The Colts on Thursday announced tackle Braden Smith was selected by his teammates as the Colts' 2025 Ed Block Courage Award recipient.
All 32 teams annually select an Ed Block Courage Award recipient, with the honor recognizing an individual for courageous play.
Smith returned to the Colts in 2025 and has started all 14 games this season after leaving the team for the final five weeks of the 2024 season to seek treatment for a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The 29-year-old Smith has been a vocal about the importance of mental health and receiving treatment, and for the Colts' 2025 "My Cause, My Cleats" game, Smith represented the International OCD Foundation.
"Obviously, he went through some things – as we all know – last year," head coach Shane Steichen said in October. "But to be able to bounce back from that, and the support that his teammates gave him – I'm sure he's got great support at home with his wife and his kid. Just the mental toughness, and he's in a really good spot right now and he's playing at a high level."
Smith, too, is a regular volunteer at Colts community events at the Dayspring Center, an Indianapolis-based emergency shelter that provides tools and resources to homeless families and their children. Through "My Cause, My Cleats," Smith has previously represented the Dayspring Foundation (2024), IndyHumane (2021-22), the National Breast Cancer Foundation (2020) and American Breast Cancer Foundation (2019).
The Ed Block Courage Award is named after longtime Baltimore Colts head athletic trainer Ed Block, who served in the role from 1954-1977, and then in a trainer emeritus role until he died in 1983.
The 48th annual Ed Block Courage Awards banquet will take place in Baltimore on March 7-8, 2026. Proceeds from the event will benefit the Ed Block Courage Award Foundation in Baltimore, which has an objective to establish homes for abused children in each NFL city. In Indianapolis, an Ed Block courage home (Children's Bureau) has been open since October of 2000.
The Colts' previous Ed Block Courage Award recipients:
Recent Colts recipients of the Ed Block Courage Award include:
- DT DeForest Buckner (2024)
- DE Tyquan Lewis (2023)
- LB Shaquille Leonard (2022)
- WR T.Y. Hilton (2021)
- P Rigoberto Sanchez (2020)
- DE Jabaal Sheard (2019)
- TE Jack Doyle (2018)
- S Clayton Geathers (2017)
- QB Andrew Luck (2016)
- G/T Joe Reitz (2015)
- TE Dwayne Allen (2014)
- DE Cory Redding (2013)
- S Antoine Bethea (2012)
- DE Robert Mathis (2011)
- DE Dwight Freeney (2010)
- DB Marlin Jackson (2009)
- C Jeff Saturday (2008)
- G Ryan Lilja (2007)
- WR Reggie Wayne (2006)
- LB Cato June (2005)
- LB Gary Brackett (2004)
- DE Chad Bratzke (2003)
- LB Rob Morris (2002)
- QB Peyton Manning (2001)
- DT Bernhard Whittington (2000)
