Hard to imagine anyone being worse than Ryan...like I said that is hindsight, at the time I was hoping for Derek Carr, not sure if the Colts even pursued him. All I know is anyone with any skills of evaluating talent could see Ryan was finished but yet we handed over millions to him and set our team back in the process. I can basically name anyone that was available or could have been traded for and say with confidence they would have been better than Ryan!

Well, you said it... that's hindsight. Literally (figuratively) everyone was galvanized into picking the Colts to win the division + do damage in the playoffs after the Ryan signing. The other options were uninspiring.

His arm wasn't very strong, but I think most realized that. He could still make enough throws to be affective. What nobody saw coming was the catastrophic ball security. Four fumbles in Week 1 and it never stopped.

Couple that with an OL that we also didn't expect would have to panic shuffle like it did and not only is Ryan getting pressured too much... he's turning it into worst case scenarios with turnovers.

That's because they hid Ryan from us in the preseason, had he played any meaningful minutes all of us would have known before the season started that we were screwed. Look back at last season's game threads, by the 3rd or 4th game everyone knew we weren't going to do shit with this washed up hack! How Ballard and Frank missed it before signing him is what should be concerning you!

Ryan probably looked good at first. The consecutive games he played showed he no longer could recover in a week. When he sat for two weeks, his arm looked better in the first game back. Then came the next game, where it seemed like soreness was an issue.

And that is why I think we did not see much of him in the preseason, again, not sure how you throw millions at a guy with a tired arm, or maybe even an injured arm? But it is water under the bridge, Ballard obviously was able to avoid any blame in either the Wentz or the Ryan hires, that alone shows incredible skill at managing people! I acknowledge that the job involves much more than just drafting and trading for players, so I believe he and Steichen and whatever other voices they listen to are going to get it right this time.

I don't want to bash Ballard, I want to move on to this season, I realize there are a number of people on this forum that still believe Ballard is a genius, I hope they are right, I am just not one of them!:D

Ryan was terrible no doubt, and I admit I bought into the Ryan hype before the season started.

That said, the Ryan deal was all predicated on the idea he'd have a good OL to work with. The OL becoming an absolute nightmare was something that most people didn't foresee. I imagine many could forsee that LT might be an issue, but not many people thought the entire OL being anywhere from average to dogshit would happen.

A younger Ryan probably could have endured the OL being as bad as it was, but the older version became a fumble machine.

Something an Atlanta fan said to me that I remember. He said that it took a year for Ryan to absorb a new system when they switched offensive coordinators. That he wasn’t very good that season and seemed slow, then went back to his normal self the next season. Obviously it didn’t help with the oline play and then firing the OC and HC.


Anyway back to the topic at hand.

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How ironic Minshew working out with Richardson

Wow....that is too much of a coincidence, surely Richardson is our pick?

Makes sense… he wanted to be a firefighter…

Well good cuz we need a fuckin hero