You need to chill out, you're going to blow a blood vessel.

4th round - Blake Freeland

Freeland earned a 90.9 Pro Football Focus overall grade (90.7 pass block grade, 87.3 run block grade) in 2022. 90.7 pass block grade was the seventh-highest in the nation among starting offensive linemen. Similar profile to Raimann and our new swing tackle.

https://www.colts.com/news/2023-nfl-...and-tackle-byu

They also drafted a highly athletic OT in the 7th but he is more a development guy, he also got hurt and is out for the season.

Thanks for the concern, but my blood vessels will be fine, lol.

Yes, I know about Freeland. That was one step towards fixing the problem, but Ballard really needed to make 2 and maybe 3 more. We had 8 draft picks after Freeland, and a lot of IOL were taken from pick 110 on. Pretty sure quite of few of them are better than Fries, and I guarantee a lot of them are better than any of our backups. Call me crazy, but seems like it would have been very prudent to have selected at least 1 if not 2 of them.

As for Witt (7th rounder). Like you said, he's a long term project. Even if he had stayed healthy he probably would have been headed to the PS. At best given a redshirt year and been a healthy scratch all year long.

That’s subjective. Considering Eliyor was a highly ranked guard and he went undrafted, not sure about the overall quality. I would have taken Vorhees late and stashed him till he healed. I’m sure someone will turn out ok, but I like done of those later round picks like Ade Ade and Jaylon Jones.

It wasn't just the sacks. We were bottom 1/3 of the league in both rushing ypc and ypg (22nd and 23rd respectively). So yes, I'm going to take objective stats like those as well as how many sacks we gave up with more weight than subjective PFF grades.

That's fair. Admittingly I've been overdoing it. Would just hate to see AR's development be impaired b/c we have a shitty OL again this year. That's all.

Take away a guy like Taylor, and this is what you get. Taylor, when healthy, would make those numbers improve dramatically.

It's not a given, but could be. Even if so, you have to ask, by what margin would/could these mid-round guys be better than Fries? It's zero-sum, so they would have had to pass on one of the guys they actually took. They clearly felt it wasn't enough of an improvement over our guys to warrant passing on the guys they took.

Who was such an egregious pick after Freeland that we shouldn't have picked them and instead should have drafted one of the IOL?

I always caveat that PFF grades are not Gospel. The point, though, is that the eyeball test and tape review can tell a much different story than the numbers.

Since the Eagles are regarded as top-dogs, I reference them a lot... they're 22nd in sacks and 13th in YPC. Contrary to those numbers, they're clearly not middle-of-the-pack.

And not just Taylor, but yes. There was so much goofy shit going on last year (more than I've ever seen by a mile) that I don't know how you can look at the stats and learn much.

I'm big on numbers, they just require context.

i don't see any scenario where we win the division

Richardson has a RGIII like rookie season, Trevor Lawrence's luck runs out as DCs expose him, the Titans aging core falls flat on its face, and the Texans can't pit it together because of their youth movement. There's your division winning scenario.

No real egregious pick as in a vacuum they for the most part seem to be good picks. Even Rush who didn't make the team. Just the overall lack of commitment on the offensive side of the ball other than QB this offseason. Ballard just picked hopefully our future franchise QB, who is going to need a lot of development. You would think he would want to surround him with as much talent within reason to help w/ that development. But he didn't do that. We're super thin at WR, have questions on our starting OL, and other than Freeland have no real depth along the OL. None of that is good for a rookie QB.

Edit: Forgot to mention that RATS had an article discussing this today that Jaff posted.

One pick that does stick out is Adebawore as there was a decent run of IOL taken after we picked him. In a vacuum he seems like a good pick, but he's not going to help your rookie QB develop. I would have liked to have seen us pick Zavala or an OG there. Even if they couldn't have beaten out Fries they in all likelihood would be better depth than what we have, which we'll desperately need when someone gets hurt.



Yeah, sometimes stats can be misleading. Typically though they're at least directionally correct. I also think PFF grades can be misleading. For example Chromeburn posted that our OL was ranked 25th over the first half of the season, which doesn't pass the stats or the eye test. There were several games (@ Jax, vs. KC, @ Den, @ NE come to mind) where our OL was dominated so bad that it looked like they weren't even trying to block our opponents DL.

I suppose that's fair. Last year was such a giant what the fuck is going on cluster fuck across the board that nothing really made sense.

Lions beat Chiefs in Arrowhead............. anything is possible !! Colts/Lions Superbowl !!!!!