stitches
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Posts posted by stitches
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9 hours ago, Superman said:
I just listened. You won't really hear anything new. Ballard said they think Richardson is fine, even though he got shut down at the end of minicamp. I hope he's right. He also acknowledged that he was talking about CJ Stroud after last year's draft, which we already knew.
Everything else has been covered already, I think. Nothing wrong with the interview, but for those of us who follow the team pretty closely, it's all repeat stuff.
I feel like, after a few years of watching pretty much every interview or pressconference, we now know most of whatever a GM will ever say on the team. It's almost to the point where we can guess the answer before it's given. Well, most of the time I guess.
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7 hours ago, NewColtsFan said:
I think both Dodds and Brown have very good reputations. If Irsay lets both go, a new guy from the outside is going to want to come in and blow everything up and start from scratch. Bring in his own people. That puts Steichen in Jeopardy. At some point the new GM wants his own HC.I don’t think Irsay would want any part of a multi-year rebuild. Not at his age and especially his stage.
A move toward Dodds or Brown is the easiest, cleanest, simplest most straight forward move The Boss could make. And keeps the continuity everywhere in the building. Good for everyone.
Thats my perspective.
1 hour ago, shasta519 said:It happened in KC. That was a complicated situation though. There was an issue in power structure since both Reid and Dorsey reported to Clark Hunt. Of course KC didn't want to lose Reid, so they extended him, but Dorsey didn't get a deal at that time. Eventually, Dorsey got fired and Veach (who pushed for Mahomes) replaced him as GM.
And with Steichen looking to be the guy, there could soon be some parallels for the distribution of power. I am sure IND doesn't want to lose him.
But I also don't think there are any issues between Ballard and Steichen, like there might have been with Reid and Dorsey. And Jim Irsay is not Clark Hunt. But if his daughter is running things, she might be less sentimental and more pragmatic.
It obviously worked out really well for KC.
So maybe in IND's case, Ballard is Dorsey, Dodds plays the KC Ballard role and moves on to be a GM somewhere else (he also didn't seem as sold on AR early on as others anyways)...and Brown (who pushed for AR) becomes the GM.
Personally, I don't think it would go quite as well as it did in KC. It worked because Mahomes was the guy. If AR not panning out is getting Ballard fired...Brown should be going with him.
So I would much prefer a reset over continuity, instead of a revamped version of the same approach that hasn't led to much success. Plus, there are plenty of good NFL org. to pilfer talented execs.
My point is... it's super rare. Even if we find an example or two they are the exception, not the rule. When a GM gets fired, usually it's because the owner is looking for a change, not continuation of the same management.
Agree that it makes it awkward with Steichen, especially if we think of him as a good coach. And BTW that's the reason I wanted Irsay to fire Ballard in 2023 and start over with a blank slate - new GM, new coach, new QB.
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3 hours ago, NewColtsFan said:
If AR doesn’t work out I think it’s hard to see a scenario where Ballard keeps his job. I think he’d be fired. I think either Dodds or Brown would become the new GM.How often does that actually happen? A GM fails, gets fired... and the person who takes his job is someone who was working under him throughout all those years you fired your GM for? IMO the much more likely scenario is we start all over with a blank slate.
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1 minute ago, Superman said:
Does the same dynamic and conflict exist when it's a positive report, based on unnamed sources?
Yes. Just like you might want to try to make a player drop to you, you might want to bump up the stock of another player so he gets taken ahead of you and this drops another player you actually like to your team.
1 minute ago, Superman said:What if a reporter just generalizes this information, without offering quotes? 'People I've talked to have concerns about this player's maturity...' Is the standard the same in that case?
This to me looks even worse. This provides even further layers of anonymity and even more questions about the veracity of the report. With what McGinn is doing at least we know where(generally) this is coming from and what the potential pitfalls might be(conflict of interest). If he generalizes it to "People are saying"... this could be anyone... it could be a scout... it could be an exec... it could be an actual coach of the player(this might actually be valuable)... or it could be a water boy the player didn't give an autograph to... In a certain way it makes it easier to ignore, but it feels worse to me because of lack of specificity about the reliability of the source.
1 minute ago, Superman said:I think if media didn't share these anonymous insights, the stuff we love to consume during draft season would dry up, and we'd be in the dark. There's a voracious appetite for this kind of information. That doesn't mean the media has no responsibility and shouldn't be held to some kind of standard, but I think your standard is more strict than it needs to be. JMO.
There is a lot of appetite for more and more information about the players. I'm not so sure there is a ton of appetite for anonymous reports about character failings specifically. In fact, I think those are some of my least favorite pieces of content around the draft. I think there is TONS of good(and some bad) substantiated, analytical, narrative content for fans to consume without going into the gutter of dirt that a lot of those anonymous reports are dealing with. Unless it is factually substantiated(example, player X is being charged with Y crime, i.e. there's actual case... it's all fair game to explore that...)
1 minute ago, Superman said:To the bolded, I think that's the job of the scouts, and it's one of the reasons there's a HUGE difference between watching video, and actually scouting. That's why teams who have access to film and independent scouting reports still pay their own scouts to go into the schools, talk to the coaches, talk to family and friends, etc., and write up in-depth reports on players that they'll likely never draft. I'm confident the Colts got sufficient answers to those questions, which is why I'm not concerned about it. If the Colts didn't have a reputation for being so thorough with stuff like this, I might feel differently.
Someone pointed out that it was Ballard that went to Marcus Peters' house and spent a couple of days with him and his family to give the OK to the Chiefs to draft him. Ballard is not a stranger to having to clear a prospect's character for his team so they'd be able to draft him. IMO he seems very confident in his read on Mitchell. I don't think he'd go to that length to defend his player the day he drafts him if he didn't really think the things he said. And I really think he feels strongly about this. I guess we will see in due time if he was right.
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25 minutes ago, Superman said:
Got it. But what do you think should be done about this?
Not sure. To me a lot of those (not just about AD) read very gross and icky, especially coming from people who have things to gain from perpetuating a narrative. IMO unless it's factually supported, you probably shouldn't print it(this is specifically about character/attitude things... things that we cannot see with our own eyes on the field - about those... go wild... print whatever you want, unless you are concerned with looking foolish). Or at the very least you should make everything possible to corroborate it with people who are close to the situation - for example, your anonymous scout tells you AD Mitchell is uncoachable. You do NOT print this unless a coach who has worked with him confirms it. Your anonymous scout tells you that when AD Mitchell is not taking care of his blood sugar levels, he's hard to work with. OK, this seems reasonable enough. But does it give an accurate picture of what it is like to work with Mitchell? In other words - how often does that actually happen? Because Mitchell's interview with Destin seems to suggest that he's been taking the necessary measures to control his blood sugar levels. Did it happen like once or twice in the span of 3 years in college? Or is it happening every second practice? Because when you write it like McGinn wrote it and then suggest that he's uncoachable, what's the picture that comes to your head? And the fact that your scout also told you "but when his blood sugar is ok, he's great", doesn't really do anything to balance the story here.
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4 minutes ago, Superman said:
What do you mean?
I mean that anonymous scouts and anonymous execs work for some team in the league. Those teams have interests very separate from the interests of the reporters giving them platform...
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1 hour ago, shasta519 said:
Sure. It's possible that teams could have had boards that included many WRs as R1 grades, including Mitchell, and they just chose one over him. I worded that weirdly, but what I meant was that teams that didn't have him as a R1 player, it was for reasons beyond the rumors in this article.
But the "surefire first rounder until he was done dirty by rumors" doesn't track.
We know that AD ranked poorly in some advanced metrics (like yards per route run) that typically operate as requisites for successful NFL WRs (outliers are rare). We know what some team scouts had concerns from his Combine drills. And we know what happened at the draft.
I agree here. There were legit football reasons for teams to not be in love with Mitchell based on his play and some of his indicators that a lot of people seem to value were not great.
1 hour ago, shasta519 said:And those comments that McGinn published weren't even his thoughts...they too were from NFL scouts.
Seems like the easiest and logical explanation is that teams had legit concerns (for multiple reasons) about AD and that, not rumors, is what pushed him down in the draft. But Destin seems to be spinning a couple of those concerns (that Ballard had addressed) to drive his narrative.
I don't know how to parse what Destin is selling here. I'm not sure you can be certain those reports changed anything in team's evaluation of Mitchell. He's presenting anecdotal evidence that teams starting asking more about his diabetes after those reports. Again... not sure if this is factual or it just was more noticeable after those reports? Who knows...
29 minutes ago, Superman said:Short version: I don't think the reports are made up, I think there's probably some truth to them. And I assume the Colts did their homework, because that's how they operate. So if they're comfortable with AD Mitchell and have a plan to help him succeed, I have no concerns about it.
Let me summarize my view in short - I don't think the reports are made up. Someone told McGinn those things. There might be some truth to it. To me it looks very one sided. My whole contention here has been about that. Do you just print anything and everything someone tells you without asking for comment from your subject?
Just go and read the whole thing again,,, the diabetes part, the uncoachable, immaturity part, the combine part(this one we can actually see with our own eyes and I can absolutely tell you the characterization of what happened is preposterous). If a scout under me really had those opinions about what transpired in those drills, I personally would question every single thing he's telling me.
On the other examples of rumors/reports about other players(Caleb, Levis, Stroud) - absolutely, if you are going to disparage the character of any of those players the very least you must do is ask them for a comment. The fact that this practice of just throwing rocks and hiding hands and not even giving the opportunity of the target to respond, is prevalent in today's draft media, doesn't make it right.
Also, I still want to underline something here... there is obvious conflict of interest here that I still haven't seen anyone address.
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6 hours ago, Superman said:
I'm not a journalist either. I agree that it's best practice to offer the subject a chance to respond. My real point is that I don't think a lack of response from the subject automatically invalidates the information.
In this specific situation, I think the information was sensationalized. The initial report shared some nuanced opinions from unnamed sources, which I think is pretty common. The way the story took off from there is probably due to aggregation, for which I don't hold the initial reporter responsible.
And what it seems like here is we're pushing back against a "negative" report regarding a player the Colts drafted, rather than taking the information on its merits.
I guess the whole question is the merits of the report. You report on his diabetes with tons of guesses and speculations and WITHOUT taking the side of the person who's been affected here and who's living and dealing with that condition. You report on the player being uncoachable WITHOUT taking the opinion of his coaches about being coachable or not(and BTW from what I've heard both from Colts and Texas coaches, this is resoundingly NOT TRUE). You report about him being immature and honestly, everything I've seen on the surface suggests the opposite. You report about his combine performance by giving it a pretty harsh reading(the video is in this thread and the account of what happened by McGinn is in this thread... People can actually go and look at what happened and make their own mind about whether the characterization of that workout was fair or not. I will just say you can represent the player stumbling in a drill and going again in various different ways and McGinn chose a specific way to represent it. It was the most negative way you could choose).
You know I had my own reservations about that outburst by Ballard at the presser, but the more I'm learning about Mitchell the more I actually believe in what Ballard was saying and the less merit those reports have in my mind. Maybe I have my own unconscious biases too, now that I have vested interest in Mitchell actually being good for us. I don't know
I guess ultimately none of it matters. AD's success or failure won't depend on some pre-draft reports... it will depend on how he handles himself from now on, how hard he works, his drive to be great and our staff's ability to get the best of him.
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Just now, shasta519 said:
That could have happened. Could have been a HIPAA issue too.
But I think the fact that these other quotes existed (even if they were put in later) adds necessary context to this situation. It wasn't just AD being the victim of some smear campaign that somehow heavily influenced NFL teams...as seems to be the narrative. Instead, there were also concerns among different scouts (assuming it wasn't one scout) about other aspects, including his Combine workout.
So we know what some thought...and we know what happened. 10 teams drafted WRs before AD. Yes, 3 of those WRs were going earlier than him no matter what, but 7 other WR-needy teams opted for other WRs. And even Ballard actually traded down with him on the board. It seems fairly safe to assume that NFL teams didn't have him as a R1 WR, or top 5 at the position, for reasons beyond a couple comments from anonymous scouts.
I think I was wrong in my guess here. On later inspection, it seems like the more likely situation is that the part about his diabetes is still in this article, but it's just hidden behind a paywall..
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17 minutes ago, Superman said:
Kind of seems like you're setting up a litmus test for whether a reporter is "good" or not based on whether they do this thing you don't like. So maybe you could share some well-respected media in your opinion -- sports would be most relevant -- and then we could share some examples.
I agree that the best practice would be to reach out to the subject for a response. But if the subject declines or doesn't acknowledge the request, now what? Add a line saying 'subject declined to respond,' and now the unnamed sources are viewed with more legitimacy?
Honestly, isn't that kind of a base level journalistic integrity and ethics? I don't think he's setting up some arbitrary litmus test. I'm no journalist and have no idea what the professional standard is, but this to me seems like a pretty reasonable standard - if you are writing about someone and a source is sharing pretty disparaging information that might affect the subject to the tune of millions of dollars, the least you should probably do is to ask for comment from said subject, before you print that information.
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8 minutes ago, w87r said:
I don't think it is weird at all.
Harrison is clearly ranked #1 on the rankings list and the sign in/ or up is listed right after him. All excerpts quoted, that link you to the pay wall, clearly have been seen past the pay wall, and are giving a glimpse of what is behind it.
All the talk above the rankings is just some general info about some of the higher rated guys.
The rankings get more detailed and that's where that information is.
I doubt that is even all of Harrison's, at the point of signing in or up.
I just read the article again to see the structure. You probably are right. It looks like he's starting to list the players in the ranking with quotes from scouts and it just cuts out at some point in the Harrison part and you have to pay for the rest.
So yeah... Please ignore my semi-conspiratorial allusions above. That's my bad.
Still not sure how ethical it is to post such disparaging comments about the character of a young player when those quotes are coming from scouts that might have conflict of interest in sharing such information before the draft.
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1 minute ago, Superman said:
If you click on the images in the tweet, it gives you those portions of the article.
And yeah, it's paywalled.
Yes, I saw them, but that was in April. What I'm saying is - I'm not sure they are still there.
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2 minutes ago, w87r said:
I don't think anything has been deleted it takes you to the article which is multi part.
It starts ranking WRs at the bottom and talking about Harrison more in depth.
Followed by a pay wall to sign up for the rest. Which more likely than not, includes those in depth reports on Mitchell.
That's what I gather by the info being there in Destin's article with link to site, which then shows pay wall for the rest.
Possible, yah... Still weird how every quote we get(from April) linking to this article is the diabetes part, and none of them are quoting the combine part.
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6 minutes ago, Superman said:
Yeah, it's on GoLongTD's site, and paywalled. But here are some relevant snippets:
Again. Notice the link. The link sends us to the article about his combine performance now, not about his diabetes, despite the quotes from April being about his diabetes. No idea what happened. It looks fishy to me.
Did they move the diabetes quotes to a different article behind a paywall? Or is this not the full article and the diabetes part is part of the paywalled content? But the weirdest thing to me is that what's now there is not quoted by any of the articles I see that quoted the diabetes part.
Just strange.
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1 minute ago, w87r said:
https://www.golongtd.com/p/part-1-wrte-hall-of-fame-talent-at?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
"Like Harrison and Bowers, Mitchell was a junior who spent only three seasons in college. His resume, however, wasn’t as impressive because of limited playing time and a high-ankle sprain during his two years at Georgia.
Coming off a 55-reception, 11-touchdown season at Texas, Mitchell did everything at the combine other than the short shuttle, the 3-cone and the bench press. And, after his blazing 40 of 4.35 and exceptional distances in the jumps, his decision to work at the combine appeared to be paying off.
Then Mitchell, wearing the WO19 jersey, started running the various routes in line with other wide receivers. His performance was insufficient, to say the least.
“He blew that 40 out, which didn’t surprise me,” one veteran scout said. “But then his position workout might have been the worst I’ve seen by a top receiver. He was falling over. He dropped balls. He had to keep redoing. It seemed as if he didn’t know how to run routes. He just seemed out of it.
“Generally, I don’t get alarmed by a combine. That was alarming.”
Based on television coverage, Mitchell staggered and fell during the gauntlet, dropped the first two slants, dropped an out and either messed up the route or failed to make the catch on his next three attempts. His performance was adequate after that.
“He was very linear, very straight line,” another scout said watching Mitchell at the combine. “Which surprised me, because in my limited exposure, for a fast guy, I thought he could actually bend and get in and out of his cuts.
“After running fast, the position stuff didn’t match. It wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t fatal. But it definitely raised some alerts with me. He didn’t have a great combine.”
Mitchell stood on his combine numbers and did positio"n drills March 21 at Texas pro day, leaving the bench press and shuttles void."
This one?
Yes. All the quotes about the diabetes, about him being uncoachable and immature link to that article, but those exact parts are now removed(and possibly replaced by the stuff about his combine?!? Since I don't see the quotes about his combine in any of the pieces that link to that article. Which is super weird. )
Again ... Unless we are not seeing some hidden article. To me it looks like it was redacted at some point after and the diabetes/uncoachable/immature things got replaced by the combine performance stuff.
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4 minutes ago, w87r said:
Here's this one:
https://www.golongtd.com/p/bob-mcginns-first-round-analysis
"WR Adonai Mitchell: A number of scouts expressed considerable reservations about his makeup and discipline."
The other article I see has multiple part breakdown, with most behind pay wall.
No, no. It's the multi part one. The part about the WRs/TEs is part 1. Don't know what happened with the diabetes part. It just seems to have vanished. Or it's in a separate part that's behind a paywall, but I found links to this one (part 1) that were quoting the diabetes parts from April. Weird all around.
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4 minutes ago, ADnum1 said:
Here is AD's combine workout video.
True, he fell down on the Gauntlet drill but got right back up and seemed to be a good sport about it. He ran the gauntlet again and completed it so not sure what the big deal is ? Maybe writers are making it a bigger deal than it needs to be ? But judge for yourself. I saw no bad attitude there.
Also very cool comparison in the video of AD running the 40 superimposed against AJ Brown and Julio Jones. He smokes both of them. That should get Colts fans really excited.
This is not the writer. This is a scout he's quoting. This (especially if it's the same scout he's quoting about the diabetes/uncoachable/immature thing) seems like a scout either with an agenda or some axe to grind.
BTW seems like the part about the diabetes is/was in this exact article, but I currently cannot find it in the article. Do we know if it got deleted or if it's behind a paywall we cannot see?
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26 minutes ago, BeanDiasucci said:
The McGinn column that I can find describes what happened at the combine in front of all of the scouts (below). Is there another column from him about Mitchell? There must be based on the conversation in this thread.
DRAFT
Part 1, WR/TE: Hall of Fame talent at the top, then (many) questions
Marvin Harrison Jr. leads the way. You'll see receivers fly off the board the first two rounds. But scouts have concerns. Bob McGinn's 40th annual series begins.
Part 1, WR/TE: Hall of Fame talent at the top, then (many) questions - golongtd.com
By Bob McGinn
(About halfway through the column is a discussion of Mitchell's combine performance)
Coming off a 55-reception, 11-touchdown season at Texas, Mitchell did everything at the combine other than the short shuttle, the 3-cone and the bench press. And, after his blazing 40 of 4.35 and exceptional distances in the jumps, his decision to work at the combine appeared to be paying off.
Then Mitchell, wearing the WO19 jersey, started running the various routes in line with other wide receivers. His performance was insufficient, to say the least.
“He blew that 40 out, which didn’t surprise me,” one veteran scout said. “But then his position workout might have been the worst I’ve seen by a top receiver. He was falling over. He dropped balls. He had to keep redoing. It seemed as if he didn’t know how to run routes. He just seemed out of it.
“Generally, I don’t get alarmed by a combine. That was alarming.”
Based on television coverage, Mitchell staggered and fell during the gauntlet, dropped the first two slants, dropped an out and either messed up the route or failed to make the catch on his next three attempts. His performance was adequate after that.
“He was very linear, very straight line,” another scout said watching Mitchell at the combine. “Which surprised me, because in my limited exposure, for a fast guy, I thought he could actually bend and get in and out of his cuts.
“After running fast, the position stuff didn’t match. It wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t fatal. But it definitely raised some alerts with me. He didn’t have a great combine.”
Mitchell stood on his combine numbers and did position drills March 21 at Texas pro day, leaving the bench press and shuttles void.
There's more about his diabetes and about him being uncoachable and hard to work with. Can't find direct link. The rest might be behind a paywall, but it's quoted in the linked article by Destin Adams. You can read it there.
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12 minutes ago, NewColtsFan said:
Again…. McGinn didn’t do the damage to Mitchell. The scouts did.
And there are columnists like McGinn at every major paper. Their job is to gather info and report it, whether it’s popular or not.
Let me turn this around. Hypothetically, a few years from now if Mitchell doesn’t pan out and he’s moody and difficult to deal with and he’s a bust, then the scouts will have been proven correct. And people here will say McGinn’s column was spot on.
Another person who should’ve handled his business better is Mitchell himself. He’s been living with this since he was roughly 16. And scouts said he interviewed badly with them. Even Mitchell admits it.
I don’t think this is as black and white as it seems to you.
To be clear…. I love Mitchell. Glad we drafted him. I’ve said several times that Ballard defending him draft night was smart and scored points with the kid. Now he comes out and says that exact thing. He appreciates that Ballard defended him so hard and he wants to pay the Colts and Ballard back by being the best player he can be.
Does a reporter bear any responsibility about what he includes in his pieces? Sourced or not? Is everything a source tell you printable? Is everything worth printing? BTW I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, I just wonder if there are any ethical considerations a reporter might have when reporting on this type of touchy subject, especially when some of those anonymous scouts might have vested interest in a player getting drafted higher or lower than currently projected?
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This is interesting. The Rams tried to trade with the Jets for 11 too:
I wonder who they were targeting. Some are speculating Bowers at 11. Seattle reporters think they tried to jump the Seahawks for Byron Murphy.
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On 6/12/2024 at 12:47 AM, NewColtsFan said:
THIS will be one of my favorite posts of the off-season. I’ve been wondering IF Richardson has an off-season coach, I suspected he did, I just didn’t know who?
Now I do, and from reading a little of his twitter page I like the guy. I’m sure AR does too and I’m sure the Colts do too. I like that he’s working out with Brock Purdy and Caleb Williams (though personally I’m not a fan of CW the person).
Yeah, It's the same guy he was working with before the draft as far as I remember. Seems like they have somewhat long-timeish relationship, so he probably feels like he's getting benefits from working in that camp. Last year Minshew worked with the same coach in the off-season, no idea if he's still working with him now.
On 6/12/2024 at 12:47 AM, NewColtsFan said:This puts me in a good mood for the week! Thanks to @stitches for this post! Great information!
On 6/12/2024 at 12:47 AM, NewColtsFan said:PS — is your new avatar Mitchell or Latu?
Latu on draft day receiving the call from the Colts.
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I wonder if the agents/agency matters? At first sight it seems kind of random, but maybe specific agents are more likely to fight for more guarantees for their clients.
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6 minutes ago, chad72 said:
Do you think positional value matters at all even with the rookie wage scale for Round 2? Pass rushers, DBs, WRs getting more guaranteed than LBs, RBs etc.??
I think so. I think @Superman mentioned JT got less guaranteed on his rookie deal than AD. From looking at the RBs in this draft(Panthers RB Brooks (drafted no. 46) didn't get anything guaranteed for the 3d year), last year Zach Charbonnet didn't get any guarantees for his 3d year too ...
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Colts Select Laiatu Latu Edge UCLA
in Colts Football
Posted
Latu weighed 257 at the combine, but later at his pro day he was 267 lbs. He probably dropped to 257 to run faster the 40.