Indiana sports voice Dan Dakich cheered the Indianapolis Colts’ midseason dumping of general manager Chris Ballard, calling the move seven years overdue after a home loss to a winless team.
The Colts relieved Chris Ballard of his duties as general manager on Monday, a day after Indianapolis fell at home to the Tennessee Titans, 26-20. The team sat at 2-4, six games into the season, when ownership made the call.
Owner and CEO Carlie Irsay-Gordon framed the move as a standard issue, not a surprise reset. She said the franchise’s bar is championships, and the front office had not met it.
The New York Post reported the firing came hours after that loss to a winless Titans club, and placed Ballard’s long run in the shadow of years of mediocrity after Andrew Luck’s 2019 retirement. Coach Shane Steichen’s record sat at 27-30, with the seat warming as the search for a new GM begins.
Ballard had held the job since January 2017. Under him the Colts never won the AFC South, reached the playoffs twice, and owned a single postseason win, in 2018.
Irsay-Gordon did not hide the timing. She said ownership wanted the work to start now, not after another empty winter.
In a team statement, OutKick reported, she put it this way:
"As I said at the start of the season, the sense of urgency has never been higher. Our standard is to compete for championships, and I believe a change in leadership is necessary to meet that standard,"
She added:
"Making this change during the season was a deliberate decision. Waiting would only delay the important work that needs to begin now."
The Post also carried her thanks to Ballard for his years with the club and the community, while still making clear leadership had to change.
Fans who watched draft miss after draft miss, and another October already tilting the wrong way, did not need a press release to know the roster math was broken. Ownership finally treated a 2-4 start against a winless division foe as the breaking point it was.
Dan Dakich, the Indiana sports host of “Don’t @ Me,” did not play polite. On Sunday afternoon, after the Titans loss, he tagged Irsay-Gordon on X and asked how he had seen Ballard’s fit years earlier when ownership had not.
On Monday he went further on air. He called Ballard the worst general manager in NFL history and said the firing should have come long before a 2-4 mess in year nine of the tenure.
Dakich said:
"Well, the worst general manager in the history of the NFL just got fired,"
He then unloaded on the full arc of the hire:
"Look, this is seven years too late. As I said last night on Twitter to one of the Irsays, how did I know this a long time ago and none of you did? How could I watch 'Hard Knocks' five years ago and go 'this is an absolute sh***show and none of you did?' How could you keep a guy over the last five to seven years, who hasn't made the playoffs in the last five, hasn't had a draft pick worth a damn since Jonathan Taylor, however many years ago, has spent your money frivolously, and been incredibly arrogant to fans, and actually cried blaming white people for social unrest?"
His closer left no exit ramp:
"No, this guy was a sh***show from the beginning."
That is fan-level anger with a microphone. Dakich’s bill of particulars, playoff drought, thin draft yield after Taylor, free-agent spend, and tone-deaf public moments, matches what Indianapolis has lived with since the Luck era ended. The record under Ballard never forced a different conclusion.
January 2017 brought Ballard in as the builder. By Monday of this season he was out, with no division title on the shelf, two playoff trips, and one January win from 2018 still the high-water mark cited in the firing coverage.
Losing at home to a winless Titans team made the urgency concrete. Irsay-Gordon’s statement treated that urgency as non-negotiable. Dakich treated the delay as the real scandal.
NFL front offices love process language and long runways. Taxpayers of ticket prices get standings and December relevance. The Colts’ choice to cut the cord six games in, rather than ride out another non-contending year, is the rare midseason admission that the process had failed the product.
Whether the next general manager can draft, spend, and hire better is the only test that matters from here. The last one had nearly a decade and left the franchise still hunting for an AFC South crown and a credible quarterback future.
Championship standards mean nothing if ownership waits forever to enforce them, and Indianapolis just stopped waiting.
