Sometimes, Week 1 games are a false signal of what's to come. Anyone remember Geno Smith throwing for 362 yards to lead the Las Vegas Raiders past the New England Patriots to open the 2025 season? The same Las Vegas Raiders that went on to have the worst record in the NFL and the same New England Patriots that made the Super Bowl? Anyone?
Then again, sometimes Week 1 games actually are a sign of what's to come. Take the Colts' dismantling of the Miami Dolphins last year: Daniel Jones completed 22 of 29 passes for 262 yards and had both a passing and rushing touchdown in a 33-8 win at Lucas Oil Stadium. The Colts went on to have a historically great offense over the first 10 weeks of the 2025 season; Week 1 was just the start.
It's usually hard to know what's real and what's not from Week 1 until you're deeper into a given season, but the Colts will learn plenty about their team between 1 p.m. and about 4 p.m. on Sunday. Think of it like an important test, but not a final exam.
To preview this weekend's season opener against the Baltimore Ravens, though, let's zoom out and look at two key expectations for the 2026 Colts and what those could look like in Week 1:
Can the Colts' offense recapture its first half success from 2025?
By EPA per play, the Colts' best offensive game of the 2025 season came in Week 7 against the Los Angeles Chargers. The Colts averaged .407 EPA per play in that 38-24 win; for context, it was one of only eight games in 2025 in which a team averaged more than .4 EPA per play. Jones completed 23 of 34 passes for 288 yards with two touchdowns; Jonathan Taylor shredded Los Angeles for 94 yards on just 16 carries with three touchdowns.
Why bring that game up?
The Chargers' defensive coordinator in 2025 was Jesse Minter. The Baltimore Ravens' head coach in 2026 is...Jesse Minter.
The Colts, though, did not approach this week as if Week 7 of the 2025 season meant anything for Week 1 of the 2026 season.
"Past results don't buy you one point when you show up on game day this week," offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter said.
Whatever ideas and schemes and tactics Minter has with the Ravens will be filtered through different players than he had with the Chargers. Kyle Hamilton and Derwin James are both All-Pro safeties, but they're not the same player. Trey Hendrickson and Khalil Mack are accomplished veteran pass rushers, but they're not the same player. Roquan Smith is not the same as Denzel Perryman at linebacker, Marlon Humphrey and Nate Wiggins are not the same as the Chargers' cornerbacks, etc. You get the picture.
"For Coach Minter, he's in a whole different place," Cooter said. "He's operating year one of a program as a head coach, so he's got a lot that he could potentially change. This game will not be a carbon copy of that game last year. Totally different defensive personnel, and I'm sure they'll have plenty of tweaks up their sleeve schematically."
The main question here for the Colts, then, is less about the Ravens and is more qualitative than quantitative. Does this offense feel like it did last year?
There are more measurable questions, of course: Is it efficient and explosive? Does it avoid turnovers? Does Taylor's production increase with a healthy Jones behind center again? Those are things about which we'll get real answers on Sunday, so far as one season-opening game can provide real answers.
Will the Colts' investment in their secondary pay off across the entire defense?
Defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo will roll into the 2026 season with a fully healthy group of defensive backs. Cornerbacks Sauce Gardner and Charvarius Ward Sr. will line up opposite each other on the outside; on the inside is Justin Walley, who just might be the most intriguing member of this unit.
"I feel like Walley probably had the best camp of all the DBs," Ward said a few weeks ago.
Cam Bynum will wear the green communications dot at safety, and AJ Haulcy, who fully participated in practice Thursday after missing a few weeks due to an ankle injury, is tracking toward making his NFL debut on Sunday. And expect to see playing time for Hunter Wohler, who, like Walley, missed his entire rookie year due to injury in 2025.
This is as talented, deep and versatile a secondary as Anarumo has had at his disposal for a given game since coming to Indianapolis a year and a half ago. But the question here isn't about how this group plays – there's little doubting what the Colts' secondary can do as a unit.
As a defense, though, the question is about how this talented, deep and versatile secondary impacts the defensive line's ability to not just generate pressure, but to get sacks.
Notably, Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson had the NFL's fifth-highest pressure-to-sack ratio last season; he was sacked 26.3 percent of the time he was pressured (Jones, for comparison, had the 10th-lowest pressure-to-sack ratio last year at 13.6 percent). And no regular starting quarterback was blitzed at a higher rate than Jackson was in 2026 (38.3 percent of his dropbacks).
But: When Jackson was blitzed and wasn't sacked, he made opposing defenses pay. His passer rating of 114.0 when blitzed was third-highest in the NFL; he gained 61 yards on eight scrambles, too, and had the second-lowest rate of plays graded as "turnover-worthy" by Pro Football Focus when blitzed (1.2 percent).
Getting several sacks is not a skeleton key for the Colts' defense - the Ravens still managed to win three of the seven games in which Jackson was sacked three or more times last year – but it's certainly a start.
"You want to keep him in the pocket, contain him, but that's easier said than done," Anarumo said. "Eliminating his scramble yards is going to be key and then keeping his overall explosive numbers, both in the run game and in the pass game, down. That's going to be the key to success. But he – anybody that's probably headed to the Hall of Fame pretty quickly, there's a reason why, and Lamar can hurt you both ways, both running and throwing."
Digging deeper, will Anarumo follow the league and blitz Jackson at a high rate, trusting his defensive backs to lock things down on the back end? Or will he use Gardner, Ward and Walley's coverage skills as a reason not to send pressure, expecting tight coverage to force Jackson to hang on to the ball long enough for a four-man rush to hit home?
We'll see. But the investments the Colts made in their secondary were intended to impact their entire defense.
