Indianapolis Colts Hidden Gems: 3 Secret Superstars on the 2025 roster

The 2025 Colts look a lot like the 2019-2014 Colts — a lot on the ball overall, but who’s the quarterback? Here are three Secret Superstars at other positions who could help transcend that serial issue.

Jacoby Brissett. Philip Rivers. Carson Wentz. Matt Ryan. Gardner Minshew. Anthony Richardson.

The Indianapolis Colts have certainly gone through a crazy quilt of quarterbacks since Andrew Luck’s bombshell retirement announcement on Aug. 24, 2019. The hope, of course, was that Richardson — the fourth overall pick in the 2023 draft — would bring that to an end with the same kind of stability the franchise once had as the envy of the non-Green Bay Packers portion of the NFL at the game’s most important position. But hey — when you go from Peyton Manning to Luck with one collapsible season in-between, maybe you’re due for some variance.

Now, of course, there are all kinds of questions regarding Richardson’s availability and consistency. With just 15 total starts in his first two NFL seasons, the development needed for this athletic marvel hasn’t really happened. And while Richardson has been a force at times in two ways — as a runner and as a deep passer — the rest of the story is still very much in question. The dreaded “right shoulder soreness” this year doesn’t exactly help the long-term plan, either… and when your general manager is now talking about your alleged franchise quarterbacks in the same terms used for ex-journeymen who finally saw the light well into their careers, and after multiple moves, that’s probably not great.

Which is why the Colts are also banking on Daniel Jones, the former sixth overall pick of the New York Giants, who doesn’t have a whole lot of spectacular stuff to show in his own NFL career.

If the 2025 Colts are to back out of a recent history that includes far more starting quarterbacks than winning seasons, it will likely be on every other roster position to make it so. Which is why the under-the-radar guys on the roster are so important.

In the continuation of our “Hidden Gems” series, we look at one underrated veteran, one underrated free-agent signing, and one underrated draft pick for a Colts organization that has it pretty much on point everywhere else… but just how far can you get in today’s NFL without the quarterback who can help to define everything?

Underrated Veteran: CB Jaylon Jones

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With all due respect to Gus Bradley, it’s tough to be a defensive back in a system where there aren’t a lot of pressure and coverage switches from pre- to post-snap. Especially in today’s NFL, where you have more and more defensive coordinators changing the picture as drastically as possible. Bradley’s more static philosophies seemed to be a primary reason the Colts moved on after three seasons, replacing him with ex-Bengals DC Lou Anarumo.

With that in mind, and after reviewing his tape, I tend to think of Jaylon Jones as one of the more underrated cornerbacks in the NFL, and a guy you really want to keep an eye on in 2025. In a set of schemes that didn’t give him a ton of assistance, the second-year man from Texas A&M allowed 55 catches on 85 targets for 727 yards, 204 yards after the catch, one touchdown, two interceptions, 10 pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 85.8.

Pretty good for a guy the Colts stole in the seventh round of the 2023 draft.

When I see that a young cornerback has a high number of pass breakups, I want to see which receivers he did it against, and how close he is to turning those deflections into interceptions. In Jones’ case last season, he was breaking up passes intended for Cameron Sutton, Garrett Wilson, Brian Thomas Jr., Stefon Diggs, Jaylen Waddle, George Pickens, and Rome Odunze. He wasn’t a player you had to relegate to second and third receivers because he couldn’t keep up — quite the opposite. And the tape shows a smart, aggressive defender who looks a lot faster on the field than you’d think, given his size (6’2, 203 pounds) and the 4.57-second 40-yard dash he ran at the scouting combine.

Maybe teams should have paid more attention to Jones’ 1.48-second 10-yard split, which was 92nd percentile for cornerbacks at the combine since 1999.

“Yeah, he’s got a great mentality, is really what it comes down to,” head coach Shane Steichen said of Jones last October. “He’s aggressive. He’s growing obviously in coverage – the tight man coverage. Stepping up to the challenge every week has been great. Obviously, in the system now for two years and understanding what we’re trying to get done on every play. Man, he’s been a pleasure to be around for sure.”

And now, Jones will have the benefit of a defensive coach who isn’t necessarily stuck in the Legion of Boom days without the Legion of Boom on the roster.

Underrated Free-Agent Signing: RB Khalil Herbert

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For all intents and purposes, the Colts had two running backs last season — Jonathan Taylor and Anthony Richardson. Outside of those two threats on the ground, there wasn’t much to count on, which is why the team made two offseason moves: The selection of Kansas State’s DJ Giddens with the 151st overall pick in the fifth round of the 2025 draft, and the signing of former Chicago Bears and Cincinnati Bengals back Khalil Herbert to a one-year, $1,337,500 deal with $482,500 in guarantees. Giddens could have made my underrated draft pick section just as easily as Jalen Travis did, and Herbert — who I liked a lot when he came out of Virginia Tech in 2021 — could prove to outstrip his contract value rather quickly.

Not that you’d know from his 2024 season. The Bears traded Herbert to the Bengals in November, and Herbert rarely got on the field. Overall last season, he ran the ball 36 times for 130 yards and a touchdown. If you want to know of Herbert’s potential, you have to flip the controls to the 2023 season, when Herbert gained 611 yards and scored two touchdowns on 132 carries, adding 20 catches for 134 yards.

“Man, they didn’t really have to sell me on much,” Herbert said after the signing, when asked why Indy was his ideal destination. “I like what they’re doing here. I like the opportunity that’s here. A great group of guys and a great offense and great defense. We had joint practices two years ago when I was in Chicago. You could just feel the energy here. So, I was just excited to be a part of that, and feel like I could come here and help out.”

Most likely, the Colts’ primary interest was an equivalent tie-breaker, but there is an element of the run game that is advantageous in this system, going back to Steichen’s ability to tie the run game and pass game together with Jalen Hurts as the Philadelphia Eagles’ offensive coordinator in 2021 and 2022 that got him his current job to a point — obviously, the hope was that Steichen could do the same with Anthony Richardson.

Getting back to Herbert, when he’s on, he’s the kind of one-cut-and-go runner with great lateral speed and a nice sense of space that allows him to transcend his size to be a surprising missed-tackle machine; he forced 33 missed tackles in 2023 with limited rushing attempts.

With the quarterback situation undefined, it was important for the Colts to shore up the run game behind Taylor, and between Giddens and Taylor, they have done a very nice job of just that.

Underrated Draft Pick: OT Jalen Travis

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It’s always easy to get too caught up in the raw tools a prospect has at the expense of what actual potential that prospect has on the field. One wonders now, of course, if the Colts made that mistake with a certain quarterback. In the case of Iowa State left tackle Jalen Travis, who the team selected with the 127th overall pick in the fourth round, the tools are utterly ridiculous.

At the scouting combine, the 6’ 7¾, 322-pound Travis had an athletic spider chart that looked like something out of the bug scenes in Starship Troopers. The size is there, the athleticism is there, and as Travis allowed one sack, two quarterback hits, and eight quarterback pressures in 475 pass-blocking reps in his first season with the Cyclones after three seasons at Princeton, the fundamental building blocks for a super-size NFL blocker appear to be in place.

“I think it’s on two fronts,” Travis said of his move to Iowa State. “They had the best plan for me in terms of this is how we’re going to get you from point A to point B in terms of accomplishing your dream to go to the league. They had coach Ryan Clanton there my junior year at Princeton –- came down from UNI. He had produced two top-three-round picks while he was at UNI with Trevor Penning and Spencer Brown at tackle. They had a blueprint, and I knew if I went there I would be able to fit into that blueprint and take the next step. But also I think the culture at Iowa State is second to none, and [it] was something I wanted to be a part of.”

Well, we might want to focus more on the Spencer Brown comp than the Trevor Penning thing, but that’s subjective. In any event, while Travis will need some time to get the hang of the intricacies of the tackle position at the NFL level, there’s a lot to work with. If he can strike with more active hands and keep his leverage in place (always an issue for your taller blockers), maybe he could rise to that level.

“I think the physical ability that he brings,” Steichen said of Travis post-draft, and what stands out. “He’s light on his feet for a big guy. I think he ran a 5.15. At that size to run and move like that, it will be good for the room.”

Even if the Colts have to build a bigger room just to get Travis in there.

(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutions).