Ballard and Steichen are coming back

[ChoppedWood]

Colts just released a PR on it.


Hey Jim, better dial up the Covid folks and ask them for all the extra cardboard bodies from the Covid events.

FU!

[Racehorse]

Dear Colts Fans:

As we close out this season, I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that we failed to win the AFC South and earn a playoff appearance.

There’s a high standard in this city for our team and anyone who steps on the field wearing the Horseshoe. The expectation is to win our division and compete for championships. Just being on the doorstep of the playoffs is not the standard I expect, nor what you deserve. We understand that and always accept the challenge.

Believe me, I know you share my impatience and frustration. I know you invest your time, energy, and money into the Colts every year. More than anything, we want to reward you with division titles and playoff runs, and we’ve fallen short in the most painful ways possible.

But things evolve quickly in the NFL from week to week and season to season, so I will never stop being optimistic that this team can take the next step!

I’ve been evaluating our entire operation, and I believe in Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen and our collective ability to make the improvements needed to take us to the next level in 2025.

I know fans who want an immediate change in leadership will be disappointed. That means we all have a lot to prove, so we’ll get back to work and keep doing what we can to earn your support and make you proud to be a Colts fan.

Sincerely,

Jim Irsay

[Thorgrim]

Screw you Jim.

[Dewey 5]

We’re fucked for the foreseeable future

[1965southpaw]

Doing the same thing over and over again….expecting a different result. Insane.

[Mr. Session]

I hate that I can’t bring myself to follow another team.

[Dewey 5]

No qb
A head coach that's in way over his head
A shit for brains GM.

Next season is going to suck & when they get off to yet another slow start Lucas Oil will be empty.

[Spike]

Dear Colts Fans:

As we close out this season, I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that we failed to win the AFC South and earn a playoff appearance.

There’s a high standard in this city for our team and anyone who steps on the field wearing the Horseshoe. The expectation is to win our division and compete for championships. Just being on the doorstep of the playoffs is not the standard I expect, nor what you deserve. We understand that and always accept the challenge.

Believe me, I know you share my impatience and frustration. I know you invest your time, energy, and money into the Colts every year. More than anything, we want to reward you with division titles and playoff runs, and we’ve fallen short in the most painful ways possible.

But things evolve quickly in the NFL from week to week and season to season, so I will never stop being optimistic that this team can take the next step!

I’ve been evaluating our entire operation, and I believe in Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen and our collective ability to make the improvements needed to take us to the next level in 2025.

I know fans who want an immediate change in leadership will be disappointed. That means we all have a lot to prove, so we’ll get back to work and keep doing what we can to earn your support and make you proud to be a Colts fan.

Sincerely,

Jim Irsay

I printed this and attached a note to it Letting Jimmy know he can use it next year at the end of the season again.

But please for the love of God don't retain Gus, that would just guarantee another fucked up season just like this one. Can't stand his cowardly way of running a defense.

Jim needs to get it through his thick skull, you can't keep doing the same old same old and expect a different result. Just plain ass insanity!

[Lov2fish]

8 years of perpetual mediocrity. Why not roll it back again. I mean, what can go wrong?

[ChoppedWood]

Dear Colts Leaders:

As we reflect on this terribly shitty season, we can’t tell you how disappointed we are that we not only failed to win the AFC South and earn a playoff appearance, but just flat out sucked and were a dysfunctional shit show that is mocked by the entire NFL community.

There’s a high standard in this city for your team and anyone who steps on the field wearing the Horseshoe to actually fucking care and to compete. The expectation is to win our division and to win championships, not just to have a flat bill fucko talk bullshit about those things of which he knows nothing about. Just being a disgrace of an organization, one where seemingly each week the rest of the NFL is making fun of us, is awful to be part of. Not even really being close to being a playoff caliber team is not the standard we expect, nor what we deserve. We fully understand from your shitty letter supporting an incompetent arrogant GM with no accomplishments to his name that when you say you really care, you don't and are comfortable with mediocrity and that money is all you really give a fuck about.

Believe us, we know you don't give a shit about our desire to root for a team that is worth a fuck and you don't give two shits about our frustration. We invest our time, energy, and money into the Colts every year, and all you do is stuff soiled undies in our mouths and tell us to swallow the shit. More than anything, we want to say FUCK YOU with empty seats and outrageous protests, and to display our disgust in as many painful ways to this administration as possible.

Things evolve quickly in the NFL from week to week and season to season, so we will never stop being furious that this team, namely you, don't even seem to give a fuck anymore!

We’ve been evaluating your entire operation, and we believe Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen are mostly terrible at their jobs and have no business leading grown men who know that when something smells like shit, it is because it is shit. Our collective ability to make the decisions needed to demonstrate to you that we will reject this bullshit will take the brown grocery bags of old, to the next level in 2025. We just aren't going to fucking pay money to attend this sack of shit.

You know fans who want an immediate change in leadership and aren't just disappointed, they are furious. That means we all have to prove to you that your thoughts that you can just fuck us and there will be no repercussions, are fucking wrong, we are going to trash your revenue stream. So we’ll get to work on organizing no shows, ticket sales to opposing fan bases, and keep doing what we can to prove to you that we are sick of this shit to make you aware it is an embarrassment to be a Colts fan these days.

Sincerely,

Colts Fans

[rm1369]

This is the reason season ticket renewals start before the season ends. I wouldn’t have renewed mine. Fuck Chris Ballard and his shitty ass “next year” team.

I can’t wait to hear again how “he gets it”, “it’s all on” him, and how he “needs to do some things differently”.

[Chromeburn]

He wasn’t going to fire them. I keep trying to tell people. They are under contract for awhile. They had to lure Steichen here, he’s not going to fire him after the second year. Steichen needs to go back to RPO some, that long ball offense is just low efficiency and I’m not sure it protects him more.

But Irsay likes Ballard and the people he listens to and respect like Ballard notably Bill Polian who speaks highly of him on his show all the time. Notice Pat didn’t mention Ballard but did a lot of players. I don’t think he has forever, but I do think he will be able to see the AR experiment through. I also think Dodds might take over more responsibilities but we will see.

[Dewey 5]

Chris Ballard is the longest tenured non-multi role General Manager (i.e. not an owner, CEO, principal etc) since 1988 to have a losing record and not have multiple playoff wins or a conference championship appearance.

If he finishes out this year without a playoff win, ( he did) he will beat out Ladd Herzeg of the Houston Oilers as the longest tenured GM of any team in NFL history to fit that same criteria.

[ChoppedWood]

Chris Ballard is the longest tenured non-multi role General Manager (i.e. not an owner, CEO, principal etc) since 1988 to have a losing record and not have multiple playoff wins or a conference championship appearance.

If he finishes out this year without a playoff win, ( he did) he will beat out Ladd Herzeg of the Houston Oilers as the longest tenured GM of any team in NFL history to fit that same criteria.

Disgusting!

[Thorgrim]

Chris Ballard is the longest tenured non-multi role General Manager (i.e. not an owner, CEO, principal etc) since 1988 to have a losing record and not have multiple playoff wins or a conference championship appearance.

If he finishes out this year without a playoff win, ( he did) he will beat out Ladd Herzeg of the Houston Oilers as the longest tenured GM of any team in NFL history to fit that same criteria.

What a shameful mark on the team.

[rm1369]

He wasn’t going to fire them. I keep trying to tell people. They are under contract for awhile. They had to lure Steichen here, he’s not going to fire him after the second year. Steichen needs to go back to RPO some, that long ball offense is just low efficiency and I’m not sure it protects him more.

But Irsay likes Ballard and the people he listens to and respect like Ballard notably Bill Polian who speaks highly of him on his show all the time. Notice Pat didn’t mention Ballard but did a lot of players. I don’t think he has forever, but I do think he will be able to see the AR experiment through. I also think Dodds might take over more responsibilities but we will see.

I’m not surprised. It’s stupid competitivly. It makes me wish I hadn’t renewed my season tickets. But I’m not at all surprised. Ballard is a con man and Jim likes stability more than anything. Hey one of these days Ballard’s supporters are going to have to be right and the team will squeak in to the playoffs and they’ll all get to say “see we told you Chris was a genius”. My money is on year 10.

[YDFL Commish]

I’m not surprised. It’s stupid competitivly. It makes me wish I hadn’t renewed my season tickets. But I’m not at all surprised. Ballard is a con man and Jim likes stability more than anything. Hey one of these days Ballard’s supporters are going to have to be right and the team will squeak in to the playoffs and they’ll all get to say “see we told you Chris was a genius”. My money is on year 10.

Don't act surprised. Disappointed sure. But we've all watched this same scene over and over again. The script hasn't changed, why should the outcome?

[CletusPyle]

The happiest team and fans right now are in Houston! We just handed them the division for the next 5 years!

I wonder if Carlie wrote this and signed Jim's name to it?

[Brylok]

Yeah, as soon as I heard Mike Chappell say it, I knew they were coming back. Chappell is right the vast majority of the time.

[Hoopsdoc]

They can’t also bring Gus back, right? Right?

Because I feel like this team might have been successful in spite of everything had they just had an AVERAGE defense. Instead they had one of the worst in the entire league and led the league in missed tackles.

I’m not happy that Ballard is coming back but I will be LIVID if they try to bring Gus back. Hell, rehire Eberflus.

[albany ed]

I hate that I can’t bring myself to follow another team.

When answering a stranger's question about who I root for, I hate the sympathetic look I get when I answer "The Colts"

On another note, when your team fails to make the playoffs, you're allowed to choose another team to root for, for the rest of the season. I want to see the Lions vs. Chiefs. The Lions because the fans deserve it and the Chiefs because Mahomes is just plain fun.

[njcoltfan]

When answering a stranger's question about who I root for, I hate the sympathetic look I get when I answer "The Colts"

On another note, when your team fails to make the playoffs, you're allowed to choose another team to root for, for the rest of the season. I want to see the Lions vs. Chiefs. The Lions because the fans deserve it and the Chiefs because Mahomes is just plain fun.

I am now a Buffalo Bills fan !!! I hope it snows like hell up there for their first playoff game !!

[njcoltfan]

Screw you Jim.

I think at this stage in Jim's life he cares more about buying guitars, pianos, and singing in his band than he does the Colts !!! We as Colt fans are the suckers because we continue to care.

[Dewey 5]

They can’t also bring Gus back, right? Right?

Because I feel like this team might have been successful in spite of everything had they just had an AVERAGE defense. Instead they had one of the worst in the entire league and led the league in missed tackles.

I’m not happy that Ballard is coming back but I will be LIVID if they try to bring Gus back. Hell, rehire Eberflus.

At this point I fully expect Bradley to be back

[albany ed]

I am now a Buffalo Bills fan !!! I hope it snows like hell up there for their first playoff game !!

You probably wouldn't feel that way if your primo seat for the game was covered in 3 feet of snow and you had to stand the whole game.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=948YexlM&id=3FA276E94DB2C85B22C64332E77778D20BBABDC9&thid=OIP.948YexlMVB4RRmGdFh7e7AHaE8&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.cbc.ca%2F1.7084587.170535 8844!%2FfileImage%2FhttpImage%2Fimage.jpg_gen%2Fde rivatives%2Foriginal_1180%2F1935662335.jpg&cdnurl=https%3A%2F%2Fth.bing.com%2Fth%2Fid%2FR.f78 f187b194c541e1146619d161edeec%3Frik%3Dyb26C9J4d%25 2bcyQw%26pid%3DImgRaw%26r%3D0&exph=787&expw=1180&q=buffalo+bills+game+seats+covered+in+snow+2023&simid=607995339479909107&form=IRPRST&ck=AC88102F9E1BFF4300F9BC5B4F8ED41A&selectedindex=7&itb=0&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0&vt=0&sim=11&mid=3FA276E94DB2C85B22C63FA276E94DB2C85B22C6

[apballin]

When answering a stranger's question about who I root for, I hate the sympathetic look I get when I answer "The Colts"

On another note, when your team fails to make the playoffs, you're allowed to choose another team to root for, for the rest of the season. I want to see the Lions vs. Chiefs. The Lions because the fans deserve it and the Chiefs because Mahomes is just plain fun.

I’d hate to see the look on that persons face when someone says, browns, jets, titans, jags, bears, raiders, cardinals.

But since the Colts are out I’ll be rooting for Washington got a couple local guys on each side of the ball playing big roles on that team

[njcoltfan]

You probably wouldn't feel that way if your primo seat for the game was covered in 3 feet of snow and you had to stand the whole game.

https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=948YexlM&id=3FA276E94DB2C85B22C64332E77778D20BBABDC9&thid=OIP.948YexlMVB4RRmGdFh7e7AHaE8&mediaurl=https%3A%2F%2Fi.cbc.ca%2F1.7084587.170535 8844!%2FfileImage%2FhttpImage%2Fimage.jpg_gen%2Fde rivatives%2Foriginal_1180%2F1935662335.jpg&cdnurl=https%3A%2F%2Fth.bing.com%2Fth%2Fid%2FR.f78 f187b194c541e1146619d161edeec%3Frik%3Dyb26C9J4d%25 2bcyQw%26pid%3DImgRaw%26r%3D0&exph=787&expw=1180&q=buffalo+bills+game+seats+covered+in+snow+2023&simid=607995339479909107&form=IRPRST&ck=AC88102F9E1BFF4300F9BC5B4F8ED41A&selectedindex=7&itb=0&ajaxhist=0&ajaxserp=0&vt=0&sim=11&mid=3FA276E94DB2C85B22C63FA276E94DB2C85B22C6
Thanks for the images, I lived in Buffalo in '68, I vividly remember shoveling snow!!

[Dewey 5]

Zack Pauley
@CoachPauley300
This is the type of loser shit Pat McAfee was talking about. “Captain” of the Colts going over to McAfees suite to pretend to shake their hands. None of the McAfee group was there. Guess this is the type of culture we as Colts fans just have to put up with now. Pathetic #Colts

https://x.com/CoachPauley300/status/1876086885371797623

[ChoppedWood]

Zack Pauley
@CoachPauley300
This is the type of loser shit Pat McAfee was talking about. “Captain” of the Colts going over to McAfees suite to pretend to shake their hands. None of the McAfee group was there. Guess this is the type of culture we as Colts fans just have to put up with now. Pathetic #Colts

https://x.com/CoachPauley300/status/1876086885371797623

Saw that a bit earlier. Big Z doing his thing!

FUCK THIS TEAM!

[Chromeburn]

I’m not surprised. It’s stupid competitivly. It makes me wish I hadn’t renewed my season tickets. But I’m not at all surprised. Ballard is a con man and Jim likes stability more than anything. Hey one of these days Ballard’s supporters are going to have to be right and the team will squeak in to the playoffs and they’ll all get to say “see we told you Chris was a genius”. My money is on year 10.

It makes some sense, it’s just not want fans want. But fans are fickle and develop a mob mentality online. Plus a lot of them are stupid and think things get automatically better with a reset like it’s a video game.

If they brought a new GM in that GM would want to bring in his own people and coaches/players. This is a bad draft to try that in. A bad QB draft and they don’t have a high pick. There is no good replacement for AR in this draft. The best bet is to continue to develop AR and hope he gets better. That is the only thing that will fix this. They could add a few players, maybe make the playoffs, but it’s the same result until they get a good QB. Develop AR and things will get better, should be the highest priority for these guys.a new GM will not fix the qB situation.

[Chromeburn]

Zack Pauley
@CoachPauley300
This is the type of loser shit Pat McAfee was talking about. “Captain” of the Colts going over to McAfees suite to pretend to shake their hands. None of the McAfee group was there. Guess this is the type of culture we as Colts fans just have to put up with now. Pathetic #Colts

https://x.com/CoachPauley300/status/1876086885371797623

Yeah that shit needs to stop. I know Zaire likes to talk smack. But no one wins here.

[Mr. Session]

Zack Pauley
@CoachPauley300
This is the type of loser shit Pat McAfee was talking about. “Captain” of the Colts going over to McAfees suite to pretend to shake their hands. None of the McAfee group was there. Guess this is the type of culture we as Colts fans just have to put up with now. Pathetic #Colts

https://x.com/CoachPauley300/status/1876086885371797623

https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx-hji-SahcIQ7eL9sHzdVVMcrLBIOhuv0?si=QILlywrLEArvKX2P

If they can't get rid of the FO they gotta dump this jackass.

[ChoppedWood]

https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx-hji-SahcIQ7eL9sHzdVVMcrLBIOhuv0?si=QILlywrLEArvKX2P

If they can't get rid of the FO they gotta dump this jackass.

Shiiiiiit, Ballard probably met him in the tunnel and tongue kissed his ass for that. That's Ballard people right there if there was ever an example of it.

[albany ed]

Thanks for the images, I lived in Buffalo in '68, I vividly remember shoveling snow!!

What's the least thing you miss about Buffalo?

[rm1369]

It makes some sense, it’s just not want fans want. But fans are fickle and develop a mob mentality online. Plus a lot of them are stupid and think things get automatically better with a reset like it’s a video game.

If they brought a new GM in that GM would want to bring in his own people and coaches/players. This is a bad draft to try that in. A bad QB draft and they don’t have a high pick. There is no good replacement for AR in this draft. The best bet is to continue to develop AR and hope he gets better. That is the only thing that will fix this. They could add a few players, maybe make the playoffs, but it’s the same result until they get a good QB. Develop AR and things will get better, should be the highest priority for these guys.a new GM will not fix the qB situation.

That’s just it - Ballard is and has been the worst thing for AR. They’ve mismanaged the whole fucking thing. Especially the roster construction. And this isn’t hindsight, I was saying this shit before the season. It should have been an all in season in support of AR. The team should have a D and run game it could lean on, veteran leadership to help set a winning culture, and an offensive scheme / plan from the onset that built ARs confidence and abilities. And we’ve seen none of those. That is a reflection of Ballard and his philosophy. That has been proven over time, it’s not a one off thing. All of those have been issues throughout Ballard’s tenure. You guys keep saying it as if AR is failing Ballard, but it’s the other way around- Ballard is failing AR. They best chance AR has is with a GM that will fix the culture and put a complete, supportive team and plan around him. That is not Ballard.

[ChoppedWood]

That’s just it - Ballard is and has been the worst thing for AR. They’ve mismanaged the whole fucking thing. Especially the roster construction. And this isn’t hindsight, I was saying this shit before the season. It should have been an all in season in support of AR. The team should have a D and run game it could lean on, veteran leadership to help set a winning culture, and an offensive scheme / plan from the onset that built ARs confidence and abilities. And we’ve seen none of those. That is a reflection of Ballard and his philosophy. That has been proven over time, it’s not a one off thing. All of those have been issues throughout Ballard’s tenure. You guys keep saying it as if AR is failing Ballard, but it’s the other way around- Ballard is failing AR. They best chance AR has is with a GM that will fix the culture and put a complete, supportive team and plan around him. That is not Ballard.

Yep. IMO Jim Irsay's letter yesterday could have been much more succinct.

"Colts fans, next year is going to be just as bad, or worse than this year. Everything Chris Ballard touches turns brown and smells like shit- that will continue next year. So, at this time next year we will be without a GM, A HC, and a QB1. So for the next 12 months, just sort of shrug your shoulders, say it is what it is a lot, and look forward to drafting a QB at like 10 next year. Hopefully the new GM can figure out how to get some good play out of # 10 or so. Enjoy another lost year fuckers".

[ChoppedWood]

The current time is 11:30 AM ET.

Gus Bradley is still the Colts DC.

Colts---- YOU SUCK!

[AlwaysSunnyinIndy]

The current time is 11:30 AM ET.

Gus Bradley is still the Colts DC.

Colts---- YOU SUCK!


Maybe the Colts are hoping that the Jags will hire Bradley to be their next Head Coach. :D

With Baalke being retained, you would think that many of the better head coaching candidates will pass on that job.

And hey, a side benefit of hiring Gus...Trevor Lawrence would get to carve up his defense in practice day in and day out. It could be a real confidence builder for Lawrence.

[Dewey 5]

https://x.com/barstoolindy/status/1876275928839700817/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1876275928839700817&currentTweetUser=barstoolindy

[ChoppedWood]

https://x.com/barstoolindy/status/1876275928839700817/mediaViewer?currentTweet=1876275928839700817&currentTweetUser=barstoolindy

Link is dead?

[Dewey 5]

Link is dead?

Hmm. Should work. I just tried it again

https://x.com/barstoolindy/status/1876275928839700817

[HoosierinFL]

Hmm. Should work. I just tried it again

https://x.com/barstoolindy/status/1876275928839700817

Whoever made that ain't have nothin on ol Duke Tomatoe and his many years of brilliance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=372q4b-2QoQ

[DragonTails]

I wish everyone would boycott at least the first game and all preseason games.

[Kray007]

Obviously, Irsay has a higher regard for Ballard and Steichen than do a lot of fans. Ultimately, I think he didn’t have much choice. You don’t want to hire a new GM and stick him with a QB and head coach he didn’t pick.

Next year is a make or break season. A repeat performance will cause heads to roll. If that happens, the new GM simply has to be sure that Jim Irsay is willing to open his wallet and do more than nibble at the scraps of free agency.

[YDFL Commish]

Apparently we have the highest paid D-Line in the league. All we had to show for that is 36 sacks.

Here is the draft capital that Ballard has used on 1'st or 2nd round EDGE guys;

Pick 1-15, 2024: Latu
Pick 1-21, 2022: Paye
Pick 2-54, 2022: Odeyingbo
Pick 2-49, 2019: Banogu
Pick 2-52, 2018: Turay
Pick 2-64, 2018: Lewis

Now, wouldn't you think with that much capital invested in EDGE, we would have a good pass rush?

The jury is still out on Latu. I'm okay with Paye as a edge setting run defender who gets 8 sacks a season, but not as a 1st rd pick.

The rest are either JAGS or busts.

[Racehorse]

Apparently we have the highest paid D-Line in the league. All we had to show for that is 36 sacks.

Here is the draft capital that Ballard has used on 1'st or 2nd round EDGE guys;

Pick 1-15, 2024: Latu
Pick 1-21, 2022: Paye
Pick 2-54, 2022: Odeyingbo
Pick 2-49, 2019: Banogu
Pick 2-52, 2018: Turay
Pick 2-64, 2018: Lewis

Now, wouldn't you think with that much capital invested in EDGE, we would have a good pass rush?

The jury is still out on Latu. I'm okay with Paye as a edge setting run defender who gets 8 sacks a season, but not as a 1st rd pick.

The rest are either JAGS or busts.

How much is it the players versus the scheme? That is the important question we will learn the answer to next season.

[ChoppedWood]

How much is it the players versus the scheme? That is the important question we will learn the answer to next season.

We had a franchise high total sacks last year. What happened to Nate Ollie?

Read an article that Flat Bill Fucko has been after Patridge for years. So did we shit can Ollie so FBF could bring in a buddy to hang out and do nothing with?

[Chromeburn]

Apparently we have the highest paid D-Line in the league. All we had to show for that is 36 sacks.

Here is the draft capital that Ballard has used on 1'st or 2nd round EDGE guys;

Pick 1-15, 2024: Latu
Pick 1-21, 2022: Paye
Pick 2-54, 2022: Odeyingbo
Pick 2-49, 2019: Banogu
Pick 2-52, 2018: Turay
Pick 2-64, 2018: Lewis

Now, wouldn't you think with that much capital invested in EDGE, we would have a good pass rush?

The jury is still out on Latu. I'm okay with Paye as a edge setting run defender who gets 8 sacks a season, but not as a 1st rd pick.

The rest are either JAGS or busts.

We went down from 51 the year before. Of course we also lost our best pass rusher in camp to injury as well.

[Colts And Orioles]

The Colts just released a PR on it.


Hey Jim, you'd better dial up the COVID folks and ask them for all the extra cardboard bodies from the COVID events.


FUCK YOU !!!





o


(9 1/2 MONTHS LATER)



After reading through this thread, I'm really glad that we're not the ones making decisions about this franchise.

o

[Colts And Orioles]

o


(9 1/2 MONTHS LATER)



After reading through this thread, I'm really glad that we're not the ones making decisions about this franchise.

o

o


Daniel Jones Was the Colts' Missing Piece, and Now They’re the NFL’s Best Team

(By Eric Williams)

https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/daniel-jones-colts-missing-piece-now-theyre-nfls-best-team

o

[ChaosTheory]

Funny thread back then. Hilarious thread now.

[Dam8610]

You know, I've noticed ChoppedWood doesn't post anymore. You would think he'd be all over posting about how good things are now that the Colts are winning.

[albany ed]

You know, I've noticed ChoppedWood doesn't post anymore. You would think he'd be all over posting about how good things are now that the Colts are winning.


He still posts, he just doesn't bitch any longer. CW is like the rest of us in his love of the Colts, he just has a tough time controlling his emotions. He's less patient for the good times to come about and will blame management, coaches and players instantly. My guess is, if he were a Jets fan, he would have slit his wrists by now. ;)

[Oldcolt]

I was one of those who felt it was time for Ballard to go. I am not 100% behind the guy quite yet. My issue was 8 years of believing he could do everything thru the draft, not finding a QB (Honestly we have finally found what appears to be a quality QB but I feel like a blind squirrel finds a nut eventually. We got lucky in my mind and I am thrilled we did. If this guy could really evaluate QBs it wouldn't have taken 8 years) and refusing to go all in. We have a few weeks before the trade deadline. This team is close, very close. There are no super teams this year. Will Ballard pull the trigger for a pass rusher or cb and go all in this year or will he just love them draft picks to much? He showed he was able to change ways and signed us some nice dbs this past off season. I would love to see us finally go all in. I hope new ownership pushes him in that direction.

[Colts And Orioles]

I was one of those who felt it was time for Ballard to go. I am not 100% behind the guy quite yet. My issue was 8 years of believing he could do everything thru the draft, not finding a QB (Honestly we have finally found what appears to be a quality QB but I feel like a blind squirrel finds a nut eventually. We got lucky in my mind and I am thrilled we did. If this guy could really evaluate QBs it wouldn't have taken 8 years) and refusing to go all in. We have a few weeks before the trade deadline. This team is close, very close. There are no super teams this year. Will Ballard pull the trigger for a pass rusher or CB and go all in this year or will he just love them draft picks to much? He showed he was able to change ways and signed us some nice dbs this past off season. l I would love to see us finally go all in. I hope new ownership pushes him in that direction.





o


Jim was a lot different than his father ...... I hope that Carlie IS NOT a lot different than Jim.

As for your blind squirrel analogy, that is far from the truth. Prior to 2025 and after the retirement of Andrew Luck in 2019, Ballard's Colts had one good season (the 2020 Philip Rivers season), 1 bad season (the 2022 4-12-1 season), and 4 mediocre/middling seasons. Those mediocre/middling teams would have been bad teams if Ballard had not done what he said that he intended to ...... build a complete team that WAS NOT overly-dependent on an all-world quarterback, such as Peyton Manning or Andrew Luck.

The Colts have essentially done the opposite of what the New York Giants did ...... the Giants got a solid quarterback in Daniel Jones and expected him to carry an otherwise incomplete team. The Colts, on the other hand, built complete teams that were a solid quarterback away from being bona-fide contenders (as is evidenced by the 2020 Philip Rivers season and this 2025 Daniel Jones season.)


Jim was a good owner, right up until the end. Ballard was a good GM all long, just like I have been saying for years in dozens of my posts here on ColtFreaks.

o

[ChaosTheory]

My issue was 8 years of believing he could do everything thru the draft, not finding a QB (Honestly we have finally found what appears to be a quality QB but I feel like a blind squirrel finds a nut eventually. We got lucky in my mind and I am thrilled we did. If this guy could really evaluate QBs it wouldn't have taken 8 years) and refusing to go all in...

...or will he just love them draft picks to much?

This offense, which is hitting efficiency marks the league has never seen, outpacing Manning offenses and even outpacing the 2007 Patriots' record for points per drive...

is almost exclusively them picks. Jones is the only non-homegrown starter, and Abdullah may be the only other non-homegrown contributor on offense (off the top of my head). I say keep loving them picks too much.

Anarumo emphasizes the DBs in his scheme, so Ballard went after Ward and Bynum, drafted an Anarumo-style Walley.

Eberflus, on the other hand, calls the 3-tech the engine to his defense... so Ballard traded his 1st-rounder to get Buckner.

[Hoopsdoc]

The way they’re playing now, and if they continue to play that way, have completely absolved Ballard in my opinion. He really has built a complete team, at least on offense.

The only thing he hasn’t had, outside of 1 year of Luck and 1 year of Rivers, is a competent quarterback. Thats the only thing that’s held us back. I think even Reich would have been successful with a good quarterback.

That really makes it a bitter pill to swallow that Luck retired when he did. He endured guys like Samson Satele and Winston Justice thanks to that moron Grigson but Ballard was well on the way to fixing that. Look at the line we have now.

I don’t blame Luck for retiring, the timing just really sucked. I firmly believe we’d have been perrenial contenders had he stuck around.

As for finding a quarterback, I find it hard to really fault Ballard for that. It’s REALLY REALLY hard to find a franchise quarterback. Teams spend DECADES looking for one.

[Colts And Orioles]

o


Jim was a lot different than his father ...... I hope that Carlie IS NOT a lot different than Jim.

As for your blind squirrel analogy, that is far from the truth. Prior to 2025 and after the retirement of Andrew Luck in 2019, Ballard's Colts had one good season (the 2020 Philip Rivers season), 1 bad season (the 2022 4-12-1 season), and 4 mediocre/middling seasons. Those mediocre/middling teams would have been bad teams if Ballard had not done what he said that he intended to ...... build a complete team that WAS NOT overly-dependent on an all-world quarterback, such as Peyton Manning or Andrew Luck.

The Colts have essentially done the opposite of what the New York Giants did ...... the Giants got a solid quarterback in Daniel Jones and expected him to carry an otherwise incomplete team. The Colts, on the other hand, built complete teams that were a solid quarterback away from being bona-fide contenders (as is evidenced by the 2020 Philip Rivers season and this 2025 Daniel Jones season.)


Jim was a good owner, right up until the end. Ballard was a good GM all long, just like I have been saying for years in dozens of my posts here on ColtFreaks.

o

o


ESPN's Bill Barnwell rates Chris Ballard and the Colts as the #1 team out of 32 in the NFL for the 2025 off-season.



Best, Worst 2025 NFL Offseasons: Tiers for All 32 Teams

(By Bill Barnwell)

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/46683459/2025-nfl-offseason-tiers-32-teams-best-worst-signings-trades-draft-barnwell



**********************************



The NFL’s Best Offseason

Indianapolis Colts


Highlights: l Signing QB Daniel Jones (1-Year, $14 Million) and Safety Cam Bynum (4 Years, $60 Million), hiring DC Lou Anarumo, drafting 1st-round TE Tyler Warren

Disappointments: l The draft picks after Tyler Warren.

I'm not sure how any other team could receive more glowing reviews. The Colts signed Jones away from the Vikings with an opportunity to beat out Anthony Richardson Sr. for the starting job, and what he has done with that chance has exceeded any possible expectation. Jones leads the NFL in QBR (80.2) while also posting the league's highest success rate and its lowest sack rate. He has been a legitimate MVP candidate while making less than just about every other veteran starting QB in the league. If he keeps this up, Jones will be one of the best one-year acquisitions in league history.

Meanwhile, Anarumo has helped turn around a defense that couldn't tackle or cover last season with his exotic pressures and variety of defensive looks, creating turnover opportunities for the Colts on a weekly basis. Bynum has played a huge role in locking down the back end for Indianapolis, while fellow veteran defensive back Charvarius Ward was off to a solid start before suffering a concussion during pre-game warm-ups, and hitting injured reserve.

Warren was my pick for Offensive Rookie of the Year after four weeks, and he continues to impress in one of the league's most entertaining and unique roles. He's 14th among all receivers in yards-per-route run. The rest of the draft class hasn't made much of an impact. 2nd-rounder J.T. Tuimoloau was a healthy scratch to start the season, and has played just 62 defensive snaps. 3rd-round cornerback Justin Walley is out for the year after tearing an ACL in training camp.

o

[Chromeburn]

I was one of those who felt it was time for Ballard to go. I am not 100% behind the guy quite yet. My issue was 8 years of believing he could do everything thru the draft, not finding a QB (Honestly we have finally found what appears to be a quality QB but I feel like a blind squirrel finds a nut eventually. We got lucky in my mind and I am thrilled we did. If this guy could really evaluate QBs it wouldn't have taken 8 years) and refusing to go all in. We have a few weeks before the trade deadline. This team is close, very close. There are no super teams this year. Will Ballard pull the trigger for a pass rusher or cb and go all in this year or will he just love them draft picks to much? He showed he was able to change ways and signed us some nice dbs this past off season. I would love to see us finally go all in. I hope new ownership pushes him in that direction.

Finding a QB is largely luck. There is an 8% chance a QB drafted in the first round will become a Pro-Bowler. As much as guys like to talk about talent evaluation. Finding a QB is, to a large extent, luck, environment, and surrounding talent. That is why I continued to support Ballard; I liked his build strategy for teams, I knew this would be a well-built team with luck, they should have gone to the playoffs with Minshew. I think he is overall a good drafting GM, all have misses, and that is one of the most important traits a GM needs. You don't almost make the playoffs with bad to mediocre QB play and not have a good supporting cast. Yeah eventually you have to move on when a GM can't find a QB, but I have definitely seen bad GM's who stayed on simply because they got lucky finding a QB.

[Colts And Orioles]

Finding a QB is largely luck. There is an 8% chance a QB drafted in the first round will become a Pro-Bowler. As much as guys like to talk about talent evaluation. Finding a QB is, to a large extent, luck, environment, and surrounding talent. That is why I continued to support Ballard; I liked his build strategy for teams, I knew this would be a well-built team with luck, they should have gone to the playoffs with Minshew. I think he is overall a good drafting GM, all have misses, and that is one of the most important traits a GM needs. You don't almost make the playoffs with bad to mediocre QB play and not have a good supporting cast. Yeah eventually you have to move on when a GM can't find a QB, l but I have definitely seen bad GM's who stayed on simply because they got lucky finding a QB.





o


One of the things that ColtFreaks posters were very critical of Chris Ballard for was the fact his Colts teams had only made the playoffs one time after the retirement of Andrew Luck. Ryan Grigson's Colts teams, on the other hand, made the playoffs 3 times in 5 seasons between 2012 and 2016 with Andrew Luck at quarterback.

So, who do most Colts fans believe was the better Colts GM ??? Ryan Grigson, whose Colts teams made the playoffs 3 times in 5 seasons with Andrew Luck at QB, or Chris Ballard, whose Colts teams only made the playoffs 1 time in 6 seasons after the retirement of Andrew Luck ??? My answer is that Chris Ballard was (and still is) a considerably better GM for the Colts than was Ryan Grigson.

o

[IndyNorm]

I've certainly been critical of Ballard over the years - some of which was well deserved (the Matt Pryor dumpster fire for example). Obviously happy to eat crow and acknowledge this at least so far has been a great team that Ballard has put together.

I do, however, think we should at least wait until the season's over before anointing Ballard and Steichen into the HOF. I mean we were all pretty happy w/ how 2021 was going until the final 2 games of the year........

[apballin]

o


One of the things that ColtFreaks posters were very critical of Chris Ballard for was the fact his Colts teams had only made the playoffs one time after the retirement of Andrew Luck. Ryan Grigson's Colts teams, on the other hand, made the playoffs 3 times in 5 seasons between 2012 and 2016 with Andrew Luck at quarterback.

So, who do most Colts fans believe was the better Colts GM ??? Ryan Grigson, whose Colts teams made the playoffs 3 times in 5 seasons with Andrew Luck at QB, or Chris Ballard, whose Colts teams only made the playoffs 1 time in 6 seasons after the retirement of Andrew Luck ??? My answer is that Chris Ballard was (and still is) a considerably better GM for the Colts than was Ryan Grigson.

o

I don’t know who’s better both guys get slammed for decisions they’ve made or didn’t make. For me the way I view a GM is similar to the way I view a player and it’s about effort and results. Ballard has built patiently while Grigson was more aggressive. It’s an impossible position to be in unless you draft a Mahomes or Manning, Grigson made moves that I was excited about so im not gonna bash either guy. I was excited about and yes I’ll say it the Trent Richardson trade, Laron Landry, Ahmad Bradshaw, Dqwell Jackson, RIP Arthur Jones, hell even Donald Thomas I was hoping would help secure the Oline.

I’ve been proud of the Colts during both tenures that’s all I know

[Racehorse]

Finding a QB is largely luck. There is an 8% chance a QB drafted in the first round will become a Pro-Bowler. As much as guys like to talk about talent evaluation. Finding a QB is, to a large extent, luck, environment, and surrounding talent. That is why I continued to support Ballard; I liked his build strategy for teams, I knew this would be a well-built team with luck, they should have gone to the playoffs with Minshew. I think he is overall a good drafting GM, all have misses, and that is one of the most important traits a GM needs. You don't almost make the playoffs with bad to mediocre QB play and not have a good supporting cast. Yeah eventually you have to move on when a GM can't find a QB, but I have definitely seen bad GM's who stayed on simply because they got lucky finding a QB.

I saw a graphic today that said Manning was the last overall first pick who led the team that drafted him to a SB win. Given that nearly every first overall pick since him was a QB, your point about luck is valid.

[Colts And Orioles]

I’ve been proud of the Colts during both tenures, that’s all I know.





o


I was proud of the Colts when they went 2-14 in 2011. I'm a Colts fan. That doesn't mean that I think that they were a good team, and I don't think that Ryan Grigson was a good GM.

o

[apballin]

o


I was proud of the Colts when they went 2-14 in 2011. I'm a Colts fan. That doesn't mean that I think that they were a good team, and I don't think that Ryan Grigson was a good GM.

o

Yet he’s still employed by an NFL team so people inside the NFL circle think otherwise

I don’t think Grigson was a bad GM, he was trying to win immediately with a young QB.

[Dam8610]

Yet he’s still employed by an NFL team so people inside the NFL circle think otherwise

I don’t think Grigson was a bad GM, he was trying to win immediately with a young QB.

Just like failed head coaches make good OCs/DCs, failed GMs make good scouts and other lower front office roles.

[Chromeburn]

Yet he’s still employed by an NFL team so people inside the NFL circle think otherwise

I don’t think Grigson was a bad GM, he was trying to win immediately with a young QB.

Grigson couldn’t draft and that is the backbone of a team. He was gifted probably the best drafted QB ever and couldn’t build around him. I think his first draft was more Tom Telesco than him. He had outdated philosophies on how to build a team and then didn’t have the eye for talent to back it up. He had to go to FA because his draft picks were failing, so he overspent for veteran players and had about the same success rate as a regular GM has in the draft.

I have my critics me of Ballard, like not fixing obvious holes right away or leaning on draft picks to succeed and fill the gap. Sometimes it works like Nick Cross and Bortolini, sometimes it doesn’t like Juju. I would a lack of urgency was his biggest issue till this year. Although sometimes I wonder how much of it was Jim.

But one traded for Buckner and one traded for Richardson. To me they aren’t even close in strategy, eye for talent and how they run their workplace. Grigson is filling smaller roles around the league but I doubt he ever gets another shot at GM. Ballard would be hired as a GM if we let him go.

[Dam8610]

Grigson couldn’t draft and that is the backbone of a team. He was gifted probably the best drafted QB ever and couldn’t build around him. I think his first draft was more Tom Telesco than him. He had outdated philosophies on how to build a team and then didn’t have the eye for talent to back it up. He had to go to FA because his draft picks were failing, so he overspent for veteran players and had about the same success rate as a regular GM has in the draft.

I have my critics me of Ballard, like not fixing obvious holes right away or leaning on draft picks to succeed and fill the gap. Sometimes it works like Nick Cross and Bortolini, sometimes it doesn’t like Juju. I would a lack of urgency was his biggest issue till this year. Although sometimes I wonder how much of it was Jim.

But one traded for Buckner and one traded for Richardson. To me they aren’t even close in strategy, eye for talent and how they run their workplace. Grigson is filling smaller roles around the league but I doubt he ever gets another shot at GM. Ballard would be hired as a GM if we let him go.

There was an article in the Athletic last year that talked about the relationship between Flores and Grigson that opined that he may get a shot at a GM role in the near future. That said, I completely agree with you that Ballard clearly has the superior eye for talent and roster building philosophies.

[Colts And Orioles]

Yet he’s still employed by an NFL team, so people inside the NFL circle think otherwise.





o


Jim Caldwell and Chuck Pagano are also still employed by an NFL team. Caldwell and Pagano were the worst Colts head coaches since the Peyton Manning era began, in 1998. Being employed by another NFL team does not vindicate awful performances of a GM and/or head coach in the past.


Caldwell doubled down on one of the worst decisions in Colts playoff history in a post-game press conference after his inexplicable time-out call against the Jets Colts coach Jim Caldwell said on Sunday that he doesn't regret calling a late timeout that actually might have helped the New York Jets' winning drive in the previous night's AFC wild-card playoff game ...... Colts coach Jim Caldwell said on Sunday that he doesn't regret calling a late timeout that actually might have helped the New York Jets' winning drive in the previous night's AFC wild-card playoff game.

This is the expression on Peyton Manning's face, followed by his helpless hand-gesture immediately after the timeout was called at the 1:55:12 mark of this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y48nV0UR1E


Chuck Pagano once called for a fake-punt in a nationally-televised game against the Patriots that was so laughingly absurd that it easily could have qualified for being an article in the satirical newspaper The Onion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i7VKQwDS2s

o





I don’t think that Grigson was a bad GM, he was trying to win immediately with a young QB.





o

Grigson was immediately gifted with a rare, all-world quarterback (Andrew Luck) and almost got him killed. Luck's career nearly ended with his lacerated kidney in 2015, and it did eventually come to a premature end after the 2018 season. Grigson spent very limited draft capital on the offensive line in his Colts tenure, which is easily the worst thing possible that a GM could do in that situation. Between 2012 and 2015, he drafted only three linemen before the seventh round, none of whom developed into quality starters. If he was "trying to win" with the great quarterback that fell into his lap, he had the worst strategy in doing so.

The Colts were a winning, competitive team in Grigson's tenure as the GM largely because of Andrew Luck's greatness, and in spite of Grigson's ineptitude, not because of it.

o

[Chromeburn]

There was an article in the Athletic last year that talked about the relationship between Flores and Grigson that opined that he may get a shot at a GM role in the near future. That said, I completely agree with you that Ballard clearly has the superior eye for talent and roster building philosophies.

Rumors were his name popped up for the Jets. I wish he had so people could judge him without a franchise QB to carry him. Guy was toxic who literally has Dan Dakich staning for him bc he’s the only guy who would feed him info.

[apballin]

There was an article in the Athletic last year that talked about the relationship between Flores and Grigson that opined that he may get a shot at a GM role in the near future. That said, I completely agree with you that Ballard clearly has the superior eye for talent and roster building philosophies.

Which may be absolutely true and I’m not debating that.

All I’m saying is it was a different approach with Grigson, aggressive spending and win now.

[apballin]

o


Jim Caldwell and Chuck Pagano are also still employed by an NFL team. Caldwell and Pagano were the worst Colts head coaches since the Peyton Manning era began, in 1998. Being employed by another NFL team does not vindicate awful performances of a GM and/or head coach in the past.


Caldwell doubled down on one of the worst decisions in Colts playoff history in a post-game press conference after his inexplicable time-out call against the Jets Colts coach Jim Caldwell said on Sunday that he doesn't regret calling a late timeout that actually might have helped the New York Jets' winning drive in the previous night's AFC wild-card playoff game ...... Colts coach Jim Caldwell said on Sunday that he doesn't regret calling a late timeout that actually might have helped the New York Jets' winning drive in the previous night's AFC wild-card playoff game.

This is the expression on Peyton Manning's face, followed by his helpless hand-gesture immediately after the timeout was called at the 1:55:12 mark of this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y48nV0UR1E


Chuck Pagano once called for a fake-punt in a nationally-televised game against the Patriots that was so laughingly absurd that it easily could have qualified for being an article in the satirical newspaper The Onion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i7VKQwDS2s

o


o

Grigson was immediately gifted with a rare, all-world quarterback (Andrew Luck) and almost got him killed. Luck's career nearly ended with his lacerated kidney in 2015, and it did eventually come to a premature end after the 2018 season. Grigson spent very limited draft capital on the offensive line in his Colts tenure, which is easily the worst thing possible that a GM could do in that situation. Between 2012 and 2015, he drafted only three linemen before the seventh round, none of whom developed into quality starters. If he was "trying to win" with the great quarterback that fell into his lap, he had the worst strategy in doing so.

The Colts were a winning, competitive team in Grigson's tenure as the GM largely because of Andrew Luck's greatness, and in spite of Grigson's ineptitude, not because of it.

o

He tried to go the free agent route as opposed to the draft, which is the right move when you have a star QB on a rookie contract surround him with veterans. Ballard was being blasted for not going all in on free agency while the Texans were signing every big name free agent because Stroud had early success… how’s that working out?

Luck lacerated Kidney came from refusing to slide

[Colts And Orioles]

He tried to go the free agent route as opposed to the draft, which is the right move when you have a star QB on a rookie contract surround him with veterans. Ballard was being blasted for not going all in on free agency while the Texans were signing every big name free agent because Stroud had early success… how’s that working out?




o


You just stated a major reason why Ballard is a much better GM than Grigson was. The free-agent route didn't work out for Grigson's Colts, it's not working out for the current Texans, and Ballard's 2025 Colts are arguably the most complete team in the AFC.

Good post, even though you inadvertently further exhibited why Grigson was a bad GM for the Colts.

o

[apballin]

o


Thank you. The general consensus of the ColtFreaks board is dead-wrong at times, including their assessment of Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen prior to this 2025 season ...... I don't think that it is wrong in their overall assessment of Ryan Grigson's tenure as Colts GM. The overwhelming majority believe that Grigson was not a good GM, and I don't think that they are wrong for the reasons that they (and I) have asserted.

o

Let the record show you will not find a post in here from me wanting Ballard or Steichen fired

I was not in that consensus

[Colts And Orioles]

Just like failed head coaches make good OCs/DCs, failed GMs make good scouts and other lower front office roles.












Grigson couldn’t draft and that is the backbone of a team. He was gifted probably the best drafted QB ever and couldn’t build around him. I think his first draft was more Tom Telesco than him. He had outdated philosophies on how to build a team and then didn’t have the eye for talent to back it up. He had to go to FA because his draft picks were failing, so he overspent for veteran players and had about the same success rate as a regular GM has in the draft.

I have my critics me of Ballard, like not fixing obvious holes right away or leaning on draft picks to succeed and fill the gap. Sometimes it works like Nick Cross and Bortolini, sometimes it doesn’t like Juju. I would a lack of urgency was his biggest issue till this year. Although sometimes I wonder how much of it was Jim.

But one traded for Buckner and one traded for Richardson. To me they aren’t even close in strategy, eye for talent and how they run their workplace. Grigson is filling smaller roles around the league but I doubt he ever gets another shot at GM. Ballard would be hired as a GM if we let him go.













There was an article in the Athletic last year that talked about the relationship between Flores and Grigson that opined that he may get a shot at a GM role in the near future. That said, I completely agree with you that Ballard clearly has the superior eye for talent and roster building philosophies.




o


Thank you. The general consensus of the ColtFreaks board is dead-wrong at times, including their assessment of Chris Ballard and Shane Steichen prior to this 2025 season ...... I don't think that it is wrong in their overall assessment of Ryan Grigson's tenure as Colts GM. The overwhelming majority believe that Grigson was not a good GM, and I don't think that they are wrong for the reasons that they (and I) have asserted.

o

[Colts And Orioles]

Let the record show you will not find a post in here from me wanting Ballard or Steichen fired.





o


That's not what we are debating. We're debating your defense of Grigson' Colts tenure, and your assertion that he was not a bad GM.

My post pointed out why the board-at-large is sometimes right and is sometimes dead-wrong, not whether or not you were a poster that was calling for the heads of Ballard and Steichen.

The board is sometimes correct, and sometimes wrong. You are wrong in your defense of Grigson. You're not wrong in your praise of Ballard, and your (correct) refusal to condemn him prior to the 2025 season.

o

[Chromeburn]

He tried to go the free agent route as opposed to the draft, which is the right move when you have a star QB on a rookie contract surround him with veterans. Ballard was being blasted for not going all in on free agency while the Texans were signing every big name free agent because Stroud had early success… how’s that working out?

Luck lacerated Kidney came from refusing to slide

It is a common strategy when you are on a rookie contract. But it doesn’t work very often and has about the same success rate as the draft but is infinitely more expensive. Grigson had to use FA though bc his drafts sucked.

Luck was the 3rd most hit QB in the league in 2016 and Brisset was first in 2017. He had arguably the worst oline in the league for years, and that’s with a franchise LT already in place. His kidney wasn’t the only injury he had.

[apballin]

o


That's not what we are debating. We're debating your defense of Grigson' Colts tenure, and your assertion that he was not a bad GM.

My post pointed out why the board-at-large is sometimes right and is sometimes dead-wrong, not whether or not you were a poster that was calling for the heads of Ballard and Steichen.

The board is sometimes correct, and sometimes wrong. You are wrong in your defense of Grigson. You're not wrong in your praise of Ballard, and your (correct) refusal to condemn him prior to the 2025 season.

o

My point is how do you measure a good GM?

How their drafted players pan out?

Win loss record?

Grigson won the division and went to the playoffs nearly every year. Year 3 AFC Championship is still impressive

Hard to draft great players when you’re in the back half of the draft every year.

[apballin]

It is a common strategy when you are on a rookie contract. But it doesn’t work very often and has about the same success rate as the draft but is infinitely more expensive. Grigson had to use FA though bc his drafts sucked.

Luck was the 3rd most hit QB in the league in 2016 and Brisset was first in 2017. He had arguably the worst oline in the league for years, and that’s with a franchise LT already in place. His kidney wasn’t the only injury he had.

He signed Gosder cherilus and Donald Thomas both suffered injuries, and right now Bengals fans are saying the exact same thing meanwhile the team has tried and tried to secure the Oline.

[Colts And Orioles]

It is a common strategy when you are on a rookie contract. But it doesn’t work very often and has about the same success rate as the draft but is infinitely more expensive. Grigson had to use FA though because his drafts sucked.

Luck was the 3rd-most hit QB in the league in 2016 and Brisset was first in 2017. He had arguably the worst o-line in the league for years, and that’s with a franchise LT already in place. His kidney wasn’t the only injury he had.





o


Thanks again, but he is locked-in ...... he's not wrong, no matter how much evidence you exhibit to the contrary.

Let him have the last word, as ridiculous as his defense of Grigson is.

o

[apballin]

o


Thanks again, but he is in Dam mode ...... he's not wrong, no matter how much evidence you exhibit to the contrary.

Let him have the last word, as ridiculous as his defense of Grigson is.

o

Not about right or wrong, when I’m wrong I’ll own up to it and give credit unlike you.

You were shitty just like everyone else that Jones was starting and you even went as far to say you’re glad I’m not running the franchise when I said starting Jones was the right call.

Now you’re bringing up Grigson I have no idea how this subject even comes up right now

[Colts And Orioles]

You were shitty just like everyone else that Jones was starting, and you even went as far to say you’re glad I’m not running the franchise when I said starting Jones was the right call.





o


I was wrong about wanting to Richardson start over Jones, just like I was wrong about asserting that Case Keenum would have a longer and more distinguished career than Andrew Luck. And I never denied that I was wrong in either case ...... unlike you, I don't dig my heels in when I say something that is preponderously wrong, as I was in both of those cases.

And yes, I am glad that I am not running the franchise because I am nowhere near qualified to do so. Whatever good that I might do would probably be far outweighed by my mistakes.

I brought up Grigson because Chromeburn essentially described him to a tee in a post about GM's staying on because they lucked into getting an all-world quarterback, and 3 posters (YDFL Commish, Racehorse and Chromeburn) thanked said post ...... that is why I brought up Grigson, and it was very apt.

You felt the need to defend Grigson, and you repeatedly stuck by that defense even though several posters made your position look ridiculous ....... so the fact that you made yourself look dubious is your own doing.

o

[Dam8610]

My point is how do you measure a good GM?

How their drafted players pan out?

Win loss record?

Grigson won the division and went to the playoffs nearly every year. Year 3 AFC Championship is still impressive

Hard to draft great players when you’re in the back half of the draft every year.

That's a great question, and honestly I think the best answer is the personnel decisions they make. If the decisions the GM makes make the roster better, they're doing a good job. If the decisions the GM makes either do nothing to improve the roster or make it worse, they're doing a bad job. Yes, the Colts got to the AFC Championship Game in 2014, but that was a generational QB in Andrew Luck dragging a wholly outmatched roster that far on his sheer talent alone. Most of Grigson's personnel decisions deteriorated the quality of the roster. Most of Ballard’s personnel decisions have improved the quality of the roster. Of course there are a few hits you could point to for Grigson, and a few misses for Ballard, but generally speaking, the quality of the roster did nothing but deteriorate from 2012 under Grigson and the quality of the roster has done nothing but improve since 2017 under Ballard.

[YDFL Commish]

I would put Grigson's 1st draft up against any of Ballard's drafts. The problem was that he got the big head after that, while Irsay entitled him and Grigson did nothing right after that.

Also his house cleaning of 2011 roster was a total disrespect to the players who could still contribute. He should have kept Bethea and Garcon and maybe others.

Dakich is the only dumbass that thinks that Grigson was a good GM, so fuck him. I won't debate on basketball, he knows his shit there, but stay out of foobtall analysis, because the average CF member is superior to you.

Another thing is, I for one, have never called for Ballard or Steichen's heads. I have challenged Steichen for chasing points early in games, as has C&O, I do believe. I have also challenged his propensity for cutsie/trick plays. In Ballard's case, I have challenged his team building at times. His devotion to his drafted rookies has been borderline dumb. His handling of the O-Line in 2022 was a fire-able offense IMO, although I also believe that Chris Strausser and Frank Reich were equally to blame.

Bottom line! I see this franchise in totally different light under Carlie. I think, but have know way of knowing, that she is challenging everyone in the building, ever single day. I think, but have know way of knowing that you can see that in their collective demeanor.

This is all about football baby! Not about dreams, collectibles or rock buddies. This what we were built for god damn it!

[Colts And Orioles]

o


Speaking of being wrong, one of my favorite lines is from Rudyard Kipling's poem, If ...... l "If you can meet with triumph and disaster, and treat those 2 impostors just the same."


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7v7rzDhG-4

o

[apballin]

Let the record also show I said Brian price would be better than Ndnmakung Suh

[Dam8610]

I would put Grigson's 1st draft up against any of Ballard's drafts. The problem was that he got the big head after that, while Irsay entitled him and Grigson did nothing right after that.

Also his house cleaning of 2011 roster was a total disrespect to the players who could still contribute. He should have kept Bethea and Garcon and maybe others.

Dakich is the only dumbass that thinks that Grigson was a good GM, so fuck him. I won't debate on basketball, he knows his shit there, but stay out of foobtall analysis, because the average CF member is superior to you.

Another thing is, I for one, have never called for Ballard or Steichen's heads. I have challenged Steichen for chasing points early in games, as has C&O, I do believe. I have also challenged his propensity for cutsie/trick plays. In Ballard's case, I have challenged his team building at times. His devotion to his drafted rookies has been borderline dumb. His handling of the O-Line in 2022 was a fire-able offense IMO, although I also believe that Chris Strausser and Frank Reich were equally to blame.

Bottom line! I see this franchise in totally different light under Carlie. I think, but have know way of knowing, that she is challenging everyone in the building, ever single day. I think, but have know way of knowing that you can see that in their collective demeanor.

This is all about football baby! Not about dreams, collectibles or rock buddies. This what we were built for god damn it!

He was gifted a franchise QB and, as someone else already stated, I would credit Telesco with the success of that draft moreso than Grigson.

That said, Ballard’s 2018 and 2020 classes are far superior to anything Grigson ever did.

[YDFL Commish]

Coby Fleener, Dwayne Allen, TY Hilton, Vick Ballard, Josh Chapman.

[Dam8610]

Coby Fleener, Dwayne Allen, TY Hilton, Vick Ballard, Josh Chapman.

Quenton Nelson, Darius Leonard, Braden Smith, Tyquan Lewis, Nyheim Hines, Zaire Franklin

DeForest Buckner, Michael Pittman, Jr., Jonathan Taylor, Julian Blackmon, Danny Pinter, Isaiah Rodgers

[Mr. Session]

Bottom line! I see this franchise in totally different light under Carlie. I think, but have know way of knowing, that she is challenging everyone in the building, ever single day. I think, but have know way of knowing that you can see that in their collective demeanor.


My wife decided to sit in with me and watch the later part of the game and asked what is up with the team this year.

I started rambling shit off because a lot of things change year to year but then the camera cut to Carlie and I had to admit I think that may be the biggest factor of all.

My gut tells me the same thing you're saying here.

[Colts And Orioles]

My wife decided to sit in with me and watch the later part of the game and asked what is up with the team this year.

I started rambling shit off because a lot of things change year to year, but then the camera cut to Carlie and I had to admit I think that may be the biggest factor of all.

My gut tells me the same thing you're saying here.




o


I believe that the biggest factor by far is the addition of Daniel Jones. He is showing us what Philip Rivers showed us in the 2020 season ...... that Chris Ballard, who was hired by AND kept on by Jim Irsay in spite of all the heat that he got for doing so, is a damned good General Manager.

Carlie is great, but the foundations of the current success that the Colts are having was laid down by Chris Ballard, who likely would have been canned by the overwhelming majority of NFL team owners not named Jim Irsay.

o

[Pez]

o


I believe that the biggest factor by far is the addition of Daniel Jones. He is showing us what Philip Rivers showed us in the 2020 season ...... that Chris Ballard, who was hired by AND kept on by Jim Irsay in spite of all the heat that he got for doing so, is a damned good General Manager.

Carlie is great, but the foundations of the current success that the Colts are having was laid down by Chris Ballard, who likely would have been canned by the overwhelming majority of NFL team owners not named Jim Irsay.

o

I'm not entirely sure that 2+2 is adding up to 4 here. I don't think anyone on the planet thought that Daniel Jones would be a top tier QB any time in his career. Yes, Ballard gets credit for building a complete team, I'm not denying that, but I cant believe Ballard thought we were only Daniel Jones away from the team we are now.

If so, what on earth does that say for Anthony One-Eye Richardson.

[Colts And Orioles]

o


I believe that the biggest factor by far is the addition of Daniel Jones. He is showing us what Philip Rivers showed us in the 2020 season ...... that Chris Ballard, who was hired by AND kept on by Jim Irsay in spite of all the heat that he got for doing so, is a damned good General Manager.

Carlie is great, but the foundations of the current success that the Colts are having was laid down by Chris Ballard, who likely would have been canned by the overwhelming majority of NFL team owners not named Jim Irsay.

o






I'm not entirely sure that 2+2 is adding up to 4 here. I don't think anyone on the planet thought that Daniel Jones would be a top tier QB any time in his career. Yes, Ballard gets credit for building a complete team, I'm not denying that, but I can't believe that Ballard thought we were only Daniel Jones away from the team we are now.

If so, what on earth does that say for Anthony One-Eye Richardson ???




o


Unlike myself and almost every other Colts fan on the planet, I think that Ballard knew about Daniel Jones. Perhaps not to the point in which he would be toying with defenses the way that he and the Colts' offense has been doing, but at the very least at the level that Philip Rivers was playing at in 2020 ...... that's why he has been sitting in the Colts' GM office for the last 8 and-a-half years, and you, myself, and everybody else on ColtFreaks has not been. So yes, I think that 2+2 does indeed add up to 4 here.

The 2020 Colts were a 39 year-old Philip Rivers away from turning a mediocre 7-9 team the previous season to being a solid 11-5 playoff team that took the Buffalo Bills right down to the wire in the post-season on their home-field in northwestern New York State. I've said numerous times before, Ballard built a complete team and then tried to get the elusive franchise quarterback. He essentially did the opposite of what the New York Giants did ...... the Giants got a solid quarterback in Daniel Jones, and expected him to carry an otherwise incomplete team. Ballard, on the other hand, built complete teams that were a solid quarterback away from being bona-fide contenders (as is evidenced by the 2020 Philip Rivers season, and this 2025 Daniel Jones season.)

Regarding Richardson, Ballard took what was available, not necessarily what he wanted. Stroud was already taken at #2, and the next quarterback that was taken was Will Levis at #33. After that it was Hedon Hooker at #68, Jake Haener at #127, Stetson Bennett at #128, and Aiden O'Connell at #135. He refused to give away a proverbial King's Ransom for Stroud, and in hindsight we're all glad that he didn't.

I personally would have been more patient with Anthony Richardson, and would have had him taking snaps behind the center as the Colts' starting quarterback for this 2025 season ...... one of many reasons why it's a good thing that I am not making the important decisions about this franchise.

o

[albany ed]

I live in Giants country, and subsequently, I've seen a lot of DJs games when he played for the Giants. Nothing spectacular, but his completion percentage was usually around 65%. The Giants had a terrible OL and he never seemed to have much time in the pocket. He got sacked a lot. His performance thus far this year, is far beyond what any of us thought we'd see, but I do feel that the Steichen system is tailor made for him. However, I see some rocky times ahead. So far, the OL has been healthy and I don't expect that to stay that way all season. But, after the first 8 weeks this has been a fun season and it's nice to see the respect that this team is getting. My nephew is a life long Steelers fan so we will be watching next weeks' game together. I'm nervous, but hopeful that the Colts can keep up the outstanding performances on offense and hand Rogers a beating that has him wondering why he hadn't already retired.

[Pez]

o


Unlike myself and almost every other Colts fan on the planet, I think that Ballard knew about Daniel Jones. Perhaps not to the point in which he would be toying with defenses the way that he and the Colts' offense has been doing, but at the very least at the level that Philip Rivers was playing at in 2020 ...... that's why he has been sitting in the Colts' GM office for the last 8 and-a-half years, and you, myself, and everybody else on ColtFreaks has not been. So yes, I think that 2+2 does indeed add up to 4 here.

The 2020 Colts were a 39 year-old Philip Rivers away from turning a mediocre 7-9 team the previous season to being a solid 11-5 playoff team that took the Buffalo Bills right down to the wire in the post-season on their home-field in northwestern New York State. I've said numerous times before, Ballard built a complete team and then tried to get the elusive franchise quarterback. He essentially did the opposite of what the New York Giants did ...... the Giants got a solid quarterback in Daniel Jones, and expected him to carry an otherwise incomplete team. Ballard, on the other hand, built complete teams that were a solid quarterback away from being bona-fide contenders (as is evidenced by the 2020 Philip Rivers season, and this 2025 Daniel Jones season.)

Regarding Richardson, Ballard took what was available, not necessarily what he wanted. Stroud was already taken at #2, and the next quarterback that was taken was Will Levis at #33. After that it was Hedon Hooker at #68, Jake Haener at #127, Stetson Bennett at #128, and Aiden O'Connell at #135. He refused to give away a proverbial King's Ransom for Stroud, and in hindsight we're all glad that he didn't.

I personally would have been more patient with Anthony Richardson, and would have had him taking snaps behind the center as the Colts' starting quarterback for this 2025 season ...... one of many reasons why it's a good thing that I am not making the important decisions about this franchise.

o

I got you, and I'm not going to say that the Phillip Rivers season was not fantastic.

Jacoby Brissett
Carson Wentz
Matt Ryan
Sam Ehlinger
Nick Foles
Gardner Minshew
Anthony Richardson
Joe Flacco

have all started for us since 2020. None of those guys were the guy, but Daniel Jones is the guy that Ballard was just waiting for?

Were having a "my steak is too juicy" discussion. But I think Ballard lucked into Daniel Jones and you are trying to make it sound like Ballard (and only Ballard) scouted this out and shrewdly found this massive value buried on the Vikings practice squad.

Ballard had a lot of good planning and a lot of good luck that paid off for all of us.

[IndyNorm]

Were having a "my steak is too juicy" discussion. But I think Ballard lucked into Daniel Jones and you are trying to make it sound like Ballard (and only Ballard) scouted this out and shrewdly found this massive value buried on the Vikings practice squad.


Agreed. It's certainly plausible that Ballard thought Jones would be better than what both fans and other GMS thought he'd be, but there's no way Ballard thought Jones would be as good as he has been. If Ballard had then he would have been chomping at the bit to trade for or sign Jones when NYG kicked him to the curb last year.

Regarding Richardson, Ballard took what was available, not necessarily what he wanted.

Gotta call BS on this. It was obvious that Ballard was very high on AR and all in on him. Just watch the post draft video that shows our war room when we're almost on the clock in '23. Ballard looks like he's about to burst into tears when it's announced a team has traded up to #3 and then jumps for joy in elation after it's announced that it was HOU that traded up. Also, you have to remember that prior to '24 Ballard drafted based on traits first and other things 2nd. I wouldn't be surprised if Ballard had AR #1 on his draft board that year, and in fact I'd be almost willing to bet the farm on it.

[IndyNorm]

To add my .02 on the Ballard vs. Grigson debate - there's no question Ballard is head and shoulders a better GM than Grigson.

Grigson had a great offseason in 2012, but after that he was nothing shy of god awful. Maybe it was b/c Telesco left and/or took some really good people with him that Grigson couldn't adequately backfill, or maybe it was due to something else. But Grigson and his FO were terrible at talent evaluation from '13 on. He had entire drafts where not a single player made it past their rookie contract in the NFL. I'm sure there are some things that Grigson does well since he's risen through the ranks twice now (he's Assistant GM in Minny now), but there's no doubt he did a shitty job here.

Ballard on the other hand has always been a good at talent evaluation (at least at most positions) and a good drafter. His big problem has always been his lack of urgency and his split philosophy between 2020-2022 where he brought in win now QBs, but continued to slow build the rest of the roster. This led to some huge, gaping holes on the roster for those years. Glad to see that his slow building is all coming together though. Also, he does seem to have become a more complete GM over the past 1-2 years as he now factors in more things that just traits in his draft picks (no way Ballard from a couple of years ago would have drafted Warren) and has seemingly gotten over his phobia of premiere FAs.

[YDFL Commish]

Agreed. It's certainly plausible that Ballard thought Jones would be better than what both fans and other GMS thought he'd be, but there's no way Ballard thought Jones would be as good as he has been. If Ballard had then he would have been chomping at the bit to trade for or sign Jones when NYG kicked him to the curb last year.



Gotta call BS on this. It was obvious that Ballard was very high on AR and all in on him. Just watch the post draft video that shows our war room when we're almost on the clock in '23. Ballard looks like he's about to burst into tears when it's announced a team has traded up to #3 and then jumps for joy in elation after it's announced that it was HOU that traded up. Also, you have to remember that prior to '24 Ballard drafted based on traits first and other things 2nd. I wouldn't be surprised if Ballard had AR #1 on his draft board that year, and in fact I'd be almost willing to bet the farm on it.

I remain convinced that the drafting of AR was largely a Jim Irsay decision. Ballard was elated because he achieved JI's wishes.

I can tell you right now, that Bill Polian wouldn't have touched AR with a 10 foot pole.

[IndyNorm]

I remain convinced that the drafting of AR was largely a Jim Irsay decision. Ballard was elated because he achieved JI's wishes.

I can tell you right now, that Bill Polian wouldn't have touched AR with a 10 foot pole.

Eh. From my experience you don't show that kind of emotion, both the disappointment and the happiness, just b/c you're able to follow orders. Not saying that Jim wasn't supportive, but AR was a Ballard (at least a pre-'24 Ballard) and Morocco Brown pick through and through. Totally tracks w/ his picks in prior years as well: traits first, production in CFB a distant 2nd (or even 3rd).

I do agree that there's no way Bill Polian would have taken AR. AR's accuracy issues would have been much too big of a red flag for Bill.

[YDFL Commish]

Eh. From my experience you don't show that kind of emotion, both the disappointment and the happiness, just b/c you're able to follow orders. Not saying that Jim wasn't supportive, but AR was a Ballard (at least a pre-'24 Ballard) and Morocco Brown pick through and through. Totally tracks w/ his picks in prior years as well: traits first, production in CFB a distant 2nd (or even 3rd).

I do agree that there's no way Bill Polian would have taken AR. AR's accuracy issues would have been much too big of a red flag for Bill.

If you have read BP's book, and in particular his philosophy on drafting QB's there is way more into it than that. There is quota on starts, completion pct., was the QB a captain, etc etc. How in the hell does the entire Colts regime, not follow a HOF GM's rules and principles?

[Colts And Orioles]

I got you, and I'm not going to say that the Phillip Rivers season was not fantastic.

Jacoby Brissett
Carson Wentz
Matt Ryan
Sam Ehlinger
Nick Foles
Gardner Minshew
Anthony Richardson
Joe Flacco

have all started for us since 2020. None of those guys were the guy, but Daniel Jones is the guy that Ballard was just waiting for?

Were having a "my steak is too juicy" discussion. But I think Ballard lucked into Daniel Jones and you are trying to make it sound like Ballard (and only Ballard) scouted this out and shrewdly found this massive value buried on the Vikings practice squad.

Ballard had a lot of good planning and a lot of good luck that paid off for all of us.




o


For starters, your citation of Jacoby Brissett is nonsense in the context of what we are talking about. Brissett was not brought here to be the Colts' long-term franchise quarterback, he was brought here to hold the fort for the injured Andrew Luck in September of 2017. Luck retired suddenly and abruptly just before the start of the 2019 season, so Ballard was left with what he had (Brissett) for that 2019 season.

That brings us to the 2020. In his first bona-fide attempt to bring in a solid quarterback to complement an otherwise largely complete team, Ballard brough in 39 year-old Philip Rivers ...... and it worked well. Unfortunately, Rivers retired after that 2020 season.

That brings us to the 2021 season. Carson Wentz on the whole was a fail, but his and that 2022 team's failure has been exaggerated. Wentz was not as good as his raw figures would indicate (27 TD, 7 INT's, and a QB rating of 94.6), but he was far from awful. If you recall, that 2021 team had a record of 9-6 after 15 games, and were riding a 3-game winning streak. Even Chopped Wood stated that he was wrong about his critique of Ballard and Wentz after that big win over the Arizona Cardinals on national television. And then, Wentz shit the bed over the last 2 games against the Raiders and a horrible Jaguars team. The entire team shit the bed against the Jaguars, but Wentz was the leader as the QB, so that's on him ....... Carson Wentz FAILED, and shit the bed at the worst time, but the failure on the season as a whole was far from disastrous.

That brings us to Ballard's biggest failure of all ...... the 2022 season. Matt Ryan was not the answer, but the biggest failure of all was the offensive line, which was the worst Colts offensive line in recent memory. In fact, I had stated that if Philip Rivers, who was very well protected in his lone season as the Colts' QB had had that offensive line "blocking" for him he would not have last 8 games, let alone led the team to an 11-5 record and a playoff berth. BALLARD'S BIGGEST FAILURE was that 2022 season, for the reasons that I just stated.

I explained Anthony Richardson, which covers the mediocre 2023 and 2024 seasons. Richardson was not necessarily what Ballard wanted, but he was all that there was left in the draft after C.J. Stroud was already taken.

So since the sudden and abrupt retirement of Andrew Luck just prior to the 2019 season, Ballard had one absolutely disastrous fail (the 2022 season with Matt Ryan and the horrible offensive line), one moderate failure (Carson Wentz and the excruciatingly painful end to the 2021 season), 2 successes (Philip Rivers and the 2020 Colts seasons, and Daniel Jones and the current 2025 season), and 2 more seasons of mediocrity in 2023 and 2024 with Anthony Richardson and his mentor/helper quarterbacks.


Finally, in addition to Jacoby Brissett, the names that you listed such as Sam Ehlinger, Nick Foles Gardner Minshew, and Joe Flacco are also red-herrings in the context of the discussion ...... like Brissett, none of those quarterbacks were brought here in hopes of being the next franchise quarterback to complement an otherwise largely complete team, like Carson Wentz and Daniel Jones were. Minshew and Flacco, for example, were brought here as QB's to mentor and/or be there in case of Anthony Richardson sustaining injuries. Minshew signed a one-year, $3.5 Million contract prior to the 2023 season, and Joe Flacco was 39 years-old, and signed a one-year guaranteed $4.5 Million contract in 2024.


So Ballard didn't luck into Daniel Jones ....... he built largely complete teams (save for the disastrous 2022 season) that needed a franchise quarterback (or at least a very good quarterback, like Philip Rivers) to be a bona-fide contender. He remained calm in the eye of the storm and in the face of harsh criticism, and now his patience and his resolve are paying off.

o

[Colts And Orioles]

o


Ballard states here the way/ways in which he and the Colts organization failed Anthony Richardson ......


************************************


In an interview with The Athletic, Ballard said that the Colts failed Richardson by making him a starter right away, instead of giving him time to grow and develop behind the scenes. “He didn’t have enough experience, both from a play standpoint but also a professional standpoint of how to get ready," he admitted, but said he faced pressure from Jim Irsay to play Richardson right away. “[W]hen you take one high, there’s an expectation. The pressure to play the kid is real.”

Yet it was on Ballard to fight that pressure, and do what is best for his team. And he, quite simply, failed Richardson. But unfortunately, this mindset goes much further than just the Colts; it's a systemic problem in the NFL, which expects immediate perfection out of its young players.


https://horseshoeheroes.com/chris-ballard-finally-admits-what-everyone-else-already-knew-about-anthony-richardson-01k1h1jd4p2w


************************************


I remember when many of us (including myself) laughed at Dam when he asserted that Richardson needed to sit for 2 years ...... in hindsight, there was nothing laughable about Dam's suggestion, but rather my own arrogance in belittling said suggestion was laughable.

o

[Oldcolt]

Ballard finally got it right with DJ. When it is your 9th time trying to find a QB (I don't count Brisset on Ballard-WTF was he supposed to do?) and you finally hit on one I have a hard time believing it was your astute scouting. Dude just got lucky, like any other GM out there (nobody can predict a QBs future, so much more than just the QB himself goes into being successful). He built an excellent team using his own stubbornness (how many of us got sick of all these raw athletes he keeps drafting?) and got lucky on Jones (in my opinion). I could care less how he did it, he did. I was wrong to give up on him after 8 years. It would be idiotic to jump ship now.

I am also hopeful that they are working with AR and he makes a jump.

[Colts And Orioles]

o


Ballard states here the way/ways in which he and the Colts organization failed Anthony Richardson ......


************************************


In an interview with The Athletic, Ballard said that the Colts failed Richardson by making him a starter right away, instead of giving him time to grow and develop behind the scenes. “He didn’t have enough experience, both from a play standpoint but also a professional standpoint of how to get ready," he admitted, but said he faced pressure from Jim Irsay to play Richardson right away. “[W]hen you take one high, there’s an expectation. The pressure to play the kid is real.”

Yet it was on Ballard to fight that pressure, and do what is best for his team. And he, quite simply, failed Richardson. But unfortunately, this mindset goes much further than just the Colts; it's a systemic problem in the NFL, which expects immediate perfection out of its young players.


https://horseshoeheroes.com/chris-ballard-finally-admits-what-everyone-else-already-knew-about-anthony-richardson-01k1h1jd4p2w


************************************


I remember when many of us (including myself) laughed at Dam when he asserted that Richardson needed to sit for 2 years ...... in hindsight, there was nothing laughable about Dam's suggestion, but rather my own arrogance in belittling said suggestion was laughable.

o

o


This is an article that was written almost 2 months ago. The author asserts the failures in general of NFL teams to develop young quarterbacks.




The Bust Files: How NFL Teams Break Young Quarterbacks

(By Zak Keefer)

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6584516/2025/09/02/nfl-first-round-quarterback-busts/



************************************



Anthony Richardson lasted 10 starts before his first benching, five more before his second.

The No. 4 pick in the 2023 NFL Draft has been the same player he was at Florida: inconsistent and injury-prone with dazzling but infrequent flashes that speak to his talent. Two years ago, the Indianapolis Colts hoped he’d become the face of their future.

“You play 12 or 14 years in this league and you’re an outstanding quarterback, you’re gonna make a billion dollars,” the team’s late owner, Jim Irsay, told Richardson a day after the draft. “A billion.”

It was typical Irsay exaggeration, but the stakes were nonetheless obvious: the Colts were banking on Richardson — a 21-year-old who’d made 13 college starts — being their answer.

He hasn’t been. Last month, Richardson lost his starting job to Daniel Jones, a former first-round pick who washed out with the New York Giants after six seasons. It’s unlikely Jones becomes Indianapolis’ long-term solution, meaning Colts general manager Chris Ballard’s six-year search for Andrew Luck’s successor will continue. That is, if Ballard is still running the team next off-season.

Finding that answer — a franchise quarterback — remains job No. 1 for anyone in charge of an NFL roster. Heading into that 2023 draft, Ballard was essentially staring at an ultimatum handed down by Irsay: take a QB or else. If Richardson hadn’t been available at No. 4, Irsay later admitted, the Colts would have taken Kentucky’s Will Levis, simply because he was the next QB on their board. Levis instead fell to the second round, was benched after 20 starts in Tennessee and lost his job to top pick Cam Ward this spring.

“I think teams get too afraid of passing on a guy they think could be special,” says Hall of Famer Peyton Manning, who spent his first 14 seasons in Indianapolis. “Even if he’s not a fit for them or he’s not ready or if there’s not a great chance it’s going to work out, they’re still gonna draft him high so they can tell their fans, ‘Hey, at least we tried.'”

Ballard has left the door open for Richardson to compete for the starting job next summer, but after two benchings and 17 games missed due to injury, the young quarterback carries a classification that threatens to define his career: a bust.

All of which leaves the Colts in the same spot they’ve been for the last half-decade: desperate for a quarterback.

“Teams would give anything to get the right guy,” says Alex Smith, the 2005 No. 1 pick. “The problem is, some of them don’t have a clue what they’re doing.”

Not that Richardson’s early stumbles are rare. Even the greats wrestled with the burdens of the position and the constant humbling it dishes out.

Seven quarters into his own career, Manning had thrown six interceptions and was nervously sneaking glances at his coach on the sideline, worried he was about to get benched. “You’re dying out there,” he says. Another Hall of Famer, Troy Aikman, remains convinced his days in Dallas would have been numbered had the Cowboys not changed offensive coordinators after his first two seasons.

But that’s the job: In no other American enterprise is the face of an organization routinely a 21- or 22- or 23-year-old fresh out of school, thrust into a new city with new bosses and new colleagues and tasked with flipping their fortunes in a little under two years.

“Take all that, then pour some gasoline on it,” says Andrew Luck, the 2012 top pick. “That’s the day-to-day, moment-to-moment intensity of what it actually feels like.”

And that’s coming from a prospect who entered the league as polished as any. Luck’s rookie season in Indianapolis was ridiculous: he led a two-win Colts team from the year before to 11 victories and a playoff berth while head coach Chuck Pagano spent most of the season in the hospital fighting leukemia. Behind closed doors, Luck says, he could barely keep his head above water.

“Andrew Luck admitting that,” says Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell, “validates everything I’ve ever thought about the quarterback position.”

What’s grown to irritate O’Connell, a failed pro QB himself, is how short-sighted some NFL teams have become. Too many organizations are in a hurry, he believes, to decide if their young quarterback is the answer or not. They abandon their plan — or worse yet, don’t have one to begin with. They move off one player to chase another, intoxicated by hope, the cycle restarting itself all over again.

“In what world do you go from wearing a life vest and learning how to swim to being thrown in the deep end in the middle of a 200-meter freestyle against Michael Phelps?” O’Connell asks. “We decide in this league very quickly whether a guy can or can’t play quarterback like it’s a simple yes or no: This is the guy or this isn’t the guy; let’s either have a parade in the streets or let’s move on and try and find another one.”

It was those frustrations that led O’Connell, in the midst of a season in which he’d be named the NFL’s Coach of the Year, to offer a biting assessment last fall on “The Rich Eisen Show”: “I believe organizations fail young quarterbacks before young quarterbacks fail organizations.”

In the QB world, O’Connell’s words struck a nerve.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put so well,” says Smith, now an analyst at ESPN after his 16-year career ended in 2021. “Certainly not from an active head coach.”

“He’s dead on,” adds Bruce Arians, a two-time Coach of the Year and a Super Bowl winner with the Buccaneers in 2020. “No one gives these kids a chance to develop anymore.”

Aikman, a three-time Super Bowl champ now of ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” also agrees: “If you have to say who fails who the most, it’s the team failing the quarterback.”

The thought begs an obvious question: If O’Connell’s right, why do so many teams keep screwing this up?

It’s Easier to Find One When You’ve Got One'

That’s something Ballard would mention to Irsay during the Colts’ years-long odyssey to find Luck’s replacement in Indianapolis.

The GM cites two recent examples: the Chiefs landing Patrick Mahomes in 2017 and the Ravens getting Lamar Jackson a year later. Both teams had entrenched starters in place — Smith made three Pro Bowls after being traded to Kansas City in 2013, while Joe Flacco’s Baltimore career included six playoff appearances and a Super Bowl MVP award — making it far easier to stash a first-round quarterback on the bench.

“If you’re gonna draft a guy and sit him, everybody in the building has to buy in,” Ballard says. “You gotta withstand the fans clamoring for him to play, and that’s a whole lot easier when you’ve got Alex Smith and you’re winning or Joe Flacco and you’re winning.”

Conversely, when a team needs a quarterback, like the Colts have for years, the pressure heightens. Evaluations are muddied. The process is tilted. It’s why so many organizations reach in the draft, year after year.

“Teams force it, simple as that,” says Matt Hasselbeck, a 17-year veteran who retired in 2016. “I promise you, some of these owners are just like, ‘Man, we need a quarterback who can sell some jerseys.’ They just want someone who’ll make them relevant.”

That’s typically where it starts, with a team in flux — an impetuous owner with too much say or a coach or GM on the hot seat — drafting a quarterback as a cure-all when only a few actually are. From there, the chaos intensifies because the need to win is more immediate. The QB never gets a fair shot.

“I hate it,” Manning says. “Teams draft these guys without a plan. They all say they have one, then the kid ends up playing for three coordinators his first two seasons … It’s like a young couple thinking about bringing a baby into the world. If you’re not sure you’re ready, just don’t do it.”

Take the last two drafts, Manning says. Chicago’s Caleb Williams and Carolina’s Bryce Young, the No. 1 picks in 2024 and 2023, respectively, enter this season on their second head coach — third if you count interims — and third play caller. So far, all they know in the NFL is turnover.

“I just wish a team would admit, ‘OK, we need a quarterback this year, but we’re not 100 percent sure our coach is the right guy, so we’re not gonna bring him into this,'” Manning continues. “Of course, they always draft the quarterback.

“Those teams were not ready,” he says of the Bears and Panthers. “That’s just how I feel.”


The NFL’s QB Development Problem ???


Zach Wilson (The Jets) 2021/ #2 Draft Pick/ Benched 30 Starts In

Trey Lance (The 49ers) 2021/ #2 Draft Pick/ Benched 4 Starts In

Mac Jones (The Patriots) 2021/ #15 Draft Pick/ Benched 41 Starts In

Kenny Pickett (The Steelers) 2022/ #20 Draft Pick/ Benched 24 Starts In

Bryce Young (The Panthers) 2023/ #1 Draft Pick/ Benched 18 Starts In

Anthony Richardson (The Colts) 2023/ #4 Draft Pick/ Benched 10 Starts In

Will Levis (The Titans) 2023/ #33 Draft Pick/ Benched 23 Starts In


Hasselbeck cites a disconnect in the scouting phase, when the two sides of an NFL building — personnel and coaching — clash on what they value most in a prospect. Scouts, he says, typically seek elite physical attributes that are unteachable, banking on the coaching staff to figure out the rest. Coaches tend to covet more polished players who’ll arrive with a higher floor and need less time acclimating to the pro game.

“Think of it as builders and realtors,” Hasselbeck says. “They’re in the same business, but they don’t always get along and they don’t always value each other’s opinions.”

He shares a scene from the NFL Scouting Combine a few years back. Two groups were watching the same QB prospects run through the same drills and coming away with completely different evaluations. “So the scouts are all excited. They’re asking each other, ‘Did you see that throw?'” Hasselbeck says. “And the coaches are like, ‘He’s holding onto it too long. That’s a sack. Interception. Sack.'”

Several current and former quarterbacks pointed to a scouting process that prioritizes the wrong things. The ability to “make any throw from any platform” — common scouting lingo — belies the fact that the so-called intangibles are what ultimately determine success. Luck says he wouldn’t draft a quarterback without elite processing capacity — and humility. “Can you make a mistake and not repeat it? And more importantly, can you own up to it?” he says. “Because that’s the job.”

The highlight-reel, 65-yard pro day throws against no defense that light up social media? Ignore those, according to QBs and coaches. That’s not what wins on Sundays.

“Accuracy over arm strength for me,” Arians says. “And are they coachable? If they do the regular stuff we design, I’m happy. But for some reason these kids are used to being Superman in college and refuse to throw it away. That’s where it gets sideways.”

Texans starter C.J. Stroud, the 2023 Offensive Rookie of the Year, says he’d never draft a quarterback “without talking to all of his (college) teammates first.”

And Bill Parcells, the Hall of Famer who coached four NFL teams, once put it this way: “You wanna know if you’ve got the right guy at quarterback? Don’t watch him after he throws three touchdowns and wins you the game. Watch him after he throws three interceptions and loses it.”

For Matt Ryan, a former MVP, 15-year pro and current analyst for CBS Sports’ “The NFL Today,” the tenets of the job were simple: preparation, consistency.

“Really good quarterback play is oftentimes making the boring sexy,” he says. “It’s not how far you can throw it. It’s making the right decision in critical situations over and over and over. Look for the guys who can do that.”

‘Coaches Say They’re Going to Build Their Offense Around What the Quarterback Does Well. Only a Few Actually Do It.'

That’s Aikman’s argument, that too many coaches are too rigid in their approach, refusing to shape their system around their QB’s skill set. It’s not simply about finding the right quarterback in the draft; it’s about building an infrastructure that will allow that quarterback to grow into the job after he arrives.

The reality, Smith pointed out, is that only a handful of teams get this right. “Maybe seven or eight,” he says. “Ten at the most?”

As for who to blame, Aikman starts at the top. Bad owners hire stubborn coaches, sabotaging young quarterbacks from the beginning.

“A lot of times these owners don’t even know what they should be looking for in a coach,” he says. “And if you don’t have the right head coach and the right offensive coordinator, you’re not giving the quarterback a real chance.”

Aikman speaks from experience: twice during his 12-year run in Dallas he played in what he calls “a high school passing attack.” It irritates him to this day.

Smith arrived in San Francisco in 2005 having thrived in Urban Meyer’s spread option attack at Utah, piling up 15 rushing touchdowns in his last two seasons there. Then he joined the 49ers and was told he couldn’t run the football. In college, Smith lived in the shotgun; his rookie year in San Francisco, he was ordered to take every snap under center. “I had to ask the coaches’ permission to get in shotgun on 3rd down!” he says. “How insane is that?”

It took until the middle of his second season — and the arrival of an aggressive OC in Norv Turner, the same coach who saved Aikman’s career — for Smith to get comfortable. Then, 10 games in, Turner called him into his office and told him the offense was changing. Again. “I don’t agree with this,” Turner told him, “but the head coach told me we need to shorten the game and take some pressure off the defense.” The 49ers were going back to being a run-first team. Smith was crushed.

“Every possession was run, run, pass,” he says. “Do you know how hard it is in the NFL to throw it on third down when the defense knows you’re throwing it?”

Finally, seven years into Smith’s NFL career, Jim Harbaugh took over and gave him the green light. “Why don’t you ever run it?” Harbaugh asked. “You were great at it in college.”

“Because I’ve never been allowed to,” Smith told him.

Smith points to Andy Reid, whom he started under for five years in Kansas City, as the best in the league at tailoring his system to his QB’s strengths. The Chiefs’ offense he ran, for example, is completely different than the one Mahomes pilots now.

“Andy doesn’t just know a playbook,” Smith says. “When a coach just knows a playbook, he spends his whole career looking for players who fit that playbook. And when they don’t fit, it’s never going to work because the coach can’t adapt.”

After a promising rookie season in New England in 2021, Mac Jones regressed considerably a year later. Why? Start with the Patriots’ hubris: that season, Jones was shuffling between two play callers — Matt Patricia, the team’s former defensive coordinator, and Joe Judge, the team’s former special teams coordinator — neither of whom had any business running an offense. That, and the line was a mess. The receiving talent was nonexistent. Jones was set up to fail.

Arians took issue with the criticisms of Young in Carolina a year later. “Everyone’s all over this kid because he’s struggling. Well, he’s a rookie. He’s supposed to struggle. And nobody mentions that he had better receivers when he was at Alabama.”

Team culture matters, too. Hasselbeck was further along in his career when he signed with the Titans in 2011 to take over for Vince Young, a former No. 3 overall pick who flamed out after five seasons. “I’ll never forget what the media relations director told me the first day I was there,” Hasselbeck says. “He’s like, ‘Hey, thanks for showing up on time today.’ I was like, ‘When else would I get here? I’m the starting quarterback.’ But it sort of shows you what they’d experienced before.”

Early on, Hasselbeck remembers wanting to throw after practice and being startled at how unnecessarily difficult the task was.

“I had to go to the equipment room, which was locked, and bang on the cage for 10 minutes,” he says. “They only have three guys working — and they’re working their tails off — and I ask, ‘Is it OK if I borrow a football to go throw?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, hold on, it’ll be a few minutes. Make sure you bring it back.'”

Two years later, Hasselbeck landed in Indianapolis as Luck’s backup. His first week there, Luck summoned his receivers for some post-practice throwing. “Within minutes,” Hasselbeck says, “the entire building knew.” A bag of footballs sat waiting for them on the field. Equipment managers stood in position. The video team was ready to record. Trainers had water bottles filled.

“The wake Peyton left,” Hasselbeck calls it. “There’s a standard in every building, whether it’s function or dysfunction,” he says. “And usually you can tell right away.”

Luck had the seismic task of replacing Manning in 2012. Looking back, he explains, there were two sides to it. One was the pressure. “Having to fill Peyton’s shoes, that never bothered me,” he says. The other was the infrastructure already in place: The Colts’ building was set up for a quarterback to have success. For 14 years, Manning made certain of it.

“That was huge for me early on,” Luck says.

‘Every Week Is Like Taking All Five of Your Final Exams in College at Once'

Rich Gannon, a former league MVP, relayed that warning to Ryan before his rookie year with the Falcons in 2008. It’s part of the reason so many quarterbacks struggle early on: the workload is absurd.

“A gauntlet,” Ryan calls it. “The four hours a day you spend on football in school are not the 14 or 15 you spend on it in the NFL. There’s a repetitiveness that can just grind you down.”

Plus, as Ryan points out, “there are no Ball States on your schedule.”

That’s where the team must step in, O’Connell says. It’s on the GM to ensure there’s a veteran quarterback on the roster. It’s on the veteran quarterback to show the rookie what each workday should look like. It’s on the position coach to teach him how to diagnose film. It’s on the coordinator to make sure he’s not overwhelmed in training camp.

Then, O’Connell says, comes the most essential part: coaching them through failure.

“I’ve thought a lot about this,” he says. “And I’ve realized the most important part of a quarterback’s development is when it doesn’t go right. When there are growing pains, when there are struggles, that’s when you have to buckle up and put on your big-boy pants as a coach. You have to have a clear-cut plan on how you’re going to improve: what film to watch, what drills to do, how to measure progress, even if it’s really small.

“It’s our job as coaches to look inward first and exhaust every resource possible to get these guys to play like the best versions of themselves.”

Smith didn’t get that in San Francisco, and his nightmare dragged on for years, through four head coaches and seven offensive coordinators. He went from running between 20 and 25 concepts out of three formations at Utah to a 49ers playbook that had 115 different play calls on it each week. Then his playbook changed, and changed, and changed, every offseason for seven years.

“It’s like trying to learn Spanish, then Portuguese, then French, then Japanese,” he says.

His confidence vanished. He came to dread home games, knowing the boos were coming. He’d find himself watching film alone. In private, he started to wonder how long it would take the organization to realize it had made a massive mistake.

“I didn’t even know what an NFL quarterback was supposed to look like,” he says. “I had no idea what the preparation was supposed to look like from Monday to Sunday. For so long, I was totally lost.”

One way to counter that, most believe, is to put players around the quarterback who will play active roles in their development. “The QB room matters a ton,” Hasselbeck says. “Like in Green Bay, I was the first backup to Brett Favre who was younger than him, and that was eight years into his career. Before me they just surrounded him with older guys they thought would be future coaches. That wasn’t an accident.”

Neither is Williams’ new teammate in Chicago. Case Keenum is an 11-year veteran whose most recent stops include backing up Stroud in Houston and Josh Allen in Buffalo. “There is so much value in that,” Smith says. “Case is great at preparing. He’s competitive as hell. It’ll be so great for Caleb to be around that every day.”

A mentor like Keenum could prove the difference in a young quarterback keeping his job and losing it. While the position gets younger — the average age of Week 1 starters last fall was 27.6, the lowest in 67 years — the leash is getting shorter. Patience is thinning, from ownership on down. It’s why Manning and Aikman are convinced, had they played in today’s era, their rocky rookie seasons would’ve earned them a spot on the bench.

For how long, they’re not sure.

'‘The Pressure to Play the Kid Is Real. It Just Is.'

Looking back, Ballard wishes he’d resisted that pressure and kept Richardson on the bench as a raw 21-year-old rookie. Instead the team let his talent cloud its judgment.

“There’s an expectation,” Ballard says. Draft a quarterback high, and the clock starts.

The Colts didn’t make Richardson earn the job, didn’t make him prove he was ready for the role — the QB competition they staged with Gardner Minshew that August was a sham — and it’s a decision Ballard now regrets. Richardson injured his throwing shoulder four games in and was shelved for the year.

He lost more than playing time; since he was away from the building, Richardson didn’t get the chance to build the daily habits needed to start in the NFL. A year later, his preparation slipped. His coaches noticed. Some teammates, too. “He was drowning,” Ballard later admitted.

Richardson was benched.

“Extremely talented, good kid,” Ballard said this summer. “He just doesn’t know yet.”

Smith has seen it play out too many times: Teams preach patience, then can’t help themselves. “They have this shiny new toy and they can’t wait to unwrap it. And so often it’s the wrong decision.”

Unwrapping that toy too early comes with serious risk, especially if the pieces around the quarterback aren’t in place. It often starts with the offensive line. Young quarterbacks playing under duress develop bad habits, and those habits can be hard to break. Scars, Arians calls them.

“And some of these guys never get those scars off,” he says.

Smith saw it watching Williams’ tape last season in Chicago. The Bears’ rookie was sacked a league-high 68 times. Some of that was a leaky line. Most of it was on Williams holding onto the ball too long.

Before him, it was Zach Wilson in New York. And before Wilson, it was Sam Darnold in New York. “The Jets just threw both of them in there right away, crossed their fingers and hoped for the best,” Smith says. “They didn’t have a plan, and they didn’t have any patience.”

The Jets would later admit their biggest mistake with Wilson was not giving him any real competition for the starting job as a rookie. They were in a race to find out if he was the answer. Then, when he started to struggle, the team tried to downplay it, acting as if everything was on track.

It wasn’t. The coaching staff lost faith in him. The firestorm intensified.

It’s hard for young quarterbacks to come back from that. Some do, reviving their careers at a later stop — Baker Mayfield in Tampa Bay, Geno Smith in Seattle, Darnold last season in Minnesota. Plenty never live up to their draft billing. A cloud hangs over them for the rest of their time in the NFL.

“When I started out, there weren’t some talking heads ripping me on TV 24/7,” Aikman says. “Now you’ve got it all day on every sports channel, and the owners are listening to this, the GMs are listening to this, and the coaches are seeing it, too. There’s just so much more these guys have to learn how to handle.”

“It used to be newspapers, right?” Hasselbeck says. “An owner or coach would make a decision based on something they read in the newspaper. Now people are making depth chart decisions based on their social media feed. I have no doubt that actually happens.”

All of which can leave a young quarterback, in Aikman’s words, “in a really dark place.” Like Young was as a rookie in Carolina. Like Williams was last season in Chicago. Like so many Jets quarterbacks over the years.

“It doesn’t matter how much money you’re making, and it doesn’t matter how much success you had in college,” Aikman says. “For the real competitors, if you’re struggling and the offense is a mess and the team is losing, you’re absolutely miserable.”

On paper, Manning’s rookie season with the Colts was miserable. He finished with a league-high 28 interceptions, a rookie record that still stands, and the Colts won just three games. He remembers actually wanting the coaches to bench him during his second game, a 28-7 loss to the Patriots. He threw three picks in the first three quarters, and his confidence was shaken. “I didn’t wanna end the day with five or six,” Manning admits now.

But they didn’t. “You’re staying in,” his head coach, Jim Mora, told him on the sideline that day. “We’re not going to win this game, but you need to figure some things out.”

The Colts had a plan, one handed down by general manager Bill Polian before the season. “Don’t let 18 get hit, period,” Polian told the coaching staff. He knew if Manning wasn’t getting the crap beaten out of him every week, eventually, the light would come on.

It meant reworking the offense and often keeping two tight ends in to block. It meant fewer receivers open down the field, and inevitably, more interceptions. But slowly, the staff began to coach Manning through his early struggles. “I had to tell him a million times the punter was his friend,” Arians, Manning’s first position coach, remembers.

One thing the QB remains grateful for: The staff never blinked. Their belief in him remained unshaken, even as his mistakes piled up. Manning knows he wouldn’t have been afforded the same patience had he entered the draft a year earlier, in 1997, when the Jets and their hard-driving coach, Parcells, owned the top pick.

“There’s no way I throw 28 interceptions in New York,” Manning says. “Because Parcells would’ve killed me first.”

o

[AlwaysSunnyinIndy]

Eh. From my experience you don't show that kind of emotion, both the disappointment and the happiness, just b/c you're able to follow orders. Not saying that Jim wasn't supportive, but AR was a Ballard (at least a pre-'24 Ballard) and Morocco Brown pick through and through. Totally tracks w/ his picks in prior years as well: traits first, production in CFB a distant 2nd (or even 3rd).

I do agree that there's no way Bill Polian would have taken AR. AR's accuracy issues would have been much too big of a red flag for Bill.


But was that emotion (both disappointment and happiness) related to being able to draft a new QB1 in general or specifically AR?

Midway through the 2022 season, the Colts went into tank mode to try to get the highest draft pick as possible. That pick turned out to be #4. There were 3 QB's (Stroud, Young and Richardson) that many thought would be worth to draft at #4. All of those QB's had weaknesses in their profile / game so the Colts decided to stay put at #4 and (hopefully) pick the leftover from that group...assuming that they didn't get drafted at #1, #2 and #3.

Just think...if another team would have swooped in and drafted Richardson at #3...that would have really screwed up Ballard's weekend. What was their backup plan? Reach and draft Levis at #4? Trade back and accumulate more picks and hope to pick up Levis later in the first round? Draft BPA at #4 and hope to pick up Levis later (even though they spent 2 months tanking to draft a QB)

[ChaosTheory]

But was that emotion (both disappointment and happiness) related to being able to draft a new QB1 in general or specifically AR?

Midway through the 2022 season, the Colts went into tank mode to try to get the highest draft pick as possible. That pick turned out to be #4. There were 3 QB's (Stroud, Young and Richardson) that many thought would be worth to draft at #4. All of those QB's had weaknesses in their profile / game so the Colts decided to stay put at #4 and (hopefully) pick the leftover from that group...assuming that they didn't get drafted at #1, #2 and #3.

Just think...if another team would have swooped in and drafted Richardson at #3...that would have really screwed up Ballard's weekend. What was their backup plan? Reach and draft Levis at #4? Trade back and accumulate more picks and hope to pick up Levis later in the first round? Draft BPA at #4 and hope to pick up Levis later (even though they spent 2 months tanking to draft a QB)

I read this morning and I planned to come back and post the exact same thing. I always saw the exhale as a response to a non-QB team trading up which meant QB3 was still available... not necessarily that AR was available.

Ballard has felt this roster was a decent (not spectacular) QB away for year after year, and threw darts at the board year after year with reclamation vets. Some darts were better than others. Rivers was like a double-20, Wentz was like a 14, and Ryan got stuck in the wall to off to the right (and he fumbled).

Then the pressure and realism of where '22 was going to land them in the draft led them to ditch that approach.

And eventually, after banging their head against the wall for two years with the premium draft pick... they went back to the reclamation vet dart board. Halfway through the season, it's been a bullseye.

[YDFL Commish]

Why is this even a fuk'n debate? Who the fuck cares? We found our qb! Why can't we just enjoy it.

This is really some silly shit!

[Pez]

Why is this even a fuk'n debate? Who the fuck cares? We found our qb! Why can't we just enjoy it.

This is really some silly shit!

Sure, but it's just 4-5 friends chatting about some emotional sh** they went through together for years. I don't even think it's a debate really. Our steaks are just too juicy.

My son and I were putting a new exhaust on my car two weeks ago and we didnt put the clamps on before we installed the sections. I joked around and said to him, "Your mom would be disappointed." He replied "Both your moms are disappointed," because well, it's a Subaru and that's hilarious sh**.

[Racehorse]

Ballard finally got it right with DJ. When it is your 9th time trying to find a QB (I don't count Brisset on Ballard-WTF was he supposed to do?) and you finally hit on one I have a hard time believing it was your astute scouting. Dude just got lucky, like any other GM out there (nobody can predict a QBs future, so much more than just the QB himself goes into being successful). He built an excellent team using his own stubbornness (how many of us got sick of all these raw athletes he keeps drafting?) and got lucky on Jones (in my opinion). I could care less how he did it, he did. I was wrong to give up on him after 8 years. It would be idiotic to jump ship now.

I am also hopeful that they are working with AR and he makes a jump.

I am probably in the minority here, but I think Wentz was a Reich pick, AR was an Irsay pick, and DJ was a Steichen pick.

[Chromeburn]

He signed Gosder cherilus and Donald Thomas both suffered injuries, and right now Bengals fans are saying the exact same thing meanwhile the team has tried and tried to secure the Oline.

Grigson definitely tried. The Baltimore DE had never had an injury before. But the draft talent was just bad. Usually I measure a GM by talent acquisition, roster management, winning too. I think Ballard got a long leash bc he was good in those depts mostly. But you could tell his time was ending bc it wasn’t getting them to the playoffs. I was nearing the end as well. But I’m glad this team is fulfilling the potential I thought it had with good QB play. Well I would say they are exceeding it.

I think the Be gals are in the same situation the Colts were in with early Manning or Luck. They need some turnover and a guy with good talent acquisition ability. I thought if Ballard was fired that might be a spot he ends up.

[Chromeburn]

I am probably in the minority here, but I think Wentz was a Reich pick, AR was an Irsay pick, and DJ was a Steichen pick.

I would probably go with that also. Although I think most everyone settled on AR bc of talent and gambled on developing him. Ballard liked Allen and Firlds previously. I do think Irsay demanded they draft a QB though.

[YDFL Commish]

I am probably in the minority here, but I think Wentz was a Reich pick, AR was an Irsay pick, and DJ was a Steichen pick.

The best post this century, and is undoubtedly the way shit went down.

[YDFL Commish]

Don't get me wrong C&O. I love you to death, even though my posts don't usually express that. But do you even have a life dude? How can a human being have time enough to type as many words as you do?

I say this with absolutely no disrespect.

[Butter]

I am probably in the minority here, but I think Wentz was a Reich pick, AR was an Irsay pick, and DJ was a Steichen pick.

It makes a lot of sense.

[Colts And Orioles]

Don't get me wrong C&O. I love you to death, even though my posts don't usually express that. But do you even have a life dude? How can a human being have time enough to type as many words as you do ???

I say this with absolutely no disrespect.





o

I don't type as much as you might think. I copy and paste those long articles that are behind a pay wall on The Athletic.

Regarding a life, I have about half of a life. I am a lifetime long-distance runner, competing in races from the Mile to the Marathon, and everywhere in between. My fastest 5-Mile race is 26:54, and my fastest Half-Marathon (13.1 Miles) is 1:15:27.

Right now, I have taken up towerrunning, which consists of racing to the top of skyscrapers. My training consists of running almost 6,000 floors per week on the stairmaster, 1,000 leg-lifts per week, and some weightlifting. I'm at the gym about 22 hours per week.

So as I said, I have about half of a life. ) :o

o

[IndyNorm]

Why is this even a fuk'n debate? Who the fuck cares? We found our qb! Why can't we just enjoy it.

This is really some silly shit!

Fair enough, but what I've bolded can be said about a lot of what we discuss on here :D. All joking aside, I suppose a lot of us on here like to debate these sorts of things. And make no mistake I don't think anyone on here is not enjoying this season.


If you have read BP's book, and in particular his philosophy on drafting QB's there is way more into it than that. There is quota on starts, completion pct., was the QB a captain, etc etc. How in the hell does the entire Colts regime, not follow a HOF GM's rules and principles?

Interesting stuff. Especially the part about number of starts. Been trying to think of successful NFL QBs who started 1 or fewer years in college and couldn't really come up w/ any to speak of. Googled it and Google AI listed Kyler Murray and Cam Newton. I suppose Murray mostly fits the category since he only started 1 year in college and has been somewhat successful in the NFL (at least from a stats standpoint). Newton obviously had a successful career, but he started for his Juco team in between UF and Auburn so IMO doesn't fit the category. For the record Google AI also listed Caleb Williams and Bo Nix, so goes to show how much you can trust AI.

I am probably in the minority here, but I think Wentz was a Reich pick, AR was an Irsay pick, and DJ was a Steichen pick.

Agree on Wentz, and I can see DJ. Maybe I read too much into the post '23 draft comments, but seemed to me it was obvious that Ballard, Steichen, and especially Morocco Brown were all super high on AR and thrilled to death that we drafted him. I don't blame them. They swung for the fences thinking AR would live up to his potential and unfortunately at least as of now it hasn't worked out. As for Irsay - I think he was supportive of the AR pick, but he was impartial to Levis as evidenced by him tweeting about still drafting Levis in the 2nd even though we had taken AR already.

Also, I want to add that whether it was luck or not, DJ was a GREAT signing. Unless we drop off a cliff in the 2nd half of the season it likely saved both Ballard and Steichen their jobs.
__________________

[Oldcolt]

Just to suck up to Ballard more; we have arguably the best offensive line in football and Ballard did this with using only one first round draft pick.

Quenton Nelson (LG) — 1st round, 6th overall in 2018. 

Braden Smith (RT) — 2nd round, 37th overall in 2018. 

Tanor Bortolini (C) — 4th round, 117th overall in 2024. 

Matt Goncalves (RG) — 3rd round, 79th overall in 2024. 

Bernhard Raimann (LT) — 3rd round of the 2022 NFL Draft (77th overall).

[CletusPyle]

I am probably in the minority here, but I think Wentz was a Reich pick, AR was an Irsay pick, and DJ was a Steichen pick.

How about Matt Ryan, whose brilliant idea was that?:)

[AlwaysSunnyinIndy]

How about Matt Ryan, whose brilliant idea was that?:)


Irsay - both to bring him in and to later bench him.

[CletusPyle]

So every bad decision was anybody but Ballard and every good decision was Ballard.....Teflon Chris!:D

[AlwaysSunnyinIndy]

So every bad decision was anybody but Ballard and every good decision was Ballard.....Teflon Chris!:D


I didn't make that answer up.

There was reporting around both of those Matt Ryan decisions although there was a lot more reporting on Irsay's role in the benching.

On bringing him in:

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/3568160/2022/09/06/matt-ryan-indianapolis-colts-2/

On a late night call with Irsay 24 hours after the meeting with Ryan, Ballard bristled over Atlanta's trade terms.

His boss pushed him over the line.

“Get it done, Chris,” Irsay instructed.

On the benching:

https://x.com/mortreport/status/1586727514101235713

Colts owner Jim Irsay said early this morning that he empowered HC Frank Reich to make the change at QB from veteran Matt Ryan to Sam Ehlinger, a 6th rd pick in 2021, and was "excited" and that he, Reich and GM Chris Ballard were in "lockstep" on the move.


There were also comments from Reich that indicated Irsay was a "one man crew" about the decision to bench Ryan.

[Racehorse]

How about Matt Ryan, whose brilliant idea was that?:)

I have no idea. But there was a Wentz connection to Reich. Irsay was always involved in major decisions (see: TRich). Shane is on the record as a Jones fan before we signed him. There are clues, if you look for them.

[Colts And Orioles]

So every bad decision was anybody but Ballard, and every good decision was Ballard ...... Teflon Chris !!! ) :D





o


Ballard ruined the entire 2022 season by completely failing on the offensive line, which I stated earlier in the thread.

Fortunately, that disastrous 2022 season was only a bump-in-the road in regard to his overall work in building a complete team that wasn't overly dependent on an all-world quarterback such as Peyton Manning or Andrew Luck.

o

[CletusPyle]

I didn't make that answer up.

There was reporting around both of those Matt Ryan decisions although there was a lot more reporting on Irsay's role in the benching.

On bringing him in:

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/3568160/2022/09/06/matt-ryan-indianapolis-colts-2/



On the benching:

https://x.com/mortreport/status/1586727514101235713




There were also comments from Reich that indicated Irsay was a "one man crew" about the decision to bench Ryan.

I know you didn't make it up, but he is definitely teflon Chris just the same. I'm glad the team has finally come together, I'm just not a Ballard fan and never will be.

How Chris Ballard and Frank Reich convinced Matt Ryan to be the next Colts quarterback

https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/nfl/colts/2022/04/27/chris-ballard-frank-reich-matt-ryan-colts-falcons/9559405002/

[Oldcolt]

Yeah Steichen is coming back. This guy breaks down how Steichen set up that 80 yard run by JT. It is a heck of a lot more fun browsing the net with a good team.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Colts/comments/1oj65ht/watching_this_dude_break_down_some_of_our_run/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[sherck]

Yeah Steichen is coming back. This guy breaks down how Steichen set up that 80 yard run by JT. It is a heck of a lot more fun browsing the net with a good team.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Colts/comments/1oj65ht/watching_this_dude_break_down_some_of_our_run/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
I know that many of us have watched the game of football for years or decades. Many of us probably played it up to the High School level and some of us possibly played it at the college level. We think that we know a lot about the game of football.

If this guy's analysis is correct, it just shows that the knowledge of folks doing at the pro level is SOOOOO much deeper. The punch, counterpunch that they all see as NFL professionals that is probably above our knowledge level is crazy!

Loved this type of analysis.

[Colts And Orioles]

o


Former Colts and current Steelers running back l Trey Sermon l weighs in on the success of the 2025 Indianapolis Colts.




How Have the Colts Emerged as the NFL’s Best ??? Ask a Steeler Who Would Know

(By Tim Benz)

https://triblive.com/sports/football-footnotes-how-have-the-colts-emerged-as-the-nfls-best-ask-a-steeler-who-would-know/



*********************************



The Indianapolis Colts are one of the feel-good stories of the year.

Based on how their offense is humming and how badly the Steelers’ defense is performing, I’m expecting most of Indiana to be feeling pretty good by about 4 p.m. Sunday afternoon.

The Colts visit Acrisure Stadium to play the Steelers with a record of 7-1, the NFL’s highest scoring offense (33.8 points per game) and the league’s No. 1 total offense (385.3 yards per game). The Steelers, meanwhile, have the 30th-ranked defense (386 yards allowed per game). It has allowed 30 points or more four times already this season.

Oh yeah, the Colts have beaten the Steelers two years in a row as well.

Wrong opponent, wrong time for the Black and Gold.

So, how did the Colts go from an 8-9 outfit that missed the playoffs last year to a team with the best record in football approaching the halfway mark of the season? I decided to ask someone who would know.

Former Colt Trey Sermon is now a running back with the Steelers. He was in Indianapolis each of the past two seasons, the first two of head coach Shane Steichen’s tenure.


Is Indianapolis’ success at all surprising to you ??? Or did you have a vibe that this might be coming this year for that group ???


“You could kind of tell that that’s what it was building up to,” Sermon said. “The past two years, when I was there, it was a lot of close games. I felt like they were just a few missing pieces away from having a lot of success. I feel like they found that this year.”

To underscore Sermon’s point, 13 of Indy’s 17 games were one-score affairs in 2024. Their average scoring differential was 6.4 points.

This year, their lone defeat was a 27-20 loss in Los Angeles against the Rams. Their average margin of victory has been 17.5 points. The team’s point differential is a whopping plus-116. Kansas City is second-best at plus-83.


What did you make of Shane Steichen as a coach ???


“He’s a great coach. A great offensive-minded coach,” Sermon answered. “He has a very good understanding of the game, getting into the flow and calling the game. I felt like he’s done a great job of that — even when he was an (offensive coordinator) in Philly.”

Steichen’s Colts beat the Steelers, 27-24, last year with a combination of Anthony Richardson and Joe Flacco at quarterback. In 2023, Gardner Minshew and the Colts smoked the Steelers, 30-13. And when he was OC in Philadelphia, Steichen piloted Jalen Hurts to four touchdowns as the Steelers were blown out across the state 35-13 in 2023.


Going into games against the Steelers, what was the game plan and did you have significant confidence that it would work ???


“The plan going in was just to rely on the basics. That’s running the ball,” Sermon said. “Indianapolis is known for having a great offensive line, especially running behind Quenton Nelson, getting him pulling around to help get the backs on the edge. But the bread and butter is just running that outside zone.”

In those three games dating to 2023 with the Eagles, Steichen’s teams averaged 138 yards rushing per game and 4.8 yards per carry on 86 attempts for 414 yards.

Sermon led the Colts with 88 rushing yards in the 2023 matchup. His career high was 89 yards with San Francisco in 2021.


Does it make sense to you that Daniel Jones is doing as well as he’s doing in Steichen’s offense ???


“Yeah, it definitely makes sense. Just watching around the league and seeing Daniel Jones before, he definitely has a unique talent,” Sermon replied. “I feel like that system fits him pretty well. He’s definitely one of the main reasons why they’re having a lot of success.”

Jones’ passer rating (109.5), average yards per attempt (8.5) and completion percentage (71.2) are all career highs. He also has a 13:3 touchdown-to-interception ratio.

The Steelers beat Jones twice when he was a member of the New York Giants. He posted a passer rating of 76.1 in those two games.


As a fellow running back, what can you tell us about Jonathan Taylor that we don’t know? What makes him as good as he is ???


“His vision and his stop-and-start ability,” Sermon responded. “His vision is exceptional. He’s very patient — letting everything develop. And his ability to go from zero to 100 is a unique talent, especially having that size (5-foot-10, 226 pounds).

Taylor’s 850 yards, 12 rushing touchdowns and 44 first downs all lead the NFL. He hasn’t fumbled in an NFL-high 143 attempts.


When you saw on draft day that the Colts went with Tyler Warren from Penn State, did you figure out right away that he was going to be the addition that he has been ???


“Oh yeah, for sure,” Sermon said. “That whole system is built on having a true No. 1 tight end that’s a receiving threat. When they picked him, I knew that was going to be a good addition.”

As a rookie, Warren has 492 receiving yards. That’s more than any tight end in football. He also has three touchdowns.


Have any of the defensive players picked your brain about how to stop these guys ???


“I kind of talked to some of the guys, mostly the linebackers. I was telling them how (Taylor) likes to run his outside zone. That’s pretty much it,” Sermon said. “They’ve done a good job studying the film. I’m always here to help them.”

Thanks, Trey. They’ll need all the help they can get.

o

[sherck]

To pull a stat out of another article to highlight it.....

The Colts point differential is a whopping plus-116.

Kansas City is second-best at plus-83. :eek::eek::eek:

[Oldcolt]

Since we are throwing around stats-this one from Zack Hicks-if you only count the Colts rushing offense (and compare it to other teams total offense-pass and run) it would be the 6th best offense in the NFL in yards per play. . That is insane

[Colts And Orioles]

o


(NOVEMBER 4th)


Ballard's acquisition of l Sauce Gardner l has made for big headlines in Indianapolis.





https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSFm6InsYk8NJvK3PifYTBfThGHL2Iog i6FGg&s

o

[Colts And Orioles]

o


There Was a Slip ...... A Drop ...... But Sauce Gardner Left No Doubt Why the Colts Traded for Him

(By Joel A. Erickson)

https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/nfl/colts/2025/11/09/sauce-gardner-showed-why-the-colts-traded-for-him-vs-falcons/87185222007/




************************************



BERLIN — There was a moment on Sunday where Sauce Gardner made it all seem worth it.

Gardner, the blockbuster prize of the deadline, was thrown directly into the fire for the Colts against Atlanta, even though he’d only been given two days before flying across the ocean into a bowl-style atmosphere at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium.

There were moments that were shaky. One, in particular, left Gardner beside himself on the sideline, cursing himself for a slip.

But there was another play, one glorious play at a big moment in the game that showed exactly why Indianapolis traded two first-round picks and 2024 second-rounder Adonai Mitchell to the Jets.

“I was trying to score,” Gardner said. “I was already looking at the end zone. It was a great third down-play, but that's one I've got to have, and that's one that I will have next time.”

The Colts needed a play.

A frustrating performance left Indianapolis trailing 17-13, and Colts quarterback Daniel Jones had just made his biggest mistake of the game, letting James Pearce swipe the ball out of his hand for a fumble near midfield.

An Atlanta touchdown could give the Falcons control of the game, and on third-and-8, the Colts sent Gardner out to the offense’s left side.

Against three wide receivers.

Essentially alone.

Indianapolis slot Kenny Moore II was at the line of scrimmage, feigning a blitz, and there was little safety help outside of Camryn Bynum in the middle. Gardner had an enormous amount of ground to cover, and Atlanta quarterback Michael Penix Jr. knew it.


Gardner used his positioning against Penix.

“It's crazy, I was trying to bait the quarterback,” Gardner said. “We brought some pressure, so I think everything played in my favor. I just gotta look the ball in and catch the ball first and not think about pick-sixing it. I feel like I did a pretty good job in terms of baiting him to throw the ball where I wanted him to throw the ball.”

Gardner hung back for a beat, then attacked, knocking the ball away from Falcons wide receiver Drake London to force a punt, just three plays after Jones’ fumble.

The instincts, the athleticism, it was all on display.

Along with the preparation.

“He just elevated the entire room,” Moore said. “It's impressive how he was able to adjust to everything that we had going into the game plan. We didn't slow up at all trying to communicate. … It was great by him because his first walk through of the week, he was like, don't slow up for me, I want to be able to catch up with y'all.”

Colts defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo is known for building elaborate plans, designed to bait quarterbacks into making mistakes.

And there were times it seemed Anarumo’s plan was hurting the Colts on Sunday. Gardner lined up against London most of the time, but the Falcons created three big plays for London by shifting him into the slot, giving an elite deep threat an easy matchup against Indianapolis linebacker Germaine Pratt.

Gardner probably should have been on London even when he went to the bench.

“I mean, man, I'm going to be honest; it was like a tough week for me, like mentally, just trying to learn all the plays,” Gardner said. “I started watching tape on Cleveland, then already had to switch and watch tape on Atlanta, and that's besides having to hurry up and fly to Indy and then hurry up and fly to Berlin.”

Gardner likely will never be a dominant tackler, and there were times on Sunday that his lack of physicality at the tackle point was evident.

He also slipped at a critical time.

Moments after Tyler Allgeier scored the go-ahead touchdown to give Atlanta a 23-22 lead in the final two minutes, the Falcons sent London to the left against Gardner, intent on throwing him the fade.

Gardner slipped.

London made the catch.

The new Colts cornerback, still looking for his first win in the NFL this season after missing New York’s upset over the Bengals with a concussion, thought he’d cost his new team the game.

“I was sick after that,” Gardner said. “Then our field goal kicker, he made the field goal — my bad, I'm still learning names and stuff like that — he made the field goal and I was like, ‘That's on me, D; that was supposed to be the game-winner right there, not just to tie the game up.’ So I made sure I'm not going to slip no more, and coverage got real sticky for us to get the ball back to our offense.”

Penix did not complete a pass in overtime, holding onto the ball long enough for Zaire Franklin to get home on a winding stunt.

For the first time this season, Gardner is a winner, headed into his second bye week of the season intent on moving to his new team.

“About 99% of my clothes are in Jersey still, so I've definitely got to make something happen with that because I'm not trying to be wearing the same stuff,” Gardner said. “That was the first time that I've been in a locker room that electric this year after a game, because that was my first win I've been a part of this year.”

And as much as he thought he might have blown it, Gardner made a key play to get Indianapolis to that point.

The Colts hope there are many more to come.

o

[Colts And Orioles]

o


Shane Steichen’s Coach of the Year Odds Rise as Colts Surge to 8–2

(By Michael Greene)

https://www.si.com/nfl/colts/onsi/news/shane-steichen-coach-year-odds-rise-colts-surge

o

[Pez]

I'm not entirely sure why I'm irrationally down on Steichen. His clock management in the 60 yard FG game.... his game plan against the Steelers and the Falcons... two 4th down failures instead of chip shot FGs...

You don't make it to 8-2 with Daniel Jones and a bad coach, but I swear he needs a handler sometimes.

[Colts And Orioles]

I'm not entirely sure why I'm irrationally down on Shane Steichen.





o


There is nothing necessarily irrational about constructive criticism/skepticism of individual aspects of a top-tier team, even if that team is riding high with a record of 8-2.

o

[Pez]

o


There is nothing necessarily irrational about constructive criticism/skepticism of individual aspects of a top-tier team, even if that is riding high with a record of 8-2.

o

You're right. Steichen is a clown.