The Colts offensive line is getting the respect they deserve ahead of the 2024 season

The Indianapolis Colts offensive line bounced back in a big way in 2023 after a down year in 2022.

Senior analyst at PFF Zoltán Buday seems to agree as he ranked them in elite territory ahead of the 2024 season.

Buday ranked his top ten offensive lines in the NFL ahead of the 2024 season, and the Colts came in at number three. The only two teams he ranked higher were the Detroit Lions and the Philadelphia Eagles.

An area that the Colts certainly have an advantage over many offensive line groups in the NFL is that they are returning all five of their starters from last season. And there are two big reasons to expect the group to take another step forward in 2024.

The first being that the team's young starters in LT Bernhard Raimann and RG Will Fries, have continued to improve as they play more. Both ended the season arguably playing the best football of their career, and there's no reason to expect that trend to come to an end in 2024. The second is the return of Anthony Ricahrdson as the team's starting QB. The drop-off in terms of pocket presence that the Colts offense saw when going from Richardson to Gardner Minshew in 2023 was quite drastic.

It led to the Colts giving up more sacks than their ninth-lowest pressure (18.3%) would suggest. The team ended up allowing 41 sacks last season, which tied for the 11th least in the NFL, but that number easily could have been lower if it weren't for Minshew's struggle reading a blitz as well as him simply holding on to the ball too long. Richardson may have been a rookie, but his poise and presence in the pocket was quite impressive. This, paired with Richardson's ability to make defenders miss and make plays out of the pocket and the number of sacks allowed by the Colts, is bound to see a significant decrease in 2024.

Related: The second-year honorary rookie: Colts OT Jake Witt

Related: Colts Josh Downs was one of the best WRs in the NFL in an important category as a rookie