Pat McAfee’s Colts Career, Records, and Complicated Love Affair With Indianapolis
From Pittsburgh Suburbs to Indianapolis — A 7th-Round Nobody Who Became a Franchise Icon
Pat McAfee grew up in Plum, Pennsylvania, a small working-class town about 15 miles east of Pittsburgh. He was a three-sport athlete in high school — volleyball, soccer, football — and honestly, soccer was probably his best sport. That background is why he can strike a football the way he does. West Virginia gave him a full scholarship, where he handled placekicking and punting for the Mountaineers from 2005 to 2008, finishing his college career 210-for-212 on PATs and converting 58 of 79 field goal attempts.
He wasn’t invited to the NFL Combine. That’s unusual for someone who attended the Senior Bowl, which typically serves as a direct pipeline. The Colts still liked what they saw in workouts and selected him 222nd overall in the seventh round of the 2009 NFL Draft. Pick 222. Out of 256. That’s the kind of draft position where the team is essentially saying: we’ll see.
Bill Polian ran the Colts front office at the time. He saw a big-legged kid who could boom kickoffs and control field position. What he probably didn’t anticipate was that the kid would spend the next eight years rewriting the franchise’s special teams record book, then go on to become one of the most recognized sports personalities in the country.
McAfee won the punter job in training camp as a rookie. He didn’t get the placekicking role — Adam Vinatieri handled that — but he owned everything else. Punts. Kickoffs. Holding for extra points. And occasionally, for reasons that should never have worked but absolutely did, fake punts.
Eight Seasons, Franchise Records, and One Hall-of-Fame Punter Performance
The 2012 season is where McAfee truly announced himself. He posted a 48.2-yard punting average that season, a single-season franchise record that still stands. His net punting average that year was 40.3 yards. He landed 26 punts inside the 20-yard line and recorded 45 kickoff touchbacks — also a team record at the time. Those aren’t punter stats. Those are weapon stats.
By 2014, the league caught up to what Colts fans already knew. McAfee earned AFC Special Teams Player of the Month in September, booted 69 punts for 3,221 yards, pinned 30 of them inside the 20, and won his first Pro Bowl selection. He also recovered his own onside kick that year — an absurd play that you’d have to watch twice to believe actually happened.
The 2013 season gave us arguably his most-replayed moment as a player. In Week 7 against the Broncos, McAfee absolutely leveled Trindon Holliday on a kickoff return. Cris Collinsworth, calling the game on NBC, said on air that McAfee was going to be “a legend among kickers everywhere.” He finished his career with 21 solo tackles — third most by a punter in NFL history. Most punters don’t tackle anyone. McAfee apparently did it for fun.
He went back to the Pro Bowl in 2016, his final season, posting a 74-yard punt against the Chicago Bears along the way. That game also featured a fake punt pass thrown on Thanksgiving Day that left everyone — including the defense — completely confused in the best way. He retired after the 2016 season with a 46.4-yard career punting average, 575 punts total, and 193 of those landing inside the opponent’s 20-yard line (33.6%).
Pro Football Focus later named him the best punter of the past 25 years. His 4.54-second average hang time on 611 qualifying punts is top-five all time among players who meet the minimum threshold. The 46.4 career average sits in the top 15 of the entire PFF era. These are not sentimental numbers. They’re analytical.
The 2009 Super Bowl Year — Peyton Manning, a Canal, and a Rookie’s Strange Introduction to the NFL
McAfee’s first NFL season was not normal. The 2009 Colts went 14-2 in the regular season, won the AFC South and the AFC Championship, and played in Super Bowl XLIV against the New Orleans Saints in Miami. McAfee handled kickoffs and punts in the game. The Colts lost 31-17. He was 22 years old.
He was named to the 2009 NFL All-Rookie Team. Not bad for pick 222.
Then, in October 2010, he jumped into the Central Canal in downtown Indianapolis after a night out. A woman called 911 to report a shirtless NFL player trying to get into her car. He spent the night in jail. When officers asked how much he’d had to drink, McAfee answered: “A lot. Because I’m drunk.” He called his father the next morning from jail. His father hung up on him. The Colts suspended and fined him. McAfee later said it was the wake-up call he didn’t know he needed.
He went on to sign a five-year, $14 million contract extension in March 2014. The franchise tag had kept him in Indianapolis in 2013. By that point, he was already one of the best at his position in the league, and the Colts knew it.
McAfee the Media Personality — and Why He Never Actually Left Indianapolis
He retired in February 2017 citing a third knee surgery in four years. The kicking motion — specifically the repetitive impact on his non-kicking leg — had worn him down. He was 29. Physically, he probably had a few more years at a high level. He chose differently.
What followed was, by any measure, an extraordinary second act. He joined Barstool Sports in 2017, developed their “Heartland” division out of Indianapolis, then left in 2018 over what he described as a lack of business transparency. He incorporated Pat McAfee Inc., launched an independent show on his own YouTube channel and SiriusXM, and built an audience from scratch. By 2023, ESPN came calling with a reported eight-figure annual deal. He now co-hosts College GameDay on Saturdays and runs The Pat McAfee Show on ESPN on weekdays.
The show is based in Indianapolis. That’s not an accident. McAfee has consistently brought Colts players through the studio — Anthony Richardson sat down with him in June 2024 for his first appearance on the show. Tyrese Haliburton came through. Caitlin Clark came through. The show became an unofficial hub for Indiana sports in a way that national media outlets rarely bother to provide. McAfee specifically noted this: Indianapolis doesn’t get a lot of national attention for its teams. His show changed that somewhat, just by being there.
He’s also a color commentator and occasional performer in WWE, which tells you everything you need to know about his personality.
The Jim Irsay Relationship — What Most Fans Don’t Know
After Jim Irsay’s death, McAfee posted a tribute that revealed the real texture of their relationship. It started professionally — Irsay owned the team, McAfee played for it — but it deepened during the 2011 NFL lockout. Irsay followed McAfee on Twitter during the CBA negotiations. When the lockout ended, their first real conversation wasn’t about football. It was about social media, about connecting with fans, about using the platform to give things away and be genuinely present with the fanbase. Irsay was enthusiastic about it.
When McAfee decided to retire, Irsay tried to talk him out of it. He offered to restructure the contract. McAfee held firm. Irsay’s response, according to McAfee’s tribute, was to pivot immediately into advice about business — and to tell him: “If for some reason this doesn’t work or you don’t want to do it anymore, you’ll always have a job here at the Colts. You are family.”
That line matters when you’re trying to understand why McAfee talks about the Colts constantly, criticizes them publicly, shows up to announce draft picks, and still refers to Indianapolis as home. The relationship with the organization ran deeper than eight seasons on the field.
Where It Got Complicated — The 2024 Collapse and the Anthony Richardson Fallout
For most of his media career, McAfee was simply the most prominent Colts fan on national television. He boosted them, criticized them when they fell short, and was basically the unofficial emotional barometer of the fanbase. That changed in 2024.
The Colts started the season 8-2 — one of the best starts in franchise history. Then they collapsed. The team finished 8-9 and missed the playoffs for the fifth consecutive year. In the middle of that collapse came the play that defined the season: Anthony Richardson, the franchise quarterback, appeared to exit a play in the third down of a red zone situation because he was fatigued.
McAfee went after it hard. He joined a chorus of former players and analysts who said this type of thing doesn’t happen on teams with winning cultures — that leaving a play due to fatigue in the red zone was simply not acceptable. He went further, questioning preparation standards within the Colts building: players arriving late to meetings, skipping treatment, a general lack of accountability that he said anyone with experience at a winning organization would recognize immediately.
The Colts fanbase split. Some agreed completely — they’d been watching this dysfunction for years. Others felt McAfee was piling on a young quarterback who’d dealt with genuine immaturity issues and deserved more patience. Current Colts players started using McAfee’s image in ways that framed him as an opponent rather than an ally. He responded publicly, pointing out that he’d been publicly championing this team for years, and that people who’d won nothing in their NFL tenures were now trying to paint him as the enemy.
He announced he would not renew his season tickets.
He also got booed at Lucas Oil Stadium. That appeared to genuinely surprise him, which — given what he’d been saying — surprised some fans in return.
McAfee later walked some of it back on the Richardson front, acknowledging that the quarterback had been put in a difficult situation by the organization itself. “AR had no chance with this building,” he said on his show. “That’s what I’ve realized.” Whether that was a genuine reassessment or a reputational pivot is something Colts fans still debate.
Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen kept their jobs after the 2024 season. McAfee was skeptical. He said on air that the building felt broken, and that it was hard to change a culture without a new voice and a new face running things.
The 2026 NFL Draft in Pittsburgh — A Magic Trick and a Super Bowl Guarantee
Whatever the tensions of 2024, McAfee showed up to announce the Colts’ picks on Day 2 of the 2026 NFL Draft. The draft was held in Pittsburgh — his hometown. He had done this once before, in Nashville in 2019, when he announced the selection of linebacker Bobby Okereke in the third round and used the moment to deliver some pointed words toward Titans fans in attendance.
Pittsburgh was a bigger stage.
Before announcing the Colts’ second-round selection, McAfee produced a napkin and made it disappear in his hands. The trick was meant to represent banishing the negativity surrounding the franchise. Then he grabbed the microphone and guaranteed that the Colts would win the Super Bowl in 2026. The crowd’s reaction was predictably chaotic. He announced Georgia linebacker CJ Allen as the 53rd overall pick. Later in the evening, he announced LSU safety AJ Haulcy at pick 78.
The Colts did not have a first-round pick in 2026. They had traded it to acquire cornerback Sauce Gardner — a move that was polarizing at the time and remains a point of discussion. McAfee acknowledged this directly from the stage. He framed the entire draft appearance around the idea that the Colts had made their bet, were all-in for 2026, and that fans should expect results.
Whether that guarantee holds any real weight is another question. McAfee has admitted he was running on adrenaline and fan energy in Pittsburgh. But the image of him — hometown kid, Colts legend, ESPN personality — making a napkin disappear on draft night and promising a Super Bowl is the kind of moment that circulates for years.
How Good Was He, Actually — The Career in Numbers
This is the question that gets lost in the media noise. McAfee’s punting metrics hold up against anyone who played his position in the past two decades:
- Career punting average: 46.4 yards per attempt (top 15 in PFF era)
- Average hang time: 4.54 seconds on 611 qualifying punts (top 5 all time)
- Punts inside the opponent’s 20: 214 total, 33.6% of career punts
- Single-season punting average record (Colts): 48.2 yards (2012)
- Career tackles: 21 solo (third most by a punter in NFL history)
- Pro Bowl: 2014, 2016
- First-Team All-Pro: 2014
- Games played: 127 over 8 seasons
- PFF ranking: best punter of the past 25 years
He made two Pro Bowls, which, when you account for how infrequently punters get that recognition, is actually impressive. He was voted All-Pro once. Those numbers feel modest compared to the PFF analysis — but voting bodies don’t always reward punters the way the analytics do.
He was drafted lower than almost any player who went on to hold franchise records at their position. He was punting at a level that might have sustained two or three more Pro Bowl appearances when he retired. And after retiring, he built a media career that earns him substantially more per year than football ever did.
McAfee’s Relationship With the Colts Franchise — Still Unresolved
The honest read on where things stand: McAfee loves the Colts in the way someone loves a family member who keeps making the same mistakes. He’s frustrated, vocal, occasionally booed, and still showing up to announce their draft picks in a Pittsburgh ballroom while making things disappear.
He played for one owner his entire career. That owner told him he was family and meant it. He watched the franchise cycle through quarterbacks — Andrew Luck, Carson Wentz, Philip Rivers, Matt Ryan, Anthony Richardson — without finding sustained success after the Peyton Manning era ended. He built his entire media brand in the city where he played. His show is still there.
Whether the Colts make good on McAfee’s guaranteed Super Bowl in 2026 will determine a lot about how the next chapter of this relationship reads. Sauce Gardner is there. The coaching staff survived. The front office survived. The pressure McAfee described from the stage in Pittsburgh is real — and it’s pressure the organization largely brought on itself by trading the first-round pick and retaining leadership after five straight seasons out of the playoffs.
McAfee’s credibility as a critic depends partly on whether he’s right. His track record as a player is already settled. On the field, by every metric that matters, he was exactly as good as the best analysts in the sport say he was.
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