INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The Indianapolis Colts missed the playoffs five straight years and selected the wrong guy to be their next franchise quarterback.
On Monday, Chris Ballard paid the price for it.
Team co-owner Carlie Irsay-Gordon announced she had fired the general manager who had run the team since 2017. The move comes one day after the hometown fans booed resoundingly during the second half of Sunday's game, chanted “Fire Ballard” and left early as the Colts lost 26-20 to previously winless Tennessee.
She said the decision could not wait until the offseason.
“Our standard is to compete for championships, and I believe a change in leadership is necessary to meet that standard,” she said. “Making this change during the season was a deliberate decision. Waiting would only delay the important work that needs to begin now.”
She said a “thorough search” for Ballard's successor will begin immediately.
Irsay-Gordon made her position clear in January when she thwarted fan requests to fire Ballard and coach Shane Steichen. Instead, she said she agreed with the fans' desire to field a championship-caliber team and that she was bringing both back with the understanding the urgency to make the playoffs could not be higher.
Yet the Colts got off to another poor start.
Ballard's revamped defense yielded 1,029 yards, the second-highest two-game total in league history, as Indy lost its opening two games. Victories over the then-winless Houston Texans and a Washington Commanders squad playing with a backup quarterback briefly quieted the calls for changes.
But another poor defensive performance in a loss at Pittsburgh was followed by Sunday's debacle — blowing a 13-0 halftime lead with the Titans defense holding Indy to only one second-half score. A 58-yard punt return in the fourth quarter set up Tennessee's tying score and a blocked punt that was returned for a touchdown less than three minutes later gave Tennessee the lead.
Afterward, the postgame tone changed.
“We’ve got to give them something to cheer about,” a feistier than usual Steichen said. “I don’t blame them for booing one freaking bit.”
Pro Bowl defensive tackle DeForest Buckner, a team captain, took his frustration public, too.
“I’m sick and tired of the same song and dance every year,” the team captain said.
The next steps are unclear, too.
Indy (2-4) visits unbeaten Minnesota (5-0) next weekend, then heads to AFC South-leading Jacksonville (4-2) the following week. They won't play at Lucas Oil Stadium again until Nov. 8 when they host Dallas.
Steichen was asked Sunday about whether turnover-prone quarterback Daniel Jones would keep his job and whether he would make any changes on his staff. While Steichen said the Colts need to find a solution to the giveaways, he did not promise any personnel changes.
Ballard's decade-long tenure included some unusual twists and turns — the sudden retirement of Andrew Luck in August 2019, seven straight years with a different opening day starting quarterback, the firing of coach Frank Reich and subsequent hiring of Jeff Saturday, and last year's decision to bring Philip Rivers out of retirement while he was on the Hall of Fame ballot.
And while the Colts routinely hovered near the .500 mark, they never could quite get over the hump. They've won only one playoff game since reaching the 2014 AFC championship, a wild-card round victory at Houston in 2018. Indy lost the next week at Kansas City, where Ballard previously worked.
They returned to the playoffs in 2020 with Rivers but lost 27-24 and haven't been back since.
Indy also has the longest title drought in its division. They haven't won the AFC South since 2014 — every other team has won it at least twice since then.
But it was the decision to draft quarterback Anthony Richardson with the No. 4 overall pick in 2023 that ultimately undid Ballard's tenure. Richardson's inconsistent play and recurring injuries through his first two seasons prompted Ballard to sign Jones last season.
Jones then beat out Richardson for the starting job and led the Colts offense to a historic start as they went 8-2. But a broken bone in Jones' left leg derailed the season, and his season ended in December with a torn right Achilles tendon.
Indy finished the season by losing its final seven games and missing the playoffs. This season's poor start, apparently, was the final straw for Irsay-Gordon.
“I also want to be clear: this decision does not change our goals for the season," Irsay-Gordon said. "We have a lot of football in front of us, and I expect us to compete, improve, and win football games.”
See AP’s full NFL coverage here
FILE - Indianapolis Colts general manager Chris Ballard on the sidelines during an NFL preseason football game against the Atlanta Falcons in Indianapolis, Aug. 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Zach Bolinger, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks in the artificial-intelligence industry are recovering some of their steep losses from last week on Wall Street, but the U.S. market and stocks worldwide are still shaky on Monday.
The S&P 500 rose 0.4% and clawed back a portion of its worst week since June. The Nasdaq composite, which is full of technology stocks, climbed 0.9%. Outside of AI, the market was more subdued, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 44 points, or 0.1%, as of 10 a.m. Eastern time.
In Europe, indexes dropped more than 1%, including 1.5% in Paris, following violent protests over the weekend that could force governments to increase their spending and put even more pressure on bond markets. Yields cranked higher for European bonds despite drops for oil prices.
Even with all the cross currents, AI stocks stood out, as they have for most of the past few years. A frenzy in spending for AI technology has forced them to the forefront of the market, sending them to record prices and driving indexes higher. Last week, though, AI stocks tumbled on worries about how expensive it has become to borrow money, which could threaten the boom.
Much of the spending on AI chips and data centers has come from borrowed money, and Treasury yields in the bond market have recently hit their highest levels in years or even decades. That raises the cost of borrowing money for everyone, from the U.S. government to companies to households.
CoreWeave, a company that’s borrowed to buy AI chips that it rents out to customers over the cloud, has been at the center of the market’s shifts. It rose 0.6% Monday after trimming an initial burst of 7%. Last week, it lost a quarter of its value after tumbling 25.2%.
Nvidia added 0.6% and was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500 Monday. Because it’s the largest stock on Wall Street by total market value, a 1% move for its stock has more effect on the index than any other’s.
SpaceX, which controls the xAI business, rose 1.6% to $148.38. Its founder, Elon Musk, pledged on Monday to give one share of SpaceX to “every kid in America” next year. The offer came after Anthropic said over the weekend that it will commit 5% of the shares in its highly anticipated initial public offering of stock to a new “public benefit” fund.
AI stocks rose ahead of some profit reports coming later in the week that could offer more details about the strength of AI-related spending.
Meta Platforms, which is pushing its Muse AI agent, will report its latest quarterly results on Wednesday. Lam Research, which supplies equipment and services for the making of semiconductors, will also talk about how its business is going on Wednesday.
Expectations are high across the board for U.S. companies’ profits from the summer. Analysts are forecasting overall growth of 29% for companies in the S&P 500 from the prior summer, according to FactSet. Those high expectations are what has allowed the U.S. stock market to run to records despite worries about war, high inflation and pressure from the bond market,
Cleveland-Cliffs rallied 7.7% after the steel company reported a bigger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. CEO Lourenco Goncalves said it was the strongest quarter for the company in three years and that the outlook for profit in 2027 “has improved materially” from three months ago.
In stock markets abroad, the rebound for AI stocks helped South Korea’s Kospi jump 1.8% to recover some of its 14.5% drop from last week. It is dominated by two huge players in the AI industry, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which has made it much jumpier than other markets.
In Europe, bond yields climbed following mass protests against the rising cost of living and poor school conditions. The protests could put pressure on governments to boost their spending to offer help, but that would likely only add to their already big piles of debt.
Yields rose for French bonds on worries about the government’s budget and climbed much more than yields for Germany, which investors have historically seen as a safer bet.
In the U.S. bond market, yields nudged higher as the yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 5.10% from 5.09% late Friday. It topped 5.30% earlier this month and touched its highest level since 2002.
Helping to keep yields in check were drops for oil prices. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 1.6% to $108.13 per barrel.
It, though, remains near its highest level since May. It's been yo-yoing between $97 and $110 this month on uncertainty about when the war with Iran will allow the energy industry to return to normal.
AP Business Writer Chan Ho-him contributed to this report.
FILE - A general view of the New York Stock Exchange is seen, Aug. 7, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
Currency traders work at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader watches monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
A currency trader talks on the phone at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, Oct. 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
