Chris Ballard and free agency
 

Not sure I appreciate or like his approach. I know the importance of building a team through the draft, and I understand that Bill Polian ignored free agency with a certain degree of "success."

But, when you compare Polian's record with another Coach/GM who took a slightly different approach...Bill Belichick, the shortcomings of Polian's approach become starkly obvious.

For the last half dozen years of Polian's tenure in Indy, the Colts didn't have much more success in the draft than Ryan Grigson. His teams were perennial playoff contenders, but that was only because of the presence of a handful of players who Polian inherited from Bill Tobin or managed to draft early in his years in Indy. When his drafts began to turn south, his refusal to consider free agency left the team with little more than Peyton and a core group of 5 or 6 aging veterans. When Peyton went down, the team's lack of success in adding talent through the draft was exposed.

While Belichick was adding talent like Randy Moss, Polian waited for second tier, talent deprived free agents like Mike Seidman and Norman LeJeune to slip through the cracks.

I'm not suggesting that Ballard rip Jim Irsay's checkbook from his fingers and spread money around the league like manna. But, when you have $72 Million in cap space, and a desperate need at positions like OL and WR, it seems to me as if you have to make more of a run at someone like Norwell.

Hardly a year goes by when the Patriots roster doesn't include 4 or 5 high quality players that they acquired from other teams. Hardly a year goes by when the Colts have 4 or 5 nondescript players acquired in a similar manner.

It is the reason, I fear, that the Patriots are perennial Super Bowl contenders and the Colts failure to win a 2nd ring for Peyton.

All true, but after winning the SB, BP was given way too much authority to promote Chrissy.

Giving Chris Polian free reign over so many things he wasn't prepared to do was the true downfall of the Polian era.

Ballard is missing opportunities to add talent. The cap isn’t an issue. It is his mindset.

I keep reading about how this is just year two of the rebuild and that we shouldn't expect to be competitive until 2019. Fuck that. We're supposed to wait till Luck is 30 to contend? That's ridiculous. Ballard should've done more for the OL by now.

We don't know that. Ballard may have made comparable offers to several of the FA's, but as has said on here previously, Indy just isn't that attractive right now.

I trust in Ballard, so much more than I trusted in Grigson.

I don’t mind him not throwing crazy money at a lg. No other dude is really a must have right now.

There was better talent at other positions. Ballard failed

Grigson is irrelevant. Not being grigson isn’t a good enough standard to hold Ballard to

Calm the fuck down. Ballard has plenty of time to get this done, between the draft, UDFA's and roster cut downs.

From the contracts I've seen, I wouldn't have gone there either.

Very true. But we don't know who he was bidding for. Indy isn't a FA destination right now.

If Ballard wants to carry it over for 1 year, to prove what we got, then so be it.

Are you satisfied with building this OL with cutdowns and UDFAs? That's more of the same old bullshit. At best we getting one starter from the draft. If he signs the guy from Baltimore and pursues others I'll shut up but until then I'm going to bitch as much as I want. The shit pile OL was a glaring problem that Ballard was aware of from day one and so far his moves have been Zach Banner in the 4th (cut) and Brian Schwenke in FA (cut).