Colts fire OC Marcus Brady

[Oldcolt]

Chaos do you think Ballard has done a good job of building the team? If so why? The results are in on how he spends money and he spends it wildly on his guys who then shit the bed. Maybe they aren’t just doing this for money, maybe it is the coaching. It doesn’t really matter in the end. What matters is we have the highest paid offensive line in the league which just happens to be the worst offensive line in the league. The guy who set this up is Ballard or does no body have responsibility and it is just bad luck that you think we should just keep rolling with. I’m not sure that Ballard needs to be fired in all honesty. He is an incredible talent evaluator but there is obviously more to putting a team together than that. I am just critical of how this team has been put together. I’m not sure what Irsay should do. I think the whole organization has fucked up.

[Dam8610]

Ryan Kelly's poor performance is IMO, based on 2 things:

1) Long COVID

2) His daughter's death

The poor performance started at the end of last season, after he was on the COVID list and after his daughter died. These two events also happened nearly simultaneously, so it's likely that some combination of these factors is at least strongly contributing to his poor play. There's a chance Braden Smith and Quenton Nelson could also be dealing with Long COVID. It's a better explanation than they're all greedy, especially Nelson, he takes too much pride in his work for greed to be the explanation with him.

[rm1369]

Originally Posted by Chaka

I'm really not trying to be a Ballard apologist here, but I need to disagree. The Colts continue to have financial flexibility despite these deals. They have not engaged in type of financial engineering which other teams have, which ends up painting those teams into a corner and setting them back for years. Even where Colts pay these guys tons of money, they usually have an out after a couple years in the event things don't work out.

Managing the cap for future years has been, and will continue to be, the primary success of the Ballard era. It will not result in anything meaningful though. Ballard apologists will point to the salary cap as the barrier to effectively fill holes on the roster, while praising Ballard for his super conservative cap use. Teams don’t consistently win today while only planning for tomorrow. The single biggest issue with the team.

[ChoppedWood]

Originally Posted by Dam8610

Ryan Kelly's poor performance is IMO, based on 2 things:

1) Long COVID

2) His daughter's death

The poor performance started at the end of last season, after he was on the COVID list and after his daughter died. These two events also happened nearly simultaneously, so it's likely that some combination of these factors is at least strongly contributing to his poor play. There's a chance Braden Smith and Quenton Nelson could also be dealing with Long COVID. It's a better explanation than they're all greedy, especially Nelson, he takes too much pride in his work for greed to be the explanation with him.

Nelson could also have a chronic back problem, and if so, this could be a permanent downslope to a tragically unrealized potential 1st ballot HOF career.

[IndyNorm]

I'm really not trying to be a Ballard apologist here, but I need to disagree. The Colts continue to have financial flexibility despite these deals. They have not engaged in type of financial engineering which other teams have, which ends up painting those teams into a corner and setting them back for years. Even where Colts pay these guys tons of money, they usually have an out after a couple years in the event things don't work out.

We have $56M in guaranteed money tied up between Nelson, Smith, and Kelly in their current contracts. Do you not think that's going to hamstring the Colts ability to fill needs, especially with the way Ballard goes about things? Also, I need to add that with the way those 3 are playing that's $56M too much to be spending on them.

Certainly there's room for criticism here, though both Pryor and Pinter played much better last year. Teams have to make tough decisions all the time and can't pay everyone, so they took a calculated gamble with Pryor and Pinter which hasn't worked out so far. But this is on Ballard to a large degree, no doubt.

You're downplaying how much of a fuck up this is. Ballard handed Pryor the starting spot at the 2nd most important position in football after a whopping 1 ok start there. It was obvious from snap one of game one of this year that he wasn't capable to holding down the LT for an entire season. How the fuck did Ballard and/or his staff not realize this? At the very least bring Fisher back. Yeah he had his struggles, but he's not the dumpster fire of worthless shit that Pryor is.

And the Pinter move was almost as bad. Pinter clearly isn't strong enough to play OG in the NFL. How the fuck did Ballard and his staff not know this? On top of that we had 2 OGs who went to other teams (Glow and Reed) for reasonable and dirt cheap deals. We should have had both of them back, no problem. Of course who wants actually good O Linemen when you can have the extra $12.5M in future cap flexiblity.

AC retired 1.5 years ago (the 2021 offseason), with a year remaining on his contract. The Colts brought in a 30-year old former Pro Bowl LT (Eric Fisher) coming off an injury to replace him, and drafted Paye in the 1st round to address a different area of weakness. Fisher didn't work out as well as hoped. Ballard drafted Raimann this off season. He could have done more I suppose, but its not as though he ignored the issue and didn't devote significant resources to it.

While AC did hold off retiring until after the '20 season, he seriously considered it in '19 which should have motivated Ballard to begin working on his replacement that offseason. The fact that Pryor, who might be the worst starting LT in the history of the NFL, was our starting LT 3 offeasons later shows how unbelievably bad Ballard fucked that up.

[IndyNorm]

Originally Posted by rm1369

Managing the cap for future years has been, and will continue to be, the primary success of the Ballard era. It will not result in anything meaningful though. Ballard apologists will point to the salary cap as the barrier to effectively fill holes on the roster, while praising Ballard for his super conservative cap use. Teams don’t consistently win today while only planning for tomorrow. The single biggest issue with the team.

Exactly. In Ballard's head having future cap flexibility is more important than actually winning games. Just like a draft pick's RAS score is more important than if they can actually fit onto your team and produce.

[HoosierinFL]

Originally Posted by rm1369

But the same coaches did it last year? Somehow Reich was a good enough to coach Nelson to multiple Pro Bowls? Not buying it

The line was not very good last year either. Smith wasn’t good at all, the LT okay was bad, Nelson and kelly were slightly above average, and glow was the only one who looked decent.
Wentz was hit a lot last year but was much more mobile than Ryan.

[Chaka]

Originally Posted by rm1369

Managing the cap for future years has been, and will continue to be, the primary success of the Ballard era. It will not result in anything meaningful though. Ballard apologists will point to the salary cap as the barrier to effectively fill holes on the roster, while praising Ballard for his super conservative cap use. Teams don’t consistently win today while only planning for tomorrow. The single biggest issue with the team.

Why won't it result in anything significant? Just because the Colts have hit some rough territory doesn't mean that the underlying strategy is wrong. What's wrong with a plan to use your funds to invest in the guys you know best - your own players - and to be skeptical of guys coming from other teams whose own teams won't pay them what you think Ballard should pay them? If you can identify talent - and Ballard can do that - it seems like a perfectly logical and solid plan to me.

It's nice to say in the abstract that the Colts should spend more money in free agency, but on who?

You can say that he's overpaid his own players, and that may be true in some cases, but nothing he's done has hampered the Colts financially in any meaningful way. The bottom line is the lack of a QB is the real issue. Criticize the Colts all you want for going the veteran route instead of trying to draft a guy, but my guess is that the batting average is far better on veteran QBs than mid-1st round QBs or later. I don't buy all the claims that the Colts could have traded up higher into the first round to get someone like Herbert - why would the Chargers do that? And further, the Colts were ready to compete and a veteran QB makes more sense in that context than an rookie.

[Chaka]

Originally Posted by IndyNorm

We have $56M in guaranteed money tied up between Nelson, Smith, and Kelly in their current contracts. Do you not think that's going to hamstring the Colts ability to fill needs, especially with the way Ballard goes about things? Also, I need to add that with the way those 3 are playing that's $56M too much to be spending on them.

How so? If they wanted to do so, the Colts could sign virtually any available player at this point.

Originally Posted by IndyNorm

You're downplaying how much of a fuck up this is. Ballard handed Pryor the starting spot at the 2nd most important position in football after a whopping 1 ok start there. It was obvious from snap one of game one of this year that he wasn't capable to holding down the LT for an entire season. How the fuck did Ballard and/or his staff not realize this? At the very least bring Fisher back. Yeah he had his struggles, but he's not the dumpster fire of worthless shit that Pryor is.

And the Pinter move was almost as bad. Pinter clearly isn't strong enough to play OG in the NFL. How the fuck did Ballard and his staff not know this? On top of that we had 2 OGs who went to other teams (Glow and Reed) for reasonable and dirt cheap deals. We should have had both of them back, no problem. Of course who wants actually good O Linemen when you can have the extra $12.5M in future cap flexiblity.

I don't disagree that the LT and RG positions have been a mess, and that Ballard has a large amount of responsibility for this. All I was saying is that you need to judge the decision based upon info available at the time, not in retrospect now that it hasn't worked out. Is Ballard making rational and logical decisions, and is he taking worthwhile gambles? I agree it's questionable on the positions you pointed out, but its not nearly as obvious as every is saying. A good part of this is on Ballard, no doubt.

Originally Posted by IndyNorm

While AC did hold off retiring until after the '20 season, he seriously considered it in '19 which should have motivated Ballard to begin working on his replacement that offseason. The fact that Pryor, who might be the worst starting LT in the history of the NFL, was our starting LT 3 offeasons later shows how unbelievably bad Ballard fucked that up.

How do you know what AC was discussing with the Colts? I know it was reported in the media that AC might retire in 2019, but he signed a two-year contract shortly thereafter. And who should the Colts have signed/drafted in 2019 or 2020 that would have satisfied you?

[AlwaysSunnyinIndy]

From Reich's press conference:

https://twitter.com/zkeefer/status/1587841156603383811

First question to Colts HC Frank Reich today is if Marcus Brady was scapegoated:

"I understand that — that should fall on me," Reich says. "Marcus isn’t being scapegoated. I have to own that. We're all responsible."

https://twitter.com/zkeefer/status/1587840418774908929

Colts coach Frank Reich on firing OC Marcus Brady yesterday: "Both things can be true — Marcus can be a really good coach and a really good teammate, and sometimes it’s right for a change and it just makes sense for the team."

https://twitter.com/NateAtkins_/stat...40327930478592

Frank Reich reiterates that firing Marcus Brady was a difficult decision. . . . . Reich was fired once as the OC of the Chargers and hopes Brady can bounce back somewhere else.

https://twitter.com/JoelAErickson/st...40428962992128

Reich says he'll handle the OC duties. "Ultimately, the offense falls on me."