The way they’re playing now, and if they continue to play that way, have completely absolved Ballard in my opinion. He really has built a complete team, at least on offense.
The only thing he hasn’t had, outside of 1 year of Luck and 1 year of Rivers, is a competent quarterback. Thats the only thing that’s held us back. I think even Reich would have been successful with a good quarterback.
That really makes it a bitter pill to swallow that Luck retired when he did. He endured guys like Samson Satele and Winston Justice thanks to that moron Grigson but Ballard was well on the way to fixing that. Look at the line we have now.
I don’t blame Luck for retiring, the timing just really sucked. I firmly believe we’d have been perrenial contenders had he stuck around.
As for finding a quarterback, I find it hard to really fault Ballard for that. It’s REALLY REALLY hard to find a franchise quarterback. Teams spend DECADES looking for one.
|