The Colts are poised to have a serious training camp competition this summer.
The franchise signed placekicker Blake Grupe, who joined the team midseason and finished 21-for-21 combined on field goals and extra points, to a one-year deal, multiple league sources confirmed to IndyStar on Sunday.
Grupe was signed last season ahead of Indianapolis’ Week 14 matchup in Jacksonville — after the Colts waived its first midseason stand-in Michael Badgley — and nailed all 11 of his field goals, including a perfect 4-for-4 on kicks from 50-plus and a franchise-long 60-yarder for a late-game lead in Seattle.
The move gives the team two legitimate options at placekicker on the roster, the type of good problem the franchise hasn’t typically had of late. After years of sifting through numerous options at placekicker, the Colts made a decisive move last offseason, parting ways with veteran Matt Gay two years into a four-year deal as general manager Chris Ballard put his trust in Spencer Shrader, who made his career debut in 2024 with the Colts and kicked for three different teams around the league before making his way back to Indianapolis.
Shrader, who boasts an uber-strong leg, started the 2025 season with the Colts 13-for-14 on field goals, including a long of 52 yards, but a late hit by Raiders safety Tristin McCollum in Week 5 tore the ACL and MCL in the 26-year-old’s right knee, ending his season and putting him on a long road to recovery that’s rare for kickers to face. The Colts immediately brought in Badgley, who went 10-for-11 on field goals but missed three PATs in seven games, leading to his exit, following a narrow 20-16 home loss to the Texans where the Colts were forced to attempt to score a touchdown late in part due to Badgley’s earlier missed extra point.
At the time of his signing, Grupe had missed a league-high eight kicks in 2025 for the Saints before he was waived following Week 12, but he was brought in to link back up with his college special teams coach Brian Mason, the Colts special teams coordinator, and immediately found a rhythm with one of the best special teams units in the league.
“With how everything went down, down there, you maybe question yourself a little bit,” Grupe told IndyStar of New Orleans following the end of the season. “To come here and all of a sudden everything’s right down the middle, makes you thankful for this team, these coaches, (holder and punter) Rigo (Blankenship) and (longsnapper) Luke (Rhodes).”
According to a league source, the Colts plan to retain Shrader this offseason heading into training camp, as he enters the final season of his two-year deal signed last spring — which includes a $1.2 million base salary that isn’t guaranteed.
“It’s kind of a rare injury, but there are guys who’ve been through it,” Shrader told IndyStar in January. “They all offer advice but the interesting thing about injury, kind of the cool thing, too, is it’s all personalized to you. … It’s about really competing with yourself every day to see how fast you can get back, ignoring some of the traditional timetables.”
During locker clean-out day, Shrader told IndyStar he had begun lifting weights again just before the end of the season, he hoped to begin running before the end of January and return to kicking by the start of March.
Ahead of the Colts’ clear decision in favor of Shrader a year ago, the team had cycled through several kickers since the franchise’s decade-plus run with Hall of Famer Adam Vinatieri. The Colts’ longtime incumbent at the position missed the final four games of the 2019 season due to a left knee injury, giving then-rookie Chase McLaughlin his third different home that season. McLaughlin was waived after a training camp battle ahead of the start of the 2020 season in favor of rookie undrafted free agent signing Rodrigo Blankenship.
Blankenship missed all but five games in 2021 due to a hip injury, an opportunity that saw the Colts lean on Badgley for the first time, and then McLaughlin finished the final 16 games of the 2022 season after Blankenship was waived following a crucial Week 1 miss. The Colts signed Matt Gay in the spring of 2023 to a four-year deal, expecting him to be the team’s placekicker of the future, but 14 misses (albeit 11 of them from 50 yards or further) over his 33 games pushed the Indianapolis front office to look to Shrader, who’d kicked the first game of the 2024 season with Gay out due to injury.
Even as they cycled through three kickers in all in 2025, the Colts finished with the second-best field goal percentage in the league (.944), with Shrader, Badgley and Grupe combining to go 34-for-36 with the 10th-most attempts across the league and the fifth-most makes.
Now, after cycling through seven kickers in as many seasons, the Colts will have a major decision to make — the loser of which would likely be swept up for another job somewhere else around the league before too long.
“It’s no secret and no accident that the Colts were 94% on field goals this year,” Grupe said.
Joel A. Erickson and Nathan Brown cover the Colts all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Colts Insider newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts re-sign kicker Blake Grupe, setting up training camp competition
Reporting by Nathan Brown, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
