Sports

The Colts fired Chris Ballard a day after losing to a winless team

Indianapolis blew a 13-point lead to the previously winless Titans as fans chanted ‘Fire Ballard.’ By Monday morning, the general manager was gone.

Published

12 hours ago

October 21, 2026

Massih Shahbazi

An American football on a kicking tee under stadium lights, in black and white, beside the headline The Colts fire Chris Ballard

By the second half on Sunday, the crowd at the Colts’ home stadium had stopped cheering for the team and started chanting at its front office. “Fire Ballard,” fans chanted, as they booed their team through a collapse against the previously winless Tennessee Titans, ESPN reported.

On Monday morning, they got their wish.

The Indianapolis Colts fired general manager Chris Ballard on Oct. 19, one day after a 26-20 home loss to Tennessee dropped the team to 2-4 in what was his 10th season running the roster, NFL.com reported. The Colts had led by 13 points at halftime, according to ESPN.

A firing that couldn’t wait

NFL teams usually prefer to fire general managers in January, when the season is over and the draft is still months away. The Colts decided they couldn’t wait.

Owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon said a change in leadership was necessary to meet the team’s standard, and that the decision could not wait until the offseason, ABC News reported. Assistant general manager Ed Dodds will oversee the personnel department for the rest of the season, while coach Shane Steichen and his staff will now report directly to ownership.

That last detail matters. Steichen no longer has a general manager between him and the owner’s office. For a head coach, that can mean more direct support, or a much shorter path to being next.

Nine and a half seasons in one sentence

Ballard took over in 2017, and his teams reached the playoffs twice in his first four seasons, NBC Sports reported. He was in the final year of his contract when he was let go, according to NBC Sports.

Two playoff trips in four years and then years of not enough is a familiar NFL arc: a general manager builds something promising, can’t get it over the top, and slowly runs out of patience from the people paying for it. Some fans had run out long before ownership did. Radio host Dan Dakich called the firing “seven years too late,” OutKick reported.

Losing to the team that couldn’t win

Context made Sunday worse. The Titans came into the game without a win this season. Tennessee left Indianapolis with its first one, Footballguys noted in its weekend roundup.

Blowing a 13-point halftime lead at home is bad. Doing it against the one team in the league that hadn’t won yet, with your own fans booing and chanting for your boss’s job, is the kind of afternoon that ends careers. Yahoo Sports also tied the timing to public criticism from star defensive lineman DeForest Buckner, in its report on the firing.

What happens on Monday morning now

In practical terms, the Colts are running a temporary structure for the rest of the season. Dodds handles personnel, Steichen handles the team, and both answer to ownership. That arrangement buys time for a proper search, which will likely run into the offseason. It also means the next general manager will inherit a coach he didn’t hire, a roster he didn’t build and a fan base that has just learned its chants can move the owner’s office.

The view from the cheap seats

For fans, a general manager is an abstract villain. They don’t see the contract negotiations, the salary cap math or the scouting reports. They see draft picks that didn’t develop, free agents who didn’t help and Sundays like this one. When they chant a name, it’s a name they’ve been waiting years to chant.

For the players, it’s more complicated. A GM firing in October says the season is being evaluated in real time, and that nobody’s job is safe, including theirs. Some will play harder. Some will start wondering where they’ll be next year.

Was it the right call?

Plenty of people think so. Sports Illustrated’s Colts site argued that the team was right to fire Ballard. A 2-4 start, a home loss to a winless team and a GM in the last year of his deal is about as clear a case for change as the NFL produces.

The counterargument is that firing a general manager in the middle of a season rarely fixes the season itself. The roster is set. The trade deadline offers limited help. What a mid-season firing really does is start the search early and send a message to the fans who were chanting. Whether the new GM can build something that actually wins is a question for next year.

The Colts’ season isn’t over at 2-4. But the most important decision of it may already have been made, on a Monday morning, by an owner who heard her stadium loud and clear.