OL Comparison and Poll

[IndyNorm]

Quentin’s play has already been improving this season. With a LT on a rookie contract it should offset his cap. If the cowboys can have all pros at the positions we can too.

Yeah, I suppose the rookie LT contract does help. But paying a LG very high end LT money isn't a good thing, especially when said LG has vastly underperformed since being paid that much.

Center will likely need to be replaced. Kelly is injured a lot now.

It's not just the injuries. Kelly flat out sucks when he's healthy too. He's probably the worst starting OC in the league this year and possibly the worst OC in the league period (as evidenced when Pinter comes in and outplays him). Of course with our luck he'll probably get back to his former pro bowl level after moving on, but I don't think we can take that risk.

Pryor was a one year gamble that failed horribly. Reed didn’t want to sign here and Glow got a good deal from the giants. RG shouldn’t be that hard to fill. Also it didn’t help Kelly was hurt to start the year.

Some of the nuance I was talking about with Reed and Glow. I know Reed gave Minny a discount, but they're only paying him slightly over the vet minimum. Seems to be we could have outbid them pretty easily. You never know what happened behind the scenes though: my guess is Ballard pissed him off by low balling him.

Glow did get a good deal, but we could have matched without any problem.

As for Pryor - Hopefully Ballard learned a lesson that LT is one of the positions you can't fuck around with and hand the starting job to a low end talent reclamation project. Unless he's gone then hopefully he didn't learn that lesson.

My biggest criticism of Ballard continues to be he doesn’t address needs quick enough or with enough redundancy. This time it got his coach fired. But I don’t think it’s fire-able offense especially since we build through the draft and he is one of the best in the league at drafting.

We are not a FA destination, especially with no QB. And we are not signing huge FAs to huge contracts like a big market team.

Agree with your thoughts on Ballard. Year after year he banks on filling holes through the draft or with bottom end FAs and year after year we watch those holes get exposed all season long. He probably shouldn't be fired, but hopefully this shit storm of a season lights a fire under his ass to fill team needs with more urgency.

As for not being a FA destination I think Ballard's reputation has a lot to do with that. Agents know that Ballard is only going to offer low end and/or 1 year show me contracts, so they don't even bother to consider the Colts.

Aside from that, up until this year I don't think the Colts were looked down upon that much. Remember we had 2 QBs specifically request to be traded here in the offseason. Going fwd I agree with you. Dumpster fire of a team in a small market = no FA interest.