From the moment Sauce Gardner joined the Indianapolis Colts, expectations were going to be sky high.
The Colts traded two first-round picks to get Gardner midway through the 2025 season from the New York Jets.
At the time, the Colts were taking a big swing. They’d had a brilliant start to the season and wanted to add a star defensive player to change the level of their secondary.
But then the Colts collapsed down the stretch, and now they’re off to a 1-2 start to 2026.
With that has come plenty of fan criticism on social media of the Gardner trade.
It creates a tough standard for Gardner to ever meet.
Sauce Gardner’s ‘Impossible Standard’
The problem for Sauce is that no matter what he does, it’ll be tough to fully live up to the trade. It was such a high cost.
“The problem (with) the Sauce discourse is he’s being asked to reach an impossible standard,” ESPN’s Stephen Holder wrote Monday afternoon on X. “For anyone who sees it as a bad trade, he can never live up the billing. All he can do is play well, and he is.”
That was in response to this post, which echoes a lot of the common ideas in Indy’s fanbase:
From all media reports seems to be a really nice guy but bottom line, we gave up TWO, 1st Rd. picks. I guarantee we couldn’t get TWO 1st Rd. picks for Jonathon Taylor and who produces me for this team…Seemed like a good gamble at the time but now looks like a really bad trade.
— Mark Holt (@MarkHoltBRHS) September 28, 2026
It’s not Gardner’s fault that the Colts decided to make such a big deal, or that the Jets accepted.
Gardner can simply keep taking the field and playing to the best of his ability.
If anyone were to be at fault for something like this, it wouldn’t be Sauce — it’d be the front office.
Sauce Gardner’s Other Problem
The other dilemma in gauging Sauce’s impact for the Colts is that he’s a shutdown cornerback.
That means that if you go a whole game without seeing Gardner involved in a play or hearing his name on the broadcast, it probably means he’s doing his job.
Quarterbacks will often throw Gardner’s way only a couple of times a game. His job is to entirely lock down one portion of the field, and that’s exactly what he’s doing.
It just doesn’t lead to the kind of splash plays that are easy for fans to notice and appreciate.
Gardner is more like a quality offensive lineman, a guy who you probably don’t think about all that much unless he messes up.
And at the moment, Gardner doesn’t mess up. He’s too good.
He’s pretty much exactly the player the Colts hoped they were getting. Was that worth two first-round picks? That’s not Gardner’s determination to make.
How Colts’ Sauce Gardner Faces ‘Impossible Standard’ After Trade