I think you are being overly harsh. A GM and HC should work closely and the HC should have heavy input into player choices. The coach should not have complete roster control though, but where is it reported that harbaugh would demand complete control?

I've never seen a demand from Harbaugh that he would want complete control. Most on the talking head show's however indicate they believe he would want to be "the man" within whatever organization he chooses.

Yes, I agree they should work in concert. I also have to believe that with what has already been done to him ala Saturday, that if Harbaugh were to come here, shit, man how could you not feel like you were just a token figure with no real influence and no perceived value? I know I would feel that way. So if it happens and he stays, would just seem to be a situation of not really caring and kinda liking the cush nature of the gig and thus sort of just tagging along for the perks.

fine. but the way you phrased in before stating "just proves to me he is a dude that is not really about anything other than ..." makes it sound like that's the way you already perceive ballard. I dont think that's the case. I think ballard thinks very highly of himself and his philosophy, but I also think that he is quite open to receiving input from his staff, coach, and irsay as seen in the draft videos they put out.

I would expect that if all decision making were removed from him then he would ask irsay to release him. you could see it in his face when saturday was introduced that he was not really on board, but ballard also knew it was just for an interim basis.

My take is Reich, again was too weak of a leader to take control of roster control decisions. Probably saying things like, I'm not sure, I'll let you decide, we're fine with what we've got, that's above my pay grade...etc...etc...etc.

I mean how else can you explain, Nick Cross starting over Rodney Mcleod or Matt Pryor starting over my mailbox.

That should ultimately be the coaches decision. So Reich was either, blind, clueless, weak and got bullied by Ballard or didn't want that responsibility.

That's why Irsay had to step in.

Yep, something along those lines. Chappy was on JMV tonight, tons of discussion around Ballard being retained, Chappy made the statement that there is something that Irsay sees in Ballard that he trusts. He then said "Ultimately he lost that trust in frank for a NUMBER of different reasons"- and he clearly enunciated the word NUMBER to add emphasis that he (Irsay) must have communicated a series of things he was tired of with Frank.

LMAO. This might be the best line of the season.

Watch Irsay just hire Saturday.

I don’t know why I found that so funny. It’s a frightening prospect, but boss man is just the type to do it.

i fucking hope not

How would he even be able to assemble a staff? Who would be part of the "Saturday coaching tree"? Former player friends? Current or former ESPN analysts? Highschool coaching colleagues/acquaintances? Con artists, grifters, opportunists looking to make a buck? Nightmare scenario.

On second thought, they'd probably just keep everyone who's already there. They'd have to get a real offensive coordinator (Parks Frazier ain't it...lol), and maybe/probably a new O-line coach...but everyone else would just stay as is as long as nobody gets picked for a coaching position on another team (don't see that happening). It would definitely be the cheapest way to go. So, as of right now anyway, I expect Jeff Saturday will be the head coach.

I will say this about Parks Frazier, older veteran coaches were given a chance to take the OC job, and turned it down. F@ck those guys, they had a chance to step up and help the team, and they bailed on the opportunity. I wouldnt hired the special teams coach, he had a chance to audition, show what he could do. He’s not going to be on my team let alone a coordinator.

If I’m the owner, who ever is he head coach, Parks Frazier will be on the staff. He stepped up, into a crappy situation. He took one for the team, the Colts owe him.

Parks Frazier may have scabbed in when nobody else would (for different reasons), but he didn't show anything that warrants him being appointed OC. He was only a 30yo assistant QB coach after all. Loyalty is one thing, performance is another.

Besides, I would imagine most of this offensive staff is gone. Unfortunately a new regime means there's a good chance we also lose our defensive staff that did a pretty good job

Calling him a scab is horse shit. He was hired by Jim Irsay, thats where his loyalty was. I didnt say he was great, he was brave to take on an impossible task and give his best. Thats why I would keep him. He didnt quit on the team

Are you high?

Parks Frazier sucks balls.

Colts had the worst scoring offense in the league and it didn’t get any better after Frazier took over even though the OLine was marginally better.

Using the above as the logic, then you are obligated to fire both Frank and Ballard on snap # 2 of the season after Matt Pryor was allowed to start the season at LT. Ballard for him being here and Frank for allowing him to start.

Who else was Frank supposed to start? Raimann wasn’t ready and Kelly turned out to be not much better when he did play.

He didn’t have any other options. That’s on Ballard.

Yeah, he sucks. So was that Frank's play book and there just wasn't enough time to change it up so Park's just kept calling Frank's plays. Was it Park's and Frank put way too much faith in a guy that is really bad at NFL play design (perhaps one of the MANY things Irsay was tired of with Frank).

In either case, no fucking way he gets a chance to repeat the insanity of this year's laughable offensive design regardless of the talent on the field.

Yeah it is on Ballard for sure. Shit, I really don't know what to think. Was Frank so bad that he couldn't see in camp that he was awful and demand they sign fucking someone, anyone that had a couple clips of better film? Or, did Frank see it and just accept that Pryor was Ballard's stooge and he just went along with it?

Either scenario, is an indictment on both of them and stands as my primary piece of evidence that Ballard has no business being a GM.

Frank was never bad at coaching offense until this season. His offenses were always top half of the league at minimum.

The struggles on offense this year were CAUSED BY THE AWFUL OLINE, not because Frank forgot how to coach.

Jesus tap dancing Christ.

Have you not watched any games before this season?

Are you stupid? Someone needed to be the OC. The veteran coaches were pussies and wouldnt even TRY to help the team. Frazier, gave it his best. He STEPED UP. The others chickened out. He is a young guy, he can learn. Courage is found, not tripped over.

No, the others were smart. Their name isn’t attached to this pathetic debacle that was the Colts after Irsay hired an ESPN analyst as head coach

I don’t blame them a bit for that.

In fact, I question Fraziers intelligence for ever agreeing to be part of what was obviously going to be a disaster.

You can't simply blame one or the other. Ballard admitted they fucked up thinking Nelson, Kelly, and Smith could "absorb" Pryor and Pinter, as he put it. Well none of them played up to standard so that plan failed impressively.

But everything we've seen from those two indicates a lot of collaboration. They both were good with the above plan. And they were both wrong. One didn't fuck the other, which is what everyone wants to make it out to be.

Looks like you mixed the wrong chemicals, chief. Be careful.

Loyalty to the team? Not a pussy to bail when things got tough?

Why show loyalty to a franchise that is clearly setting you up to fail and who will cut ties in a heartbeat?

I have no problem whatsoever with coaches not wanting to be associated with the 2022 Colts.

All the smarts as a coach means nothing without the courage to take on a tough job and risk failure

Just offer Ben Johnson the job this week before we lose him. Maybe that's Irsay's plan. Drag feet & hire Saturday.

There is a difference between being courageous and being foolish.

Taking the Colts offensive coordinator job in 2022 was foolish.

There was no possibility of success.

The roster on offense, specifically the offensive line, was just to bad.

I see guys showing excitement for Ben Johnson, which is fine. But some of these guys I read/hear are guys I know bitched about Frank being buried in his play sheet and not a HC for the whole team.

I can't square that.

Our offense was dog ass last year sans the stretch of games where Taylor went absolutely bonkers.

Lest we forget, we were 0-3 and 1-4 through 5 last year (hmmm a good coach constantly coming out of the gate with horrible starts... yeah that's not really what constitutes "good"). We were averaging a whopping 250 yards passing per game and a LOT of us were griping about how bad the passing game was and were bitching because Ballard had not stocked the WR room.

We then got the running game going (credit to Frank for at least finally recognizing we had a remarkable talent in the backfield and his golden boy was a complete fraud so he had to do something different). In the 8 game stretch in the middle of the season, we averaged 175 yards rushing per game and we did it against some really solid defenses as well. Let me also point out that during that stretch, we dominated the NFL in defensive turnovers with 2.5 per game (Leonard was going insane and pushing hard for DPOY). So our winning streak when everyone was saying we should be feared, had a high number of short fields to work with and allowed us to get into a lot of clock killing possessions where it was load JT up and just smash em'.

All of us recall the insanely bad offense in the last 2 games, but we should probably really look at the final 4 in total. In those final FOUR games, we averaged a comical 137 yards passing per game! We didn't necessarily burn the lights up on the running dial either as the average fell by nearly 40 yards per game from that incredible 8 game stretch.

His offense was not some prolific juggernaut last year. But, many thought the problems at the end of the year were:
1- Wentz
1A- Wentz
1B- Wentz
2- WR
3- Pass Blocking

Jump into this year, and instead it could easily be interpreted that the real problem was teams knew all we had was a running game and were going to sit on that knowing his scheme wasn't gonna do shit through the air. One could easily read into that that Frank Reich WAS bad at offense and basically his play book was understood and easily defended.

Different QB, same disastrous result. Insert another QB, more horrible results. No explosiveness at all. Weird gimmicky shit in clutch moments. Tons and tons of throws into the flat for 2 yard gains; shit it seemed like some of our plays the check down was the 1st option in the progression. Tons of shotgun runs into the B gap with one of the most explosive runners in the game NEVER seeing an outside pitch for some fucking reason despite having what WAS one of the games best ever pulling guards.

Now, I will give you that the Rivers year, was far better than either of the last 2. But I will also point out that during the final 4 games of that year, we averaged a meager 217 passing yards a game. Was that because the league had adjusted and was just sitting on his passing scheme?

To me, Frank was good, when he had Luck, who was going to make any OC, gonna make me, look good- outside of the fairly common picks that were part of his aggressive nature, Luck was a phenom. Luck was a Josh Allen level of QB- he could do incredible things.

But Frank with average or sub par talent, nah man, nothing to substantiate him being good at anything really, and thus he doesn't have a job.

Could be wrong, but I have a hard time believing Reich would have been happy w/ that plan considering how critical the LT position is. Even if Nelson, Kelly, and Smith would have played worth a shit this year the OL probably still would have struggled due to not having a good LT (although not near as bad as what happened I'm sure).

Well, what do we mean by "happy"? Until we get another anchor like Castonzo, you can't really be happy. But we can't treat it like it's just a matter of running to the grocery store because we're out of eggs. They didn't like the FA tackle market for whatever reason (money, age, injury, etc.).

With how collaborative and open to input they seem to be... I have an equally hard time believing that Ballard and Reich didn't watch tape together and determine Pryor did alright (as Ballard said before the season). I can't see either of them not signing off on the plan to roll with Pryor, draft a kid they like, and have him take over as that anchor. In the meantime, three studs on the OL from the previous few years would take up the slack.

They were wrong. Pryor was awful. Couple that with the most INSANE lack of ball security I've personally ever witnessed and you have a true disaster. Hopefully the vets return to form. If so, I think at the end of an ugly road, we may actually have that anchor at LT.

Maybe happy is the wrong word. I just find it hard to believe that people in the Colts organization (Reich, etc.) didn't think that handing the starting LT spot to Pryor was a bad idea. There were a lot of us on the board who felt it was a really bad move, and you would think guys like Reich would have forgotten more about football than schlubs like us know about the game. Of course you would also think Ballard would know the importance of the LT position, but based on his actions and comments I don't think he does.

At any rate, water under the bridge I suppose. Hopefully Raimann is the answer at LT and the OL gets back to playing at least decent football again next year. We'll see if Ballard has learned his lesson and at least hedges the position, but I kind of doubt it.

https://twitter.com/santajono/status...xTZHS23CbFh74g

Pain

Sad

We are so fucked

No surprise. He wasn’t going to leave Michigan. I don’t know why some thought he would.

Jeff Saturday or Leslie Frazier here we go.

down vote please

That doesn't mean shit (Harbaugh saying he is staying in Michigan). People change their minds all the time. Nobody has any idea what people are thinking or even who will end up being the best head coach out of the bunch. It is a crap shoot (except for proven failures like Saturday).