Insider: Why Colts believe new kicker Matt Gay is worth the money

PHOENIX — For the most part, Indianapolis Colts general manager Chris Ballard has treated free agency this spring the same way he always has, prioritizing the defensive line, looking for low-cost bargains at other positions.

Except for one spot.

It's a position Ballard acknowledges he could have been more aggressive over the past couple of seasons, even if it’s not a role that moves the needle in a big way.

“I’ll tell you, the one thing I took for granted was Adam Vinatieri,” Ballard said at the NFL’s owner’s meetings last week. “Well, I didn’t take him for granted, because I kept re-signing him, but getting Matt Gay, we think he can be a real weapon.”

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The Colts have spent the past four seasons ‒ since Vinatieri’s age finally caught up with him ‒ dealing with inconsistency and uncertainty at the kicking position. Initially, Indianapolis stuck with an injured Vinatieri too long in 2019, then spent the next two seasons and change betting on Rodrigo Blankenship, who started off his career on the right foot only to falter later, plagued by inconsistency and ineffectiveness from long range.

Blankenship’s struggles ultimately cost him his job after the first game of the 2022 season, and replacement kicker Chase McLaughlin handled the job well, burying a franchise-record nine kicks of more than 50 yards while making 83.3% of his kicks overall.

But McLaughlin has been an inconsistent option throughout his career, and Ballard wanted a kicker he could count on as a weapon.

And it was a kicker Blankenship once kept him from keeping. Gay was on the Colts practice squad in 2020 for two months before the Rams snapped up the former fifth-round pick, a player who’d found his rhythm in Indianapolis.

He’d just happened to find his rhythm in Blankenship’s best stretch of games in an Indianapolis uniform.

“We saw it back in ’20, but Rod had gotten hot,” Ballard said. “And then the Rams came along. What are you going to do?”

While Blankenship faltered, Gay blossomed into one of the NFL’s best kickers with the Rams.

Gay made 92.5% of his kicks in Los Angeles, burying 17 of 23 from 50 yards or more.

If Gay keeps that up in Indianapolis, the Colts no longer have to worry about riding a roller coaster at the kicking spot.

“We actually think he’s going to give us an opportunity to really add value from a consistency and talent level,” Ballard said. “It’s a real weapon to have.”

Landing Gay required a significant investment.

Indianapolis handed the former Ram a four-year deal worth up to $22.5 million, the second-largest contract on a per-year basis ($5.5 million) of any kicker in the league, trailing only Baltimore’s Justin Tucker, widely considered one of the best kickers in the history of the NFL.

But as big as the contract is for a kicker, it’s relatively small compared to the salary cap at large, and under Ballard, the Colts have learned their lesson about the importance of kicking consistency.

A consistency Gay believes he’ll be able to bring to his new team.

“Consistency, day in and day out, with the small things is really what’s the key to just seeing the results,” Gay said. “Then just taking it one kick at a time, not getting ahead of myself, knowing that whether the last kick went in or it didn’t has no bearing if the next one’s going to go in or not.”

Gay found that rhythm in Indianapolis.

The kicker also found a city that he and his wife loved, a place they could see themselves raising a family.

The familiarity helped the Colts land him in free agency.

“Us having that exposure to Matt, I thought it was an advantage,” Ballard said.

The Colts are now counting on Gay to give them the consistency Vinatieri once provided in Indianapolis.

Unlike McLaughlin, who has struggled to find a permanent home in the NFL because of a tendency to struggle in cold weather, Gay has proven he can transfer his indoor consistency into the cold weather on the road in November, December and January.

“He made some big kicks outdoors,” Ballard said. “One of the things I did watch was the 55-yarder he made outside in Green Bay in the regular season.”

Gay’s Green Bay blast made him only the third kicker in history to make a 50-yard field goal in temperatures colder than 25 degrees, and it burnished his reputation as one of the NFL’s best up-and-coming kickers.

A reputation the Colts are counting on him to cement in Indianapolis.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts: Why they believe new kicker Matt Gay is worth the money