Colts youth will cause growing pains

With final cuts done and over with, the Colts’ roster is mostly set. With that being the case, they have all kinds of youth on their roster, and that could cause some problems throughout the season.

The Colts are in rebuilding mode. They finished with the third worst record in the league a year ago. They need an infusion of talent. But it takes time to develop talent. They have drafted young players who need time to learn. But playing that young talent means going through growing pains.

GM Chris Ballard has shown that he has a commitment to playing young talent over proven veterans. He made that clear based on his cuts. With that being the case, there are going to be a lot of mistakes made this season.

But mistakes are okay. As long as young players are getting experience and learning from those mistakes, they will make those players better in the long run. Which will in turn make the team better in the long run as well.

Young talent makes the future exciting. But it makes the present uncertain. If some players play up to their potential sooner, the team could be way more competitive than anyone thought. But if they take awhile to develop, losing could be a regular occurrence.

Based on the roster composition, there will be a lot of young talent getting a lot of run. Expect to see Tarell Basham, Kemoko Turay, Quenton Nelson, Jordan Wilkins, Skai Moore and others to see a lot of playing time throughout the entire season.

What Ballard and the rest of the organization hope is that playing all of this young talent now can make the team competitive within the next two or three years. That would mean Andrew Luck is still in his prime and they can take advantage of that play.

This is a risky play. If the talent doesn’t develop, the Colts would have wasted Luck’s prime for nothing. Ballard is staking his job on the fact that it will.