Indianapolis is trusting head coach Shane Steichen and general manager Chris Ballard to continue leading the team into the future, but it'll be one without Gus Bradley.
The Colts have fired their defensive coordinator following Bradley's three seasons with the franchise, the team announced Monday.
News of Bradley's firing comes the morning after owner Jim Irsay announced the club's retention of Steichen and Ballard despite a disappointing 8-9 finish resulted in Indy missing the playoffs for a fourth straight year.
Bradley led a unit that began the season as a sieve and ended it as one, failing to find consistent rhythm outside fleeting spurts of productivity.
Indy's D finished the campaign 29th in yards allowed, the lowest in Bradley's 12 years as a DC in the league, and 24th in points allowed -- only moderately better than his 28th-place rankings in the category in each of his first two seasons helming the defense.
His most dreadful performance came during one of the Colts' most important games, an embarrassing 45-33 Week 17 defeat to the New York Giants that laid bare the depth of Indianapolis' defensive issues.
In a matchup the Colts needed to win to avoid elimination from playoff contention, Indy allowed Big Blue backup quarterback Drew Lock to throw four touchdowns and run in another.
Entering that contest, the Giants had yet to score 30 points in any week and were averaging 14.3 per game. Their average dropped to 12.6 across Lock's three prior starts.
Such a collapse following a Week 16 outing in which Indianapolis allowed 30 points to the Tennessee Titans, another bottom-10 offense, cannot solely be blamed on Bradley, but the writing for a needed change was apparently on the wall regardless.
Bradley's firing closes his three-year tenure with the team, one season shorter than his four-year stops as the Seattle Seahawks' DC (2009-2012), Jacksonville Jaguars' head coach (2013-2016) and Los Angeles Chargers' DC (2017-2020). He also served as defensive coordinator for the Las Vegas Raiders in 2021.
Head coach Shane Steichen, who retained Bradley from the previous regime when he came to Indianapolis in 2023, must now make a crucial hire to help turn around the fortunes of the wayward Colts, a franchise with just two postseason trips in the past decade.
Whoever next takes the reins will have playmakers such as Zaire Franklin, DeForest Buckner, Kwity Paye and Laiatu Latu to work with.
