Colts defensive coordinator Gus Bradley will be back

INDIANAPOLIS — Colts defensive coordinator Gus Bradley will be back next season.  

Bradley, who is headed into his third year in Indianapolis, is under contract, and the defensive coordinator’s return was telegraphed on Monday when head coach Shane Steichen responded to questions about coaching staff changes by saying he values continuity.

Indianapolis general manager Chris Ballard confirmed Bradley’s return during his postseason meeting with the media Thursday.

“I know that’s been a hot topic for everybody, and it’s an area we need to improve,” Ballard said. “But in a little bit of defense, the year before, (Bradley) comes in, and we kind of had, I don’t want to say a veteran team, but we had some veteran players, and I just said, 'Look, we’re going to go young in some spots (in 2023), and we went young in the secondary.'”

Ballard’s decision to replace veteran cornerbacks Stephon Gilmore and — to a lesser extent — Brandon Facyson and Isaiah Rodgers with a pair of draft picks, second-round pick JuJu Brents and seventh-round pick Jaylon Jones, and two second-year players with little experience, Dallis Flowers and Darrell Baker Jr.

Injuries to Brents and Flowers limited the defensive staff’s options further.

At safety, Julian Blackmon stepped capably into Rodney McLeod’s shoes at strong safety, but inconsistency from Rodney Thomas II and Nick Cross at free safety cost Indianapolis in terms of explosive plays, limiting Bradley’s options.

“There were times that we had some soft coverage,” defensive tackle DeForest Buckner said. “A lot of the young guys need to do some growing up over this offseason and stepping up coming into next year. I feel like Gus is going to be able to be more confident in certain calls that he calls, having confidence in the guys in the back end.”

From the general manager’s seat, Ballard agreed, placing the blame on himself, rather than Bradley and the rest of the defensive staff.  

“Look, there were some rough moments, at times, in the secondary, and I don’t completely put that on them, I put that more on me,” Ballard said. “How do you ever develop any continuity with your guys if you don’t play them? I decided to go young, we took our lumps, we took our lumps at times, but I think it’s going to pay off down the line for them.”

Indianapolis finished 28th in the NFL in scoring defense (24.4 points per game), 24^th in yards (349.8 yards per game) and 20th in defensive DVOA, an advanced metric that measures a team’s efficiency based on opponent, situation and a number of other factors.

The Colts also finished fifth in the NFL with 51 sacks — a record for the franchise in the Indianapolis era — and forced 24 turnovers, ranking Indianapolis in the middle of the pack.

“We got after the passer pretty good, that’s got to get a little better, but 51 sacks is pretty good,” Ballard said. “We took the ball away, we’ve got to be a little better in that area, and we’ve got to take away the explosives, but I would expect to see us take another jump, here this year, on defense.”

The schedule will be much tougher.

After largely avoiding the NFL’s best quarterbacks and offenses in 2023, Indianapolis is scheduled to play Buffalo’s Josh Allen, Miami’s Tua Tagovailoa, New York’s Aaron Rodgers, Green Bay’s Jordan Love, Detroit’s Jared Goff and the two AFC South opponents, Jacksonville’s Trevor Lawrence and Houston’s C.J. Stroud.

“The points do need to come down,” Ballard said. “We’ll continue to have long discussions about where we’re going and how we’ll get that done, but saying that, we had new starters on defense. We did do some good things, too.”

Bradley has been criticized for focusing too much on zone coverages, rather than playing man-to-man and blitzing aggressively, a decision that was heavily influenced by Steichen’s emphasis on preventing explosive plays, along with Bradley’s history.

“That’s part of our discussions that we’ve been having, what’s the best thing,” Ballard said. “You do one thing to the extreme, and everybody wants the other extreme. At the end of the day, it comes down to who blocks, who tackles, who’s fundamentally sound. That still wins in our league, no matter what you play, whatever the coverages are.”

Bradley will get another season to prove he knows the right strings to pull.