I didn’t miss it. It’s 3 million more than Jenkins, the previously highest paid guard, and 3 million less than Williams the LT. Everyone knew this would be an increase in guard benchmark. The cap will go up. LT prices will go up as the next franchise LT deal sets a new benchmark.

This is another talking point I hear on 1070 all the time. Less critical positions. You can get rid of them, (lb, rb, G, DT, etc) but are you going to replace them with equivalent talent at a ‘critical’ position? If no, then you are simply becoming a worse team bc you don’t think that position group should be paid well. Then all you have is money and a less talented team. Are those signings keeping them from an obtaining a player at a critical position?

If you weren’t trying to win with Rivers or Ryan I see no point in acquiring them. Most people assumed 2 years for each of them. So if the first year is a prove it year as you suggest, then the second year would put you in the situation you just described- pushing for a SB without knowing who your QB would be the next year. Basically by your reasoning they should never have wasted their time with Rivers or Ryan. Then we’re never going to do anything other than make it harder to acquire their future QB. And sell tickets, like the Pacers.

The point is that you can make the right moves and your colleagues would recognize that you did and understand results are malleable, especially with six consecutive years of a new starting QB.

Fans and radio host, however, will do what you're doing.

I don't agree with this. There are exceptions. Nelson wouldn't have been a guard taken at #6 overall unless he was the most hyped OL to come out since I don't even know who.

And then the kid exceeds expectations starting his career with what would've been 4-straight 1st-team All-Pros if he didn't miss games in '21. Of course we're going to pay him and reset the market. I've said before, it doesn't make a difference to a QB if he's getting hit off the edge by Von Miller or up the middle by Aaron Donald. Not to mention the culture shift we had on the OL once he a Smith showed up.

Same goes for Leonard who started his career by racking up better numbers in his first four years than a whole fucking bunch of elite and HOF players amassed in their entire careers. Of course we're going to pay him.

Ahh yes - stating in year 2 that you disagree with a philosophy and continuing to disagree in year 6. If he had proven me wrong it would be easy to show. The funny part is I said he was planning a 4-5 yr rebuild and was told I was crazy. Same kinds of shit you are saying now. Little did I know I was being optimistic.

Fanboys tend to do what you are doing - complaining about any critique. Must be nice to have a job that doesn’t require performance.

Sigh, you keep trying to poke holes in it. It’s not that complicated. At least two years. They didn’t want a new QB every couple years. You’re saying they never should have bc of hindsight. At the time no one knew what the results would be. They were hoping for an Alex Smith n KC at the least, at most a Brady in Tampa or Manning in Denver type situation.

In hindsight maybe they should have bitten the bullet after Luck retired. But hindsight is 20/20 and Irsay didn’t want to go through a bunch of losing seasons.

They have more talent than the pacers did during their stretch of mediocrity.

You are an angry elf.

Overpaying at less critical positions and going cheap at the critical ones is how you end up w/ shit like the highest paid but arguable worst performing OL in the league.

The point I was making is that LT is WAY more critical than LG, and a great LT can cover for a bad LG. Not the vice versa. Back when we had Tarik Glenn at LT we could put whoever at LG and the OL was fine. Looked what happened when we put a shit LT next to the supposed greatest LG in the history of football this season.

It has nothing to do with hindsight. I have never criticized the decision to acquire any of the QBs. I’ve criticized the decision to acquire veteran QBs with only 1-2 years left in their career and then leaving major holes in the roster. I get real fucking tired of hearing everything is hindsight when I’ve pointed this shit out in real time. It’s your guys go to defense for everything.


That is not fucking hindsight. I said from the day they traded for Ryan that they needed to go in on the roster to win and that they shouldn’t depend on a rookie LT.

Alex Smith was with KC for 5 years and they actively tried to win with him. He wasn’t brought in as a place holder. Wentz could have been a Smith like move, but Rivers or Ryan was not. They were more like Brady and Manning situations and neither of those teams wasted one of their few years seeing what they had before they attempted to win. So I’m not understanding the comparison.

Just because you type it doesn't make it true. Your idea of "performance" is totally narrow. It's how a guy like Dan Dakich arrives at his take. Grigson had results and Ballard doesn't. None of his other "performance" matters when you're trying to make a point. Just flash his record without context.

The QB situation is simply the easiest to point out. Nobody stays afloat for 6 years with our circumstances. We did until last year. I won't even ask you if Luck had stayed around if we'd be a year-in-year-out elite team with Ballard's exact same team-building approach. It'd be a dumb question.

Even if we time-traveled, Luck stayed, we had multiple good records and a SB... you just say Luck won it despite Ballard.

Unfortunately this is the Not For Long. You can be great at everything else, but you fuck up that QB pick and you're done. That said, he has probably the best collection of scouts in the league to help him make the decision, and he's a crafty bastard of a negotiator. I'd be shocked if Ballard wasn't at least partially responsible for the recent wave of stories tamping down expectations of crazy Bears fans thinking they were going to get the moon and the stars for the #1 overall pick. Clearly the front office in the league most likely to trade for that pick is the Colts. Ballard even tipped his hand far more than he normally would in his end of year presser, saying he'd do whatever it took to land the right QB if said QB is in this class. Given the team's proximity to the #1 pick and the owner's damn near public mandate that the team draft and develop a QB, "the right guy" is whoever the front office thinks is the best QB in this draft. Given my opinion of this QB class and Ballard and Co.'s acumen at talent evaluation and acquisition, I believe they'll arrive at what I believe to be the correct conclusion that C.J. Stroud is the clear #1 QB in this draft and they'll trade a reasonable, not king's ransom package to Chicago to move up and get him.

The only way I can see Ballard getting this wrong and keeping his job is if Irsay comes in and forces his will as an owner to trade up and pick "that Alabama kid" over Ballard’s objections, and Young ends up busting for whatever reason. That said, Irsay has been involved in the NFL long enough to believe that his comment in that press conference may have been a smokescreen to hide the true interests of the Colts' front office regarding this QB class.

I know what you're saying, I just don't agree with the cliché.

-Darius Leonard was drafted high and eventually paid because he was making edge rusher levels of impact to games from the WLB spot

-Luck is the biggest albatross this team has had and it wasn't caused by LT (we had underrated Castonzo)... he was demolished by years of a pathetic interior OL.

-Grigson finally drafts Kelly on his way out in desperation, Luck misses '17, again because of the interior OL, and Ballard spends the #6 and #37 on guards. Until snake eyes hit this year, they were worth the draft capital and earned their paydays.

-Glenn was a really good LT, but I think I even remember reading Mudd or Dungy or somebody saying that Jake Scott was our best OL. We had a good OL across the board. It's also difficult to judge in a vacuum since Manning was the hardest to sack QB ever.

-Yes, Pryor was a disaster. But Nelson also wasn't himself last season which was part of the rationale behind Reich and Ballard going with Pryor to start. Again, that was about Pryor, not LT. If Pryor and Nelson switched positions, we'd be back to the Luck days desperate to improve the interior OL.

Come on, he's not John Hannah yet.

It’s strange - when we argued about Polian the only thing that mattered to you was wins and losses. And the fact it was done with Manning was largely irrelevant. Polian was an obvious genius because of his wins and losses. Now on Ballard, wins and losses means nothing and his QB situation is critical in analyzing his performance.

Luck retiring was unprecedented. However needing to fix the QB situation situation is hardly unusual. It’s a situation most GMs face. I don’t knock Ballard for not having a franchise QB in place, I knock him for his half assed approach to the position and the roster. Acquiring vet QBs and prioritizing development for the rest of the roster has been stupid. It’s kept the team mediocre - good enough for you guys to say he can’t draft his QB, yet bad enough that the team isn’t winning anything meaningful- 1 playoff win in 6 years, no division titles in one of the leagues worst divisions. I would have been fine with a worse record developing a young QB. I would have been fine shooting their shot with any of those QBs and coming up short. What I’m not fine with is the “safe” middle that you guys seem to love and that has gone exactly as I expected. But it makes sense. Ballard has said it, Dam is saying it, Chrome is saying it - once he drafts a QB then his excuse goes away and he will likely be fired if he misses. Again I disagree with the logic. But it makes sense that he has continuously punted on the decision and made no “big” mistakes. Job security. And hell, if it wasn’t for Irsay getting involved (which I didn’t like) he still wouldn’t be in a position to fix the QB position. As long as he had that crutch and wasn’t Grigson he was untouchable.

I asked Chrome for some kind of measuring stick for Ballard going forward. His answer is simply draft well. I’m curious whose job in the organization is it to put together winning teams? According to him that shouldn’t be the measure for Ballard. He’s largely drafted well for 6 fucking years and yet the Colts were one of the worst teams in the league. If he’s drafted well for 6 years yet the team still sucks don’t you think it is fair to question some of his methods, his team building philosophy? That’s why I say he’s not required to perform.

Send in an application.

I’m guessing you never criticized Grigson or Pagano? How about a player? Fuck off with your childish BS arguments.

No, I had my critic of both of them, after the fact. But I dont pretend to know how to run a draft.

Im not going to pretend to know what goes on in the front office on 54 th street, let alone in Irsays head. He may be serious about trading up to get the kid from Alabama.

I dont pretend to know more than someone who has actually spent most of his entire adult life working inside football. Ballard doesnt get the gift of hindsight. It could have been Irsay who told him to trade for Wentz. Did we have all the info on that trade the day it happened?

I will give you my guess for the future. It wont matter who they draft as a Qb if they dont fix the O line. Draft it, trade for it, I dont care. Cut guys if they cant get something for them, but make some room and bring some one who is a hitter.

From HINDSIGHT, it wont matter who the Qb is. He will look like the kid with the bears. Running for his life trying to make plays. Unless our future Qb is an olympic sprinter, it will be a football version of Groundhogs day all season long

Not really. Other teams have paid guards. Cowboys have pulled it off. The underperformance is the problem. And that is mostly attributable to one player disrupting the entire unit. Pryor just couldn’t get in sync with the oline at tackle or guard. Things started to stabilize once Raimann got better.

The defense was very good, but they missed Leonard’s turnovers which is an elite skill worth paying. Again you ignore the fact that removing those players just creates a performance gap. It isn’t replaced by another player somewhere else.

That's hilarious because I'm the least single-issue minded person you'll come across. I've had guys bitch at me for getting too bogged down in the details, even you I believe. I've never had somebody say my argument is too narrow. You either didn't read my posts or are intentionally omitting details. The first bold text, for example, is such a mischaracterization that it basically qualifies as made up.

And the second bold is a similar example of mischaracterizing where you take things to ridiculous extremes.

The rest of your post is stuff we've scrapped over already. We disagree. I think your premise is wrong. Going back to the original point of bringing up Polian's record in our previous conversation... even if this team drafts a great QB in '23 and begins a run of 10 years of success akin to the 2000's Colts, that won't be good enough for you.

You won't view Ballard in a positive light until he signs a bunch of big names from other teams. And it's not like it's about whether those moves work out or not... you'll say, "At least he took his shot."

You do realize that this is a team game right? Polian and Dungy, Mudd, Moore and Manning are all HOFer's or should be Hall of Famers. Hell I'll even throw in Teerlink and Huey into that mix.

That was unique collection of individuals who worked well together and were very strong minded in their beliefs.

Pagano and Grigson were strong minded pricks who were bull headed and couldn't work together.

Ballard is strong minded and probably had more control than he should have, because of Reich's passive we can win with these guys philosophy. You can see that in the handling of 2 players last season. Reich was hands off on defense and Nick Cross was benched 1 1/2 games into the season. Reich ran the offense and continued to believe in Pryor at two different positions that he failed miserably at for 9 straight games.

Ballard and Reich just did not form a good team. That's nothing against either one of them. It just wasn't working and because we didn't have other coaches the caliber of our 2000's teams and a Peyton Manning, it was never going to work.

All I’ll say is it’s a shame the amount of historical posts on here is limited. I’m curious how many of you specifically told me that I was crazy for saying Ballard’s methods were embarking on a 4-5 year rebuild. I don’t remember a single person saying yes but it’s going to take that or longer. Not a single person, yet now it’s so obvious that this was the only way to go. At the time it was all calling me an impatient hater who didn’t understand his brilliance or his challenge. Here we are in the exact scenario I said and I’m still just a hater who doesn’t understand his brilliance or challenges. Eventually, if he hits at QB it will be turned around and you guys will crow and bask in your 7-8 year rebuild. I suspect he’ll still be the ultra conservative GM he is now and it will be bad luck when the same issues keep beating the team. Time will tell.

Good news, Carson Wentz is available!

They go back to early 2018, which was Ballard's second offseason as you've talked about. If everybody was giving opinions about a 5 year rebuild in the context of 2018, what's so egregious about that?

We had our QB. Were we not way ahead of that 5 year rebuild by the end of 2018? We had just ridden a 10-1 wave, including smacking the division champs at home, into the playoffs where we went back to HOU and smacked the division champs again even worse.

Yeah, in that context, before Luck bailed out, I'd agree with guys that may have thought 4 more years to rebuild was a stretch. Because it was.

This proves my point, or at least the point I was trying to make. If your LT sucks then your OL is in all likelihood going to suck. Ballard overspent at the less critical position and therefore (at least in his mind) he had to go cheap at LT. And it was an epic fucking disaster.

It's not really a cliche, it's a fact that unless you have a left handed QB LT is the most important position on the OL. Not only is he protecting the QBs blind side, but he's typically going up against the other teams best pass rusher.

Guessing the quote about Scott was more about him being the most versatile since he could play multiple OL spots. Glenn and Saturday were definitely the best OL we had in the Peyton era. I just remember back then us plugging in whoever at LG: 7th rounders, UDFAs, guys signed to the practice squad the week before, and it was fine. I'm sure Peyton had a lot to do with that, but Glenn did as well.

Also, I never suggested that Nelson should have been moved to LT. If he was able to do that it probably would have happened well before now.

Maybe cliché-lite. I understand it, and in a vacuum I agree, I just think it's a bit overstated. With all the passing in the league, you're seeing pass rushers all over the line. Donald, Jones, Heyward, Buckner... these dudes can wreck a game from the interior just as much as Bosa, Watt, Garrett can outside.

So when Nelson comes along and makes the impact he did, despite going against conventional thought, he was worth taking at #6 and worth paying to keep. He reset the market so he's close, but still behind the top LT's money.

I wish I could remember where I read that because it was such a long time ago. It stuck with me because I wouldn't have expected to hear that. Not important because I'm not knocking Glenn at all.

I didn't mean to imply you suggested it. Just saying Pryor would have been exploited anywhere on the line. Nelson could have faired better at LT than Pryor, but Pryor would still be beaten inside and Matt Crisco Fingers Ryan would've fumbled again and we'd lose.

For this line I think the LT is a lynchpin, I’ve been saying that a long time since Castonzo first got hurt. But the plan was always to draft a long term replacement at LT. They had a stopgap vet who wasn’t that good for a year then they tried an athlete who couldn’t adjust. But the hope was always a rookie to come in and fill it. You kind of have to with the money going to other positions. Then I expect when it comes time for Raimann’s second contract we will move to rookies at other spots. Yeah the stop gap didn’t work, we all know this. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t sign Nelson, nor does it mean he doesn’t value LT. He just doesn’t value a high priced older bet at LT, if they could have even signed Williams who was pretty much the only one available.

The Oline for Manning could move positions because thats how they were coached by Howard Mudd.

As important as having top tier talent on an offensive line, is having the absolute best offensive line coaches who can maximise each individual player to get the very most out of their skill set. If that then means you need to be going to the offensive co-ordinator and saying "stop calling that stupid play, we don't have the personnel to block that", then that might be as good as anything.

I am sure Strausser is a decent oline coach, but is he as good as Howard Mudd was? Does he command the level of respect from the rest of the coaches?

Line play has degraded since Manning’s time. A lot of articles have been written about it. Bc of the players agreement practice time is a lot shorter, consequently it also means player development is not as good now. Why I think you see more of a premium on oline players in the draft.

Years before teams would take guards and centers lower and then develop them as years went by. That’s not happening as much now. Partially why Grigson’s dated philosophy on building oline didn’t and doesn’t work now.

Give Polian a little credit. He knew what Mudd wanted. Graduates, team captains, had “good feet” , played multiple positions in college, a good team mate. It was also a reason the colts lost lineman to FA. Drop them in a system, they could play

Not just shorter, but softer, as well. For example, some of the drills they prohibited from all practices:

Guys get hurt with those drills, pee wee to NFL.

Sure, but it's just an illustration of the direction the league has gone over the years.

When the number of draft picks decreased and roster limits they had to stop those bs drills. Losing guys in practice to see who’s “the man” was always stupid. My hs lost an important player before first game of state football because the HC thought bull in the ring was a good idea

We never did the circle drill. Everybody loved Oklahoma and board drills, though.

Mike White? Any interest? 6'5, 220. 27 years old.
I haven't been posting or reading much lately. Not excited about any of the top 4 QBs we're likely to pick.

Brett Kollmanns take:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5CGSKGVlhM

Howard Mudd would take starters and move them in practice and insert back ups in their place. You make time in practice so guys step in and play. You make it part of your daily plan. You plan for the worst, you hope for the best