The Indianapolis Colts’ short-lived Adonai Mitchell experiment came to an abrupt end on Tuesday when Chris Ballard traded the 2024 second-round pick to the New York Jets as part of a deal that brought star cornerback Sauce Gardner to Indy.
The former Texas standout ends his Colts’ tenure having played in 25 games and having caught just 32 passes on 71 targets. That low catch rate may be one reason Ballard dealt him. Another stat – zero touchdown catches – may be even more significant. More on that in a moment.
When he was going through the pre-draft process in 2024, scouts drooled over what Mitchell offered an NFL team 6'2” and 205 pounds. A blistering 40 time of 4.34 seconds. Length, size, speed. In drills designed to measure an athlete’s explosiveness, Mitchell was off the charts. His 136” broad jump was the best of all receivers in the 2024 combine. Indeed, it ranks in the top 20 all-time, at any position.
Indianapolis Colts general manager Chris Ballard pulls the plug on a major dice roll
Clearly, Adonai Mitchell is an exceptional athlete. The mere fact that such a prospect fell into the second round shows that there were also concerns about Mitchell’s chances for success. Those concerns all centered on ill-defined character questions. Did he take the job seriously enough? Did he put in max effort in every game? Did he keep his body in top condition?
Those can be difficult to assess, especially for outsiders. But it appears that after a season-and-a-half of first-hand exposure, the Colts have decided that Adonai Mitchell is unlikely to live up to his vast potential.
In retrospect, AD Mitchell’s future with Indianapolis may have been sealed with one ill-fated play earlier this season.
Week 4, on the road against the Los Angeles Rams, Indy found itself locked in a tight, back-and-forth game. Early in the second half, trailing 13-10, Mitchell sprinted down the left sideline, used his size and strength to take the ball from Rams’ cornerback Emmanuel Forbes, broke a tackle, and pulled away from two Rams defenders for a glorious 76-yard touchdown and a Colts’ lead.
Or, it would have been had Mitchell not carelessly lost the ball just as he was about to cross the goal line. Therefore, it became a 75-yard reception and a fumble out of the end zone for a touchback. Mitchell recognized what had happened immediately. As everyone was celebrating, he tried to corral the ball before it went out of the field of play. He couldn’t.
The nightmare was made even worse by a holding penalty, which negated a 53-yard touchdown run by Jonathan Taylor late in the game that also would have given the Colts the lead. As it turned out, Indy instead suffered its first loss of the year, and Adonai Mitchell was clearly in the doghouse.
If you are looking for a silver lining in the Adonai Mitchell story, there are actually two. First, Mitchell became expendable because of the emergence of other Colts’ receivers, particularly soon-to-be star Alec Pierce. Pierce is delivering on the promise that Ballard saw in Mitchell – a promise which had yet to materialize.
And when Mitchell was knocked down a peg or two on the depth chart following that Rams’ debacle, veteran special teamer Ashton Dulin took advantage of some extra snaps on offense to make a couple of nice catches.
Of course, this could backfire. If Indy loses one of its top receivers – especially perimeter threats Pierce or Michael Pittman – Mitchell’s absence would be felt. Dulin and fellow vet Laquan Treadwell are steady options, but neither offers the upside of Mitchell.
In the end, Adonai Mitchell may no longer be a Colt because the Colts simply became too good to wait for him to develop. A middle-of-the-pack team still trying to build its roster might view that game against the Rams as a simple case of growing pains.
They might focus on the remarkable play Mitchell made up until his mistake and trust that he would learn from the miscue. But a team looking to challenge for the Lombardi Trophy this season does not have the luxury of patience.
So in a very real sense, Adonai Mitchell is no longer a Colt because the Colts are now too good a team. In the most recent seasons, they would have waited for his immense talent to emerge. In 2025, let the Jets wait on Adonai Mitchell. The Colts cannot wait. They intend to win.