Keenan Allen was arrested on preliminary charges of operating a vehicle while intoxicated just after 1 a.m. Sunday in downtown Indianapolis, hours before the Colts were due to turn in their 53-man roster. Police found his vehicle parked in a no-parking zone and noted signs of intoxication, according to ESPN. The Colts didn’t get unlucky with the timing. That’s the story itself.
You don’t get booked on two preliminary misdemeanor charges — operating a vehicle while intoxicated and OVWI endangering a person — at 1 a.m. on the day your team sets its 53-man roster and chalk it up to bad luck.
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport had the news Sunday morning.
https://twitter.com/RapSheet/status/2094031940416385304
Allen played Saturday night in the preseason finale against Detroit, one catch for 24 yards, in what TMZ reports was hours before the arrest. The Colts signed him eleven days earlier, and it wasn’t a desperation move. He’s a 14-year veteran, a six-time Pro Bowler, one of 18 players in NFL history with at least 1,055 catches, 12,051 yards and 70 touchdowns.
Indianapolis needed receiver depth while Alec Pierce was still working back from an ankle injury on the PUP list. Allen also has a personal relationship with head coach Shane Steichen going back to their years together with the Chargers. This was a front office trying to buy stability during a fragile week, and it got neither.
Because the fragility wasn’t limited to the receiver room. Daniel Jones is Indy’s starting quarterback, still working back from Achilles surgery, but the real drama has been at QB2, where Anthony Richardson and Riley Leonard have been fighting for the backup job — a competition Steichen said could come down to the preseason finale performance, the same game Allen played in before he was arrested. Indianapolis has been picking through its own quarterback mess since spring, but Sunday added a wrinkle nobody in that saga saw coming: a receiver in a holding cell.
I went back and watched Allen’s one catch from Saturday looking for a tell. There isn’t one.
The Colts’ statement said they’re “aware of the incident” and gathering information, which is the same sentence every team writes when it doesn’t yet know how bad the story gets.
None of this settles anything legally. Both charges are misdemeanors, Allen hasn’t been formally charged, and nobody outside the Marion County booking room knows what actually happened at 1 a.m. But teams don’t get to plead ignorance about who they signed.
Indianapolis brought in a 34-year-old receiver for exactly the reasons that make a franchise feel safe: the résumé, the coach’s old locker room, the idea that a six-time Pro Bowler doesn’t need to be managed. Eleven days later he was booked hours before the roster deadline, on the same day as the rest of this weekend’s cutdown carnage league-wide.
Steichen wanted stability. He got a police report.
