The Colts Fire Sale Began Eight Days After the Owner Said the Season Was Not Over

“I also want to be clear,” Carlie Irsay-Gordon said on Oct. 19, “this decision does not change our goals for this season. We have a lot of football in front of us, and I expect us to compete, improve, and win football games.” She was announcing the firing of Chris Ballard, the general manager since 2017, a day after the Colts blew a 13-0 halftime lead at home to a previously winless Tennessee team. She called the midseason change deliberate, said waiting would only delay the important work, and promised a thorough search for Ballard’s successor. Sports Illustrated read the statement the way it sounded, and told its readers not to expect a fire sale, naming DeForest Buckner and Quenton Nelson among the players who would not be shopped.

Tuesday answered it. Indianapolis traded Nelson, its eight-time Pro Bowl guard, to the Seattle Seahawks for a 2027 third-round pick and a 2028 fifth-rounder, with Seattle covering just under $10 million of his remaining base salary. A few hours later the Colts sent Buckner, their two-time All-Pro defensive tackle, back to the San Francisco 49ers for a 2027 fourth-round pick. The Colts fire sale took both of the team’s captains in one afternoon. Nelson and Buckner had been voted captains in every season since 2021, and both were playing out the final year of their contracts.

Seattle is 4-3 and San Francisco is 6-1, so neither pick projects early. Athlon Sports put Seattle at No. 17 in the 2027 draft order at the time of the Nelson deal, which would land that third-rounder in the low 80s. The Buckner return looks thinner still against its floor. Had he walked in free agency, the highest compensatory pick Indianapolis could have received was a 2028 fifth-rounder, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. The trade bought one round and one year. ESPN’s Seth Walder graded the deals B+ for Nelson and B- for Buckner, and his Buckner note cut against the urgency of the sale: Indianapolis did not have to move him that day, with two weeks left before the Nov. 10 deadline, and might have squeezed out another Day 3 pick.

Nelson arrived as the sixth overall pick in the 2018 draft and made eight Pro Bowls. Buckner cost a first-round pick in March 2020, plus a four-year, $84 million deal, and produced 47 sacks in six-plus seasons in Indianapolis, including four in seven games this season. The two pillars were assembled with a top-10 pick and a first-rounder, then cashed in for three Day 3 picks. The money cleared is real but modest beside the talent: Nelson carried a $24.2 million cap hit and Buckner $26.6 million, per Over the Cap, with $6.2 million and $10.8 million in dead money respectively left behind on Indianapolis.

The Jets own Indianapolis’s 2027 first-round pick. Last November, with the Colts at 7-2, Ballard sent the 2026 and 2027 first-round picks and receiver Adonai Mitchell to the Jets for cornerback Sauce Gardner. The 2026 pick became tight end Kenyon Sadiq at No. 16. The 2027 pick sat at No. 12 when the Colts were 2-3, and climbed to No. 7 after the 16-10 loss at Minnesota that ended with Harrison Smith’s game-clinching interception. The Jets now hold three 2027 first-rounders: their own at No. 10, the Colts’ at No. 7, and the Cowboys’ at No. 12 from the Quinnen Williams trade. A rebuild that bottoms out would hand its best asset to someone else, and Gardner has yet to record an interception since arriving in Indianapolis, with calf injuries repeatedly interrupting his time there.

Chris Ballard went 72-82-1 in Indianapolis, with a 1-2 playoff record across ten seasons. The Colts reached the postseason twice under him, in 2018 and 2020, won a playoff game only in 2018, and never won the AFC South. The quarterback search after Andrew Luck’s retirement before the 2019 season produced Anthony Richardson Sr., the fourth overall pick in 2023, who has made 15 starts, and Daniel Jones, re-signed for two years and $88 million, who had nine turnovers in his first six games of 2026 and will collect $50 million in cash this season. The 2025 team went from 7-2 at the Gardner trade to 8-9 after seven straight losses, and the 2026 team fell to 2-5 with three straight defeats. Interim general manager Ed Dodds, Ballard’s assistant since 2018, is running the deadline, and he spent 2007 to 2016 in Seattle’s front office, the same club that just bought Nelson. Shane Steichen, 27-30 in his fourth season as head coach and under contract through 2028, coaches the stripped roster.

Steichen did not pretend Wednesday had been easy. “Yeah, I kind of hid it a little bit, but obviously tough,” he said when he was told both players were being moved. He opened his press conference with them before taking a question. “Two of the ultimate competitors. The best to ever do it,” he said, and told the locker room plainly, “I didn’t sugarcoat it. Anytime you lose those guys, they are tough to replace.” He added that the standard had not moved. “Well, I think the expectation doesn’t change.” Gardner, asked about the departures, said, “It hurt, it hurt for sure because like I said those are two captains that embodied everything.” Buckner posted his farewell on Instagram on Wednesday morning. “Forever grateful to the Indianapolis Colts Organization and Irsay family for blessing me with the opportunity to wear the Horseshoe,” he wrote. “I’m sorry we couldn’t get the job done, but just know that I poured my heart and soul into the organization and the community the best way I knew how to.”

Ayanna Taylor, the wife of running back Jonathan Taylor, asked the question hanging over the rest of the roster in a video posted as the trades landed. “Is literally anyone safe on this team? I’ve never known the Colts organization without these people,” she said. “It kinda feels like rookie year all over again.” She went on: “Do I need to start packing our bags? Are we even going to be spending our daughter’s first Halloween together? Will we make it to game day or was last week the last time my husband is putting on a Colts jersey?”

Jonathan Taylor has not asked for a trade, Steichen said Wednesday, adding, “J.T. is on our football team.” Schefter does not think Taylor will be moved before the deadline, and the price argues for patience anyway: IndyStar’s valuation puts a first-round pick as not off the table and a second-rounder as a fair haul, against the Christian McCaffrey comp of a second, third and fourth plus a fifth. Gardner is harder still, since a first-rounder plus additional assets would be fair while Indianapolis paid two firsts and Mitchell for him less than a year ago. Grover Stewart, 33 and expiring, would fetch a sixth- or seventh-rounder at best, and Josh Downs is drawing calls from receiver-needy teams. The first exams for what is left come fast: Sunday at Jacksonville, where the Colts have not won since 2014, against a 4-2 Jaguars defense ranked third in points allowed at 17.3 per game, and Dallas visits Lucas Oil Stadium on Nov. 8, where Adetomiwa Adebawore will fill Buckner’s role after a 91.0 grade with two sacks on 29 snaps against Minnesota.

Buckner was drafted seventh overall by San Francisco in 2016. He returns to a 6-1 team that had just lost its first game of the season.