stitches

It looks so effortless... looks like an NFL QB.

He made the same throw going to the left too:

I think reporters are not allowed to take pictures and videos during 7 on 7 and 11 on 11... That's why all we are getting is videos from drills...

Seems like Braden is back:

Love how Minshew celebrated Richardson hitting the target too...

My QB1

His injuries started somewhere week 3-4, not sure the exact game it happened. He didn't get healthy by the end of the year. He played injured for most of the season. Part of the reason he missed the bowl game and the Senior Bowl. He was rehabbing after the season. No idea how well his rehab went and what his state is right now. Well, he seems healthy enough to participate in TEN's OTAs... I would have guessed if he needed some sort of medical intervention they would have stopped him from participating.

This video was posted on Leonard's instagram story today:

The thing I worried the most with Levis was that DESPITE having worked with two NFL OCs, he looked raw with some of his decision-making and fundamentals. For whatever it's worth Greg Cosell is saying he's talked to some of Kentucky's coaches and they are saying they had to scrap a lot of what they worked on with Levis in the off-season because of his injury and what we saw is a very limited version of their offense because Levis couldn't move a ton for most of the season(doctors supposedly recommended he sits, but he didn't want to). BTW some of us here caught on to that when looking at his film. For example, in the beginning of the season Levis was taking snaps under center in 35%+ of their snaps. By the end of the year he was taking 100% from shotgun. Cosell is also saying he's got some info from scouts that in the off-season when the NFL scouts were making their rounds on college campuses, he looked phenomenal and many thought he might end up no. 1 pick in the draft. Take it for whatever it is worth I personally thought Levis had some high level traits and IMO his tape, especially in the context of his injury was better than where he got drafted. To me it seemed like he rubbed people the wrong way in interviews... With all that being said, those are young players and performance in first OTAs is likely not very predictive about what they are going to be in their careers. Of course, positive reports are better than negative reports, but I would take all this with a bucket of salt. To me the more important reports are those coming from the coaching staff about how they are handling themselves, how they are handling the playbook, etc. and this is where Richardson's reports so far are very positive in my books. It seems like the Colts want him to start week 1 and they are throwing everything at him to see what he can handle and so far so good... It seems like he's doing well and checking all the boxes he needs to check in order to start week 1.... so far. BTW according to reports Richardson and Bryce are the only rookie QBs splitting 1st team reps. Stroud is reportedly running with the 2s and Levis is playing with the 2s and 3s.

Most of them. Levis' was really low 2.59 or something of the sort. That would be a good mark even for the NBA.

I think the OL will likely be better than last year and my reasoning for this is - I expect positive regression. The whole interior of the line had pretty bad seasons last year, and especially for Nelson and Kelly this season was much worse than the baseline they had established in the past. I expect both of them to have better season. I'm not sure we can expect the same from the RG spot since we didn't make any changes really... but we are starting at such a low spot there that it would be really hard for it to be any worse than last year. Braden has been model of consistency throughout his career at RT so far so I don't expect huge swing either way from him. Raimann continuously improved throughout the season so I kind of expect us to have better overall season at LT than we had last year. Mobile QB doesn't necessarily help the OL... depends on the QB really... some mobile QBs invite pressure and make the life of their OL harder by moving away from the pocket when it's not needed or expected by the pass protection. The good thing is... Richardson actually was not exhibiting a lot of those problems in college and he had really low pressure to sack ratio, even though he was holding the ball for a long time. To me it will be really interesting to see what Steichen will require from Richardson!? Will he try to speed up his processing and introduce tons of short throws... or will he try to give him full field progression reads targetting the deep field... Richardson's time to throw in college was 3.2 seconds. This will NOT fly in the NFL... defenders are way too athletic and they will get to him if the offense is not significantly sped up compared to what he was running in Florida. Yeah... a lot depends on Leonard... he's been the heart and soul of this defense since he got drafted. His playmaking almost singlehandedly makes our defense one of the premier defenses when it comes to turning the ball over. I don't really know what to expect when it comes to eventual return of Leonard... I don't think even the Colts are certain... With all that said... when thinking about this team, my feeling is that we would be about 7-8 win team... but then I did the exercise where I give W/L predictions on the schedule... and I got us to 11 wins so... who knows... our schedule is not all that hard.

How high do you expect his completion % to be? Low? Mid? High 50s? 40s??

I'm just being silly I posted one of Bryce earlier too..

Levis improving his accuracy...

The value based trade charts(OTC, PFF, Stanford) are practically charts of expected value to be returned by players selected in those slots... they take into account the history of performance of players selected at the respective positions, the contracts they are getting after their rookie deals, the value they bring to teams, etc. The value charts are probably closer to the truth, IMO... but teams still operate heavily within the frameworks of the traditional draft charts(Johnson). This is a huge inefficiency in today's league and Ballard has been exploiting it consistently through the years. This IMO is one of his best attributes and philosophies as a GM. So yeah... probably late round picks should have higher value than they do in the Johnson charts.

In essense we got Julius Brents, Adetomiwa Adebawore, Daniel Scott and Titus Leo for #35... I really believe that you have to have a great reason not to trade back when that's the value you are getting. To a huge degree the draft is a crapshoot and the difference in expected value between 35 and 44 is probably negligible. And for the price you get 3 more shots at players, some of them with really high upside too. Of course, there might be some exceptions to the rule(QBs as always break that rule... maybe some exceptional talent at another high value position), but in general if you can get that type of a deal, you should almost always do the trade back. And I think this is one area where Ballard has actually been great as a GM.

It is incoming value from one trade... and then it's outgoing value in the next trade. You are not claiming the value of those picks... they cancel out when you put them in the outgoing picks. 35 for 38+141 then 38 for 44+ 110 then 141 for 158 + 211 ... when you draw the line you get 35 for 44+110+158+211 Using Johnson: 35(550) for 44(460) + 110(74) + 158(28) + 211(7)... or 550 points for 569 points. Net gain of 19 points, which by Johnson's chart is equivalent of late 5th, early 6th round pick... Using OTC: 35(1128) for 44(1007) + 110(525) + 158(334) + 211(182) or 1128 points for 2048 points. Net gain of 920 points which is by OTC chart is equivalent to the 60th pick... or thereabout(i.e late second... )

this is taken into account in the outgoing assets, They are included in the incoming assets because they are coming from the trades made - 38 and 141 are coming from the trades made down from 35 to 38.

54.1%... That's the thing I think people have a big misconception about. A ton of even the elite players have completion % in the 50s the first time they compete at a certain level - be it first year starting in college(Luck, Burrow, Russell Wilson, Mahomes, Stafford, Lamar, Allen, etc... they all had completion% in the 50s in their 1st year starting) or rookie year in NFL(Lawrence, Lamar, Luck, Hurts, Allen, Manning!!!, ... etc. ). IMO in a lot of cases first year is more about accumulating experience and testing the limits of what works and what doesn't at that level of competition...

Here's a thread about every team's value gained/lost via trades in the draft this year(the guy includes various different charts): Depending on the chart used the Colts have gained somewhere between 2nd-3d round value(this is according to the modern analytics based value charts - Stuart, Overthecap, PFF charts) or an early 6th round value according to the classic old school trade charts Jimmy Johnson or Rich Hill charts. So what can we conclude based on those evaluations? The value is much closer on the old school charts thus it's very likely the teams are using the old school charts rather than modern analytics based charts... or at least Ballard is insisting on using those when trading back. In general, if you believe in modern day draft value analytics, the draft is a great place to gain an advantage... and in general - trading back is a great idea. The reason according to those charts the Colts gained a day 2 pick in this draft is because we traded back 3 times and the value of that extra capital far outweighs the small drop in draft position(8 spots in the second, 20 spots in the 5th). On a sidenote - according both the value charts and the trade charts the Texans lost a TON of value by trading up to 3. The analytics charts are brutal for them - they lost the equivalent of the no. 1 pick in the draft + more... the traditional charts are a bit more mild but still think they lost a high 1st round pick in that trade.

The more interesting question about Nelson is - what kind of offer would it require for you to consider trading him? They won't cut him for at least 2 more years almost regardless of how he plays.

Which ones is Richardson going to to break?

I'm most confident in Braden. He's been the picture of consistency. In 5 years the difference between his highest and lowest PFF grade is like... 7 points(lowest was his rookie year at 73.3 and highest was 80.6).