Colts' JT Tuimoloau Has Immense Room to Improve in Year Two

The Indianapolis Colts rolled into this season with a less-than-ideal edge rush room, headlined by a solid player in Laiatu Latu and an underachiever in Kwity Paye, while backed up by two aging, injury-prone players in Tyquan Lewis and Samson Ebukam.

For better or for worse, each of those four players hit expectations coming into the year. The lone wild card in this equation was the second-round rookie JT Tuimoloau.

Tuimoloau was selected by the Colts with the 45th overall pick in the 2025 NFL Draft. A productive player in college, Tuimoloau finished his career with 23.5 sacks (12.5 as a senior) at Ohio State and even won a National Championship in his last year of play.

He appeared to be fairly NFL-ready coming out of college, as his blend of size and strength appeared to be good enough to get on the field and produce right away in the NFL.

J.T. Tuimoloau is a DE prospect in the 2025 draft class. He scored a 9.33 RAS out of a possible 10.00. This ranked 136 out of 2012 DE from 1987 to 2025.https://t.co/Qbsk6jmDpR pic.twitter.com/Of4LzVL8Rl
— RAS.football (@MathBomb) March 31, 2025

Today, we kick off an offseason of individual player spotlights by looking at this promising rookie and how his NFL career didn’t get off to the greatest start in 2025.

Things appeared pretty bleak for Tuimoloau in training camp, as he was consistently running with the third and fourth teams and was even seen playing late in the fourth quarter of preseason games.

He obviously made the team, but that spoke to how far away he was from cracking the lineup out of August.

He was a healthy scratch for three of his first six games with the team, and only had a total of 39 defensive snaps played through six weeks.

He did eventually find a role on the team after that, mainly due to injuries suffered by Lewis and Ebukam.

Tuimoloau finished the season with 12 games played with 215 total snaps on defense. His final counting stats were zero sacks, six QB hits, and eight hurries across 130 pass rush snaps as a rookie.

The counting stats were pretty rough for the young player, but his advanced stats may actually be worse. Among Colts edge rushers, he finished only ahead of Lewis in pass rush win rate at 9.8%.

That number is good for 85th out of 121 edge rushers to take at least 124 rush snaps on the year (according to Pro Football Focus).

Next Gen Stats was a little kinder to him, charting him with the second-highest pressure percentage in the edge room, but his average time to pressure only beat out Ebukam among his fellow edge players.

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The biggest concern for me when looking at his film is that I saw a player that looked very indecisive, slow off of the ball, and simply too big for the edge rusher position.

He looked a bit more comfortable rushing inside this year, but on the edge, he just looked like another fringe roster player in a majority of his snaps.

So many of his rushes were plays where he was slow to get off the ball and just gave an uninspired bull rush to no depth in the pocket.

Tuimoloau isn’t a speed rusher. He is a massive player with freaky length and good power. He should be using these elements to his advantage, but far too often he was washed out on the edge and caught leaning by opposing offensive tackles and snatched to the ground.

He was cleanly snatched and trapped twice this season (one was wrongly called a hold against a Raiders OT) and had several other plays where he was just a non-factor.

If I had to grade him based on impact as a pass rusher this year, I’d grade him out very poorly overall.

Luckily, Tuimoloau is a rookie, and this one season isn’t make or break for him (even if it was for many others in his position group).

The key in year one for young pass rushers is for them to show flash in limited playing time and give the team building blocks for the future.

While I am still concerned with how slow Tuimoloau looked off the ball and his lack of plan on most of his rushes, he did showcase some flash here and there.

Most notably, his spin move is a really fun weapon to build on. He won cleanly with this rush quite a few times this season, and offensive linemen really struggled to corral him when he pulls it out.

He also flashed good hands on a few cross-chop attempts and swipe attempts, too, which at least shows me that he can win in this league.

The key for him is just being more decisive pre-snap and building a go-to move out of all this.

JT Tuimoloau doesn't have much of a pass rush bag right now, but his spin move is pretty fun to watch. After watching all 189 of his defensive snaps, I think he's been successful every time he's tried it this year: pic.twitter.com/9bXcgAXXS8
— Zach Hicks (@ZachHicks2) December 20, 2025

Overall, it was definitely a disappointing season for Tuimoloau and he has a big season ahead of him. I’m certainly not out on the young player but he has a lot to prove heading into year two with snaps potentially there for the taking.

If he can come into camp a bit lighter and with a clear plan of attack, he can serve as a key rotational pass rusher in this system come 2026.

If not, well, he may be on track to join the Chris Ballard graveyard of top 100 edge rusher picks.

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