Quote:
Originally Posted by rm1369
You list CB as an obvious issue and I agree. However I don’t agree that it’s manned by vets. 67% of the snaps taken so far have been by 2nd year players. The two current snap leaders are 2nd year players. Desir is 3rd as a 5th year player. He meets the “been in the league several years” description you used. He accounts for 29% of the teams CB snaps. Milton accounts for the remaining 4%. He’s a 3 year vet. I’d say CB is a pretty young, inexperienced position and one that could have been upgraded.
You also mentioned WR. It’s another position that could have been upgraded, but it appears as if Ballard is holding it open for a draft pick. Grant on a 1 yr contract was the solution along with a bunch of young guys and the holdover Rogers.
LB is manned by a potential star in Leonard, an old journeyman in Goode, and several unspectacular young players. It was also an upgradeable position.
A review of the standings reveals the team is 2-5. The same record as last year. This is after getting its franchise QB back, improving its coaching, improving the O-line, improving the defense (apparently quite a bit), and improving the roster as a whole. My argument hasn’t been that Ballard hasn’t added talent, it’s that he was assembling a roster that wouldn’t win as much as it should. Too much forced youth, too much reliance on 1st and 2nd year players, too many holes left unfilled. Everything supposedly better, but same record - I’d say the facts back up my argument pretty well.
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Your point about CBs is fair – they are younger than I was thinking. Still no rookies though, and I don’t think it was unreasonable to expect last year’s high second rounder (Wilson) to step up and claim one of the CB positions. I also recall reading that Ballard explored resigning Melvin but was given a crazy price tag (something like 5 years / $50 million), and as I mentioned in another post, the 2018 free agent CB pool hasn’t proven to be very good at this early point. So perhaps this is one area where Ballard was content to take his lumps in the hopes that some of the young players like Wilson and Moore would emerge. This would be consistent with his strategy and does not equate to “sacrificing the season” – as I’ve said many times before, having Luck gives us a chance to win any game and a legitimate chance to win the division. The decision to focus on youth probably means that we won’t play quite as well as we would have with a bunch of free agent vets in the short term, but is a much better long term strategy.
On the WR issue, I'll just say that WR was way down the list of priorities this last offseason. While Grant's contract was for one year, I've always viewed it as sort of a "show me" contract where he could earn a second Colts contract if he played well, so I personally don't think Ballard was holding a place for a rookie. And let's not forget that Ballard did draft a couple of WRs.
Not sure why you bring up LBs. Leonard is a star and Walker has been great as well. If you got your wish and we addressed this issue in free agency, are you concerned at all that we perhaps wouldn't have ever drafted Leonard?
Lastly, your point about the team’s record is completely off base. The numbers absolutely do NOT back up your point – Racehorse’s post illustrated this perfectly. We were outscored 222 to 119 in the first seven games last year! We were thoroughly smoked by the better teams we played, and were only able to eke out victories against two of the worst teams in the league. The gap between our team and the better teams in the league has shrunken dramatically since last year, as evidenced by our performance in the games this year – we nearly beat the SB champs in their own stadium! By virtually any measurable statistic, we have improved by leaps and bounds over last year. And by the way, the improvement is on both offense and defense, so it’s certainly not all attributable to Luck. If your eyes don’t tell you this, and all you can see is our 2-5 record, then you need better glasses.
As to this last point, I should also mention that if you acknowledge that the talent level on the team has greatly increased, but your criticism is that the record doesn’t reflect this, then perhaps your beef is with Reich rather than Ballard. That would be another discussion, and another one where I would disagree with you, but it has no place in a discussion about Ballard’s performance.