Colts Center Ryan Kelly: “I Want to Spend My Entire Career in Indianapolis”

Colts center Ryan Kelly spoke with team beat reporters yesterday afternoon to discuss his future with the team, as well as what his virtual off-season training has been like thus far, according to Indiana Athletic’s Stephen Holder.

One of the first things Kelly told reporters was how his agent, Jimmy Sexton, has had some conversations with GM Chris Ballard regrading a potential contract extension in the near future.

“Yeah my agent, Jimmy Sexton, I know he’s had a few conversations with Chris (Ballard) so far,” Kelly said. “I don’t know if any numbers have been thrown around yet, but obviously I have the most confidence in Chris that – I think we have something special on our offensive line. I’d like to play my entire career in Indianapolis. I truly believe that I’ll be here for a while, I hope.”

After this past season, Ballard spoke highly of Kelly’s leadership, overall performance, and how he’s really enjoyed watching him grow over these last four seasons.

“Really proud of Ryan Kelly,” said Ballard via 1070 the Fan’s Kevin Bowen. “16 weeks, fought through, tremendous leader, is really starting to understand the (entire offensive line), bringing the group together, being the leader of the O-line.

“Fun to watch his growth.”

Over the last four seasons, Kelly has truly cemented himself as one of the NFL’s best centers.

Despite the obvious obstacle of not having an in-person off-season, Kelly still believes that he, the rest of the O-line, and newly added quarterback Philip Rivers, will be on the same page once the season starts.

“That’s just kind of the hard part about this whole Corona(virus) thing, not being able to get out there and get live reps with his (Rivers’) certain cadences that he likes to do,” Kelly said. “I think what we’ve done so well is that Frank (Reich) and Nick (Sirianni) and all the guys on the offensive side have really got us going in the fact that we’re going to try to figure out the best we can how to get live reps on Zoom. That’s what we’ve been doing the last couple days. I think that’s really been helping a lot.”

Kelly added that he, Rivers, and the rest of the offensive line have met via Zoom to work on different cadences. According to Kelly, the meetings have been going very well.

“Yeah, basically what we do is we go through – so they basically give Phil (Philip Rivers) the play call, and he’ll just say, ‘All right, we’re in the huddle. Here’s the formation. Here’s the play. Here’s the cadence,’ and we go to the line of scrimmage and we’ll cut to a play,” Kelly said. “We’ll kind of run through it the best that we can. We’re doing everything that we can to get live reps. If you visualize it enough, it will come over time to get used to it. As far as down to the cadence and his presence in the huddle, it’s obviously going to be paramount that we get that down. I think we’re doing a good job.”

It’s no secret the Colts want to keep Kelly around for years to come. Understandingly so, too, as he’s been a key component to one of the NFL’s best offensive lines for the past several seasons.

Now, It appears to only be a matter of time before the Pro Bowl center receives a contract extension with the team.