[Luck4Reich]

Originally Posted by Chaka

You are a funny guy, I’ll give you that. Nobody said that Ballard is infallible, and just because I take a position different than yours doesn’t mean I endorse everything he does. However, I do like his management style, and I’ve been pretty consistent from the beginning about that. That doesn’t mean, as RM1369 and others seems to think, that I advocated that we avoid signing any big name free agents this last offseason. I didn’t. Indeed, as FatDT correctly pointed out, Ballard himself didn’t have this mindset, and he actually tried to sign a few last off season.

Nevertheless, while Ballard’s plan might not have been to completely avoid free agency, his philosophy (or at least how I interpret it) makes it unlikely that we will ever – except in perhaps very rare instances – be seriously in the running for the top free agents. I just think there will almost always be another team willing to pay more than Ballard will. The truth is that most top-end free agents are vastly overpaid for what they produce. Ballard’s value-oriented approach will lead us to signing a lot of mid-level free agents like Ebron, Grant, etc. He’s betting on himself to be able to draft star players and to find diamonds in the rough in free agency.

Right now, all of this means there’s a lot of cap space because there’s nobody to spend it on. But if Ballard’s good at the talent evaluation part of his job, it won’t be long before we’ll be spending lots of money keeping our own players from hitting free agency. Either way, the cap money will be spent – it’s only a question of when and on whom.

That's why I like Omaha, he doesn't give a shit like me. He pretty much says what comes to mind and doesn't stress over who doesn't agree.

If we all agreed on everything here it would really suck more sick than Tom Brady and maybe even more than Dam. Stop getting your panties in a bunch because we haven't chose to fall before Ballards feet and claim him as the Amazing GM you do.