Maybe the issue for the Indianapolis Colts in terms of how wide receiver Adonai Mitchell's career ended with the team wasn't general manager Chris Ballard's fault. Maybe the problem was head coach Shane Steichen. After all, Ballard's job is to add talent to the roster and Steichen's job is to make sure that talent turns into wins on the field.
Mitchell was not working out with Indy after being a second-round selection in the 2024 NFL Draft. He is on the cusp of being quite good for his new team, the New York Jets, however. He's shown as much in the last half of last season and the offseason program for the Jets.
In minicamp this week, Mitchell has found a connection with newish New York quarterback Geno Smith that he never found with any iteration of the Colts quarterback he played alongside. According to the Jets beat report for The Athletic (subscription required), Zack Rosenblatt, Mitchell and Smith are turning into quite the duo in practice.
Failed wide receiver experiment for the Indianapolis Colts, Adonai Mitchell, could be a star for the New York Jets
In other words, the kind of duo that Mitchell wasn't able to find the same kind of partner in Indy. Anthony Richardson and Joe Flacco were a no-go, and neither was Daniel Jones in 2025. The issue might not have been the quarterbacks. The problem might have been how Steichen tried to use Mitchell in his scheme.
Ballard saw something in the wide receiver that made him want to choose the player out of Texas in round two. Maybe it was that Mitchell was 6'4" and had good speed. For whatever reason, and some of the blame might lie with Mitchell, who seemed mercurial in terms of his approach to Steichen's system, Mitchell failed greatly with the Colts.
What was clear was that he was never going to be successful. He rarely saw the field, and when he did, he might have felt so much pressure to excel that he couldn't be himself.
His lasting memory among Indianapolis Colts fans is likely to be that just before he was about to score his first-ever touchdown when the team was playing the Los Angeles Rams last season, Mitchell stuck out the ball too early to celebrate and fumbled the ball through the end zone for a Rams touchback. The writing was on the wall then, as far as his needing to go.
He obviously had raw talent, however, and after being traded to the New York Jets as part of the trade that brought Sauce Gardner to the Colts last season, Adonai Mitchell had 24 catches for 301 yards and two touchdowns for New York. Overall, that's better than he did with Indy on an average game basis.
Now, with Geno Smith, Mitchell could be ascending and becoming a good NFL wide receiver. His future could be an embarrassment to the Colts. Meanwhile, Indianapolis is trying to find a replacement for the traded Michael Pittman Jr., and that player should have been Mitchell.
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