Are we wasting away Lucks career?

[COLTS449]

Thoughts???? I've made it very clear I think we are. I've said what I think. Just want some input.

[Superman]

Oh, look! It's this thread again...

[COLTS449]

Just now, Superman said:

Oh, look! It's this thread again...

 

Never made this thread. Not one time. I've stated it several times. I just want to see how many posters agree with me you know.

[NorthernBlue]

2 minutes ago, Superman said:

Oh, look! It's this thread again...

Round and Round we go............

[Superman]

1 minute ago, COLTS449 said:

 

Never made this thread. Not one time. I've stated it several times. I just want to see how many posters agree with me you know.

 

Do you not realize how many times we've discussed this same topic on this board over the last three years?

 

If people want to talk about it, that's fine. 

[COLTS449]

1 minute ago, NorthernBlue said:

Round and Round we go............

 

Wait for it. Bet there will be several posters agree with me here.

[Superman]

6 minutes ago, COLTS449 said:

 

Wait for it. Bet there will be several posters agree with me here.

 

I'm sure you're right. 

[Jules]

It's time to fire Ron Meeks.

[Bluefire4]

14 minutes ago, COLTS449 said:

Thoughts???? I've made it very clear I think we are. I've said what I think. Just want some input.

I will say with the questionable moves made so far in his career, the team sure isn't helping him.

 

But I just hate this idea that just because Luck was drafted number 1 and highly touted that he is destined to win us 30 super bowls. That is not how it works.

 

Matt Ryan was the number one overall pick and just went to the super bowl in year 8 or 9. Cam did go in year 5 but had little success up to that point. Neither have won a super bowl. Having a AFC Championship birth with the roster we have is more than I could have asked for.

 

But you seem to have this Madden fantasy that if we offer free agents 12 million instead of 11 million that they will automatically come here and ignore all other offers and reasons to join other teams. It is not a lack of aggressiveness that we don't sign top free agents, its that they don't want to come here. We tried to get Perry and Alshon and others and they chose other teams. 

 

You can't look at hindsight and say we should have hit every draft pick out of the park and got every top notch free agent because the NFL does not work that way. 

 

[NorthernBlue]

18 minutes ago, COLTS449 said:

 

Wait for it. Bet there will be several posters agree with me here.

That's not even the issue here.

[COLTS449]

7 minutes ago, Bluefire4 said:

I will say with the questionable moves made so far in his career, the team sure isn't helping him.

 

But I just hate this idea that just because Luck was drafted number 1 and highly touted that he is destined to win us 30 super bowls. That is not how it works.

 

Matt Ryan was the number one overall pick and just went to the super bowl in year 8 or 9. Cam did go in year 5 but had little success up to that point. Neither have won a super bowl. Having a AFC Championship birth with the roster we have is more than I could have asked for.

 

But you seem to have this Madden fantasy that if we offer free agents 12 million instead of 11 million that they will automatically come here and ignore all other offers and reasons to join other teams. It is not a lack of aggressiveness that we don't sign top free agents, its that they don't want to come here. We tried to get Perry and Alshon and others and they chose other teams. 

 

You can't look at hindsight and say we should have hit every draft pick out of the park and got every top notch free agent because the NFL does not work that way. 

 

 

Andrew Luck is a once in a generation talent. Not comparable to Matt Ryan. He is a top 5 QB and we're simply stupid for not putting playmakers all around him.

 

Obviously you aren't going to land every good FA, but if we had tried we would have landed a few by now. Probably Pernell McPhee, Ritchie Incognito, Casey Hayward among others. Its like if you go after 10 good players hard you're probably going to be able to get at least 2 of them. And I doubt we went too hard after Alshon. If we had of, we would have him most likely, and Perry was re-signed quickly.

 

And saying drafting Werner instead of Rhodes, or Dorsett instead of Kendricks isn't hindsight. Its common sense. Was then, is now. Trading a 1st for a ___ like Richardson was stupid. Obvious then, obvious now.

[buccolts]

I know I am.

I've done nothing to get him a raise, or boost his confidence

I cheer my head off (figuratively), but I don't feel I'm making much of a difference.

[Jules]

Okay to be fair no we are not wasting him, not at the moment anyway. We just have to undo the damage Grigson did and it's already starting by dumping Stone Hands and Patrick Robinson. We might be able to win the division again this year since I don't know who or what is going to start at QB for the Texans, Titans are on the rise but have to beat us first and the Jags are like mystery meat every year who btw do live to play us......sad but true. 

 

In the AFC there isn't much going on outside the Pats who everyone has penciled as a repeat champion but easier said then done in professional sports. Especially when your QB is almost 40.

 

So just be patient and hope we improve since we honestly can't get any worse on defense IMO.

[Jules]

1 minute ago, buccolts said:

I know I am.

I've done nothing to get him a raise, or boost his confidence

I cheer my head off (figuratively), but I don't feel I'm making much of a difference.

 

We all could do a better job to help out Luck as fans.

[buccolts]

2 minutes ago, Jules said:

 

We all could do a better job to help out Luck as fans.

I feel this may be true, but what can we do?

I'm but a man......

[Synthetic]

20 minutes ago, Jules said:

Okay to be fair no we are not wasting him, not at the moment anyway. We just have to undo the damage Grigson did and it's already starting by dumping Stone Hands and Patrick Robinson. We might be able to win the division again this year since I don't know who or what is going to start at QB for the Texans, Titans are on the rise but have to beat us first and the Jags are like mystery meat every year who btw do live to play us......sad but true. 

 

In the AFC there isn't much going on outside the Pats who everyone has penciled as a repeat champion but easier said then done in professional sports. Especially when your QB is almost 40.

 

So just be patient and hope we improve since we honestly can't get any worse on defense IMO.

 

 

Pair him with a better coach, give him a nice running back and he would be a lot better than he has been. 

 

To Luck's defense, he hasn't gotten much help out of the team or management. An RB would definitely help him out, and not asking him to throw it 50 times per game. 

 

I like the moves the Colts have made so far with Ballard in charge, and I am hoping the fans on here don't grow impatient and want overnight success. It's going to take longer than one night to undo the damage Grigson caused. 

[Synthetic]

30 minutes ago, COLTS449 said:

 

Andrew Luck is a once in a generation talent. Not comparable to Matt Ryan. He is a top 5 QB and we're simply stupid for not putting playmakers all around him.

 

 

Matt Ryan is a generic talented quarterback, not much different from Stafford or Palmer. The average 'good' QB. He will be forgotten this up coming year when Atlanta goes back to being an average team. He is never going to sell close to the number of jerseys that Luck has sold, or become a household name like that. 

 

Fun fact - Falcons fans still wear Michael Vick jerseys at home games. It wasn't until this past year, did we not hear their fans complaining about the tons of #7 jerseys popping up at home games. 

[COLTS449]

Just now, Synthetic said:

 

 

Matt Ryan is a generic talented quarterback. He will be forgotten this up coming year when Atlanta goes back to being an average team. He is never going to sell close to the number of jerseys that Luck has sold, or become a household name like that. 

 

Fun fact - Falcons fans still wear Michael Vick jerseys at home games. It wasn't until this past year, did we not hear their fans complaining about the tons of #7 jerseys popping up at home games. 

 

Well I mean Ryan was the 2nd best QB in football this year, and was a pure stud, but all in all....Luck is the better of the 2. With that said though, Matt Ryan is still IMO a top tier franchise QB. And I think Atlanta is here to stay as long as he's there.

[Synthetic]

5 minutes ago, COLTS449 said:

 

Well I mean Ryan was the 2nd best QB in football this year, and was a pure stud, but all in all....Luck is the better of the 2. With that said though, Matt Ryan is still IMO a top tier franchise QB. And I think Atlanta is here to stay as long as he's there.

 

Atlanta isn't a consistent team. They post a winning record every few years when they have a weak schedule. See 2010 and 2012, where they went 13-3 both those years playing cupcakes, and then got throttled in the playoffs. This year, everything fell in their favor. They got a weak Seattle team in the first round, and then avoided going on the road into Dallas to face a great offense, and instead got a crappy Packers team who really had no business being there, as it showed with the final score. Even in the SB, everything went their way and they did everything to screw it all up. 

 

I doubt they'll get breaks like that again next year. Carolina went 15-1 and then 6-10 the next year, and this Falcons team don't have near the defensive depth that Carolina had.

[Jules]

21 minutes ago, Synthetic said:

 

 

Matt Ryan is a generic talented quarterback, not much different from Stafford or Palmer. The average 'good' QB. He will be forgotten this up coming year when Atlanta goes back to being an average team. He is never going to sell close to the number of jerseys that Luck has sold, or become a household name like that. 

 

Fun fact - Falcons fans still wear Michael Vick jerseys at home games. It wasn't until this past year, did we not hear their fans complaining about the tons of #7 jerseys popping up at home games. 

 

Matt Ryan is painfully boring and that team is stupid and don't know how to run the ball when up by 100 points.

 

They deserve to fail.

[COLTS449]

1 minute ago, Jules said:

 

Matt Ryan is painfully boring and that team is stupid and don't know how to run the ball when up by 100 points.

 

They deserve to fail.

 

Yeah. LOL. I agree they were pretty stupid.

[Patagonia Chris]

This thread is about 2 years too late.

[COLTS449]

2 minutes ago, Grigson's Gaffes said:

This thread is about 2 years too late.

 

Tell em your opinions. We need to become the majority bro. There's too many followers who think every move we make is the best.

[Robert Johnson]

1 hour ago, Jules said:

It's time to fire Ron Meeks.

And Jim Caldwell

[Bluefire4]

1 hour ago, COLTS449 said:

 

Andrew Luck is a once in a generation talent. Not comparable to Matt Ryan. He is a top 5 QB and we're simply stupid for not putting playmakers all around him.

 

Obviously you aren't going to land every good FA, but if we had tried we would have landed a few by now. Probably Pernell McPhee, Ritchie Incognito, Casey Hayward among others. Its like if you go after 10 good players hard you're probably going to be able to get at least 2 of them. And I doubt we went too hard after Alshon. If we had of, we would have him most likely, and Perry was re-signed quickly.

 

And saying drafting Werner instead of Rhodes, or Dorsett instead of Kendricks isn't hindsight. Its common sense. Was then, is now. Trading a 1st for a ___ like Richardson was stupid. Obvious then, obvious now.

Still not as easy as you make it sound and you have no idea if we did go after those free agents. 

 

Also there were questions about each free agent you mentioned. People thought McPhee was a one-hit wonder, Hayward was only a slot corner, and very few wanted to mess with Incognito after that bullying scandal. 

 

The only thing I see as consensus was the Rhodes over Werner thing. That was definitely dumb. People were still saying Kendricks was a second rounder and were mocking other players to us who haven't made an impact yet like Dorsett hasn't.

 

There are many great quarterbacks who hadn't been to an AFC Championship game in 3 years and took more than 5 years to win a super bowl. Plenty of them. In fact besides Joe Flacco only Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and Ben Roethlisberger have been to the super bowl in the AFC in the past 12 years. It takes time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[csmopar]

1 hour ago, Superman said:

Oh, look! It's this thread again...

I vote we go ahead and lock this now

[Patagonia Chris]

22 minutes ago, COLTS449 said:

 

Tell em your opinions. We need to become the majority bro. There's too many followers who think every move we make is the best.

 

I actually like most of the moves that Ballard has made so far, but that has a lot to do with Grigson not being able to build a team with any depth whatsoever. I've been in enough arguments with people on here about how wrong they are on player evaluation that there is no point anymore. I literally had people telling me I was a terrible person because I said I would rather have Incognito than Jonathon Martin on my team. I was heavily against Herremans, Cole, Andre Johnson but it doesn't matter now. You have countless people here who act like they're the second coming of Lombardi, Polian or Mel Kiper that voicing opinions on players isn't really attractive to me anymore.

[COLTS449]

12 minutes ago, Grigson's Gaffes said:

 

I actually like most of the moves that Ballard has made so far, but that has a lot to do with Grigson not being able to build a team with any depth whatsoever. I've been in enough arguments with people on here about how wrong they are on player evaluation that there is no point anymore. I literally had people telling me I was a terrible person because I said I would rather have Incognito than Jonathon Martin on my team. I was heavily against Herremans, Cole, Andre Johnson but it doesn't matter now. You have countless people here who act like they're the second coming of Lombardi, Polian or Mel Kiper that voicing opinions on players isn't really attractive to me anymore.

 

At the risk of taking this off subject....... ...Yeah. That's dumb. Guys like Incognito is exactly what we need. Hardcore, hard nosed, rough, tough, in your face types who only care about winning. Guys who'd rather kill somebody than to lose 1 game. But back to that... Yes if Ritchie used the N word he took it to far, other than that he didn't do anything wrong, but the bottom line is Jonathan Martin was a sissy. I mean he came out and told all that on his teammate. What a joke. You don't do that. You be a man and go on. Look at Javell McGee. Same thing. Shaq made fun of him, and McGee's mom came out and said all that crap???? Come on man. 10 years ago McGee would have been laughed out of the NBA. Now its cool to be soft. .... ....I want guys like Burfict, Talib, Jenkins, Pacman, Incognito, etc. Guys who start fights on the field and play angry. Guys who intimidate opposing players and get in their head, and maybe take em out of the game. It works sometimes depending on the player. And loud mouths like T-Sizzle and Sherman who talks non stop, and taunts the crowed.

[southwest1]

"Are we wasting away Luck's career?" --Colts449 

 

It depends on who you define as "we" as. Okay sure, the easy answer would be that hiring Grigson, an inexperienced GM, was a colossal mistake & it was. Next, you could say that Pagano has had difficulty making sideline adjustments after halftime. Some claim that Jimmy, our owner, has fallen in love too quickly with an ariel based TE & WR offense since Luck was drafted in 2012 & didn't emphasize defense enough until recently. Or that Jimmy retained Ryan too long before finally cutting him loose. 

 

I get the premise behind your question--Don't squander premier talent at the QB position or subject them to too many vicious hits that wreck his body & mess with Andrew's psyche. You're not wrong, but to me, I always view it as where are we now at this moment? We have a proven GM in Ballard that knows the pedigree of winning in KC. Chuck knows he must win now or he is gone. Translation: He is motivated & Jimmy always makes changes in terms of coaches & front office personnel when he's fed up with a lousy product on the field as a football team. 

 

Answer: You've gotta look at what INDY is doing right now...Pushing forward toward winning the division, making the playoffs, & rolling the dice. In addition, Chewy plays a role in all this--Faster decision making, less turnovers, & realizing when to just give up on a play; throw the ball out of bounds, & live to fight another down. Punting isn't always a bad thing. It beats 6 points the other way on a pick. 

 

[Gabriel Alexander Morillo]

You could say we wasted his first 5 years...from a certain point of view.

I think we more so wasted our team overall because we didn't take advantage of a very good/potentially elite (in the future) QB's rookie contract. 

[Yoshinator]

As Gabriel has said, we definitely wasted his first 5 years. Think of it as Luck gets frozen in a time capsule, wakes up 5 years later and he is still the QB of the Colts. Except the team isn't any better than 5 years ago when he was a rookie, and he is 5 years older. We have wasted away 5 years of Luck's career. Namely, Pagano, Grigson, and to an extent, Irsay are responsible for this. Grigson is gone, and now Ballard has to rebuild this team correctly. We have to do what we did in 2012, fill in all the missing holes and try to draft our way into something respectable in a 3 year window. The difference is, even if we succeed, Luck will be 30, and not 25 now. The shining light at the end of this is that if we do succeed, Brady will be retired, Big Ben will be close to declining, and hopefully Luck will be the best QB in the NFL or at least the AFC. Lot of work to do and a lot to accomplish with limited time.

[rock8591]

28 minutes ago, COLTS449 said:

 

At the risk of taking this off subject....... ...Yeah. That's dumb. Guys like Incognito is exactly what we need. Hardcore, hard nosed, rough, tough, in your face types who only care about winning. Guys who'd rather kill somebody than to lose 1 game. But back to that... Yes if Ritchie used the N word he took it to far, other than that he didn't do anything wrong, but the bottom line is Jonathan Martin was a sissy. I mean he came out and told all that on his teammate. What a joke. You don't do that. You be a man and go on. Look at Javell McGee. Same thing. Shaq made fun of him, and McGee's mom came out and said all that crap???? Come on man. 10 years ago McGee would have been laughed out of the NBA. Now its cool to be soft. .... ....I want guys like Burfict, Talib, Jenkins, Pacman, Incognito, etc. Guys who start fights on the field and play angry. Guys who intimidate opposing players and get in their head, and maybe take em out of the game. It works sometimes depending on the player. And loud mouths like T-Sizzle and Sherman who talks non stop, and taunts the crowed.

 

Speaking of that, I remember when Trent Williams punched Sherman in the face after a game. Bet that got him to stop talking.

[WoolMagnet]

Groundhog day : the sequel

[COLTS449]

20 minutes ago, southwest1 said:

"Are we wasting away Luck's career?" --Colts449 

 

It depends on who you define as "we" as. Okay sure, the easy answer would be that hiring Grigson, an inexperienced GM, was a colossal mistake & it was. Next, you could say that Pagano has had difficulty making sideline adjustments after halftime. Some claim that Jimmy, our owner, has fallen in love too quickly with an ariel based TE & WR offense since Luck was drafted in 2012 & didn't emphasize defense enough until recently. Or that Jimmy retained Ryan too long before finally cutting him loose. 

 

I get the premise behind your question--Don't squander premier talent at the QB position or subject them to too many vicious hits that wreck his body & mess with Andrew's psyche. You're not wrong, but to me, I always view it as where are we now at this moment? We have a proven GM in Ballard that knows the pedigree of winning in KC. Chuck knows he must win now or he is gone. Translation: He is motivated & Jimmy always makes changes in terms of coaches & front office personnel when he's fed up with a lousy product on the field as a football team. 

 

Answer: You've gotta look at what INDY is doing right now...Pushing forward toward winning the division, making the playoffs, & rolling the dice. In addition, Chewy plays a role in all this--Faster decision making, less turnovers, & realizing when to just give up on a play; throw the ball out of bounds, & live to fight another down. Punting isn't always a bad thing. It beats 6 points the other way on a pick. 

 

 

I just mean we're wasting away his career by not putting good players around him. By not building a monster OL to protect him via the draft and FA, and by not bringing in playmakers on D via the draft and FA. With a stout OL, and 4-5 playmakers on D we'd be a SB caliber team every year. We should be a top 3 team by now 6 years into Lucks career. But we've failed to surround him with talent.

 

Yeah. We may win a SB in 3-4-5 years, but I mean if we had done things right we could have already, maybe won one, or came close. Our roster should be much better than it is. So why wait until Luck's 30 and hope to win ONE, when we could go all in now.

[Malakai432]

The Patriots and the Broncos have wasted everyones careers in the last 5 years for the AFC......

 

and will most likely continue to do so again next year, the Patriots that is.

[neug3246]

Grigson definitely wasted Lucks talent by bringing in bust FAs and even bigger bust draft picks. The talent evaluation since 2012 has been down right terrible and that has started to be pointed out by anylisist and media member since Ballards was named the new GM. If Grigson did draft a player with potential like Johnathan Newsome who got into a little bit of trouble, I think for smoking pot, he would cut them from the team bc thats not the type of person the Colts want playing for them... Unless they are a vet like when DQ beat that pizza guy up. On the flip side he passed on young good FA like Ritchie Incognito who bullied another player. Guess what its football bring the nasty. Instead he signed old slow guys past their prim like everyone know or guys that were roll players on there past team but giving them huge contracts, the same thing that Ballard is doing minus the huge contracts allowing us to sign more roll player type guys to actually add depth and competition to this team. FINALLY one last thing I HATED about Grigson was his push for way to many experimental football players like Adongo, McNary, Swoope, Werner, his beloved Diamonds in the Ruff philosophy and tried to build his team using these guys a fundamental building blocks for contributions but never happened bc they should never been on any NFL team to begin with.    

 

Now the coaching staff. Im gonna pass on the Defensive side of the ball bc they never had any players to make the D worth anything. I do wish we would run more stunts, exotic blitzes, delayed blitz's, etc so if that is I guess what I have to say about the D. On the Offensive side of the ball go more hurry up no huddle, thats when we move the ball the best. Let Luck have more command on the Offense and not handcuff him to slow starts bc we dont press the opponents D. Then once we get an early lead don't slow down lets have an Offense that puts up 35 plus points a week. We can do it easily we just never play the style that suites us the best until we are already down by multiple scores. The coaching staff overall don't play towards anyone of our players strengths. Once we do that we will be tapping into some of these unproven type guys or start to develop our own but we don't. 

[southwest1]

6 minutes ago, Gabriel Alexander Morillo said:

You could say we wasted his first 5 years...from a certain point of view.

I think we more so wasted our team overall because we didn't take advantage of a very good/potentially elite (in the future) QB's rookie contract. 

We did get to the AFC Championship Game vs NE in the Deflate Gate Game. Okay, fine Luck carried us there sure, but he didn't do it all completely alone either. 

 

QB Wilson from the Seattle Seahawks is always used as the perfect model for winning a Championship under a rookie deal & yes, Pete Carroll & their GM deserve credit for putting a then stout OL in front of him as well as smothering 'Legion of Boom' secondary, but even if you make all the right contract moves for 4 yrs; it doesn't guarantee hardware either. My point is this: The Pacific NW had all the right ingredients mix in a short term post season window meaning the football Gods blessed them with health & good fortune as opposed to brilliant moves in isolation. 

[Yoshinator]

2 minutes ago, COLTS449 said:

 

I just mean we're wasting away his career by not putting good players around him. By not building a monster OL to protect him via the draft and FA, and by not bringing in playmakers on D via the draft and FA. With a stout OL, and 4-5 playmakers on D we'd be a SB caliber team every year. We should be a top 3 team by now 6 years into Lucks career. But we've failed to surround him with talent.

By now, we should be at a point where we are challenging the Pats for the SB every year and possibly upsetting them in the AFC Championship game. After 2014, it looked like we were heading down the right path, but it fell apart. When you draft as poor as you did, it's going to catch up to you. That's why, as bad a coach as Pagano is, I actually blame this more on Grigson.

[Jules]

2 minutes ago, Malakai432 said:

The Patriots and the Broncos have wasted everyones careers in the last 5 years for the AFC......

 

and will most likely continue to do so again next year, the Patriots that is.

 

I was all set to pick the Pats to repeat but now am not. They gave up a 4th for Stone Hands and a first and third for a slot receiver (who got outplayed by a rookie WR on the Saints) that not even Sean Payton could turn into more then a weak slot receiver.

 

Something don't feel right........

 

I am picking the NFC right now to win it all. Who? No idea since the NFC is wild every year but there will be a few to shock us.

 

A few AFC teams could suprise too but I have no idea right now. Hell maybe even the Colts but we still need to prove it but with Grigano gone there is hope again.

 

[COLTS449]

OMG I totally forgot we DID go all in in free agency 2 years ago. WOW. What was I thinking. I mean we brought in Dre, Gore, Cole, and Herremans. That was big time, and much better than McPhee, Orakpo, Hudson, Incognito, and Maclin..........................  .....