Indianapolis, IN
Former Orange Bowl opponents now Colts teammates
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The Indianapolis Colts are in the middle of rookie minicamp at the Indiana Farm Bureau Football Center.
Former Penn State tight end Tyler Warren was drafted by the Colts in the first round of last month’s NFL Draft, while former Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard was drafted by the Colts in the sixth round of the draft.
The two played each other this past January in the Orange Bowl down in Miami Gardens, Fla. Leonard’s Fighting Irish beat Warren’s Nittany Lions 27-24 in that College Football Playoff matchup.
News 8 Sports’ Andrew Chernoff asked Warren on Friday if Leonard and him have discussed that game at all.
“Hadn’t been long talks, but it came up here and there,” Warren said.
Notre Dame may have beaten Penn State this past January, but Warren had a huge impact for the Nittany Lions in the game. He finished with 6 receptions for 75 yards in the contest, while also rushing for 21 yards on two carries.
“I didn’t talk to J.T. (Tuimoloau) about the natty, but I went straight up to Tyler Warren,” Leonard said. “That’s for sure. I went straight up to him. But then again, he probably had like 150 yards on us too at the same time.”
The duo may have been on opposite sidelines in that game this past January, but now they are looking forward to being teammates in Indy.
“He (Leonard) was a great player,” Warren said. “So playing him in college and now being teammates is really cool. And just to kind of share teams with guys that had great success all through college. Now being on the same team is really cool.”
Leonard shares the same sentiment as he now is throwing passes to a player in Warren who made life miserable for defenses all across the college football world last season.
“Tyler, he’s a football player,” Leonard said. “He went out there yesterday and just very easily adapt(ed). He’s just a quarterback-friendly guy – catches, soft hands and things like that. But, ‘Tyler Warren’ Tyler Warren is like – you strap up them pads, that’s another version of the dude. Some guys are just football players and he’s definitely one of them. You can kind of tell. When he gets his hand in the dirt and straps it up, I’m excited to see it. Because I obviously saw it in person when we played him in the playoffs and it was fun to watch… kind of.”
The two players are ready for the challenge of playing in the NFL. Leonard credits playing at Notre Dame for helping prepare him for this next opportunity.
“You learn how to be a professional from the day you walk into the locker room,” Leonard said. “And you don’t learn it through the X’s and O’s and the playbook. You learn it from the environments around you. So if I went into Notre Dame’s facility at 10 p.m. at night, there’s guys in there constantly working because they’re all trying to make it to the NFL and win a national championship. That is our goal as a program. And everybody’s in there for the same purpose, rhyme and reason. So, I think Notre Dame teaches you the intangibles that just set you up perfectly for the next level.”
Colts rookie minicamp continues Sunday.
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — UPDATE: IMPD detectives with the Missing Persons Division have safely located Zohott.
Original Story
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is seeking the public’s help in locating 68-year-old Mari Zohott.
Zohott is described as standing five feet five inches tall, weighing 115 pounds, and having brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen at 1:30 p.m. Jan. 3 on foot in the 9200 block of E. 10th Street. Zohott was last seen wearing hot pink pants and a black hoodie. Detectives are looking into the possibility that Mari got on a bus.
According to her family, Zohott is believed to have symptoms of undiagnosed early onset dementia. She may be in need of medical attention.
Investigators ask that anyone with information on Zohott’s whereabouts call 911, contact the IMPD Missing Persons Unit at 317-327-6160, or call Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at 317.262.8477 or (TIPS).
Robert “RJ” Williams Jr.’s aunt speaks after his body recovered in White River
Patricia Madison, who identified herself as Robert “RJ” Williams’ aunt, speaks to media near where her nephew was recovered from the White River on Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, in Broad Ripple.
Police recovered the body of a missing 16-year-old with autism Jan. 3 in the White River, a few hundred feet from the Broad Ripple McDonald’s, where he was last seen.
Emergency personnel loaded the body of Robert “RJ” Williams Jr., shielded by baby blue sheets, into the coroner’s van Saturday afternoon. Family members stood nearby, grasping each other in hugs. A ‘missing’ poster for Williams was taped to the wooden steps leading down to the water where his body was found.
“RJ was a good kid. He didn’t bother nobody,” Williams’ aunt Patricia Madison said through tears. “He loved his family, and now he’s gone.”
Police had been searching for Williams after he was last seen between a McDonald’s and a bus stop on Dec. 17 in the 1100 block of Broad Ripple Avenue, according to a missing person’s flyer. It also stated that he suffered from mood disorders and had a history of psychosis. The flier also said he had the “mentality of a 10 or 11-year-old.”
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Capt. William Carter said they do not suspect any foul play. Cameras in the area caught footage of Williams walking toward the river dock, he said. They also obtained the last message he sent, he said, where he said he was walking on the ice and sent a picture.
Around 1 p.m. on Jan. 3, an officer identified what looked to be a person under the water’s surface while conducting a drone search. A dive team and first responders then recovered the body, and family members identified him as Williams.
Capt. William Carter speaks after Robert “RJ” Williams Jr. found in White River
Capt. William Carter speaks on Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026, in Broad Ripple.
“That’s obviously a heartbreaking development in a case that has deeply affected our community. It’s not the outcome we had hoped for,” Carter said. “We do extend our deepest condolences to his family and loved ones.”
The discovery ended over three weeks of police and community search efforts. On Jan. 2, IMPD confirmed it was shifting to a recovery process, believing he fell into the river. Detectives and IMPD’s K9s searched the area and located a backpack and gym bag belonging to the teen on a dock along White River, police said previously.
Steps away from the river, Madison said it was difficult to know they had been searching for weeks, but he was so close. She said he loved video games and was close with her son. She stressed how close she and Williams were, being both his caregiver and basketball coach, and how she was more than an aunt.
“RJ was loving, caring, and he would do anything for anybody. He didn’t like people to be bullied,” she said. “He loved his dad and his mom and his sisters, all his family very much. RJ was loved by everybody that he came in contact with.”
Now, with closure that he was found, Madison said his family will try to move on. She asked that people with relatives who have mental disabilities keep them close and make sure they are aware of their surroundings.
The case rallied many in the community. Dozens of neighbors have gathered on multiple occasions to search the area and put up posters.
“It means a lot to us because people just came out of nowhere asking to help look for him,” she said. “People we didn’t even know, never met, that was willing to help. They have literally been helping us every single day, looking for him.”
Several of those who sought to find Williams showed up to pray and give support Saturday as police retrieved his body. Debra Porter, who knew the family through school, said the neighborhood came out to uplift the family, and she said she hopes this tragedy brings the community closer.
“Our heart goes out to another mother. Our heart goes out to another family. Our hearts go out to those that are suffering. That’s where our hearts are,” she said. “We come together as one another, just embracing one another and supporting.”
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Have a story to tell? Reach Cate Charron by email at ccharron@indystar.com, on X at @CateCharron or Signal at @cate.charron.28.
INDIANAPOLIS — Philip Rivers wasn’t able to change the course of this Colts season.
A promising campaign that seemed lost when Daniel Jones tore his Achilles tendon in Jacksonville effectively ended when the team was eliminated from the playoffs before Rivers led the Colts onto the field against the Jaguars again.
The collapse, the kind that hasn’t been seen in the NFL in thirty years, prompts big questions about the future of the franchise, questions that can only be answered definitively by Carlie Irsay-Gordon in her first year as principal owner.
Those answers will come later.
For the moment, it is OK to appreciate what Rivers brought to Indianapolis, the NFL and the sport at large at the age of 44, even though he wasn’t able to make the Colts’ wildest dreams come true by leading the team to the playoffs.
“If this was the last one … shoot,” Rivers said. “I told you guys I wouldn’t have any regrets about coming back and I don’t. Other than us not winning, right – us not winning. It’s been an absolute blast for three weeks.”
Three starts in December at the age of 44 were not going to change Rivers’ Hall of Fame credentials. Not unless he somehow led the Colts to a Super Bowl, the sort of fairy-tale ending that would have been in production at Disney before the halftime show began in Santa Clara.
But the three starts Rivers made in December gave the NFL world a chance to fully appreciate what made Rivers great, on the field and off, as a representative of the game.
Rivers wasn’t the same player he’d been in 2020.
Far from it. The old shotput motion was still there, but he clearly had less velocity on his throws, leading to misses that Rivers could have made in his sleep the last time he took the field. After a surprising performance against San Francisco on Monday Night, Rivers fell back to Earth on Sunday.
“I thought this was probably the worst game I’ve had of the three,” Rivers said. “Just couldn’t get in really any sync or rhythm.”
The game-changing interception Rivers threw in the fourth quarter brought home his diminished physical ability. Rivers fluttered an out route to slot receiver Josh Downs, leaving plenty of time for Jacksonville cornerback Jarrian Jones to undercut it for a pick.
“I wasn’t fooled by any means,” Rivers said. “It was just a bad throw.”
The throws shouldn’t be the takeaway from these three starts.
Rivers wasn’t fooled. By just about anything. Five seasons after he last started in the NFL, Rivers flew back into Indianapolis on the whim of Shane Steichen and Chris Ballard, stepped back into a quarterback meeting room and immediately knew more than almost anybody else in the league.
In the history of the NFL, for that matter. Only a few quarterbacks have ever been able to process information at the line of scrimmage like Rivers, a 44-year-old who kept shocking the Colts with his ability to see what was coming.
Wide receiver Alec Pierce got a taste in Rivers’ first start. When Pierce looked at Seattle’s defense, he saw the Seahawks in a pressure look the Colts had seen on tape, and he told Rivers the blitz was coming.
Rivers shrugged it off, told Pierce the Seahawks were bluffing.
The 44-year-old was right, just like he was right on Monday night, when San Francisco showed a look that offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter was sure indicated a blitz from the right, leaving him shocked when Rivers shuffled the protection to the left.
Rivers was right again. He’s almost always right, looking across the line at defenses like Keanu Reeves looking into the lines of the matrix.
“It’s really just that he’s probably seen it before, so it’s probably not even a matrix,” Colts running back Jonathan Taylor said. “I’ve seen this a couple years ago, and he’ll probably tell you the exact game, the drive, the actual down it was. So, he’s seen a lot of ball, so it’s not much you can throw at him at all.”
Taylor’s right. Rivers never forgets anything.
What makes him special is that he can access all of that information in a split second. When a coach talks about a quarterback going through his progressions, he’s often talking about a decision the quarterback makes after the snap.
Rivers goes through his progressions before he’s even finished calling the cadence.
That’s how a 44-year-old quarterback with diminished arm strength can complete 63% of his passes over three games, throwing four touchdowns and three interceptions to post an 80.2 quarterback rating, numbers that aren’t impressive for a 30-year-old starting quarterback but take on new meaning for a man who’s been calling plays at the high school level for five years.
“For Philip to come off the couch with a couple days of practice, go into Seattle and take them down to the wire, then come in here, and the past two weeks, I’ve thought he played well,” wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. said. “That just says a lot about him, that he can still go toe-to-toe with some of the best teams at, what is he, 40-something? Phil’s up there.”
Rivers’ genius on the field is something only a handful of quarterbacks have ever been able to replicate.
The quarterback’s love of the game, and the way he approached these three starts in December, is something that can inspire anybody.
Rivers had plenty of reasons to rebuff the Colts, namely the tidal wave of public opinion that started flowing as soon as his decision to fly to Indianapolis became public.
But few people have ever loved anything as much as Rivers loves football, and as he’s said plenty of times since answering the Colts’ call, he wasn’t about to let the negative possibilities of what might happen affect his decision to play, even after Indianapolis was eliminated from the playoffs by Houston’s win on Saturday night.
“The message amongst all of us was like, ‘Hey, we get to play in an NFL football game. We signed up for all of them. They pay you for all of them, and you go out there and play,’” Rivers said. “The thought of meaningless games — which I know that gets thrown around, and it is in the sense of it doesn’t affect the postseason, there’s no impact on the postseason — but to say a game is meaningless is not in my DNA.”
That’s what draws people to sports, why so many keep playing pickup basketball or city-league softball long after their actual playing days or over, or why they start taking golf lessons to get that handicap down into single digits.
Win or lose, Rivers loves playing.
For the sake of playing itself, even though Sunday’s loss to Jacksonville might have been the last NFL game he starts.
“If I’d go back and say, ‘All right, now you know everything that is going to happen. What are you going to do?’ I’d do it all again,” Rivers said. “It’s been absolutely awesome. I mean, if it’s the last one, it’s the last one. … If it is, I got three bonus games that I never saw coming.”
Three games in December that should only make the NFL world appreciate Rivers more.
Joel A. Erickson and Nathan Brown cover the Colts all season. Get more coverage on IndyStarTV and with the Colts Insider newsletter.
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