A day after the Indianapolis Colts traded two of their longest-serving leaders, Daniel Jones stood at his locker on Wednesday and tried to explain what Quenton Nelson had meant to the team. “Everybody knows how good of a player he is on the field. He’s the best in the league,” the Colts quarterback said. “But as a leader and just getting everybody together, you know, he was huge for that also.”
On Tuesday the Colts sent Nelson, an eight-time Pro Bowl guard, to the Seattle Seahawks for a 2027 third-round pick and a 2028 fifth-round pick. A few hours later they traded defensive tackle DeForest Buckner back to the San Francisco 49ers, the team that drafted him, for a 2027 fourth-round pick. Indianapolis is 2-5 after three straight losses and plays at the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sunday.
Jones: “Disappointed to lose a guy like that”
Jones said he had learned “a ton” from Nelson in their time together on offense, “just watching him go about his work day to day, how he’s led, who he is as a player and a person.” He did not hide how the players felt. “Obviously you’re disappointed to lose a guy like that, you know, honestly. And you know, that’s part of it,” he said. “But our job is to play, is to prepare and play and play well, play at a high level.”
Asked how a team keeps believing after losing two of its best players in the middle of a season, Jones said the decisions are not the players’ to make. “Whatever that perception is or whatever that indicates, one way or the other, you know, is outside of our control,” he said. “We have a mature group of guys and guys who understand that.” Asked what the last 24 hours might mean for his own future, he said “it’s natural” to have those thoughts, but “what I can control right now is playing football and preparing as well as I can this week to play the Jaguars on Sunday.”
Jones described a leader who worked off the field as much as on it: “how he focused on getting guys together outside of the locker room, off the field, building relationships, bringing guys along, holding guys accountable when it wasn’t good enough. He was the guy doing that in a lot of situations.”
He was also asked about his own turnovers. Jones has thrown seven interceptions in seven games, at least one in six of them. “Certainly got to do a better job taking care of the ball. I know that and haven’t done a good enough job,” he said. “That’s hurt us, so got to make better decisions, understand when to take the chance and when not to.”
Jalen Farmer: “It ain’t no replacing”
The player stepping into Nelson’s spot is Jalen Farmer, a rookie guard from Kentucky and a fourth-round pick in April. Farmer said the plan is for him to play left guard, though a reporter pointed out he had mostly played right guard. He and Nelson have already spoken since the trade. “Really just telling me that if I need anything to hit him up, because he’s still that guy for us,” Farmer said. “You don’t really have vets that have that type of attitude towards their players. And some people, they think it’s always just a business. But you can really see that he really cares about the guys that he goes to work with each and every day.”
He would not call it replacing anyone. “What Q did was real, you know what I’m saying? That’s a real gold jacket guy right there,” Farmer said. “You can’t disrespect nothing he did here, so it ain’t no replacing. It’s just I’m here for a job, and I gotta get it done for my guys.”
“Dang, we really don’t have Q and Buck in the building anymore”
Longtime Colts tight end Mo Alie-Cox said the news still felt strange a day later. “It was a little shocking, a little weird,” he said. “I was playing the game with my friends yesterday, we were talking about, I’m just like, kept saying like, dang, we really like don’t have Q and Buck in the building anymore.” He added: “At the end of the day, we know it’s a business, a business we signed up for. This could possibly happen to anybody on the team.”
Alie-Cox said the two set the tone in their rooms and organized team dinners away from the facility, and that their exit puts the burden on the players left behind. “We lost two of our leaders and things like that, but it gives younger players a chance to step up and play,” he said. “This is a time to have more on your plate and go out there and show that it wasn’t a bad decision to trade those guys.”
Defensive tackle Adetomiwa Adebawore, whose locker sits next to the one Buckner used, said it “definitely feels a lot different right now without him here.” He said Buckner had organized the defensive line’s dinners “for years” and talked him through the guards he would face each week, adding a player’s view to what the coaches were teaching. “I’ve learned a lot from him,” Adebawore said. “But we have to move on. We all have a job to do, and that’s the focus on Jacksonville right now.” Asked about his growing role, he said he has prepared every week “like I’m the starter, and now I have this opportunity, so I just plan to make the most of it.”
The Jaguars lead the AFC South at 4-2. The Colts and Jaguars kick off on Sunday, November 1, at 1:00 p.m. ET, which is 8:00 p.m. in Cairo.
No published comments yet. Start the conversation.