I think you guys are right about Fields if we want to bring in someone to legitimately compete w/ AR for the starting QB job.

But if the idea is to bring in more the mentor type role to help get AR back on track then I say you go w/ Mariota. Or just throwing this out there - bring Minshew back. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Vegas releases him, which would be a ~$6M cap savings, or willing to trade him for a low round draft pick which would be ~$9M savings.

I’m torn between legit competition and a mentor. How much would Fields need to outplay AR before you give him the starting job? If you think Fields is playing well enough to be the possible long term answer then that’s one thing. But if he’s just a little better than AR who do you start? May be hard to lure Fields here if it’s not a true competition. But if Fields comes in and just barely beats out AR, then Ballard and Stechein are likely done in Indy. AR too.

Will Howard & even Kyle McCord are better than Kurtis Rourke

Rourke didn't do himself any favors in the playoff game with Notre Dame, his mobility or lack thereof, was really exposed!

It's a really bad QB class.
Maybe Sanders or Cam Ward might be good. Milroe maybe. The rest, hard pass for me. Just JAGS!

Agree. That's why I'm leaning towards the mentor and attempt to get AR back on track approach. Of course if Ballard and Steichen believe AR likely won't get there then the better move is to go w/ Fields.

Seem to recall Ballard really like Fields that year in the draft

The only way the Colts don't get set back 3-5 years is if Richardson works his ass off and comes back next season as a much better QB. He can physically make all the throws and we know he can run, no reason why he can't be greatly improved next season if he is willing to put in the time!

The reason I question whether or not AR is going to what it takes, is his end of season presser.

When ashed directly, if he was considering working with one of the QB gurus {Tom House) AR replied that he would work with his guys.

What has his current team done to improve his game? That is not a guy who is committed to improving. That is a guy who wants to feel comfortable. To win in this league, you have to do some things that make you uncomfortable and challenge you.

Or is it a guy that doesn’t know what it takes to improve? Similar to not understanding the level of preparation that’s required weekly? Both scenarios are issues but one is completely on him and one is more on the team. I honestly can’t get a sense if AR is lazy / unwilling to work or just naive and not being mentored properly. I see little indication the team has done him many favors. I’m often not a fan of the play calling, he’s lacked the typical security blankets (pass catching RB and TE), their handling of the benching and the back injury were shitty, and we’ve seen no indication anyone is really mentoring him. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t lead me to much optimism.

o


Oh, OK.

So, throughout a good portion of the day, you're a typical, mild-mannered, Clark Kent type of person ...... you just kind of roll with the punches, go about your business, and don't take life too seriously ...... you can be counted on to be even-keeled, level-headed, and generally fair-minded in various areas of life.


But then ....... at the mere mention of anything having to do with the Indianapolis Colts ....... you turn into a raving, foaming-at-the-mouth maniac ....... FUCK CHRIS BALLARD !!! Ballard can go straight to fucking hell !!! And FUCK ANTHONY RICHARDSON !!! He's the weakest fucking pussy ever to step foot on a football field !!! And FUCK GUS BRADLEY !!! I fucking hate him with every inch of my soul !!! And FUCK JIM IRSAY !!! That lying son-of-a-bitch kept Gus Bradley on board an entire year longer than he should have !!! And FUCK ANDREW LUCK !!! That fucking little pussy quit on the team 3 weeks before the start of the season, and left the franchise in a shambles, of which it may NEVER recover from !!!



I think I understand, now ...... thanks for clarifying that.

o

I agree totally that providing the team with some Tight End and RB pass catching options would be ideal. It remains to be Seen if AR is the guy to hit those layups though.

Can Cooper Flagg play TE?

Ummmm, fairly close. I think Bradley was retained for a couple years longer than he should have been. Sorry, not sure it's my fault the Colts have been a disgrace of an organization with some absolutely fucking shitty management and some atrocious players for the better part of a decade. A lot of the people you name, really suck. Not all of them, but many of them, especially Chris Ballard. Fuck Chris Ballard!

o


Nobody said that the Colts' failures was your fault ..... my observation was due to the fact that you seem to not be able to make a post without going berserk with endless exclamation points and profanity.

The Colts' mediocrity seems to eat at your soul with a vengeance, but it's your life if you're OK being that way.

o

I do love this team with incredible intensity. It does hurt my soul to see this extended period of suck, and it torments me that for some reason it is sort of just accepted. That's what gets my fury so high. I just can't understand why it is so okay to be run by what is clearly a fraud who doesn't have a clue what he is doing.

Why get so worked up over a game? I think that’s Coats and Oreo’s point. Why get so upset at something as trivial as this but be chill about other more important things?

o


Actually, I do understand getting worked up over the Colts ...... if they are in a close game, I will sometimes write a tongue-in-cheek post that if Matt Gay misses a kick I'm going to blow up his fucking car in the parking lot.

And there are plenty of posters who get pissed off and say so when the Colts shit the bed and lose a crucial game to a team like the Giants with their playoff hopes on the line ...... and I understand that, too.


But what I perceive as peculiarly excessive from Chopped Wood is that in about 80 to 90 percent of his posts, he lashes out vehemently at somebody in the front office, some coach on the team's sidelines, and/or one of the team's players ...... it's almost as though he does so as if he's remembering to sign his name at the end of a written letter ...... and if he really is as upset as he is saying that he is (and as often as he expresses it), it makes me wonder if his fandom of the Colts is even worth it. The whole point of being a fan is to get some type of enjoyment out of it, even if your team has a record of 2-15 and you are showing others that you are a loyal fan through thick and thin by wearing the team colors (which is what I do, regardless of how good or bad my teams are ...... I wore the Baltimore Orioles' colors every day when they were losing more than 100 games 3 times in 4 seasons between 2018 and 2021, just as much as when they had 5 straight winning seasons between 2012 and 2016.) If he is OK with being that way like he says he is, that's his business, but I almost feel a little bad for him if he really is that upset over it all.

o

Fans have a lot of different ways of dealing with their disappointment. Some go ballistic, others make jokes, some say "we'll get'em next week" and others get specific about who should be blamed. Bottom line, nobody here wants to see their team lose and when they do, this is a good place to vent. We're fans, but I'm pretty sure none of us here knows more about what it takes to turn this team around. We may think we do, we may proffer our opinions, but you know what they say about opinions ... "everybody's got one"

I do like reading everyone's posts. I don't agree with all of them, but I still like reading them. The more passionate ones help me get through some of the Colts shittiest performances, and in a season like this one, they're more enjoyable than the shit show game I just suffered through. So keep it up, it's therapeutic for me.

Yeah the danger is when fans start becoming apathetic. I’m just now starting to follow the Pacers again after years of not caring. I was a die hard fan, but once I felt the team was content being mediocre as long as they were ok enough to have seats filled, I quit. I can deal with losing and rebuilding. Honestly sometimes those are the most exciting times - if you think something is being built. But if the team doesn’t seem to care, why should I? I’m in that danger zone with the Colts. I would have not renewed my season tickets if I had the option now. I still get frustrated, but it’s becoming more a resignation now than anything else.

Good shit, and I am fighting the same battle. Maybe that's the best way to put it into context- Ballard makes me WANT to be apathetic but my conflict and as such my rage comes by way of my love for the team causing me to lash out instead.

In terms of my off board life and my board life, I do view the Colts and other sports of course, as a source of entertainment and release; so I am not irrational. Loses happen, they suck, it hurts, but I still have to go about life and do the things I have to do each and every day both good and bad. Life's so full of crazy shit to be absorbed, addressed, resolved, much of it you have to just deal with. So then comes the few hours of disengagement from all the world's requirements by taking in what should be enjoyable and instead it's 3 hours of pure shit, well then I start losing my shit!

Look Ballard in particular, to me, is soooooo fucking far away from my perceived standards for this organization it's unreal. I'm old, I've been through the atrocious and the glorious Colts experience. At this point, this feels like the absolute worst. Seems a bit ludicrous to say about a team that is at least competing for the playoffs, but that's how it feels. It feels like the TEAM is apathetic- willing to accept insufficient effort and outcomes with a meh and then off to island paradise attitude---- and that fucking sucks!

I have, right or wrong, laid my blame for that apathy squarely on the shoulders of Ballard who I legitimately believe is a con-man. I don't think he is good at this shit at all and I think he is willing to stab his own mother in the back for self preservation, and I fucking HATE people that are like that.

I am tired of watching the same movie over and over again. As RM points out, shit I can live with 2-14 but you KNOW the team is making changes for the better. Fucking give me that, give me some really bad football players that go out and just die on the field trying. In the Giants game thread I might have reached my most acerbic state when Locke ran for the TD and Nick Cross literally stood there and watched him score without even making a step toward him. To me, that is this version of the Colts in a single play and that shit is why I RAGE at this version of the team. That is not entertainment to me and I can invest my time and $$$ elsewhere in the entertainment world but I sure as hell don't want to! Chris Ballard is pushing me more and more in that direction.

TRIPLE FUCK CHRIS BALLARD!

First off, I empathetic to your disillusionment. Believe me, many of us on this board share your sentiment. But you are singling out one individual and no one else for this situation.

The truth is, that none of us know who is running this shit show of a franchise right now. For all we know Carlie has been pulling the puppet strings for 2 years, or maybe it was Jim, or Ballard. Maybe Steichen is getting mixed messages from all of these fools, hence his blundering of everything media related.

All of them have their faults and culpability in this. It's impossible top know, who is most responsible, and to what extent.

That is why I choose to blame players more often than not, because we can see with our own eyes when they are not giving effort, execution and a basic awareness of football intelligence.

JT is my whipping boy in so much of this. He is PFF's lowest rated RB in the league, with lowest amount of yards after contact. He can't block, he can't catch, and he can't think (at least on the football field). That man is a fraud!

There are others though, Blackmon, Speed, Mitchell, AR, Flacco and to a lesser extent, Franklin, who just don't give a shit.

I'll never blame a player for just not being physically, big enough, strong enough or fast enough. But I will blame them for lack of effort, stupidity and lack of improvement.

Give me a team of guys like Jaylon Jones, Pittman, Pierce, Nelson, Moore, Raimann, Fries and Big Grove.

I will say this against Steichen though, WTF is up with 8 captains. WHY...WTF, which of those 8 voices to players look to? Do not use the excuse that, it was a players vote either. Your dumbass decided how many captains we would have.

o


Jonathan Taylor's dropping of the ball at the 1/2 yardline is emblematic of the all of Colts' failures in almost all of their crucial games over the last 4 seasons, since Philip Rivers retired.

I think that Taylor is trying, as he played very well in the Colts' final 4 games of the 2024 season ...... but his dropping of the ball at the 1/2 yardline is worse than not trying, it was absolutely inexcusable for any player at the collegiate or professional level of football.

o

It's not just his dropping of the ball 1/2 yard line. I have documented on here 4 fatal errors in the Giants game alone. He has no fight, no thrive to improve and no football smarts.

His lack of football smarts is something really really really fucked up. The guy is a genuinely smart person but he steps on that field and has ZERO game time intelligence. So fucking strange.

To me there are athletic highly skilled players and there are football players. The Colts need more football players! It's not enough just to be athletic, you have to have that competitive fire, fearlessness, and love for the game. Guys that possess those qualities are the ones that take teams from middle of the road to contenders. Not saying those guys are easy to find, but it doesn't look like the Colts even look for them!

Absolutely agree. I don't think Ballard even knows what the difference is. FUCK CHRIS BALLARD!

Pass catching RBs and TEs are a struggling QBs best friends. Colts have neither. I think the team has failed AR, but in saying that, I realize AR has to drive his own success as much as he is able.

Unfortunately you're probably going to end up in this situation when the GM prioritizes RAS scores by far more than anything else.

Is it the culture inside the locker room that is the problem?

Is it the culture of the owners and managmeent that is the problem?

Is it picking RAS scores over football players that is the problem?

Is it the scheme? Is it the playbook?

Do we have accountability on the field? In the locker room? Among leadership?

Do we have an NFL capable QB?

Reality is that it is probably some of all the above and the only way to change most of that is to BLOW IT THE F UP!

However, we are choosing not to do that for 2025 which means we will, again, have a middle of the road season (because I do not think AR is the guy) that will result in a middle of the road draft pick that has a low chance of delivering our next franchise QB which is the #1 need of any NFL franchise that does not have one.

While I am a lifelong Colts fan, I have about zero enthusiasm to look forward to the 2025 version of the Colts because I think we are just on the wrong path and until the team gets blown up, we have no chance to get on the right path.

I read the RATS 10 thoughts on Ballard's presser article earlier this week. Not much was mentioned that hasn't been hashed out on this thread so not going to post the whole thing, but the below section really stuck out to me, especially the stat included at the end. Hope Ballard read that :cool:

So it took Ballard, the dumb fuck that he is, 8 years to figure out that you need to have competition to get on the field. Instead he said fuck it we’ll just roll with the players that haven’t done shit because we like our guys.

Yeah man, BLOW IT THE FUCK UP "TIGER BOB STYLE". St. Louis needs a team or maybe become 2nd cousin to the Bears!;)

my god do not bring back minshew

I was trying to point out the stat that every team that made the playoffs this year added at least 1 starter via free agency, but that's a good take away as well.

Back to the free agency stat. I wonder how often that's the case.

Not sure why you'd say that. If the goal is to bring in someone to help get AR back on track and improve then Minshew is a good fit. He works well w/ AR, is proficient in Steichen's offense, and has proven that he's good in relief and can win games when the starter's out.

Now if the goal is to bring in someone to compete w/ and potentially replace AR then I agree that's not Minshew. And really only Fields fits that of any QBs who are likely to be available.

Don't be surprised if Ballard's seasonal mismanagement of the roster has the residual effect of free agents not wanting to join this shit show.

No shit, who in the fuck would want to come play for this disgrace of a fucking organization?

I don't think there is any intention for this to work, I think the plan is to just let it all implode next year- the entire fucking thing is washed with bleach including Jim turning it over, and we start from absolute scratch as basically an expansion team.

FUCK YOU CHRIS FUCKING LOSER BALLARD!!!