2022 NFL Free Agency

[ChaosTheory]

Originally Posted by IndyNorm

We can't afford to sign Armstead and take on Ryan's contract. We only have ~$40M in cap space left and need to make sure there's enough left 5 years from now to re-sign Paye and Dayo in case they become good players along with anyone we draft this year that pans out.

Damn, dude. Why strawman? I thought for a minute we were having an honest discussion and disagreeing. Knock yourself out if you want to go this route.

[IndyNorm]

Originally Posted by ChaosTheory

Damn, dude. Why strawman? I thought for a minute we were having an honest discussion and disagreeing. Knock yourself out if you want to go this route.

Sorry. I was trying to point out how ridiculous it is to include players who might need to be re-signed in 3 and 4 years as a factor in why we can't spend current cap dollars, and my smartassness kicked in a bit much.

All joking aside here are my responses to your post:

A.) Ballard never goes out and gets players

Relatively speaking he doesn't. Here is the list of FAs of note that Ballard has brought in since 2018 (excluding the bargain basement depth signings that is standard for every team and minimal cap impact):

Denico Autry (2018) - 3 yrs/$18M
Eric Ebron (2018) - 2 yrs/$13M
Ryan Grant (2018) - 1 yr/$5M
Devin Funchess (2019) - 1 yr/$10M
Justin Houston (2019) - 2 yrs/$23M
Philip Rivers (2020) - 1 yr/$25M
Xavier Rhodes (2020) - 1 yr/$3M
Trey Burton (2020) - 1 yr/$.9M
Eric Fisher (2020) - 1 yr/$8.4M
Brandon Facyson - 1 yr/$3.8M

So basically in 5 years running now Ballard has brought in 2 FAs that weren't lower cost value signings or 1 year band aids (and technically Rivers was a 1 year band aid)

B.) All of the holes on this team need to be filled by free agents right now

While this is true, Ballard has shown a distinct trend to either ignore the teams needs or rely on the upcoming draft and/or band aid signings to fill those needs.

Take for instance pass rush. It was clear that we needed an upgrade at pass rush coming out of '20 even before the guys who were 2nd and 3rd on the team in sacks were allowed to walk (Houston and Autry). Now letting them walk in and of itself wasn't horrible (although turns out letting Autry go was a mistake), but the need to add pass rush became even more of a priority after that. So what does Ballard do to address it? He adds a bargain basement depth guy (Rochell) and drafts 2 projects. Turns out, at least in the short term, that didn't work out at all as our pass rush was pretty much non-existent throughout '21.

C.) Some of these guys who signed with other teams would've been signed by the Colts if you were GM

This is a good point. I get that in our current situation we would have to way overspend to bring in a guy like Robinson over the LAR. But that always hasn't been the case, and Ballard could still bring in guys to fill team needs.

Here's a great example of someone Ballard should have brought in last year: Trey Hendrickson. We were in dire need of pass rush, had cap space going into FA, and Hendrickson was coming off a year where he had 13.5 sacks, 12 TFL, and 25 QB hits. The Bungles signed him for 4 yrs/$60M with $16M guaranteed. At the time the Colts were a more attractive landing spot since we had come off an 11 win season and it looked like we had adequately backfilled Rivers at QB. The Bungles on the other hand were coming off back to back terrible seasons (2 and 4 wins) and while they had Joe Burrow at QB he was a big question mark at least for '21 as his knee had been pretty much blown up in Nov. '20. One would think if we had offered a similar deal Hendrickson would have signed here.

Hendrickson rewarded the Bungles with 14 sacks/12 TFL/27 QB hits in the regular season and had 3.5 sacks in the playoffs. If we had added that type of production to our shit show pass rush then we're certainly in the playoffs and quite possibly win the division.

That's the type of signing Ballard needs to be making.

One other thing I'd like to add. Our complete lack of activity in FA is pointing to that the FO has decided that '22 could very well be a throw away year. It doesn't necessarily mean that yet, but as each day ticks by it's looking more and more likely. This is one reason why some of us are so pissed and shouldn't be happening in a GM's 6th year.