Superman

Granson is the one with more than double everyone else's production, so I'm fine with his $3.3m. Mo hardly catches passes and makes double. And Mo, Woods, and Ogletree are the Y guys, while Granson and Mallory are the Fs, so Mo's position is where the bloat would be. Whether it's value, roster mechanics, cap strategy, player potential, whatever, all signs point to Mo. I don't dislike him, I'm not hoping he's gone, he isn't holding the team back, it's not preventing us from adding anyone else, and it's not my money. I just think it's obvious who the odd man out would be.

I don't know. If you want the most leverage, I guess you'd wait until the dead of summer, when rosters are pretty much settled and everyone has spent all their free agency money. If you see it as black and white -- we'd like to keep the player at this amount, otherwise we'd rather move on -- then I guess it doesn't matter when you do it. In this specific situation, I think it would be best to do it before the off-season program starts, but if the Colts are wondering about Woods and Ogletree, then it makes sense to wait. What would have been best for the player would have been moving on at the start of the league year.

I agree that first rounders get overvalued at times. But I think part of that is people/teams viewing first rounders as if they are surefire playmakers on your roster, when in reality even teams that do a good job in the draft miss on first rounders all the time. And that's why the bolded doesn't seem like best practice either. You can talk yourself into any player. I think trading up in the first round is very risky. I'm not totally against it, but generally speaking, the best way to maximize your drafting is to maximize your total picks, not to concentrate all your draft capital into one selection. If your confidence in that one player is misplaced, you've now sunk two firsts and a second into a mistake. I don't strictly stick to the traditional points chart, and neither do teams, but I want to use the points just to illustrate my point. Pick #4 is worth 1,800 points. We have #15 which is worth 1,050 points, so of course you have to make up the 750 point difference. So you propose trading #15, plus the 2025 first (approx 1,000 points, potentially more or less depending on where you land next year), and the 2024 second (440 points), to get to #4. That's almost 2,500 points in draft value, in return for a pick worth 1,800 points. My point is that you're concentrating a lot of value into one high draft pick, on the basis of your high level of conviction in one prospect, so you really need to be right, otherwise it's very costly. I personally wouldn't do this unless it was for a QB that I felt really strong about.

Agreed. I think they need to open up some room for in-season buffer, just based on where the numbers are likely to stand after the cuts. We could probably project the final 53 at about $250m, plus another $3-4m for practice squad, so now we're about $7m under the cap. I assume they'll sign a vet or two after the draft, but even if they don't, that's running kind of thin for in-season moves. Even just for injury replacements. I feel like the target number is $10m, at least. And once they do Buckner's new contract, they can't restructure him again for 12 months. Since he's the most likely candidate for a cap reduction, it makes sense to reduce his number right now. The other likely move to free up cap space, is Mo, but now that the off-season program is starting, they're running the risk of him getting hurt on the job, and then you can't do anything with his contract. That's if they're even considering moving on from him in the first place. My expectation is Buckner's cap number comes down to $17m or so, adding $5-6m in cap space for 2024.

I don't see why we need the body. But again, I have a muted opinion of Mo, at least compared to the staff apparently.

I meant Woods, not Mallory, you're right. But the math is basically the same. And another consideration is that Woods and Ogletree both have concerns right now, so it makes sense to not rush any decision on Mo. If both of those guys are available and look good by the end of camp, we'll see what happens with Mo. There are some draft prospects, it's not super exciting, but I'm not worried about finding Mo's replacement. I think we have capable replacements already on the roster. Ogletree in particular seemed to be on his way to replacing Mo in the second half last year, and if you look at Woods' snaps in 2022 there's a similar usage.

Yeah, yall just don't hold your breath. Can't have all our Colts fanbase passing out while waiting for us to draft MHJ...

I think a lot of fans would would cut Mo a long time ago if it were up to them, so no doubt the team likes him more than the fans do. But I still wonder just how much the team actually values him. He played 38% of offensive snaps last year. His highest usage games by percentage were Raiders (61%), Pats (60%), and Texans 2nd (53%), all games in which Ogletree was unavailable. He was targeted 22 times last year -- Granson had 50, Mallory had 26, Ogletree had 21. So he's not a huge part of anything the offense is doing. Even if he's the best blocking TE we have -- and I don't think he's a great blocker, but that's JMO -- is he five times better than Ogletree or Mallory? Because he's making five times more money than either of them. I think if Ogletree comes back, Mo is on the bubble. And maybe would have been released already if not for the Ogletree uncertainty. Again, JMO.

Yup. A simple way to summarize my earlier point is that the Colts keeping their own is not a departure. The Colts allowing so many of their own to hit free agency is the real departure, and that's not likely to be the new pattern. And like you said earlier, the Colts sign free agents after the draft every year, so we'll probably see some veteran free agents added. I don't know how many, we already have 76 players under contract per Spotrac, then we'll draft 8-10, plus 10+ UDFAs. Most teams are in the low to mid 70s, the Eagles have 77, while teams that got gutted have fewer (Chargers are the lowest with 57; Ravens have 61). We'll see some roster churn, but there aren't a lot of spots right now.

Keep the dream alive, but I feel compelled to state that this is Big 10 media day, and the Big 10 championship game always takes place at LOS, so that's probably what MHJ was talking about.

I think it's pretty much required. Once you get past the cut downs and we're counting the 53 man roster + practice squad, I think there's a chance that we're at $5-10m in remaining cap space. If it's less than $10m, they probably want more buffer for in-season moves. DeFo's contract is the most practical target for creating more cap space in 2024, so I'd be surprised if this doesn't reduce his cap hit by $5m or so.

I don't think this is that big of a deal. There are some circumstances that make it seem like a different approach, but really it's not. First, the Colts have always made an effort to sign their own. They just usually sign them before they reach free agency. Using Spotrac's list, those players -- Nelson, Leonard, Smith, Moore, Grover, Speed, Franklin, JT, etc. -- don't factor into to the breakdown of how much a team has spent in free agency, because they sign before their contracts expire. It doesn't even include Pittman because they tagged him. Second, the Colts re-signed several free agent players to third contracts -- Grover, Moore, Rigo Sanchez, Lewis (4th, but that's because of injuries), etc. Most of them were players developed by the Colts, who had previously signed extensions before their rookie contracts expired. I think it's as simple as the Colts having a lot of their core hitting free agency at the same time, and rather than extending them before they expired like they have historically, they let most of them play out their contracts in 2023. And that's kind of what they signaled they would do last offseason. Everyone was asking about JT and Pittman, and Ballard indicated that they wanted to see how the team would respond to the ugly 2022 season, with a new coaching staff, etc. But besides JT and Pittman, there was Moore, Grover, Lewis, Blackmon, Rigo, Pinter, etc., all players with considerable roles on the team that were expiring as well. If there's any change in approach, it's not keeping their own. It's allowing their own to hit free agency in the first place. And judging from the Buckner extension today, I'd say the standard will still be to re-sign their own players before letting them hit the market, and 2023 was an aberration due the circumstances.

There might be value for roster mechanics. I'm just thinking about whether the league would suspend a player who is all but exonerated. I don't think they would. (That's my opinion of the situation. The league might uncover credible evidence that Ogletree was perpetrating some domestic violence. I'm assuming they don't uncover anything that the criminal investigators couldn't find.) Would the Colts release him if he's suspended? I think so. Rodgers was a critical piece of the roster. They waited for the outcome of the investigation, and when the league suspended him, they cut him immediately, even though it severely impacted one of our most precarious position groups. I know that was for gambling, and they took a zero tolerance stance for obvious reasons. I think they'd have a zero tolerance stance for domestic violence as well. To your side note, yeah I saw that as well. Common sense change, I'm happy to see it. I think the league could stand to loosen up even more roster restrictions. It would be good for player development and roster stability.

It's a statistical analysis. So, as it applies to the Texans, unless someone expects those three to produce the same way they did last season, their receiving yards and average rank will likely be different.

Yeah, I don't like this at all. I don't care about him taking the heat at the podium, I care about him getting coached and then responding. I understand not wanting to shatter the confidence of your starting QB, especially when his ego seems fragile to begin with. But it's okay -- necessary, even -- for your QB to know that if he's reckless and unpredictable, he won't stay on the field.

The Colts waited for the league to make a decision with Rodgers. It appears they're doing the same with Ogletree. IF the league suspends Ogletree, it wouldn't surprise me if the Colts release him.

I think the nature of the difference is important. In this case, it seems to me that the investigation of Ogletree casts serious doubt on the validity of the accusation. If the NFL investigation leads them to believe that he actually did engage in domestic violence, then that's a different story. None of us knows the details, so I guess we'll see. In Elliott's case, he was not found not guilty. He was never charged, apparently because prosecutors didn't think they had enough to bring a winnable case. The NFL investigated and found what they called credible evidence to support the allegations. If that's the case with Ogletree, then a suspension is likely. I'm just assuming, based on the charges being dismissed with prejudice, that there's no credible evidence, and the evidence they used to charge him was later shown to be not just insufficient, but inaccurate. Otherwise, the charges would have been dismissed without prejudice, in case they decide to refile charges in the future. With prejudice seems close to an exoneration. And it seems like people expect the NFL to issue a suspension simply because he was accused and charged, so they have to do something. But if there's no credible evidence, I don't think there will be a suspension. Again, I don't know any of the details, and I could be wrong, I just think dismissed with prejudice is an important factor here. And I don't think the league will default to a suspension if there's no credible evidence.

I watched the first two, and I can't take anymore. The one against the Rams was run as designed, those shovel passes are often thrown with the left hand. He probably could have recognized that Doyle wasn't going to get there and just thrown it away, but that wasn't totally his fault. The one against the Titans is inexplicable. Not a great play call, and the execution up front was terrible... but again, just throw the ball away, put it in the dirt and live to fight another day. There's just no way to get comfortable with that kind of QB play. And I don't think that video shows all of his left handed passes. From memory, I think there were 15 of them that season.

Why would you do this??

I don't know anymore than anyone else, but I don't see why he would be suspended, based on what's been reported. I can't think of any other player who was accused of something, had all charges dismissed -- with prejudice, in this case -- and then was still suspended by the league.

I've said before, the inconsistency from play to play is something I wasn't prepared for. I watched some of his games with the Eagles before we made the trade, but watching him every week, running the offense for my team, it's a different story. I couldn't appreciate the impact of his wild swings from good to bad and back again when I wasn't emotionally invested in the outcome of every drop back. His decision making was downright reckless at times.

It's definitely an interesting visit. I don't keep track of top 30 visits because I don't know if there's a real connection to be made, but when we're at #15 and spending this kind of time with a top 5-10 guy, it's worth noticing. Fifteen days...

Even in a vacuum, the Foles thing was bad. If you see it as part of a pattern, it's 100x worse. I don't think the issues vanished suddenly. I believe that good leadership has to develop organically, not just because a new person is installed. However, we saw some accountability as soon as Saturday arrived. And more of it with Steichen. But what would be best would be players meeting the high standard, and holding one another to the same high standard. I don't know if I connect this to the poor performances in 2023. We had a limited QB, a roster with some holes, and an uninspiring DC. And unlike 2021 when the team didn't bother to show up for a make-or-break season finale, last year they finished with some passion and heart, and lost on a poorly executed play late in the 4th quarter. It would be good to see some leaders step up -- I think Franklin has been saying the right stuff -- but I think there's been a noticeable shift from the Reich days. Ultimately, you have to win some meaningful games and have a measure of success for any of this to matter.

To clarify from that "cliche" post, that poster said everything that people say about white DBs and WRs, and I wasn't sure if he was doing it on purpose or not. Probably not, which is fascinating to me. On topic, as a disclaimer, please note that these are my thoughts only, just my perspective. I think Frank Reich didn't do a good job setting standards and holding people accountable. I think he actively avoided confrontation with his best players. I think this was probably most obvious with Carson Wentz in 2021, especially toward the end of the year when it seemed obvious that Wentz's play wasn't reliable. I also think there's a connection to be made with the Covid/vaccine stuff, but I don't want to go down that road. Ultimately, I think the team was soft, especially mentally. It's probably unfair to blame that entirely on Reich and Wentz, but I think they were a big part of it. And between the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, I think a lot of that came to a head, and the result was an underperforming team that was shrinking in the biggest moments. I think Irsay hit the nail on the head when he said fear and doubt had crept into the building. And rather than sitting back and watching, Irsay turned up the heat. He was texting players about how important it was to win the opener. He extended Ballard and Reich, but called them in for tough meetings after the 2021 season, and early in 2022. While I don't like how he handled the Reich/Saturday stuff, I think he recognized that it was necessary to shake things up, and to a certain extent he brought Saturday in to sniff some things out. It wasn't the best process, but I think he meant to burn out whatever fear and doubt he sensed in the operation. And after the dust cleared, it was pretty obvious to me how Irsay felt about things.

This is what I posted a couple months ago: I just watched some of Jared Verse. He's a pretty good athlete, good size, adequate length, seems powerful, and he definitely passes the eyeball test as a football player. Good motor during his rushes, kind of jogs around once the ball goes away from him. He has a good first step, not super explosive, so don't be fooled by the plays where he times up the snap perfectly. He can come out of his stance too high, and then sometimes he'll be too far out over his feet, but when his leverage is right, he can go speed to power and embarrass the lineman. Good chop move, good swim, he'll spin but it's not super effective. Speaking of, he can be incredibly undisciplined with some of his moves, taking himself out of position, giving up rushing lanes, abandoning edge containment, and it happens a little too often. And it's really the lack of of discipline that bugs me throughout the game. He's also not a great tackler, kind of dives around a lot and will miss the ball carrier. He's not great in space, and he doesn't bend the edge very well... look for a mediocre three cone and shuttle. There are also times when he looks like the most unstoppable player on the field. Watch the Florida game, or the Louisville game... sheesh. Just a wrecking ball. There are plays where he sets up a blocker and hits them with a counter, and even plays where he has to go to his second or third move to beat the blocker, and has some success. If he can refine his technique, and stabilize his attacks, he can be a pretty good DE and pass rusher. If he's disciplined, he can hold up against the run. I don't see him having a high ceiling in the NFL and being a consistent double digit sack guy, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him have a long career. Think Brandon Graham. He probably wouldn't be my favorite pick at #15.