Indianapolis Colts tight end Tyler Warren hit the ground running as a rookie.
It's exactly what Chris Ballard expected, and the general manager has now set his expectations on Warren taking it to another level.
"He's going to get better, and that's the exciting thing," Ballard said this week at the NFL Scouting Combine, via . "So yeah, excited about him and it didn't surprise me, what he did."
What Warren did was join Indy as the No. 14 overall pick in the 2025 draft and subsequently make the Pro Bowl on the strength of 76 receptions for 817 yards and four touchdowns, plus another score on the ground. His 817 receiving yards set a franchise rookie record by a tight end and marked the most by a Colt at the position since Dallas Clark's 2009 campaign.
Perhaps more impressively, he was a difference maker from the start -- and in countless alignments.
Warren hit 70 or more receiving yards in three of his first four games as a pro and in Weeks 4-7 pieced together a four-game scoring streak. He still spent the majority of his time inline (466 snaps, per PFF), but he also played 384 combined snaps out wide or in the slot, took 60 snaps as a fullback and three as the quarterback.
"You saw it at Penn State, he's really instinctive, he's really smart," Ballard said of Warren. "I think for any rookie, especially on both sides of the ball but offensively, a tight end that has to -- I think it's a very difficult position because you got to know the blocking schemes, the passing schemes, the pass protection schemes, the run game. There's so much that you put on them, and his ability -- we knew it coming out, that he'd be able to handle it. Now, you didn't know how fast, but we had a pretty good feeling for it."
The only major knock on Warren's rookie season is that he lost momentum as the campaign progressed, though that felt more related to the Colts' spiral than anything Warren did individually.
Indianapolis emerged as a surprise Super Bowl favorite in the early going, racing out to an 8-2 start behind quarterback Daniel Jones and running back Jonathan Taylor. Rigoberto Sanchez didn't even attempt a punt until Week 3.
Then, already in a two-game slide, Jones tore his Achilles in the first quarter of a Week 14 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, and the floodgates of futility opened for Indy. After failing to hit 20 points just once to that point, the Colts scored in the teens in three of their final five contests (including versus the Jags). Philip Rivers coming out of retirement could not save them from finishing the season 0-7 following a Week 11 bye spent atop the list of contenders.
Through the 12 games in which Jones was healthy from start to finish, Warren averaged 4.8 receptions and 57.0 receiving yards. He scored his final touchdown on the season in Week 13. Including Week 14 when Jones went down, Warren averaged 3.6 catches and 26.6 yards through the team's final five outings.
As the Colts look to reset -- whether it's with Jones, a pending free agent, or someone else under center -- they are counting on Warren to rebound and go beyond the output from his stellar first season.
Despite a lull as the team lost its footing late in 2025, everything Warren has shown so far suggests he can.
PROGRAMMING NOTE: NFL Network and Â鶹¹ú²ú will have live coverage of the 2026 NFL Scouting Combine through March 1.
