The Colts could get cornerback Charvarius Ward back in the lineup for Sunday’s game against one of his former teams.
Ward has been designated for return from injured reserve. Ward went on the list on October 18 due to a concussion.
The Colts can activate Ward at any point in the next 21 days and he’ll have to be activated by Saturday afternoon to play against the Chiefs. If he is active, the team will get its first chance to see Ward and Sauce Gardner, who was acquired in a trade earlier this month, in the same secondary.
The Colts also announced that they have designated linebacker Jaylon Carlies for return. Carlies has not appeared in a game yet this season.
The Colts are 8-2 and well rested as they come off of their bye week, but they aren’t favored to win in Week 12.
DraftKings currently has the Chiefs installed as three-point favorites for Sunday afternoon’s game at Arrowhead Stadium and some other sportsbooks have the home team as 3.5-point favorites at this point in the week. That’s just fine with Colts wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr.
Pittman noted on Monday that preseason predictions for the Colts did not view them as a contender for the top seed in the AFC and he said that being seen as underdogs suits the team well.
“I would personally rather people underestimate us, just because it gives us that edge. For whatever reason, people don’t want to believe,” Pittman said, via Nathan Brown of the Indianapolis Star. “At the beginning of the season, there were experts telling us we were only going to win three games, and we saw that.”
The Colts have outperformed the early expectations, but Pittman said “we’ve gotta know that our work isn’t done” and a trip to Arrowhead is a good reminder of the kinds of games the Colts will have to keep winning if they’re going to turn their strong start into a strong finish.
The Chiefs fell to 5-5 with Sunday’s loss to the Broncos and all five of those losses have come by one score, which is a stark change from the 2024 season.
Kansas City was 11-0 in one-score games in the regular season last year and that change explains why their record is unimpressive despite scoring more points and allowing fewer points than they did last year. It also explains why head coach Andy Reid stressed the need to improve “small things” in order to pick up enough wins to get back to the postseason.
“We’re not quite as negative as the outside world is,” Reid said in a Monday videoconference. “We know what we need to clean up and we need to do it, but, the guys, they get it. Some of these guys have been through some pretty good seasons, and this isn’t like this one’s lost. We just got to clean up a few of these things and the urgency level, obviously, we got to make sure we take care of that now.”
Sunday’s game would be a good time for the team to start taking care of business. They’ll host the Colts with a chance to move back over .500 by beating a team at the top of the AFC and doing so would help shift the narrative about what the 2025 Chiefs are capable of doing in the final months of the season.
An item from last Sunday explained the efforts of Colts tackle Braden Smith, who endured serious OCD in 2024, to expand access to player mental-health resources, and to streamline and modernize the league’s handling of players confronting such challenges.
With the Colts on a bye this week, Smith visited PFT Live for a lengthy discussion regarding his own journey, and his commitment to helping other players who may end up needing help for any type of non-physical ailment.
The relevant portion of the interview is attached. The full conversation is here.
As it relates to the league, Smith wants mental-health issues to be handled like any other condition acquired while playing the inherently physical, stressful, and demanding sport of professional football. Currently, a player who has developed anxiety, depression, OCD, or any other mental-health condition lands on the non-football illness list, if/when it prevents him from practicing and playing. Smith has been advocating directly with the league to make such players eligible for injured reserve. This will, among other things, remove the possibility that the player’s team will decide not to pay his salary while he’s on the NFI list.
Hopefully, the league won’t view it as a matter of collective bargaining, but as the right thing to do for the men who play the game.
Regarding the NFL Players Association, Smith wants to expand the existing network of contacts for workers’ compensation attorneys in each city to include mental-health professionals who will serve as an immediate contact point for any player who needs help. That person would then refer the player to the appropriate professional, if it is determined that specific assistance, diagnosis, or treatment is needed.
In some cases, the player may just need to talk to someone. And the player — as Smith explained — may not feel comfortable using the mental-health clinicians made available by the teams. Correct or incorrect, real or imagined, some players fear that activating the team-provided mental-health resources will get back to those who shape the roster. The legitimate concern is that the player’s mental-health issues will become a factor when deciding who stays and who goes. Who gets playing time and who doesn’t. Who gets a new contract and who doesn’t.
The goal is to remove all obstacles to players seeking help when help is needed. It’s hard enough, for many, to open up at all. If they believe that opening up could cause more problems than it solves, they won’t do it.
Football constantly changes and evolves. The NFL, we believe, is always trying to improve. In the past 16 years, the league has made player health and safety a priority. Mental health should be a priority, too.
The recent death of Cowboys defensive end Marshawn Kneeland should be the catalyst. Both the league and the union should embrace any and all possible strategies for providing a system that will remove any and all barriers to a player who is silently dealing with problems that have become too big for him to deal with alone.
Smith should be applauded for using his own challenges as the spark to help other players. Any players who read this should send it to their teammates. The agents who read this should send it to their clients. Braden Smith’s commitment should spark a groundswell for the kind of positive change that will result in players struggling with the question of whether to get help to believe that safe, easy, and effective paths are immediately available.
Colts running back Jonathan Taylor has been tough to stop in the United States this season and he showed last Sunday that he’s just as difficult to defend in Germany.
Taylor ran 32 times for 244 yards and three touchdowns in Indy’s 31-25 overtime win against the Falcons. Taylor’s third touchdown was the game winner in the extra period and he had three catches for 42 yards as well.
It was the fifth three-touchdown game of the year for Taylor and he leads the league with 17 touchdowns on the season.
That production has made him a favorite for AFC offensive player of the year and his Week 10 work made him the AFC’s offensive player of the week for the third time this season.
