Ballard

[IndyNorm]

While we all know (or at least should know) that Frank needs to go (although realistically speaking he's not gone until the offseason), I think we need to all recognize Ballard's part in this complete garbage, shit show of a team. After we traded Wentz he had the most cap space to spend and here's what he has to show for it:

- Our OL is now complete garbage
- We still have no pass rush whatsoever
- Our secondary sucks now too
- We still only have 1 WR/TE who's any good

And on top of that we actually didn't get any better at QB either. What a fucking shit show disaster of an off season.

Fuck you Ballard.

Oh, and fuck Gus Bradley too.

[YDFL Commish]

Who are the leaders on this team? Ryan and Shaq are the only 2 I can think of.

Big Q has to step up on offense and become the leader that he's being paid to be.

Reich is leading this team straight into the dumpster.

[Luck4Reich]

Who are the leaders on this team? Ryan and Shaq are the only 2 I can think of.

Big Q has to step up on offense and become the leader that he's being paid to be.

Reich is leading this team straight into the dumpster.

I don't see a single leader on this team as of right now. Unless you count leading the way to get a big pay day.

This team is a big letdown right now

[Hoopsdoc]

He put his money on Dulin, Campbell, Patmon, Strachan, and Pierce being adequate behind Pittman and he was dead ass wrong. Hilariously wrong.

That’s not even mentioning the black hole that is the tight end position.

He absolutely needs to face the music on this.

I hope Jim is reaming his ass right now.

[YDFL Commish]

Ballard drafts too many choir boys. Every team needs some alpha males.

You know, the Kyle Turley's, Ed Reed's, Michael irvin's, Ndamukong Suh...etc...etc...etc. P{lease feel free to add on.

[omahacolt]

Ballard drafts too many choir boys. Every team needs some alpha males.

You know, the Kyle Turley's, Ed Reed's, Michael irvin's, Ndamukong Suh...etc...etc...etc. P{lease feel free to add on.

thats stupid


he needs football players that have pride. wtf alpha males. retarded

[YDFL Commish]

thats stupid


he needs football players that have pride. wtf alpha males. retarded

No it's not! Buckner is a former all pro, he's getting paid. What has he done? He's a quiet dude who does not hold others accountable.

Pride is part of being an alpha male. Get in somebodies face when they fuck up and cost your team.

The last true leader on this defense was Cory Redding. He may have been at the end of his career, but he got in peoples faces.

[CletusPyle]

I don't see a single leader on this team as of right now. Unless you count leading the way to get a big pay day.

This team is a big letdown right now

I was impressed with Speed today on defense, not sure if he is a leader or not?

[omahacolt]

No it's not! Buckner is a former all pro, he's getting paid. What has he done? He's a quiet dude who does not hold others accountable.

Pride is part of being an alpha male. Get in somebodies face when they fuck up and cost your team.

The last true leader on this defense was Cory Redding. He may have been at the end of his career, but he got in peoples faces.

thats even dumber

[YDFL Commish]

thats even dumber

You are not going to convince me that this team has the heart of a champion.

Reich deserves all the blame in the world, but these players are just not up to the task from a fundamentals and leadership standpoint.

They are stupid players who haven't been coached well and will never be any better than they are right now.

[omahacolt]

You are not going to convince me that this team has the heart of a champion.

Reich deserves all the blame in the world, but these players are just not up to the task from a fundamentals and leadership standpoint.

They are stupid players who haven't been coached well and will never be any better than they are right now.

they don't have the heart of champions. i disagree with your wanting alpha males. just saying alpha males is retarded

[YDFL Commish]

they don't have the heart of champions. i disagree with your wanting alpha males. just saying alpha males is retarded

Okay then, we can keep running the same bullshit team out there every week and we will see how satisfied you are.

[Colts And Orioles]

o


It wasn't that long ago that many Colts fan were branding Ballard a genius for finding a way to get another team to take Carson Wentz off of our hands in spite of the fact that he still had a year left on his Colts contract, and then went out and acquired an elite/borderline elite quarterback such as Matt Ryan.


When Chris Ballard first came to the Colts in 2017, he vowed to build a "complete team", as opposed to a team which was extremely reliant an an elite quarterback. We saw an extreme example of that in 2011, when the Colts went 2-14 without the injured Peyton Manning.

That 2011 season verified 2 things ...... that Peyton Manning, who repeatedly guided the Colts to a bare minimum of 10-12 wins each and every season regardless of what kind of team that he had around him, was one of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of pro football, and that the Colts had been extremely dependent on his presence to continue that perennially winning pattern.

So, along comes Ballard in 2017. In 2019, when Andrew Luck abruptly retired, the Colts went 7-9 with Jacoby Brissett at quarterback. Not only that, but the Colts were very competitive in almost all of the 9 losses in which they sustained that season ...... with a break here and there, they easily could have gone 12-4 or 11-5.


https://www.jt-sw.com/football/pro/results.nsf/Teams/2019-ind


So Ballard went out and acquired a 38 year-old Philip Rivers for the 2020 season. The slightly-past-his-prime Rivers, who had the mobility of an inanimate object such as a chair, guided the Colts to an 11-6 record, a playoff berth, and a playoff game in which the Colts went right down to the wire against an excellent Buffalo Bills team on their home-field. That 2020 team was a pretty darned complete team with an immobile, slightly-past-his-prime Philip Rivers taking snaps from behind the center.

In 2020, the Colts started the season at 9-6. They easily could have been 10-5 if Rodrigo Blankenship had not been injured in an early-season game against the Ravens. Everything looked pretty darned good until Wentz shit the bed against the Raiders, and then the entire team shit the bed against the Jaguars.

So what did Ballard do in response to the late-season collapse over the final 2 games of the 2021 season ??? He somehow managed to get the Washington Redskins/Commanders to take Wentz off of our hands, even though he still had a year left on his 2-year contract with the Colts, and he acquired Matt Ryan ...... Colts fans everywhere rejoiced at Ballard's resourcefulness in the face of adversity.

So in the 2022 season opener against the Texans, Matt Ryan didn't start playing well until the 4th quarter and overtime period. The Colts managed to salvage a tie, and very nearly won the game in spite of the awful start in the first 3 quarters of the game.

Then in the 2nd game against the Jaguars, Ryan didn't play well at all, albeit behind an awful performance from the offensive line.

Add to the above the fact that Shaquille Leonard, the Colts' best defensive player (and arguably one of the best defensive players in all of football) missed both of those games, and Michael Pittman Jr., the Colts' best receiver, missed the Jaguars game ...... with hindsight, many people would probably come to the conclusion that the Colts' record of 0-1-1 should not be surprising at all, and more significantly, only the most George Steinbrenneresque, manically compulsive Colts fans would be calling for the head of Chris Ballard.


In conclusion, I don't think that the second coming of Edward DeBartolo Jr. and/or Carmen Policy is out there ...... and even if they were, I'm not so sure that they could have done much better than Chris Ballard has done with this Colts team since coming on board prior to the 2017 season. As for me, I'm firmly on board with Ballard as the Colts' GM in spite of the disastrous start to the 2022 season.

o

[MeSayDayo]

I am with you on this one. Ballard can stay. At the very least, he is mostly doing a fine job with filling this roster with talent on a yearly basis- young talent, mostly.
I think he needs to show sound improvement on filling obvious holes, and he will.
I also think that his time is now to make the big swing for a QB. The draft is full of them, and he just might have a realistic crack at one if this season is really the dumpster fire that everyone is making it out to be.
Ballard hits on a few players in every draft, even if they may not be in the most important positions. That is better than over half the GM's in the league, and like most have pointed out, Ballard rarely has a top 10 pick to play around with- and when he does- like he did with Q- he flipped it into an extra two second rounders and still got a HOF player.
Ballard can keep backfilling the team with solid drafting and he can work on improving the rest of his skillset.
It is up to the coach to do something with the talent and Reich continuously starts slow and underachieves. The real problem needs to be the first scapegoat and that starts with the coach. It might even start with our coach relinquishing playcalling duties.

[CletusPyle]

If this team doesn't improve dramatically over the course of this season, then Ballard should not be safe at all! Ryan fell into his lap, and the jury is still out as to whether it was that much of an improvement. We have no pass rush, the OL looks like crap so far, and our defensive backs are getting beat on nearly every play! While a lot of that may be coaching, it's impossible to absolve Ballard of any blame!

[Ironshaft]

I am going to post a longer piece but my opinion on Ballard is that....I am on the fence.

I appreciate his approach to talent, his steadfast refusal to overpay for it, his salary cap management is masterful and he seems to have a good eye for draft evaluation of certain positions.

However, his approach to left tackle in 2022, his apparent inability to sign or draft effective defensive ends, his ignoring the Cornerback position for young talent while drafting safety every year are all troubling. And finally, his overarching desire to draft physical studs who need time....and time....and time to develop is not really working. We spent a TON of time and effort developing MAC and while is is fine; he is not a superior TE. At all.

I am on the fence about Ballard. If Jim retains him, I will be fine. If Jim fires him, I will be fine.

[rcubed]

I am going to post a longer piece but my opinion on Ballard is that....I am on the fence.

I appreciate his approach to talent, his steadfast refusal to overpay for it, his salary cap management is masterful and he seems to have a good eye for draft evaluation of certain positions.

However, his approach to left tackle in 2022, his apparent inability to sign or draft effective defensive ends, his ignoring the Cornerback position for young talent while drafting safety every year are all troubling. And finally, his overarching desire to draft physical studs who need time....and time....and time to develop is not really working. We spent a TON of time and effort developing MAC and while is is fine; he is not a superior TE. At all.

I am on the fence about Ballard. If Jim retains him, I will be fine. If Jim fires him, I will be fine.
Very well said and I agree.

I am quickly moving towards a coaching regime change though.

[IndyNorm]

I am going to post a longer piece but my opinion on Ballard is that....I am on the fence.

I appreciate his approach to talent, his steadfast refusal to overpay for it, his salary cap management is masterful and he seems to have a good eye for draft evaluation of certain positions.

However, his approach to left tackle in 2022, his apparent inability to sign or draft effective defensive ends, his ignoring the Cornerback position for young talent while drafting safety every year are all troubling. And finally, his overarching desire to draft physical studs who need time....and time....and time to develop is not really working. We spent a TON of time and effort developing MAC and while is is fine; he is not a superior TE. At all.

I am on the fence about Ballard. If Jim retains him, I will be fine. If Jim fires him, I will be fine.

Well said, and Ballard certainly has his good points. He's really good at drafting RBs and LBs, manages the cap well, and seems to have a great scouting and draft board process. But also has his weaknesses. And his biggest weakness, which is his reluctance to fill team needs with anything other than development players or draft picks, has been on full display so far this season. The fact that we're not better than last year at a single position group is a total failure on his part.

[rm1369]

I’m in the minority, but I see Ballard as a bigger issue than Reich. The team lacks a QB, LT, pass rush, and has only one viable WR. Those are priority positions in the modern NFL. And they have all been issues for multiple seasons. Tell me a coach has a new starting QB every season, no LT, no pass rush and his second best pass catcher is his backup RB and I wouldn’t exactly expect good things.

I’ve said since his second season that his team building philosophy is outdated. Teams win big in small windows, not decades. Have an elite QB and you can be competitive in the down years. Don’t and the bottom will fall out. But either way, to compete you have to put resources in the now. Ballard is so focused on 3-4 years from now that he hamstrings the team in the current 1-2 year window. 4 years is an eternity in the NFL. The Colts have a good cap situation. So fucking what if it never allows them to make a push. If it’s always for tomorrow you aren’t going to consistently beat teams today. He consistently turns his nose up at avg level NFL vets and instead hopes someone from his collection of projects steps up. Leaving Reich and the coaches to essentially use the early season as an open audition. How many good teams rotate their LT?

I like Reich more than most, but fire him - I don’t care. However, the teams primary issue is a team building philosophy that never prioritizes winning now. That’s on Ballard.

[CanuckColt]

I don't see a single leader on this team as of right now. Unless you count leading the way to get a big pay day.

This team is a big letdown right now

Yep. Colts motto now is "Once you pay, we cease to play".

[njcoltfan]

Well said, and Ballard certainly has his good points. He's really good at drafting RBs and LBs, manages the cap well, and seems to have a great scouting and draft board process. But also has his weaknesses. And his biggest weakness, which is his reluctance to fill team needs with anything other than development players or draft picks, has been on full display so far this season. The fact that we're not better than last year at a single position group is a total failure on his part.

I would like to know when exactly is Ballard going to try to move up in the draft and get the next "Franchise" QB, or are we Colt fans doomed to watch old, almost washed up, former almost HOFers. The QB situation on the Colts is at best poor, Ballard needs to make a move this year, or this will be groundhogs day for years.

[dwilli57]

Well said, and Ballard certainly has his good points. He's really good at drafting RBs and LBs, manages the cap well, and seems to have a great scouting and draft board process. But also has his weaknesses. And his biggest weakness, which is his reluctance to fill team needs with anything other than development players or draft picks, has been on full display so far this season. The fact that we're not better than last year at a single position group is a total failure on his part.

I'm with you on this. I'm too old to have a good memory and may be wrong on this but wasn't Justin Herbert an option when he was drafted? I seem to remember saying "take him, TAKE him, TAKE HIM!!!" only to have him trade that away for multiple draft picks that likely got us nothing.

[ChaosTheory]

I'm with you on this. I'm too old to have a good memory and may be wrong on this but wasn't Justin Herbert an option when he was drafted? I seem to remember saying "take him, TAKE him, TAKE HIM!!!" only to have him trade that away for multiple draft picks that likely got us nothing.

Herbert was taken at #6 by LAC. We traded the #13 pick for Buckner, so our first pick was Pittman at #34. Then we got Taylor at #41.