Chaos do you think Ballard has done a good job of building the team? If so why? The results are in on how he spends money and he spends it wildly on his guys who then shit the bed. Maybe they aren’t just doing this for money, maybe it is the coaching. It doesn’t really matter in the end. What matters is we have the highest paid offensive line in the league which just happens to be the worst offensive line in the league. The guy who set this up is Ballard or does no body have responsibility and it is just bad luck that you think we should just keep rolling with. I’m not sure that Ballard needs to be fired in all honesty. He is an incredible talent evaluator but there is obviously more to putting a team together than that. I am just critical of how this team has been put together. I’m not sure what Irsay should do. I think the whole organization has fucked up.

Ryan Kelly's poor performance is IMO, based on 2 things:

1) Long COVID

2) His daughter's death

The poor performance started at the end of last season, after he was on the COVID list and after his daughter died. These two events also happened nearly simultaneously, so it's likely that some combination of these factors is at least strongly contributing to his poor play. There's a chance Braden Smith and Quenton Nelson could also be dealing with Long COVID. It's a better explanation than they're all greedy, especially Nelson, he takes too much pride in his work for greed to be the explanation with him.

Managing the cap for future years has been, and will continue to be, the primary success of the Ballard era. It will not result in anything meaningful though. Ballard apologists will point to the salary cap as the barrier to effectively fill holes on the roster, while praising Ballard for his super conservative cap use. Teams don’t consistently win today while only planning for tomorrow. The single biggest issue with the team.

Nelson could also have a chronic back problem, and if so, this could be a permanent downslope to a tragically unrealized potential 1st ballot HOF career.

We have $56M in guaranteed money tied up between Nelson, Smith, and Kelly in their current contracts. Do you not think that's going to hamstring the Colts ability to fill needs, especially with the way Ballard goes about things? Also, I need to add that with the way those 3 are playing that's $56M too much to be spending on them.

You're downplaying how much of a fuck up this is. Ballard handed Pryor the starting spot at the 2nd most important position in football after a whopping 1 ok start there. It was obvious from snap one of game one of this year that he wasn't capable to holding down the LT for an entire season. How the fuck did Ballard and/or his staff not realize this? At the very least bring Fisher back. Yeah he had his struggles, but he's not the dumpster fire of worthless shit that Pryor is.

And the Pinter move was almost as bad. Pinter clearly isn't strong enough to play OG in the NFL. How the fuck did Ballard and his staff not know this? On top of that we had 2 OGs who went to other teams (Glow and Reed) for reasonable and dirt cheap deals. We should have had both of them back, no problem. Of course who wants actually good O Linemen when you can have the extra $12.5M in future cap flexiblity.



While AC did hold off retiring until after the '20 season, he seriously considered it in '19 which should have motivated Ballard to begin working on his replacement that offseason. The fact that Pryor, who might be the worst starting LT in the history of the NFL, was our starting LT 3 offeasons later shows how unbelievably bad Ballard fucked that up.

Exactly. In Ballard's head having future cap flexibility is more important than actually winning games. Just like a draft pick's RAS score is more important than if they can actually fit onto your team and produce.

The line was not very good last year either. Smith wasn’t good at all, the LT okay was bad, Nelson and kelly were slightly above average, and glow was the only one who looked decent.
Wentz was hit a lot last year but was much more mobile than Ryan.

Why won't it result in anything significant? Just because the Colts have hit some rough territory doesn't mean that the underlying strategy is wrong. What's wrong with a plan to use your funds to invest in the guys you know best - your own players - and to be skeptical of guys coming from other teams whose own teams won't pay them what you think Ballard should pay them? If you can identify talent - and Ballard can do that - it seems like a perfectly logical and solid plan to me.

It's nice to say in the abstract that the Colts should spend more money in free agency, but on who?

You can say that he's overpaid his own players, and that may be true in some cases, but nothing he's done has hampered the Colts financially in any meaningful way. The bottom line is the lack of a QB is the real issue. Criticize the Colts all you want for going the veteran route instead of trying to draft a guy, but my guess is that the batting average is far better on veteran QBs than mid-1st round QBs or later. I don't buy all the claims that the Colts could have traded up higher into the first round to get someone like Herbert - why would the Chargers do that? And further, the Colts were ready to compete and a veteran QB makes more sense in that context than an rookie.

How so? If they wanted to do so, the Colts could sign virtually any available player at this point.

I don't disagree that the LT and RG positions have been a mess, and that Ballard has a large amount of responsibility for this. All I was saying is that you need to judge the decision based upon info available at the time, not in retrospect now that it hasn't worked out. Is Ballard making rational and logical decisions, and is he taking worthwhile gambles? I agree it's questionable on the positions you pointed out, but its not nearly as obvious as every is saying. A good part of this is on Ballard, no doubt.

How do you know what AC was discussing with the Colts? I know it was reported in the media that AC might retire in 2019, but he signed a two-year contract shortly thereafter. And who should the Colts have signed/drafted in 2019 or 2020 that would have satisfied you?

From Reich's press conference:

https://twitter.com/zkeefer/status/1587841156603383811

https://twitter.com/zkeefer/status/1587840418774908929

https://twitter.com/NateAtkins_/stat...40327930478592

https://twitter.com/JoelAErickson/st...40428962992128

Reich gave Strausser a vote of confidence at his press conference.


However, if the OL continues its mediocre play the rest of the season, I doubt Strausser's contract will be renewed in the off season.

https://twitter.com/JoelAErickson/st...42550173401090

https://twitter.com/NateAtkins_/stat...42813084958724

The oline struggled run blocking early and late. Early because Ballard banked on Fisher coming back from an achilles injury. And late because of Covid and the loss of Kelly’s daughter. In between they were opening up pretty damn good holes in the run game. Pass blocking was spotty throughout. All I’ll say is if the issue with all the Oline is Reich then Ballard’s an even bigger fucking idiot for handing out huge contracts to 3 shit players. If none of the oline has been good under Reich then why the fuck have we locked guys in and have the highest paid oline in the league?

Great news....instead of hiring a new OC, Frank will be calling all the plays the rest of this season!:D

Fans perception of the team 8 games into this particular season doesn't paint the full picture. But overall, yes. That doesn't mean he's aced everything. I've said all along that Pryor and LT have been his biggest failure. And he whiffed on Basham, Banogu, and Turay. There are others.

But he built the entire defense. Although it's not complete (of course we'd all love our own Nick Bosa), I like our defensive personnel. I think he nails LB, just about nails S, nailed Grover + Buckner, has gotten some good young guys at CB in Rodgers and Moore and brought in good vets like Gilmore or Xavier Rhodes before him, and our DE situation was weak and is getting better. Kwity was playing really well when he got hurt, I think Dayo will keep getting better (they're both 23), and Tyquan Lewis was under the radar playing really well for us.

We all know the story with the OL this season... meaning NOBODY understands why they have inexplicably played so poorly this year. But until now, the OL was a strength for us. We just produced the rushing champ last year.

We just lost one of my favorites in Nyheim Hines and that stings. But Ballard drafted that RB in the first place. He brought Mack in who played well for us and brought Taylor in after. We've already seen Deon Jackson play well when called. That lets me trust that he can bring guys in who can play going forward.

Receiving corps was the trendy panic position this offseason. Not unwarranted. But as wrong as he may have been trusting Pryor and Pinter... I think he may have been equally correct trusting guys like Campbell, Granson, a rookie Pierce, etc., to go with Pittman. We don't have an All-Pro, but I think we have plenty of weapons.

I look at moves he makes for this team, weigh it with the shortcomings, and it leads me to easily trust future moves.

The elephant is QB which is it's own long discussion. Here's your Rorschach, I'll just put it like this: Assume these Ballard teams are healthy and stick Luck at QB. Now compare to those 11-5 teams Luck played on under Pagano. Are we better?

Chaka you and I have been having this discussion for 3-4 years. And guess what? We are exactly where I have been saying we would end up - mediocre.

I’m not so sure what is hard to understand. Ballard has never fielded a complete team. Never. Yes every team has some degree of weakness. It’s a matter of magnitude. And Ballard has repeatedly left several major areas extremely weak while waiting on player development or next years draft. LT, WR, and DE primarily. Ballard refuses to “overspend” on average NFL talent. Great, except that means the team has repeatedly put out below average players at critical positions each and every year. Having a few great players that carry the bad players works in the NBA, it doesn’t in the NFL. You get exposed. If you have bottom 5 pass rush it doesn’t matter how great your LBs and secondary are. Oline can’t block? Doesn’t matter much you have the best RB in the league or have maybe finally solved the WR issue. We’ve seen it year after year - an obvious issue the team says is fine, then it costs them games and they spend half the season trying to find a solution.

Where this intersects with Ballard’s approach to the cap is that other teams do mortgage some of the future for today. Instead of filling holes with rookies and vet minimum guys they shoot their shot and shore up areas with over paid average players. It doesn’t always work, but it sure as fuck beats what Ballard does. Do the colts have a brighter future than the rams? Maybe. But the Rams have something to show for prioritizing a window. I guess Ballard’s is yet to come

That doesn’t even touch how he’s been fucking up at QB. I mostly give him a pass there. It’s an unbelievable difficult task, but one he makes more difficult by his “building a dynasty” philosophy.

Let me ask you - how many more years does Ballard need to prove what you and him believe? I said it was at best a 4 year plan before competitiveness using his method. Most on here, especially you, told me I was nuts. So I’ll ask - how much longer until the genius reveals itself?

This makes sense to me. I tend to fall on the side of not being happy with how this roster is put together, but it certainly isn’t something that is black and white (like Grigson) to me. And I will say that there is a chance that he hit on Ehlingher which if he did counts for a ton. And I think it is 60-40 that he did. So Ballard is far from the worst GM out there and I get that letting him go you could easily end up in a worst position. You can learn from mistakes and hopefully he will. It a total mess right now.

Let me try to explain why I think our line looks so much worse. Rivers was adept at reading a defense, which put the line in a great position to protect him. Wentz was the opposite, and Ryan was somewhere between the two, but slow as molasses. Add in the fact that pass rushers are becoming tremendously athletic freaks, and most lines struggle with blocking. If our QB can be even remotely close to where Rivers was about reading the defenses, we will see vast improvements.

What Ehlinger brings to the table is that he is a winner. Yes, he has some drawbacks, but being a winner can mask a ton of them if the coaches know how to put together a game plan.

I don’t know Racehorse. That may be why they are not good at pass blocking (I don’t buy that though, these guys are getting their asses handed to them one on one) but what is your theory on why they cannot run block for shit? There used to be not only holes to run through but every week I looked forward to watching Nelson flatten someone. Baldy made it something you didn’t want to miss. Now Nelson is getting flattened. The thing that makes the most sense is injury to his back but my god why would you give that contract to a guard with a back injury?

That’s crazy to me. By every available metric, the Colts are one of the worst lines in football, in both run and pass blocking.

The offensive line is why Matt Ryan was benched, it’s why Taylor has been ineffective all season, and it’s why Brady got fired.

The play of the line is at the root of every other problem. Blowing smoke up everyones ass doesn’t change that, because it’s so painfully obvious.

I feel like personal politics played more of a role in these moves than anything else. If a shakeup was needed, it should have been made at the source of the problem.

Firing Brady just feels like a desperation move, a move aimed more at getting people off of their asses than actually addressing the problems.

o


There were a number of Colts teams in which Peyton Manning masked otherwise noticeably flawed teams ...... and in his case, he didn't even need the coaches to put together a game plan, they (the offensive coaches) just shut the hell up and let Manning run the show. Jim Caldwell was a lousy head coach, but the one thing that I give him credit for was staying out of Peyton Manning's way in regard to running the offense for 2 full seasons in 2009 and 2010 before the neck injury forced him out of the 2011 season.

o

My guess is that they didn't like the alternatives for interim offensive line coach.

Kevin Mawae is the assistant line coach and is still relatively new to coaching.


One option that jumps out to me would have been to temporarily name TE Coach Klayton Adams as the Offensive Line + Tight Ends coach. But maybe they thought that would be too much for Klayton.

I've said this before, but the passing of Howard Mudd has been the downfall of this line.

Strausser is a Mudd disciple, Mawae is not. I sense that creates some conflict within the OL room.

Reich says he has confidence in Chris Strausser, says OL needs to play better but says he believes the OL is improving.


https://media.tenor.com/rdmU3NM3avcA...rphy-laugh.gif

Maybe we are tipping run plays. No creativity in fooling the defense. Reich is almost as predictable as a Pornhub plot, but not quite as predictable as Pagano was.

You know damn well that Ballard will use how much he's invested in the OL as an excuse not to invest in FA to fill team needs. He certainly won't invest any more in the OL even thought that's the unit that obviously needs to be fixed. In fact he already did that by letting Glow, Reed, and Fisher walk and going cheap w/ Pryor and Pinter :mad:


You don't judge a decision by the outcome it creates? What kind of dumbass thinking is that? And BTW handing over the starting LT position to a journeyman backup who made a whopping 1 start there is not a reasonable and logical decision. This was pretty obvious to a lot of us on the board here. Pinter wasn't as obvious to us fans, but it should have been obvious to Ballard and his staff. They had 2 years worth of practices and workouts to evaluate him, and the fact that they were so far off on his evaluation as well as Pryor's should say something.


AC seemed like a really standup guy. Do you think he'd tell the media that he was considering retiring and not talk to Ballard, Reich, etc. about it?

Off the top of my head I would have either signed Leno instead of Fisher and/or drafted Darrisaw instead of Paye. And as I already mentioned re-signing Fisher would have been a much better move than handing the job over to Pryor. But my opinion doesn't really matter as I don't get paid to make the Colts better. Ballard does, and that's something he's failed at big fucking time over the past couple of off seasons. Fucking Matt Broken Down Turnstyle Pryor at LT. What a fucking joke.

Well said, only I disagree on us being mediocre. We're a complete and utter shit show.

That would be such a luxury if he was hiding on our roster the whole time. Maybe I shouldn't hold my breath.


Nelson's back and other surgeries are more plausible to me than other suggestions I've heard. Whatever it is, if you remember when he came in in 2018, he made Kelly, Castonzo, and the ultimately the whole line better by nature of the unit. When one guy does worse, the next guy does worse, and so on.

Also, not to excuse the OL at all... but if you watched the JT O'Sullivan breakdown on Ehlinger, he pointed out some RPO runs. Pittman, Granson, Woods, etc. were getting beat on several blocking assignments. They're more dynamic as receivers, but that's an underrated element we used to get from guys like Doyle and Pascal that hurts our run game and quick passing game.

To me that's a team like the Raiders or the Packers now.

But it feels like a slight argument at best.

No one is saying that Ballard isn't a better GM than Grigson. He obviously is, but who isn't? Seeing that Grigson in one of the worst GMs in NFL history the comparison bar for Ballard should be much higher than Grigson. At least Tobin level.

If Nelson's back is the reason why he sucks now then that is HUGE fuck up by Ballard to give him that big of a contract. The smart thing to have done, again if he is having back issues, would have been to let him play out his 5th year option to see how his back impacted his play before handing him the largest OG contract in league history. Of course Ballard hasn't done many smart things the past couple of years.

We'll find out in 2 weeks who the bigger shit show is.

Sure, but my point is not to compare Ballard to Grigson.

If we agree the team around the QB is a lot better, then we're talking about, what?... 12-, 13-, 14-win teams? Then I think the perception of the roster is different.

I would agree if that's the case. But I don't know if that's the case. That's the frustrating part: the mystery.

If we were a 12-14 win team then obviously there wouldn't be any Ballard bashing (or very minimal). But the OL is so unbelievably bad that I'm not sure we'd be a double digit win team even with someone like Luck or Peyton at the helm.

Agreed, but something has obviously happened to him. Guys like Autry who Nelson used to blow up and pancake regularly are now making him their bitch game in and game out.

It is a mystery because the Colts continue to lie to the fan base. They have this opinion that letting someone know, for instance, that Nelson is dealing with a bad back (if he is) will be giving other teams a one up on us. I could stomach this if this was part of a winning plan, it isn’t obviously. None of us trust anything that comes out of these guys mouths. Is there anyone here who listens to Reich’s press conference and believes him? One person who doesn’t see the firing of Brady as trying to put the blame somewhere it doesn’t belong? ‘He was a fabulous coach but we had to let him go because…well you know’ kind of shit. Reich is a weasel, kind of guy who makes others take his hits. They are exactly the opposite of who they claim to be. I, like most here, am over it.

Wait a second. This is nothing unique to Frank Reich or the Colts. Bill Belichick is considered the GOAT and he's famous for giving bullshit pressers. They all do.

Beyond the competitive aspect... reporters and fans claim they want honesty but the moment there's an aberration and someone does speak some truth or specifics, about an injury or anything else, people lose their minds. That's why coach-speak is a thing. They don't want to be there, they don't want to talk to these robot reporters.

This is simply the nature of the garbage (sports) media that people ask for. These reporters have been asking the same goddamn questions and getting the same goddamn non-answers forever. If they didn't get special access to practices and stuff like that, they'd be useless.

Every player and coach will tell you the opponent this week is a "great team" and "they do a lot of stuff really well." The coach and GM always makes every single decision "in the best interest of the team." The winning quarterback in the post-game interview is going to tell the lady, "My teammates had my back" and "we believe in each other", and blah, blah, blah.

That's what people eat up.

I don't need two weeks to know that it's gonna be us. Our only hope is Ehlinger. Good luck with that.

I dont believe the 'got paid and coast theory' that some spout.

I think its a combo of lingering injuries and not fully recovering from covid.