Superman

I get your point on this, and I agree. I think Ballard goes out of his way to give props to his staff. But on the Downs situation, it's not that no one else liked him and Reggie made a fuss about it, so let's get him his guy to shut him up. Just that when you have a former great as your position coach, and he really likes a guy at that position, it makes a difference. That's especially noteworthy when the GM is known (IMO) for liking players with size and length, and the player in question doesn't fit the profile. Just as important, maybe more important, is the fact that Downs has special traits to make up for his lack of size. His quickness and change of direction, production after catch, and ability to make contested catches despite his size, offsets most concerns about him being smaller than ideal. The Reggie piece is a bonus. Not unimportant, but definitely not the entire story.

Just because Minshew said this doesn't make it mean anything.

If the playoffs started today, we'd play the Dolphins. That might make it even more likely that Bradley would be gone. But I don't know. There's enough there statistically to make a case for keeping Bradley, even though I fully believe his defense doesn't work. Agreed. No matter what, I expect we'll be a four down, heavy zone defense, so I'm not super worried about CB. But LB is thin, and we have some contract decisions to make with several players, like you mentioned.

I think between all the TEs and intending to really work the QB run game, they felt like they had enough at WR. But cutting almost all of them at the end of the preseason was kind of eye opening. (By the way, I just looked, McKenzie made the final 53, but was released shortly after that. He was resigned almost immediately, just a roster machination.)

What I said is there are a lot of missed opportunities to get Pierce the ball. And that was partly in response to you (and others) saying that he doesn't get separation and can't get open. He needs to run routes better, he should be more reliable catching the ball (that's kind of a new thing this year though), the production isn't there, we gotta add to the WR room... we're on the same page on all of that. I'm pushing back on the idea that he doesn't get the ball because he can't get open, and that's because I see him getting open and still not getting the ball. My point is pretty much what you said in bold.

I like him too, he could easily be a top ten pick, IMO. I think he's primed for a big game against Texas. We'll see how the board looks in March but he's really good.

It's arguably the thinnest position on the roster. At cut down day we had three WRs -- Pittman, Pierce, and Downs. Most of the year, Pittman and Pierce have played > 95% of snaps. I thought McKenzie should get more reps, but now he's not even with the team; no one else has a legit case for even being active on game day. Even if we loved our top three, we need more guys who can play WR on Sundays.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I wonder about how things went with him last week. All week, it seemed like thumbs were pointed up. He's on social media Saturday night, telling everyone he's good. Steichen says he's looking good all week, he practices all week, then clears protocol with little intrigue. Then, I believe it's after he clears protocol that he speaks with media, and admits that he lost consciousness and didn't know what happened, couldn't remember the hit, etc. His comments increased my own level of concern about how serious his condition had been. The next day, his symptoms have returned and he's back in protocol. I don't remember this ever happening (that doesn't mean it's never happened). I wonder if his comments caught someone's attention, and they decided that maybe he cleared too quickly given the severity of the situation. I just found it curious. Then again, he was wearing sunglasses on the sideline during the game. So maybe some sensitivity to light? Or maybe while flying he had a migraine, and they decided to play it safe? I don't know, it was just weird. All told, it's better to err on the side of caution so I don't mind what happened. Hopefully it's all behind him and he's okay.

I agree with the bolded to an extent. I just think anyone with eyes should be aware that our WR room needs to be upgraded, so I would expect both Steichen and Ballard to be interested in adding better players there. But I'm not expecting our 2024 first rounder to be spent on a WR... Regarding tall WRs, I do think that's a Ballard thing to a large extent. Not that Reich wasn't on board, but Ballard and Co. are obviously heavily influenced by RAS, and height/length play a significant role in RAS scores. If not for Downs having special traits outside of size, we probably don't draft him, and even then it took Reggie Wayne pounding the table for him.

They aren't winning with him, and he looks bad. Right now they have an 8% chance of making the playoffs; even if they win this Sunday, it only goes up to 12% (pending other results; it's less than that if Texans, Steelers and Bengals all win, and then Colts/Raiders play each other). And even if by some miracle they got in as the 7th seed, they'd have to go to Miami and play the Dolphins again, and no one wants that, not even the Dolphins. Their season is effectively over. Should they risk triggering $37m in injury guarantees for a player that they're most certainly intending to move on from?

I think Ballard would give a meaningful answer. But I never know with this Indy media group whether it will even come up.

I'd be surprised if they move on from him, but I fully expect them to add to the WR room in a meaningful way.

When Steichen was hired and the decision was made to retain Bradley, I wondered if it was mostly about allowing Steichen to just build his offensive staff and evaluate the defense for a year. Steichen took the job more than a month after the season ended, the Combine was coming up, he's a first time HC, and we needed to draft a QB... it's a lot to figure out in just a couple weeks time. So I went into the season thinking that Bradley was probably on a probation year, and it would be up to Steichen to determine what to do in 2024. But I have no idea what Steichen would want to do. And while I've never liked Bradley's defense and didn't like the hire, it hasn't been terrible. You mention the Vikings in 2022, we're not as bad as they were. But I appreciate that they moved on from their previous DC after just one year when they didn't like the results.

Meh. Formerly great player gets cut by his team, and uses it as motivation. Most professional athletes walk around with a giant chip on their shoulder anyway. I don't care about this one bit. I actually wish the Colts had been more vocal about why they cut him. I'm frustrated by how little information we got about the decision.

Minshew throws them the ball. First thing to acknowledge is that our entire passing game is schemed to feed Pittman. When we're not forcing the ball to Pittman, it's Downs working against zones. And everything else is leftover crumbs. No there wasn't. Aside from his drop, he mostly got trash targets late in the down, including overthrown balls, and plays on which he drew flags. I'm not arguing that. What I'm arguing is this myth that he doesn't get open. He does, and Minshew doesn't throw him the ball.

I'm not attempting to absolve Pierce of any responsibility, or lay all blame at Minshew's feet. Pierce needs to play better, he needs to run routes better, etc. But I watch the games, and I watch some all 22, and anyone who says that Pierce doesn't get open is flat out wrong, bottom line. I have screenshots to prove it. Between the scheme, and Minshew's limitations, there are a lot of missed opportunities to get Pierce the ball. So while he needs to play better, it's also not all on him.

I'll rewatch, I thought I saw several run plays from under center. Maybe it was play action... Either way, I think the OL was losing up front, and that doesn't really change based on where the QB is standing.

We tried running from under center against the Falcons, and it didn't work. The interior OL mostly got whipped. I do think all the RPO has a drag effect on the run game overall, but I don't think that's why the Colts couldn't run against the Falcons. I think they just won up front, bottom line.

So does Gardner Minshew...

If we don't improve our roster in specific areas, and if we can't get more dynamic playmaking from the QB, then yeah. Assume we're playing a 2nd place schedule, so we get the Browns, Broncos, and Cowboys (instead of Raiders, Pats, Rams). We're playing the NFC North instead of the NFC South. And we can still expect some growing pains from Richardson. Plus, unless something significant changes on defense, we can't stop slightly above average QBs, much less really good QBs. If the playoffs started right now, we'd go to Miami, and that could easily be another 70 point game from the Dolphins... It might sound like I'm being negative, and that's not really the case. I just think we've played a favorable schedule and caught some good teams at bad times (Ravens especially). At the beginning of the season, I thought we had a questionable roster that would be relying on a lot of young players. Some of them have done well (Raimann especially), others have had some rough games. But this was always gonna be a reset/evaluation season, and that's not just about how many games we win. It's been a huge success already, but IMO if anyone thinks this is a good team that's knocking on the door to contending, they're fooling themselves.

My evaluation of the OL isn't based on the results right now. I'm gonna be rewatching some in the coming weeks, but like you said, the QB play, the changing of RBs, injuries, and running a lot of RPO has a lot to do with the rushing production. Still, I felt early in the season that we weren't getting a lot of push in short yardage situations, and while it's been better at times, it's still not where it was when the OL was at its apex a couple years ago. What I'm not worried about is paying a lot for the OL just because people don't like having a highly paid OL. If we have good, reliable OL, then it's worth the money. We can't have five guys at the top of the market, but I think we can handle three for sure.

I don't mind having the highest paid OL, if they're playing well. Which means we need to start thinking about replacements for Kelly and Smith. Good OL play can be a force multiplier, and can separate us from other teams. There's a lot of bad OL play around the league. If it's a strength for us, I'm okay with doubling down on it.

Smith expires after 2025, just FYI. We'll see on Kelly. He's been fine, I don't know if there's anything to the noise that he might retire, but it's something to keep in mind. I also wonder if we could just upgrade the position. There are some decent FAs that might be available, at guard and center. Buckner is pretty scheme agnostic, IMO. He's played in 3-4 and 4-3, and is always good. He can play 5 tech, he just won't have the sack production. But we're not going to a 3-4 as long as Ballard is the GM, so that's not really a factor. Even if we change DCs -- and we probably won't -- Buckner should fit. For me, the question is whether the team timeline will make sense for both sides.

I think we can handle three OL at big money, but they have to be playing at a high level. If Smith misses half the season with nagging injuries in 2024 then I don't think he's back in 2025. We haven't heard much of anything about Smith's injury right now, so I don't even know what to think about it. I don't see us handing the keys to Freeland in 2024 though.

I don't think extending Kelly or Smith would be on the table. The numbers somewhat make sense if they were FAs. The DeFo extension makes sense, I think he could argue for slightly more but it would be close.