ago for the Indianapolis Star:

When McAfee was a senior in high school, his parents told him they would not pay to send him to the prestigious Ray Guy kicking showcase In Florida. After all, he already had a scholarship to Kent State in Ohio. Well, he wouldn’t take no for an answer. He borrowed $100 from a friend, turned it into $1,400 in an illegal poker game in his hometown of Pittsburgh and earned enough to get down to Miami. There, he kicked beautifully and received more scholarship offers, including one from the school he ultimately attended, West Virginia.

Another story:

When he was making the transition from punting to joining the media, almost everybody told him no, or at least expressed doubt. During a conversation before his regrettable Barstool TV introduction, he asked my opinion, and I told him I thought he should try to milk two more years of NFL contracts and then dive into the media. And I can promise you, I wasn’t the only one making that argument.

“Media will still be there in two-three years,” I said. “Might as well bank another couple of million kicking a football.”

He didn’t take no for an answer. He couldn’t be moved off his position. This was, after all, a guy who gave himself the name “Pat McAfee Show” on his then-Twitter account long before he’d ever done a show of any kind. He loved football, but he loved TV and especially the talk shows. Truth is, he wanted to retire and go into media years before he ever left the Colts. He told head coach Chuck Pagano on at least one occasion, and probably more.

As for this album, I listened to it this weekend, and I have a review (I haven’t written a music review since I wrote one in high school on Jethro Tull’s 1974 album “War Child” in high school.)

I also know that I know next to nothing about music – I played the sax for a few years as a kid – so I reached out to local and regional country/rock artist and friend Corey Cox, who was kind enough to share his thoughts on “Polarizing Figure.”

Without further ado, here are our reviews:

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Which is to say…he showed flashes. Of excellence. Of cluelessness. All of it.

When he ran, it was hard to resist salivating over the thought that Shane Steichen might keep him around and design a Taysom Hill-like role for the fabulously gifted Richardson. But then he missed a layup to a wide-open Will Mallory and fumbled when he fought for the first-down marker, and you were jostled back into reality. At least he stayed healthy, and yes, it was nice to see him after that dreadful eye injury that could have ended his career then and there.

Good.

Bad.

But rarely indifferent.

In the end, he completed 11 of 14 passes for 145 yards and ran for an additional 53 yards. That’s a lot of offense for one half, and if the Colts could have held onto the ball (and had the Ulysses Bentley non-fumble been called correctly), they would have found the end zone with more regularity. As it was, they were moving the ball up and down the field with relative ease. But they couldn’t finish, a popular observation these last several years.

At this point, I’m really rooting for Richardson. Not necessarily to beat out Leonard, but to find a spot somewhere on somebody’s roster as a second-string quarterback, whether it’s here of somewhere else. I don’t know that he’s one of the top 32 quarterbacks in the league – in fact, I know he’s not – but he’s surely in the top 64. At the very least, you’d think somebody, maybe even the Colts, would take a flyer on Richardson just for his athletic profile.

Look, some of his situation was his fault. No question, he was handed the keys to the car and wrecked that sucker within weeks. He was immature – of course he was, he was in his early 20’s – and he didn’t have any earthly clue how to be a team leader. His work habits lacked. And he’s got no one else to blame for asking out of the Houston game because he was tired.

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The league, which can’t buy this kind of publicity, is grimacing all the way to the bank. Drama sells. Conflict rules. Especially now, in the current day, where every utterance is deconstructed into some binary right-left referendum, on sports, on culture, on everything.

Have you seen the TV ratings? The WNBA is exploding. And they are being led by this generational change-maker, Caitlin Clark, and a compelling, must-see-TV cast led by the dynamic Kelsey Mitchell, the irrepressible Sophie Cunningham and the under-appreciated Aliyah Boston. There’s a very good reason why every Fever game is televised. They sell.

The more my friend Christine Brennan talks on CNN, the more the NBC national news features clips of White’s fevered soliloquy, the more it raises interest in the WNBA. The league has its hardcore fans, the ones who paid attention before Clark came on the professional scene. But a lot of fans are newbies, and they can’t get enough of the craziness. You’re paying attention, right?

Who can’t wait for DiJonai Carrington, the woman who committed the hard foul against Cunningham, then blamed her ejection on “white privilege,” to come face the Fever again, specifically Aug. 23 in Chicago?

Ratings, already soaring, will be through the roof.

The WNBA is trying to address all the nonsense, their anti-hate task force meeting virtually this week to address some of the nastiness inside the league and out, but as long as there’s social media and trolls who can’t resist a delicious story line, I’m not sure what they can accomplish.

Plus, the league lack’s the leadership plays a significant role as commissioner Cathy Engelbert continues to establish herself as one of the most feckless commissioners in pro sports.

I also want to take the media to task.

Yeah, my friends and colleagues.

There’s been a lot of tsk-tsk-ing going on, media voices decrying the off-the-court weirdness, insisting we all need to focus on the ample talent in the WNBA, write about all the good stories – like Kelsey Mitchell pursuing a doctorate while sitting second in the league in scoring behind A’ja Wilson.

“It’s awful,” they say and write after every WNBA-related outrage, whether they’re angry fouls or imprudent tweets like the one penned by Carrington. “It’s just terrible we can’t make space for any of the league’s truly inspiring stories.”

Bull.

Shit.

Look, if it bleeds, it leads. In my business – and I’m as guilty of this as anybody – conflict and drama are the coin of the realm.

I’m going to be painfully honest here: All those happy years of the Colts going 13-3 and clinching the top seed in the AFC weeks before the end of the season, that was great for fans, but a little bit boring for a columnist like me. Really, how many times can you write that Peyton and Marvin and Reggie and Dwight and Robert (and others) are remarkable players? I joke around with my old Star colleague, Mike Chappell, who loved all the success because it made for a happy, obliging locker room. For me, as a columnist, it kind of sucked. I appreciated their weekly excellence but found myself struggling for compelling new ways to tell their story.

Now, everybody is jumping on the WNBA-is-toxic bandwagon.

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It’s become a front-and-center national story, everybody (myself included) chiming in. The truth is, Mitchell’s academic pursuit is a one-day story – a great and inspiring story, but one with a short shelf life. But it can’t compete with the daily drama that infests the WNBA. It’s an easy column. It’s many easy columns. Drama and conflict sell, whether the WNBA will admit it or not.

Media has changed in recent decades. Juicy controversies sell now more than ever. How often is the WNBA a significant story on the network news? It was this week, with everybody having something to say about Stephanie White’s angry soliloquy before this week’s Liberty game at Gainbridge.

Maybe they’ve got a Kelsey Mitchell story in the works. I have no idea, but I’m going to guess: No, they don’t.

We say we are disappointed and disheartened by the way the league is being hijacked both from the outside and from within, but let’s be honest as media members: This stuff is great for business.

At my old place of employment, The Athletic, you were largely judged on how many subscribers you produced with your copy. Well, I can promise you, every time James Boyd, the one survivor in The Athletic’s Indianapolis purges, gets great numbers any time he writes about Caitlin Clark or any of the madness surrounding the league.

Look, I don’t blame White for going scorched-earth the other night. It’s got to be hugely frustrating to have your leadership questioned every time Clark misses a shot. It’s got to be a huge challenge, keeping the team united when the trolls and the ultra-right-wing sports bloggers make an issue of White’s post-game quotes after Cunningham got clothes-lined.

In fact, if the Fever, one of the three or four true candidates for a WNBA championship, continues to play well – they’ve won eight of their last 11 games – we will look back to this moment when White went off and Clark offered a full-throated defense of her coach, and remember this as the night when it all came together and sent the Fever on the way to a title.

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I’m not suggesting White did it to inspire her team, or anything like that. She did it out of pure anger and exhaustion, having been criticized (again) for her comments after the Liberty game, wounded by suggestions she failed to support her own player.

She’s trying to keep her team focused and united. All the outside garbage doesn’t help, not a bit.

But I’m not convinced the media feeding frenzy is, in itself, a terribly bad thing.

If anything, it raises the WNBA’s profile as an endlessly compelling league, with personalities and conflict and all the things that draw eyeballs.

I think we can appreciate the quality of play and dive into all the drama at the same time, like walking and chewing gum. We know there are great stars in this league. We know there’s great basketball being played, especially by the rising Fever.

Sports are built on a foundation of personalities. Look at Cunningham, a good but not great player, an important role player for the Fever. But she’s front and center with all her media ventures and her fashion sense and her winning personality. Everybody knows who Sophie is, as much as they know Kelsey and Aliyah – if not more. (Clark is in her own stratosphere).

Like her or not, Carrington is another big personality who is known outside of Chicago. Maybe for all the wrong reasons – I mean, “white privilege”…really? – but she brings a Dennis Rodman vibe to the proceedings. Every sport needs its bad guys (or gals), and Carrington fills that role, however unwittingly.

Now…did Fever fans really boo White when she was introduced during the Liberty game?

I was there and I would say: Mildly. You heard a vague undercurrent of dissatisfaction, a few scattered boos, but that’s about it.

What was important was how Clark addressed it later, saying it made her “sick” to hear those random boos.

White didn’t deserve any. Does anybody remember how White, a top-level WNBA coach for many years, led the Fever to the league semifinals and nearly knocked off the eventual champion Aces with a depleted roster one year ago. No Clark. No Cunningham. They were starting players who’d been in a Fever uniform for mere weeks. And yet, the Fever were right there in Game Five, hanging in there until Mitchell fell prey to full-body cramping that forced her out of the action. Took the Aces to overtime. Incredible.

Now they’re 21-12 and playing their best basketball of the season, and while everybody is chasing Minnesota, the Fever have every opportunity to reach the Finals and even win them. True, they have a ton of talent, but consider the job White has done, keeping the WNBA’s version of The Beatles on task and headed in the right direction.

There are unique challenges that come with coaching Clark and leading the most visible team in the league. White has to worry about a whole lot more than X’s and O’s.

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You’re free to say nothing.

Like Caitlin Clark, who has smartly avoided the political and cultural minefield that is the question of transgender women competing besides biological females.

She’s been asked the question -- a question inspired by Sophie Cunningham’s months-old quotes from an ESPN profile addressing the transgender issue. Cunningham said, and doubled down later, that transgender women should not be allowed to compete with cisgender women.

And Clark has responded with a word salad that didn’t directly address the issue.

And that’s fine.

It’s more than fine.

It’s smart, exceedingly smart.

Back in Michael Jordan’s days, he was sometimes asked why he didn’t address political and cultural issues. Specifically, he refused to endorse Democratic candidate Harvey Gantt when he ran in the 1990 North Carolina Senate race against an old-school Republican fossil named Jesse Helms. Asked why he wouldn’t put his name behind the Democratic candidate, he famously said, “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”

And Clark, when she’s not trying to lead the Fever to a title, is in the business of selling her new line of Nike sneakers.

I don’t make a habit of feeling badly for professional athletes – all things considered, they’ve got it pretty good – but I feel for Clark. She’s a human Rorschach Test; people look at her and see what they want to see. As Adam Silver said a few months back, she has become a “political football.” In today’s world, you get criticized for speaking out – especially if it’s an unpopular opinion --- and you get criticized for saying nothing. If Clark chooses to play it safe at this point in her career or even for the rest of her career, that’s her prerogative.

Remind me: Did we ask Peyton Manning his views on various issues of political and cultural import?

Not that I can recall.

As for Cunningham…good for her. Freedom of speech (at least for now) is a beautiful thing.

I know the interview was several months ago for an ESPN profile on Cunningham, and I’m aware that she doubled down before recently asking the media to cover basketball and not the culture wars. Good luck putting the toothpaste back in the tube. But she said what she said, and no, it doesn’t make her transphobic because she finds the idea of transgender women playing alongside cisgender players unsettling. Do transgender women have a physical advantage against biological women? I’ve looked throughout the internet and AI and have read several different conclusions. And if you spend any time on the web, you know a good portion of what’s out there is complete B.S.

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It seems to me that if they do have an innate physical advantage, they shouldn’t be on the same floor as biological females.

Conversely, if there’s no intrinsic advantage due to years of hormone therapy, I don’t see the problem.

I’ll leave it to the experts to make that determination.

Honestly, I’m inclined to say they don’t belong – seems like common sense to me -- but I’d be lying if I said I had all the information I need to reach a smart conclusion.

I do feel strongly about this: The whole issue is overblown. In all of the NCAA sports, just 10 athletes are transgender. I feel like when we take issue with the transgender athletes competing in women’s sports, we’re killing a cockroach with a nuclear device. It’s only a major issue because it’s been politicized and used as a chip in the culture wars. Do we really need state and federal legislation? Doesn’t seem necessary to me. Feels like people are punching down at a small group that is already marginalized.

Several WNBA types have entered the debate. Minnesota coach Cheryl Reeve wore a “Trans Kids Belong” shirt the day the Lynx took on Indiana in Minnesota; at one point before the game, Reeve and Cunningham had a very civil conversation where they shared their thoughts on the matter. Stephanie White acknowledged she hasn’t done a deep dive on the subject but added that exclusion of any sort is never an answer to a complicated question.

So…the basketball game Thursday night at Gainbridge.

They still play those, right?

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I’m sitting in my office at home late on Thursday night, and I’m trying to figure out exactly how in the hell the Fever just lost to the Las Vegas Aces, 86-84, in overtime.

Actually, I do know. Twice inside 10.9 seconds, the Fever went to the line with a chance to make it a two-possession game. But Kelsey Mitchell hit just one of two free throws and Clark, another deadeye free-throw shooter, missed both. Then Clark, guarded tightly by A’ja Wilson in the final seconds, turned the ball over, which led to the second of Chelsea Gray’s two buzzer beaters, the first forcing overtime, the second a game winner. Despite 22 Fever turnovers, they were right there, ready to dispatch the defending WNBA champions for the third time this season. And then they didn’t.

Clark knew she blew it and took full ownership after the game.

“Yeah, obviously, that just can’t happen,” she said glumly. “And those are free throws I usually make. Certainly frustrating. One of them (free throws) gives us a two-possession lead. I kind of cost my team there for sure, so that’s on me…Honestly, it was me that made costly errors for us. So that’s on me to help us win. That’s my job. That’s what I get paid to do.”

Said Stephanie White: “I mean, look, it’s easy in a game like this to think it comes down to one thing. For me, I look at that (Vegas) 15-0 run in the last three minutes of the second quarter (which cut into a 20-point Fever lead) and the 7-0 run (early in the third quarter). You know, that’s the gist of it. I look at our 22 turnovers. Gave them 18 points…It really came down to us giving them extra possessions with the turnovers and those runs at the end of the second and into the third.”

The ironic thing is, the Fever played some defense, which, as we all know, is not a strong suit. The question must be asked: Can they win a title playing sub-standard defense? Currently, Indiana ranks 12^th in the league in defense, an ominous statistic when you understand that 80 percent of WNBA champions ranked in the top three on defense. The only defensively-challenged team to win it all was the 2007 Phoenix Mercury, who were coached by fast-break guru Paul Westhead and led the league in scoring while placing last on defense.

The Fever were better Thursday night, allowing 86 points with an overtime period to the second-leading scoring team in the league. But it wasn’t quite enough.

White was asked, up three points, why not foul and turn it into a free-throw game in the final seconds?

“We knew what was coming and we were right there,” she said. “We talked about fouling, but they’re so good and they’re such veterans that if you get your hand in there just a little bit late, they’re going to go up into the shot and they’re going to bait you.”

It was all the opening Gray needed. She was the superstar guard on the floor Thursday night. For Clark, who also turned the ball over eight times and shot just 7-of-20 (2-of-10 from three), there will be better days.

Irsay-Gordon has made it abundantly clear: It’s playoffs or everybody goes.

Nobody knows that better than Ballard who, for some reason that eludes me, was asked if he’d like to sign a contract extension with just one year left on his deal. Kind of an odd question, to be honest, especially given the circumstances, but it did move Ballard to provide a revealing answer.

“Would you sign a contract extension?” he was asked.

“No, I wouldn’t do one,” Ballard said. “I wouldn’t do one. I’m in the last year of my deal. We need to win.”

A pause.

“We need to win,” he repeated.

Is it as simple as playoffs-or-bust? I think it goes deeper than that. I think it’s make-some-noise-in-the-playoffs or bust. Just showing up and losing in the first round should not be enough to save Ballard and Steichen, especially Ballard given his excruciatingly underwhelming 70-78-1 record since taking over the Colts. Indy, which used to ride herd over the AFC South, hasn’t won a division title in 11 years. No playoff victories in eight years.

This has got to be a massive breakthrough, the kind of season that almost makes you forget the previous nine years of mediocrity, and worse.

“We have been very clear with Chris and Shane that giving them another opportunity means that the sense of urgency for them to deliver and perform has never been higher,” co-owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon said at the close of last season.

Which sounds pretty clear, no?

Surely, Ballard and Steichen feel the heat. Or maybe they don’t. But they know the score.

.For the third or maybe fourth straight year, Ballard was asked about feeling the pressure. For the third or maybe fourth straight year, he kept it in perspective. Pressure, after all, is not knowing where your next meal is coming from, not knowing how you’re going to afford medical treatment. This is football, a game played by millionaires.

“Look, this is my 26th year in the league,” Ballard said. “And as a kid, if you would have told me I was able to work in football and do this for a career, I would have signed up 100 times over.

“Okay, the journey is different for everybody. I’m just a steward in this position. I’ve always believed that, and I’ll always do the best thing for the organization, both short and long term. That’s just how I tick and how I roll, but I don’t – I’m grateful that I’ve always had a job in this league that I have great respect for, and that will never change. The fun to me is the journey. That’s the fun part. Even the hard moments, compared to what other people have to go through, like they’re not really that – excuse my language, like they’re really not that hard. They’re judged rightfully so, which we should. We’re in the public eye, and we should be judged. But I get to do football every day, and I never take that for granted. I won’t ever take one day for granted.

“And look, I happen to be able to do it at the highest level, but I have such great respect for what the game of football gives people, okay? Not just players who play the game, but fans and the moments it makes. It’s an impactful sport. It’s into a fabric of our society, and I think it’s a great thing. I’ll never take one day for granted. So in terms of the pressure, look, nobody puts more pressure on me than myself to succeed. But like, if I’ve learned anything over the years, sometimes you’ve got to enjoy all of it – the good and the bad. That’s the fun part of this. The going through things that are not always easy with people that you care about and you respect. Man, not everybody gets to do that in life. I’ve been very fortunate.”

Every team, even the Super Bowl champion Seahawks, come into the new season with a number of ifs; even the most loaded teams, like the LA Rams, come into the new season with questions and uncertainty.

But the Colts, well, they’re filled with ifs all over the place, not a comfortable spot for a team that has to win – or else.

As always, it starts with the quarterback, Daniel Jones, who is coming off a torn Achilles but is prepared to start Wednesday’s training camp as a full-go. That’s the good news. The bad news is, he’s only stayed healthy for one season in his star-crossed career, that coming in 2022 when he led the New York Giants to a playoff appearance and a post-season victory.

Last season began with such promise, an 8-2 start, the Colts setting offensive records all over the place. Jones turned into a revelation and Jonathan Taylor was the early-season MVP winner. And then Jones got hurt, his game declined, and he ultimately tore his Achilles in Week 14 against Jacksonville. End of season. End of hope. The Colts dropped seven straight and watched their season circle the drain.

There are ifs all over the roster, but this is the most important one. If Jones can stay healthy – for a change – if he can play the way he performed the first nine, 10 games of last season, the Colts have every chance to win 10 games and reach the playoffs. They were that good early last season, until they lost Jones and were that bad.

The good news is, he’s at full-go heading into this camp. There will be no team-imposed limitations. Will he be the same player he was those first two games, especially early in the season? Probably not. Like Tyrese Halburton, who also suffered a torn Achilles, it’s going to take some time to get up to full speed.

The bad news is, the early-season schedule is a bear. If Jones isn’t highly effective, this could be over before it ever starts.

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Asked if there will be a post-surgery transition, Ballard said, “Of course. I mean, anytime you go through surgery, there’s always going to be a little bit of a new normal for any player. It doesn’t mean that they’re not great again – just a little bit of a new normal, and you’ve got to work through that.”

He continued. “I remember in Kansas City when he we had Alex Smith, and that’s who Daniel reminds me of. Alex’s first seven, eight years of his career, he had the same M.O, couldn’t quite stay healthy. He had some concussion issues at the end in San Francisco then we got him in Kansas City, he ended up having a really good run. Sometimes it’s a little bad luck. So hopefully we’ve got him in a good spot and he’ll be healthy and playing 17 games on into the playoffs.

The ifs are everywhere.

If DeForest Buckner can return from major neck fusion surgery… He acknowledged Tuesday that he will have to make some adjustments to his style of play. Can he continue to be a guy who routinely demands double teams and opens things up for his defensive-line mates? Good question, one that doesn’t yet have an answer.

If Charvarius Ward can avoid suffering another concussion… He had multiple concussions last season – suffered terribly with them – and thought seriously about retirement. As it is, he’s back, but one more concussion, which is always around the corner in this violent game, and he may very well hang them up entirely.

If Alec Pierce can return off the PUP list sooner rather than later, if this thin wide-receiver room can produce the way Ballard thinks it can… Right now, it’s Pierce, Josh Downs and tight end Tyler Warren, but there’s not much after that. Ballard made it clear Tuesday he’s in the market for a veteran wide receiver who can provide some production and depth.

If Laiatu Latu, the defensive end who had 8.5 sacks in his second season last year, can make the jump to double digit sacks and become the kind of difference maker the Colts expected him to become when he was the first defensive player selected in the 2024 draft. If the Colts can get decent play from the defensive ends opposite Latu. Currently, they’re talking about doing it by committee, which is a slick way of saying they don’t have anybody. Remember all those years with tight ends by committee? Or would you rather not?

If the Colts can find a backup running back to take some of the pressure and load off of Taylor. There’s second-year back DJ Giddens and seventh-round draft pick Seth McGowan. The good, old days of Zack Moss, who performed so well in 2023, are gone. This will be a position, among many, to watch at training camp.

If two rookes, CJ Allen and Bryce Boettcher, a second- and fourth-round pick, can hold up at the two linebacker spots. Ballard seems perfectly comfortable relying on the two young players. Allen, who will start the season on the PUP list, is trying to fill the sizable shoes of Zaire Franklin, who is now in Green Bay.

If Jalen Travis, who played well in Braden Smith’s place for short stretches of last season, can maintain that level or play and be a stalwart at right tackle.

Lots of ifs, starting with the most important if, the one that will go a long way toward determining the fate or Ballard and Steichen – if Jones can stay healthy and productive throughout the season. As we’ve learned through the past decade, without a quality quarterback, you have no chance.

I can see them winning 10 games if the ifs line up properly, if most or all of the questions are answered in the affirmative.

I can see them winning seven games if Jones is hurt or struggles, or if the pass rush fails to change games when a play is most necessary.

This is the last dance for these Colts, even as it related to training camp in Westfield. The organization is moving camp back to West 56^th Street next season and seasons beyond, which is really a damned shame for the fans who make the annual pilgrimage to Grand Park. But these things are not inexpensive. This was a financial decision, pure and simple.

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The question, ultimately, is whether Ballard and Steichen will still be at the helm when the team gets back together next year at the practice facility.

Lots of things have to go right.

Lots of ifs.

I find it sickening because the U.S. government, and President Trump, got personally involved and reached out to FIFA president Gianni Infantino and asked (demanded?) that Balogun’s one-game suspension after a red card be rescinded.

I don’t question the very real possibility it was a lousy call from the start. Or that the process for determining the decision to suspend was questionable. But the moment you have governments – in this case, the government of the host country – calling in favors from the same people who gave Trump that bogus peace prize, you have a serious problem.

Look, I’m like a lot of you: I pay attention to international soccer once every couple of years, either during the Olympics or the World Cup. I don’t claim any special expertise on the sport, although like so many observers, I thought the red card and resulting suspension were harsh and wrong-headed. In my view, it was worthy of a yellow card at most, especially during a hyper-physical game against Bosnia when it appeared the referee had completely misplaced his yellow card.

Like a lot of you, I have no issue with the U.S. Men’s National Team raising hell about the decision or appealing the call. What I have an issue with is the U.S. government getting involved. What I have an issue with is Trump and his cronies reaching out to the spineless Infantino and demanding a second look at the suspension.

Now, if the U.S. should continue to win, anything they accomplish will come with a giant bold-faced asterisk.

In the end, we have this feel-good American story on the 250^th anniversary of the country’s birth, being hijacked by the powers that be in the Trump administration and FIFA.

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Yes, red card suspensions have been lifted previously, including Ronaldo’s two-game suspension that was supposed to carry his team through the firs ttwo games of group play.

Here, though, is the elemental difference: In Ronaldo’s case, and all the other cases when suspensions have been lifted, the team’s governments did not get involved in what now appears to be a completely bogus process.

And before you say, “Well, you’re a liberal blowhard,” I’d have said precisely the same thing if former President Barack Obama had tried to pull off a similar trick – although, we all know that would never happen.

I’m hearing a lot of “the ends justify the means” nonsense in the past 12-24 hours. Yes, this was a right call. As I mentioned, the foul wasn’t worthy of a red card (and again, I’m no expert). But if it was going to be changed, it needed to be changed through proper channels, with the U.S. program appealing to FIFA without the aid of President Trump and his people. I’ll be very curious tonight to see how FOX TV’s analysts handle this outrage, whether they take issue with it (as they should) or whether they kowtow to the American audience who are thrilled to see Balogun back on the field.

At last check, around 9 in the morning, Belgium was being given an opportunity to appeal, but I don’t see this turning back the other way. Trump has spoken. Infantino has spoken.

I know I’m supposed to be a good American and continue to root for the USMNT tonight, but honestly, I’m torn. Not that I have any special feelings towards Belgium – I like their waffles – but this is so corrupt, so down-and-dirty, I find myself in the role of casual observer. Trump and Infantino (mostly Infantino) have undermined the credibility of this tournament, and anything the U.S. accomplishes now as they move on in the World Cup will be diminished. In a perfect world, Balogun refuses to accept the decision and sits this one out – yeah, sure – but that’s not going to happen.

The beautiful game has turned ugly.

Shameful, is what it is.

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That said, I have to be honest.

I’m not thrilled the Pacers traded into the second round, selection No. 32, and took the Boilers’ point guard as an eventual replacement for T.J. McConnell.

Here’s my problem (well, I have a lot of problems, but I’m speaking specifically here of the Smith selection):

He’s only 5-foot-10 ¼.

The NBA is not dominated by sub-6 footers, although Jalen Brunson, listed at 6-2, just led the Knicks to the NBA title. I did a little research and what I found was, roughly 25 sub-6-footers have gotten time in the NBA. Most of the names you don’t know; they never really made it at the highest level.

Some, you do: There’s Muggsy Bogues, there’s Nate Robinson, there’s former Celtic Isaiah Thomas, there’s Calvin Murphy, the only sub-6 footer in the Hall of Fame.

That’s not to say you can’t make it in the NBA if you’re below 6 feet. It is to say that the odds are deeply stacked against the league’s Lilliputians. (I speak as a 5-foot-7-inch Lilliputian myself.)

McConnell may be charitably listed at 6-1, but Smith is shorter than him. By quite a bit.

I asked Pacers general manager Chad Buchanan yesterday about Smith’s slight stature (he’s also light, just 166 pounds) and wondered how he would overcome the lack of size in the biggest, strongest league in the world.

“It goes back to his will to win, his ability to lead a team, his ability to get other people shots,” Buchanan said. “I think if you put shot makers around Braden and finishers around Braden, he can get opportunities for those players. His basketball IQ is extremely high…It’s his ability to see things that other players can’t see; that’s a special trait. I think in the second round, you’re looking for a special trait or a special skill…They’re in the second round because they all have something they have to overcome, otherwise they’d probably be in the lottery. For him, it’s going to be his size, but we’re betting on his toughness and his IQ. We’re betting on his will to win. It’s going to be a challenge, but we’ll be there to support him.”

I know, I know: Smith has always been on the small side and he’s consistently overcome the size issue. He overcame it at Westfield, where his jersey is retired and he earned Mr. Basketball honors. He overcame it at Purdue, where he bypassed Duke star Bobby Hurley for the most assists in college basketball history.

But the NBA is a different animal.

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In other words, there’s a reason there have been so few sub-6-footers have made it in this league. I’d rank Murphy, the old Rockets’ sharpshooter, as the best of the crop. But the list is not long.

Two reasons the Pacers selected him:

One, they got the hometown discount, Smith willingly accepting a two-way contract that will likely seem him bounce between Indy and Noblesville.

Two, the day will come when McConnell, now 34 years old, will need to be replaced. And who better to guide Smith than McConnell, another pint-sized guard who, unlike Smith, went undrafted and has become the biggest pest in the NBA?

But I keep coming back to these numbers: 5-10 ¼, 166 pounds.

How’s he going to defend in a league filled with oversized, hyper-physical guards? It’s a very small sample size, just one game, but I remember Smith struggling terribly in the national title game against UConn and current Spur Stephon Castle. The NBA is filled with guys just like Castle.

Now, in his defense, he won’t be playing 40 minutes per game the way he did at Purdue. Like McConnell, he can be a super-pest and pick up 94 feet for a couple of minutes at a time.

Again, I’m not being a contrarian for the sake of being a contrarian. But I think there’s a tendency to overstate the abilities of players we see on a regular basis. Smith was a high school and college superstar, a one-of-a-kind player. But now he’s joining the NBA, and that 5-10 ¼ number gives me pause.

They’re killing the golden goose in the WNBA. Not that Caitlin Clark wants to be viewed as some kind of a victim – I tend to think it kills her to be cast this way – but the truth is the truth.

After a rookie year when she was consistently cheap-shotted, we saw it again this week in the Fever’s second of back-to-back home games against the Phoenix Mercury. First, Alysa Thomas, a woman with a Bill Laimbeer type of reputation, kneed Clark in the groin. Later, she buried her fist in Clark’s neck as Clark lay flat on the floor. No call. Went to the review. No call.

One day later, the WNBA, which seemed wholly ill-prepared to handle Clark’s arrival three years ago, deemed the punch to the throat a Flagrant 2 and worthy of a one-game suspension.

Which didn’t do the Fever any good, the home team losing by a bucket in another game when they scored 100 points and somehow found a way to lose. (The putrid lack of defense is another story altogether.)

In the same game, the Mercury’s Valeriane Ayayi stepped under Clark during a 3-point shot attempt, taking away her landing area. It should have been a foul. It should have been a flagrant. No call. They reviewed. Still no call. As a result, Clark injured her back and eventually was sent back to the locker room for treatment.

I’m not one who routinely bashes officials – I think that’s the easy way out – but the officiating in the WNBA stinks. And it takes a month and a half to execute a review, killing the game’s momentum, and still, they get it wrong all the time. (The league should have help next year when it’s expected they will have an office in Secaucus, N.J. to help with reviews – just like the NBA. That should expedite matters and should bring some level of accountability and maybe, just maybe, consistency.)

There was a reason why Fever coach Stephanie White took almost 40 minutes before she met with the media after the game. She wanted to review the calls. She wanted to pull her message together. She wanted to gather her composure. And then she let loose.

“The fist in the throat is crazy,” she said. “It’s crazy. It’s dangerous,”

And…

“The reckless closeout (by Ayayi) that they actually reviewed and the foot still comes down on top of the defender’s foot that wasn’t upgraded? I don’t know because that’s like a do-over on a test. How do you screw it up again?”

And…

“You’re coming in here aware of what happened two nights ago (when things got chippy) and that shit still happens? Absolutely unacceptable.”

And…

“We spent all offseason looking at officiating. And I still say the one thing that we keep asking for is consistency. She is not called the same way everybody else is called.”

As for the commissioner, Cathy Engelbert, she strikes me as being completely clueless and ill-prepared for the league’s close-up. From the moment Clark landed in the W, the league has had no plan for how to handle her impact. I still remember when Clark and the Fever flew commercial to a pre-season game in Dallas her rookie year, at which point she was accosted by media and paparazzi in the airport. It was only then that the league figured out it was time to fly privately.

I’m not suggesting that other players are immune from the rough stuff, nor am I saying that Clark deserves special treatment. What she deserves is fairness. What she deserves is some accountability from a league that is supposed to be celebrating her game-changing arrival, and not trying to get her killed. I don’t know it’s jealousy or something more sinister, but Clark has taken a beating since the moment she arrived, harkening all the way back to the Chennedy Carter incident.

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I’ve heard people say she’s hard to officiate, like she’s Zach Edey or something.

I don’t know, a fist to the throat?

That seems pretty simple and straightforward, doesn’t it?

That’s not to say that Braden Smith, the former Purdue star and college basketball’s assist king, compares with Brunson, who is a one-in-a-million player who is 6-2 (three inches taller than Smith) and is uniquely gifted with an ability to use angles and his will and his mind to wear down opponents. It is, instead, a fact that provides hope to player like Smith, who isn’t 6-foot on a good day (he measured out at 5-10 1/4).

Well, maybe not hope, necessarily – that may be the wrong word -- but it’s confirmation that there’s still room in the NBA for the smaller player. It does not go without notice that Brunson and Smith had similar statistics during college, both were and will be a second-round pick and both are 6-2 or shorter.

“I don’t think (the NBA Finals) made me think differently, but it definitely gave hope to people our size,” Smith said Monday after he, Purdue teammate Trey Kaufman-Renn, and others did a pre-draft workout for the Pacers. “I know he’s (Brunson) a little taller than me, but to see that people that size, they have a chance, that it is possible, it’s doable and obviously I have enough confidence in myself, in my game and my ability to go out and perform to be special like that.

“…At the end of the day, it gives a lot of people hope and especially with that run (the Pacers had), like with TJ (McConnell) and (Andrew) Nembhard, like it was good to see that it gave smaller guards a lot of hope.”

Speaking of McConnell, who went undrafted and forged a decade-long career:

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This much I know, too.

He’s not a flamethrower. He’s not a hot-take artist.

You know who’s a flamethrower, or was when he was writing more regularly?

Me.

And I don’t think I’m speaking out of school when I add the Star’s Greg Doyel to that list.

As columnists, it’s our job to stir the pot when it’s necessary, be critical when the situation requires criticism. Our job is to bring eyeballs to our publications, and we do that by sharing our informed opinions.

Scott is not a columnist. He’s a straightforward beat reporter who covers the news of the teams with unrivaled thoroughness and professionalism. Along with the Dustin Dopirak, Tony East and Chloe Peterson, he stands out as the ultimate straight shooter. The truth is, Scott is good for both organizations, serving hardcore readers around Indy and the entire country who read his site.

I mean, if you wanted to pull a credential, which should never happen unless it’s under the most grievous circumstances, you should pull mine. Or Doyel’s. (For the record, it was Gannett, the Star’s parent company, that decided to pull Gregg from Fever coverage for the one year after his unfortunate exchange with Caitlin Clark at her introductory press conference. I personally thought it was an overreaction by the publication – Gregg is wildly talented but can be socially awkward at times, by his own admission – but that’s not my fight today.)

You don’t think Bill Polian wanted to yank my credential oh, about a thousand times? Let’s be real here.

Anyway…

I know the Pacers’ front office people, notably Kevin Pritchard, Chad Buchanan and Rick Carlisle.

I know the Fever’s front office folks, notably Kelly Krauskopf and Stephanie White, although I haven’t yet spoken with Amber Cox.

These are not stupid people. And I never sensed they were petty or unreasonable – at least not until now. I don’t have any specifics – nobody is willing to share -- but I’ve got to think there’s more to the story here that I’m not aware of. But these decisions – first by the Pacers and now by the Fever – makes both organizations look small and overly sensitive and completely unprofessional.

When the Pacers first pulled Agness’ credentials, I told him to raise holy hell; instead, he chose to keep it all on the down-low and use back channels to restore his status. As a result, I said nothing publicly – out of respect for Scott.

This time was different. Scott chose to go public with the Fever denial of his credentials, and now all hell is breaking loose. It looks especially bad for the Fever and the WNBA, which appears to be small-minded and hyper-sensitive. Remember, this is the same league whose players’ association attempted to have Christine Brennan’s credential pulled because she asked some uncomfortable questions during the research for her book. Christine, you should know, is a superstar in our business, a long-time writer for The Washington Post (when they had a sports section) and now USA Today. Her book, “On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women’s Sports,” is a New York Times bestseller.

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I remember when I took the job, my editor-in-chief at the time told me not to worry about my lack of motorsports expertise, saying, “You’ll figure it soon enough.” Much to my chagrin, one of my first columns the summer of 2000 was on the Brickyard 400, which was a complete mystery to me. Then, about a year later, Dale Earnhardt, Sr. tragically passed during the 2001 Daytona 500, and my column fully reflected my lack of understanding of the sport and the men (and women) who compete so heroically nearly every weekend. The piece was, in a word, awful.

Now, 27 years later, I still can’t claim that I know the sport any better than I do the stick-and-ball sports. And again, full honesty, I still don’t pay much attention to races that aren’t the Indianapolis 500. If there’s a hockey or basketball game and a race on TV, there’s no question what I’m watching.

Having said all of that, I will say this now: After almost three decades of covering the event, I love the Indianapolis 500.

I do.

I love the driver introductions, notably the Alexander Rossi introduction, when he was helped to the podium by his first-row competitors after a frightening crash and resulting injuries this week. I get choked up listening to “Taps” and then “Back Home Again In Indiana,” whether it was Jim Nabors or, currently, Jim Cornelison. The flyover always gets to me. And there is no sound in sport quite like the guttural roar of the great machines when the drivers are told to “start your engines.”

And I’m reasonably proud to say, some of my best work has come during the run-up to the race, including two pieces for The Athletic, one a story about Rossi, who’d won the 100^th running of the 500, and an oral history of Mario Andretti’s one and only Indy 500 victory 50 years earlier. One thing I learned rather quickly is you’re writing about people doing extraordinary things. What these folks do is completely insane and noble, flying chassis-to-chassis, nose-to-tail around a superspeedway at 220 miles per hour, putting life and limb on the line every time they got behind the wheel. As the years have worn on, I’ve come to find drivers and the people in the paddock to be some of the most fascinating humans on the planet.

This sport requires the ultimate bravery, as we saw Sunday when Felix Rosenqvist beat crestfallen David Malukas by half a car length, winning the race by .0233 seconds, the closest finish in Indianapolis 500 history. It bypassed Al Unser, Jr.’s 1992 victory over Scott Goodyear by .043 seconds. It came down to a one-lap shootout, which is basically all you can ask from the Greatest Spectacle in Racing. The pass at the end was the 70^th of the race, setting the record for most lead changes in Indy 500 history.

I mean…wow.

When it was over, Rosenqvist, the third-ever Swedish driver to win this race and a newly-minted father, was overjoyed while Malukas, the talented 24-year-old American and back-to-back second-place finisher, could not stop the tears. And it was deeply moving, revealing both ends of the emotional spectrum. Think about it: .0233 seconds. That’s an eyeblink – less than an eyeblink, actually, which takes one-third of a second, especially at 220 miles per hour. All those stops and starts, yellow flags and red flags and crashes and all the rest, and this is what it came down to. One more go-for-broke pass in the final couple of yards of track, which revealed the chasm between ultimate joy and gut-wrenching heartbreak.

This race had everything, from balls-to-the-wall racing to multiple strategies as drivers and their teams tried to beat the rain that never really came in earnest until hours after the race’s end.

This is why I’ve learned to love the Indianapolis 500.

It never disappoints.

###

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FRIDAY

If the idea is to show potential trade partners that Anthony Richardson is healthy and his vision has returned, it makes some sense to have him active and participating in voluntary minicamp this week.

If the idea is to set Richardson up to truly compete with Riley Leonard for the backup quarterback position, that makes no sense to me. If Richardson and Leonard are sharing reps, that makes no sense to me. Richardson is begging to be traded or released; remember, he requested a deal and the Colts failed to pick up the fifth-year option on his contract. There’s too much water under the bridge. This relationship is over.

I think.

Everything about the way the Colts have handled Richardson from the very beginning is a mystery. None of it makes sense, from the time they gave him the QB1 job over Gardner Minshew after one preseason game. This, despite the fact the two quarterbacks seemed to be performing at roughly the same level throughout training camp. Hell, they even made AR a captain, this young man – kid, really – who played just 13 college games.

So what’s Richardson doing at voluntary minicamp?

Reporters asked Shane Steichen in several different ways Friday, and his responses made it clear as mud.

How would you evaluate having Anthony Richardson Sr. back in the building?

“Yeah, I mean he’s back in the fold right now. That part has been good. He’s working, going through his fundamentals, details, out there throwing with the guys. That’s where it’s at right now.”

At least for the offseason work, how do you go about reintegrating Anthony Richardson Sr.? There is a time very soon where you’ll be back doing 11-on-11 and figuring out the depth chart. How have you thought about that?

“That’s part of it. Obviously, he’s here. He’s going to get reps, just like Riley (Leonard) will get reps. We’re in Phase Two right now. We’re throwing routes on air and doing walk-thru stuff, and both those guys will get reps.”

Is he competing for the backup job?

“Right now, we’re in May. We’ll see how it goes obviously with all that. But he’s working, he’s here, he’s in good spirits. He’s cleared to play with the vision stuff, so that part is good.”

Have you seen limitations at all with the vision?

“No, he’s been good. I mean, he’s been here for four days but we’re just throwing right now. We haven’t done any team stuff, but he’s been good.”

Do you notice improvements from him from where he was in late December and early January?

“Yeah I think he’s getting back into the fold right now obviously throwing again. He’s been working obviously down in Florida doing workouts so he’s been good. He came back in really good shape. So, that was good. So yeah, he’s been good so far.”

If you know what any of that means, you’re a whole lot smarter than me (which isn’t a high bar, I admit).

Which brings me back to Richardson and the way this whole thing has been mismanaged since his first day on West 56^th.

Now, could all of this have been a Jim Irsay mandate? I’m talking about the decision to select Richardson and the decision to play Richardson his rookie year – well, for as long as he could stay healthy.

Irsay always said, when it came to quarterbacks in the draft, his vote was the one that mattered most. .

And he’s made mandates on quarterbacks before, most notably when he called for Sam Ehlinger to start over Matt Ryan.

Maybe he thought back to Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck, who both hit the ground running in their rookie years. Irsay had seen young quarterbacks survive the early fire and come back even stronger. But Manning played 45 games at the University of Tennessee. Luck played 38 at Stanford. I could be completely wrong here, but I’ve always thought Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen were too smart to throw Richardson into the deep end of the pool right away; that’s why they acquired Minshew as a very capable starter/backup to use as a bridge to Richardson.

Irsay was a great owner, but in his final years, it’s pretty clear he wasn’t all there. His physical and mental health were declining quite precipitously. Remember when he fired Frank Reich and hired Jeff Saturday? Is that the decision of a man fully in his right mind? He always said he didn’t want to be like his father, Robert, who was both hands-on and deep into alcoholism. And for a while, Irsay was different, ceding almost complete control to Bill Polian, who built a powerhouse. But in the last five-six years of his life and tenure, there were too many troubling signs to ignore.

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The whole thing is very curious, and it keeps getting more curiouser.

Has been from the very beginning.

SATURDAY

• My first thought, watching the Fever and Wings play an epic if defensively shoddy season opener was this: Thank heavens the owners and players association signed that new CBA.

  It took a lot of missed deadlines and rancor with players calling out commissioner Cathy Engelbert, but they got the deal done, and right on time. We are in the midst of the league’s greatest heyday (thus far) and that was firmly on display Saturday afternnon at Gainbridge as the last four No. 1 overall picks were on the floor. That’s Aliyah Boston (2023), Caitlin Clark (2024), Paige Bueckers (2025) and Azzi Fudd (2026). The result was a wild 107-105 Wings victory over the Fever, the home team falling short when Kelsey Mitchell’s buzzer-beating three, a good look by any standard, rimmed out. Dallas, the worst team in the league the last two years, shot 59 percent from the field and a ridiculous 52 percent from three. Defense was optional.

The larger point being, the WNBA, with so much momentum and star power, could not afford to get stuck in a morass of bruised feelings and a play stoppage. This is a big league now, with salaries and travel arrangements to match, and a work stoppage would have been disastrous. So thank God they got it done.

• We saw part of the future of the league Saturday. As I mentioned, the last four No. 1 picks were on the floor and with stars like A’ja Wilson, Brenna Stewart and others, the league is in a very strong position to continue to grow. exponentially (thank you, Caitlin). I can’t wait to see the TV ratings numbers for this Fever-Wings opener, which was shown on ABC on a day when there was little to no TV competition. Expect them to be through the roof.

• I thought Clark looked good but not great in her first game back after missing most of last season with a series of nagging and problematic soft tissue injuries. She finished with 20 points on 7-of-18 shooting (2-of-9 from three) with seven assists and five rebounds. Early on, you could see the nerves, plus the breakneck pace was leaving everybody on the floor, including Clark, searching for their second wind. Probably not a reason to be concerned, but a number of times, Clark left the floor, returned to the locker room and had her back adjusted.

She said it was nothing.

Coach Stephanie White said it was nothing, just basic maintenance.

We’ll see.

She did play 30 minutes, it should be mentionedl

But it sure was great to see Clark back on the floor, and to see the Fever at close to full strength for the first time in a long time.

“There’s just like a different juice inside of your body when you’re putting on your uniform and you’re mentally locked in to go play a basketball game,” Clark said prior to the game. “Obviously, I was excited for my teammates last year, 100 percent. I was their biggest fan. But it’s not the same.”

Again, she looked good but not great. But that will come in time. Without question. But somebody – anybody – has got to play some defense.

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“Started off a little slow, just the anxiety of the first game, trying to work through that,” Clark said. “But overall, felt good, felt fast out there. Felt I was literally a couple of buckets away from putting together a really good game and helping us win.”

Patience, friends. Patience.

• The two teams combined to attempt 45 free throws, and the game lacked continuity with so many whistles stopping play.

That’s ordinarily a bad thing.

White, who along with the league’s other coaches has pined for less physicality and more freedom of movement in the WNBA, loved it.

“Look, like I told (our players), like I told (Wings player) Alanna Smith as we were standing on the sideline having a conversation, this is what we want,” White said. “We need to overcorrect, so to speak, so that we have freedom of movement. So it’s a free-flowing offense. In all of our offseason, we have asked officials to call everything. The challenge and the questions sometimes is, is it consistent? So that’d be the next growth area. But this is what we need to clean up, some of the stuff we saw last year.”

Once the players adjust – and they will – the whistles should diminish.

• It’s only one game in a 44-game season and a disappointing result, but in the end, I see the Fever returning to the WNBA semifinals, at the very least. And if they can stay healthy, especially the Big Three of Clark, Aliyah Boston and Kelsey Mitchell, they have a shot at reaching the finals. It’s not championship-or-bust, not this soon, not with the Las Vegas Aces dominating the league and teams like New York and Atlanta making noise, but this team has every chance to make a deep run once again.

SUNDAY

Dammit.

But it was a risk. The Pacers knew it was a risk. And Ivica Zubac, one of the top 10 centers in the league, is a tremendous consolation prize. Trust me on this. He makes the Pacers a contender in the East.

But this hurts. This hurts like the 1985 Draft when the Pacers barely missed out on Patrick Ewing. We’re looking at arguably greatest draft class since 1996, 30 years ago. It’s heavy with franchise-changing talent and it’s deep. Are they organizationally snakebit in the Lottery? History would certainly suggest so.

The best-case scenario was the Pacers would get a top-4 pick and reprise what the San Antonio Spurs did in 1996 and ’97. For you young’uns out there, the Spurs were a playoff team in 1995. Then David Robinson and Sean Elliott were injured, the Spurs sunk to the bottom of the league and earned a spot in the 1997 Lottery. There, fortune shined on Gregg Popovich and the Spurs; they won the No. 1 pick, they drafted Tim Duncan and became a dynasty.

In the moments after the Lottery, TV showed A.J. Dybantsa, the likely top pick, sitting and listening to the ABC/ESPN commentary. In the background, buried in their feelings, were the Pacers braintrust of Kevin Pritchard and Chad Buchanan. What could they have been thinking? They knew this was possible, but as they say, reality sucks.

This is a generational draft.

A draft the Pacers are going to sit out.

It’s easy to play Monday morning quarterback and question why the Pacers made this deal that only protected the top four picks, but that’s the price of doing business in the NBA. Again it was a calculated risk. Without the lottery piece, the Pacers couldn’t have acquired Zubac. It just wasn’t the haul the Pacers had prayed for in the end.

Dammit.

Without the pick this summer, the Pacers will still have a chance to contend in the Eastern Conference. This core group has gone to the Eastern Conference Finals and the NBA Finals in the last three years; now add Zubac to the mix and you have a team that’s going to matter A LOT again next year.

But if they could have won a top-four pick, a franchise-altering pick, they could have been elite for a generation. Hell, one championship, maybe two. They would have been a juggernaut. The stakes, well, they were enormous, this being the most consequential draft in 40 years, at least.

As a good friend texted me shortly after the Lottery, “(Bleep) me.”

I think we can all relate to that sentiment.

It had gone stale by now, 10 years of bumps and bruises and ownership issues, five years without a playoff berth, 14 years since the Colts won the AFC South. There may be gnashing of teeth about the loss of six and potentially seven starters from this Indianapolis Colts team, a major loss of leadership, a significant change of face, and I’m asking myself the following question:

What have they won?

Yeah, Kenny Moore II and Michael Pittman Jr. and Zaire Franklin were all-time good guys, community pillars, unofficial spokesmen for the team when reporters came around.

But it’s like the guy who averages 26 ppg for a 17-win NBA team. I mean, it doesn’t matter how mediocre you are – and the Colts have been the very picture of mediocrity – somebody has got to settle in as a leader. And how much does the captaincy really mean? The Colts named Anthony Richardson a captain his rookie season.

This is a very needed housecleaning.

The draft? As this is being written, it’s the morning after Rounds 2 and 3 and, as expected Chris Ballard traded back and grabbed an additional fourth-round pick.

Then he addressed a massive hole on the defense – before Saturday, could you name a starting Colts linebacker on this team? – by grabbing Georgia inside linebacker CJ Allen. Guess who’s mentioned prominently as a comp for Allen?

Why, it’s Zaire Franklin.

The circle of life.

Essentially, Ballard is getting a younger, faster, less expensive version of Franklin. I don’t know if Allen has a podcast – just a matter of time, is my guess – but like Franklin, he has an enormous presence in every community he touches.

He wore the green dot at Georgia and will wear it starting on day one in Indy. And while he’s said to lack in some coverage areas – just what I read -- he is an instinctive player who makes up for some slight physical limitations with an insistent motor and an intuitive sense for the game.

He led Georgia in tackles (47), tackles for loss (8) and two forced fumbles. Another thing worth noting: Allen didn’t commit a single penalty in 41 college games.

“He stands for all the right stuff,” Ballard said late Friday night. “He’s an athletic, fast MIKE (middle linebacker). He’ll be a green-dot guy for us from the get-go. I mean, he’s a face of the program type of guy. He’s a really special dude now. Loves to play, serious about football. It’s evident when you watch Georgia tape. I mean, he shows up and look, I mean Kirby (Smart) and Will Muschamp…they were effusive in what kind of player this kid is. It’s a good fit for us.”

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With Allen, Ballard very directly addressed one of the team’s greatest needs, if not its greatest need. With Franklin and Germaine Pratt gone, the Colts were in desperate straits.

(Yeah, I know the Colts traded back and gave up the opportunity to draft IU’s DeAngelo Ponds, leaving fans apoplectic. I say: Calm down. Ponds will be a game-changer, but slot corner, while a need, is not a high priority right now.)

With their second pick, in the third round, the Colts didn’t think specifically in terms of need, selecting LSU safety AJ Haulcy. He will bring a big game and, if his post-draft interview with Indy writers was any indication, he’ll bring a big personality, too.

The move replaced Nick Cross with a younger, faster, less expensive version than the Colts’ one-time safety.

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At this point, I’m guessing you were thinking what I was thinking: Why not an edge rusher? Then I dug into some of the draft guides and saw what Ballard would be talking about later that evening: There weren’t any edge rushers in the late-second and third rounds who caught the Colts’ eye. They’d rather address a position of slightly lesser positional need than stretch for another edge rusher who can’t play dead. Expect a defensive end or two to come off the board to the Colts this afternoon. Although unless you’re talking about Robert Mathis, you don’t find uncommon edge rushers in the latter stages all the draft.

What it all comes down to is Ballard, who is fighting for his job in the final year of his contract, has no choice but to ace this year’s draft, which continues this afternoon with picks in rounds 4-7. His most important draft, which he duffed, was selecting Anthony Richardson. This is his second most important draft, and maybe his most important given his fraught employment situation. He’s in the final year of his deal. The writing is on the wall. It’s playoffs or bust.

And he’s got to do it without his first-round draft choices the next two years, having dealt them last year for elite cornerback Sauce Gardner (I know it blew up in their faces last year, but I still think this deal benefits the Colts). It needs to be 2018, when Ballard added Quenton Nelson and Shaq Leonard. It needs to be 2020, when he grabbed Jonathan Taylor and Pittman Jr., both in the second round. Or the 2022 draft, when they grabbed Alec Pierce in the second round and Bernhard Raimann in the third round.

They need an edge rusher (this is a recording), an area where Ballard has invested considerable draft capital with very little in the way of a return. They need linebackers; still, even after the Allen acquisition. They need young interior defensive linemen to eventually step in for DeForest Buckner and Grover Stewart. They could use another wide receiver to replace Pittman, although they’re bullish on the idea that Josh Downs can line up outside opposite Alec Pierce.

It was a quiet free agent period, the Colts adding some depth like defensive linemen Arden Key and Michael Clemons, but after they struck out on Trey Hendrickson, the Colts concentrated on re-signing Jones and Pierce. In other words, Ballard needs to hit some homeruns in this draft.

Here’s what scares me: I don’t yet see how the Colts are significantly better today than they were yesterday. A little faster and younger on defense, but game-changers? Hard to say. And it puts the onus on Ballard to produce with very little in the way of a safety net. There is no margin for error. The Colts are counting on a lot of things to go exceedingly well, like safety Hunter Wohler and cornerback Justin Walley returning after suffering serious injuries last year. Like Jones – that’s Daniel Jones -- recovering from Achilles surgery, like Buckner coming back from neck surgery, like Pierce undergoing the knife, forcing him out the next three months.

Earlier this week, Ballard was asked straight away whether his team has improved over last year.

“Well, I think our depth up front is better,” he said before he ever got his hands on Friday’s second and third rounds and Day 3 Saturday.

“ I do believe that. I think the additions of (defensive tackle) Colby (Wooden) – like Colby kind of gets washed over a little bit, but like he started. He’s not really a nose, but because of who he is as a kid, he ended up starting for Green Bay at the nose and playing a lot of snaps. But we think he gives us some real versatility, as we do with (Jerry) Tillery. We think he gives us some versatility. So, I do think – and then with the additions of (Micheal) Clemons and (Arden) Key. I think we got better real depth and they’re healthy. As of right now, they’re healthy. So, I think that’s a really positive thing.

“I think on offense, we’re going to bet on some development of players. I mean, that’s kind of what we’ve done. I mean you got to be able to do that. And it’ll – I think offensively with Jalen Travis, we saw enough good stuff at the end of the year that we think he’s got real upside...And then I think the ability on offense to get – I think we’re going to be able to get (Alec) Pierce and (Josh) Downs, I’ve said this numerous times about Josh Downs, I think Josh Downs is good. I’ve always thought he was good. We’ll see how it plays out, but I think getting him and Pierce the ball more is going to be a good thing.”

Yeah, this is going to be a different year, a very different year, more different than any of Ballard’s previous years.

By the end of this afternoon, we’ll have a pretty solid idea what the 2027 Indianapolis Colts will look like, with the requisite roster tinkering in the coming months. I know this for sure: Indy just got faster, younger and less expensive. The problem is, they don’t yet have any game-changers, especially on defense. That worries me. It does. And has for several years.