The mystery of Sauce Gardner’s age is finally solved. Going into this week, if you looked up Gardner’s age on the internet, you would have been told that he’s 25, but that information would have been incorrect.
The Indianapolis Colts star is actually 24, and in what might be an NFL first, he had to clarify his age during Indy’s final day of mandatory minicamp.
“I’m 24, by the way,” Gardner told reporters. “Yeah, I’m 24.”
Gardner is one of the best corners in the NFL. The former first-round pick is a two-time All-Pro, so how in the world did almost everyone get his age wrong for so long? That’s a great question, so let’s answer.
Why Gardner’s age was unclear
Let’s start things off here by giving some credit to James Boyd of The Athletic. He’s the first one who noticed that, depending on where you looked, there was some discrepancy with Gardner’s age.
If you went to ESPN.com, Pro Football Reference or Wikipedia to get Gardner’s age at any point over the past few years, his birthday was listed as Aug. 31, 2000, which would make him 25 years old. However, if you went to NFL.com or the Colts official website, Gardner’s birthday was listed as Aug. 31, 2001, which would make him 24.
Obviously, the smart thing to do is to just go with the age that the NFL and the Colts have, but it’s not that simple. Although Gardner’s age is listed correctly on the league’s website, it was NOT correctly listed in the 2025 version of the NFL’s Record and Fact book. The league publishes an updated version of this book every year, and Gardner’s birthday was incorrectly listed as Aug. 31, 2000. And it gets worse. His birthday has actually been listed incorrectly in each book since his rookie year in 2022, when he was selected with the fourth overall pick by the New York Jets.
You can see his 2025 listing below.
NFL
And here’s the listing from his rookie year.
NFL
If any websites pulled Gardner’s birthday from the record and fact book, that would explain why they were off by a year.
“Clubs notify us of any incorrect birthdates that would have appeared on their college sites when a player signs,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy told The Athletic. “Players also self-verify their birthdates and other personal information through a player portal.”
Gardner told The Athletic that his passport and driver’s license both have his birthday as Aug. 31, 2001, so although most of the internet has it wrong, the government has it right.
“When it comes to the paperwork and everything I’ve signed, it all says ’01,” Gardner said. “So I don’t know where or how it got messed up unless people just get it straight from Google.”
Gardner went to Cincinnati, and although some schools include a player’s birthday on their player profile pages, Cincinnati doesn’t, so the 2022 Record and Fact book likely became the source everyone pulled Gardner’s birthday from.
What this all means is that the Colts now have a 24-year-old cornerback who’s under contract through the 2029 season instead of a 25-year-old, which sounds like an even better deal for Indy.
It also means that if you’re planning to throw a birthday party for Gardner on Aug. 31, you better make sure there are 25 candles on the cake and not 26.
