throwing BBZ
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Posts posted by throwing BBZ
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5 hours ago, Stephen said:
Only if he is Revis day 1. I feel like rookie wrs have a bigger impact than rookie corners
You have 10,500 posts but are worried how good a rookie is for what is likely a 3rd place team. Pure nonsense. There is no rush to develop our talent.
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9 hours ago, Superman said:
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.
Irsay on the tarmac made it clear that this shall not stand.
He attacked the problem with positively and unbridled enthusiasm, unfortunately Preacher Frank's message fell flat with his congregation.
I give Irsay an A+ for having the clarity to fire Frank when he did and replacing him with Saturday. Saturday's leadership and enthusiasm are off the charts and the players knew that he was Irsays eyes. Nothing Irsay could have done would have been more motivating.
Win or lose going forward today, look at the success rate on how many from that fall remain the core of our hopes to win.
Thank goodness for Tepper hiring Frank and taking on that salary, and there was fairy dust in the air the day Steichen walked through our door.
We have an Irsay daughter invested in the front office and one wearing a headset on the sideline. Enthusiastically keeping an eye on things.
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7 hours ago, DougDew said:
In addition to Rice. Taylor, Dwight Clark, Roger Craig in an era when RBs mattered more, Joe Montana still made plays based upon more of his football traits, not so much personal athletic traits. That's is a distinct difference in entertainment value for me.
But that goes way back before the salary cap, when SF stacked the team.
I hope Ballard builds out the roster with talent in the "right" places.
If he continues with 4.5 corners defending 4.3's WR were done.
It's simple. Pierce, Woods, Cross, Downs, Brents, Ogeltree, Mallory have to play good football. Year two with Steichen and our whole team should be a little better, a little sharper. Another little bump from Dayo and Kwity.
In the draft give us a shutdown corner, a fast route runner WR, a couple of good safety prospects and this team can make real progress by seasons end.
Then next off season Ballard can pull the string for that 1- 2 players to go for it.
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1 hour ago, DougDew said:
Actions speak louder than words. A team is more interesting when its heros are dispersed throughout the team and not focused on one Michael Jordan and his stats. You obviously have a problem with that opinion or else you wouldn't be trolling trying to irritate me.
Joe Montana played very much like Mahomes does. The difference is that Montana had much better players around him. What Mahomes has accomplished year after year, clutch play after clutch play, is extraordinary.
And Michael Jordan won Championships with a lot of help.
AR is going to play very well, when he plays. And I am going to greatly enjoy watching our line compete, and our offensive weapons under Steichen's guidance.
And I have no faith that Ballard/Gus can put up enough defense to get us to the playoffs.
Sneed was at the top of the list as core.
They ran out of $$ for LOL.
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15 minutes ago, DougDew said:
Credible to whom? Is there somebody here who has the credentials to hand out who is credible and who isn't? Maybe in their own minds I suppose.
I laid out why it wasn't enjoyable. It was boring. One of the worst seasons ever. I'm sure most on the national level thought the team was boring as well. For me, satisfaction doesn't come from a narrow lens of simple numbers of wins vs losses.
I'm not being disagreeable. I'm not arguing what YOUR opinion should be on a matter. I'm giving a personal opinion that I thought the season was terrible...not compelling at all to watch...and that opinion seems to offend you.
Watching our overall defense against mediocre competition was generally frought with unpleasantness. Not enjoyable.
Steichen and his staff got a 5 win offense in the victory lane, again playing just an increment better than teams that didn't play so well.
I couldn't be happier that that duck and run novelty act found a new home.
And those of you that enjoy touting how fun the season was watching that level of football, i would have much preferred drafting 4th -5th in every round this draft.
That would have been something Positive for our future. Those garbage wins were quite damaging.
Did Ballard or Gus and his staff learn anything useful? 🤔 lol
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It's a shame he so loved the deep ball that he took all those big shots, plus he relied so much on running the dang ball and more big shots.
Harbaugh flat out lied pre-draft saying that he could make all the throws.
His rookie year it was WTH with these poor simple bubble screen passes, and then 3 years of hundreds of inaccurate short throws.
It was fun beating the tar out of Jaxs and the Texans and other weak teams.
He was barely above .500 otherwise.
Yes I would rather he didn't quit but, you win some "playing like a LB", and He risked all playing like one.
In the end, he took the $$$ and was still able to run.
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51 minutes ago, NewColtsFan said:
If the scouting department had some bad people — and that’s a very BIG IF by the way — wouldn’t you think those people are long, LONG gone? They shouldn’t be hard to identify. Any decent GM should be able to spot the weakest link in a department full of people.The scouts/Dodds are given Ballard's well defined parameters on what he is looking for. Not sure how you assign the blame for any of those 160 or so on our draft board that have been assessed by so many that are in our process.
After this long questioning Ballard's grading philosophy certainly is on the table.
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3 hours ago, CoachLite said:
Sounds like you think the Colts are what the Washington Generals are to Harlem Globetrotters in basketball - a bunch of JAGs.
What do we have that is SB caliber?
7 d-lineman
4 o-lineman
1 WR
1 slot
1 RB
I think our TE room can be that good, Woods must kick tail.
It's mystery meat with our secondary, and our LB's have to improve. As does our WR contribution.
And it takes one heckuva QB to beat Playoff teams. Show me.
As we anxiously await our draft results. We need two future high end starters to come from this draft.
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30 minutes ago, Superman said:
It's exactly true. He was pathetic, and if they wanted to win he would have been replaced much sooner. Wasn't it Orlovsky that did finally replace him and darned near cost us Luck? No way we get Luck if Orlovsky started just a few more games.
One can say we came into the season with Collins with hopes of being .500.
Once it failed, we were all in for Luck.
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11 hours ago, AwesomeAustin said:
Correct about the QB. Drew Brees had 8 seasons on teams with a .500 or worse record were he played in majority of the games. That’s almost a decade of losing in his career. I do think the Colts have a really good roster. If AR is everything the Colts planned for him to be, they should have some success the next three years. This is an AFC championship appearance roster with great QB play.
Interesting.
We lack pass rush.
Our LB's are weak in coverage, with No depth.
The secondary looks to be bottom 5.
Nobody believes in Pierce as a quality 2.
Our QB is still a ?
We look like a bottom 10 now.
There was high Quality play from both sides of the ball from the final 8 teams in the playoffs.
With Irsay/Ballard, .500 seems to be the business model.
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12 hours ago, Jason_ said:
So here are the couple of reasons why I can't completely rule it out.
First, you don't really need all that many people involved. It could have been done with only 3 people and a mandate to a 4th (more on that in a sec). The 3 people would be Irsay, Caldwell and Christiansen.
I do think they all thought they could be competitive with Kerry Collins, but that crashed and burned pretty quickly and it became pretty apparent that the roster wasn't quite as good as a lot of people had previously believed. At this point, Irsay realizes it's time to move on from Polian and do a pretty hefty overhaul of the roster, but he does believe in Caldwell and Christiansen so he plans to keep them. He tells them to just make sure the offense doesn't get on any kind of a roll. He also tells Caldwell to make sure Coyer doesn't get creative or blitz.
Also, Caldwell was still the HC when Irsay hired Grigson. Once Grigson was hired, both Caldwell and Christiansen were still the HC and OC. In fact, both Grigson and Caldwell interviewed Steve Spagnuolo to be the new DC. Rumors were that Spags perhaps showed interest in the job but he would in no way work under Caldwell. It wasn't long after that interview took place that Caldwell was also fired. As for Christiansen, he was the one member of the coaching staff that was retained for 2012, though he was moved from OC to QB coach.
Remember, after Coyer was fired, he gave an interview where he said his playcalling was handcuffed and that he was told he wasn't allowed to blitz. Said something about it being an organizational mandate or something like that.
I remember the defensive playcalling that season very vividly. It was only a few games into the season when it was starting to infuriate me how often I saw them running Tampa 2 coverage. Every team runs Tampa 2 coverage sometimes, not just teams that are designated as a tampa 2 defense. I started keeping an excel spreadsheet tracking every defensive playcall in every colts game. The amount of time they were in tampa 2 coverage was ridiculous and we had discussions about it here. Towards the end of the season, during one of the games, the announcers even started talking about it and a graphic was put on screen showing the top 5 teams than ran tamp 2 coverage the most. The team that ran tampa 2 coverage the 2nd most frequently ran it on around 20-22% of the time. Numbers 3, 4 and 5 were also in the low 20%. The Colts were number 1 at something well over 55-60% of the time.
So, was Coyer's playcalling handcuffed to ensure the defense would be as bland and predictable (and therefore ineffective) as possible? Or had he just become an incompetent DC by that point?
Not saying it did happen, but I also can't say that it didn't and I don't think it's as far fetched an idea as some would think. Take that for what it's worth.
We certainly tanked. They kept playing Painter. The end.
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4 hours ago, DougDew said:
Yes. My goal of this entire discussion is to bring out the fact, I believe, that Ballard believes in the concept of blue chip players, and identifies that line every draft. Its just a matter of whether the value is there to make the trade. If you think that circumstances have changed a bit from the previous 8 years...notably being sold on AR and the depth of his roster.....and the SS factor.....its possible that the change might cause us to witness something we've never really seen before under Ballard.
Just saying, I wouldn't be dismissing a trade up from 15 out of hand because "its not what Ballard does" type of thing.
CB1
WR1
FS1
RG
LB future starter/depth
These are 5 positions that must be filled and developed before will ever have a chance to even have a sniff at a AFC Championship game. This is no time to be spending picks from the first 3 rounds this draft because there are solid prospects as future, much needed starters.
Now a 3rd or later from next years draft to help go up and get a guy. Go for it.
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1 hour ago, Horse Shoe Heaven said:
Glad hes back, hes better every year last year was his best and when healthy he is pretty good. 1 year deal is great considering his health & and lack of safeties on the roster
We have suffered with painful miscommunication on the back end so playing another year together as a unit should us help us improve on it.
And I am also a BIG believer in having a slew of your best players in their prime. I consider that in years 4-8.
This is another big year for our young players to get prepared for us to challenge the best in 2025 and beyond.
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8 hours ago, GoColts8818 said:
Yeah pretty clear what happen Blackmon realized there was no market for what he wanted and he went back to the Colts who needed a starting safety badly and both sides agreed to do a prove it deal for one year. Win win for both sides. Gives the Colts help and gives Blackmon the best chance to perform with a team and system he already knows.
I wasn’t crazy about keeping Blackmon because I figured any deal would be long term and I didn’t like that because of his injury history and the fact I don’t like giving big contracts to guys who have a major career year in a contract year. However, it’s very hard to argue with this move given how the contract shock out.
If he had a "major career year" he would have gotten a 3 year deal for $21M.
He made a number of aggressive splash plays near the line of scrimmage, but for anyone watching, he got washed out defending the outside too frequently. And for those PFF numbers, he got a big boost from 4 int.'s. 3 balls overthrown right to him standing back in his cushiony zone.
My estimation would be that the Colts grading system was closer to a PFF equivalent in the lower 60's.
The good thing is the cheap "backup level" deal. He already "proved" his abilities. Let's hope Cross keeps him mostly on the bench.
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34 minutes ago, DougDew said:
So, you are saying that there should be a difference-maker at 15, and that is QMitchell? The draft runs that deep in difference makers? (projection of course)
Now we are just having some fun with this of course.
Latu, Brian Thomas, Latham, Adoni Mitchell, I project to be future kick tail players. DeJean might make a superb Safety.
There is nothing more important for our offense than to have a dominant o-line. Getting us a RG that is a road grader and excellent pass protector would immediately help with everything thing we do.
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34 minutes ago, DougDew said:
Is it a deep "difference-maker" draft? How much more young 2nd and 3rd round level talent does the team need?
The lamentation to trade for a $19M per 4th rounder was very loud here.
Your question is uncharacteristically seemingly off target. We need as many as we can get.
If we can't get QMitchell, trading back with AZ. for 27 and 35 should make Ballard twitch.
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2 hours ago, ColtStrong2013 said:
I would rather hope, if drafting Mitchell, the FO would bring a vet in at safety and make Flowers/Jones compete for the 3rd spot (not factoring Moore at the nickel). Brents is a starting corner moving forward, I don’t see anyway around that.OK, thank you. I really do appreciate your vision and football knowledge.
Surely Brents couldn't possibly be a better safety.
We will see how his 4.5s speed holds up over a season.
I'm anticipating your vet to be a 1 year placeholder as we develop another young player. We are likely competing with Tenn. this season to stay out of the division cellar and it's a must cap wise to stay inexpensive at safety for beyond 2024.
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25 minutes ago, ColtStrong2013 said:
Why does he need to address the room before the draft? If the safety market hasn't moved much prior to the draft, why would he rush that? The more patience he has, the less he spends and the longer Blackmon waits, the less he makes, imo. I don't see the urgency that others do. We may end up with Cooper DeJean in the draft, and they might feel that he and a low cost vet is suitable. Who knows.
Draft Q Mitchell, move Brents to safety. As of now Jones and Flowers compete for the other corner.
I like the idea of Brents and Cross on the backend, with a shutdown Mitchell on an edge. I think it can be the start of something very enjoyable.
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On 3/21/2024 at 6:50 PM, AKB said:
i want him to keep doing exactly what he is doing so I can keep complaining about it.
which in my mind, means we probably fill a gap rd 1 instead of taking bpa, like we normally do, that probably extends to rd 2
then we sign another budget or two, sign an udfa, and we go about .500 again.
gus gets fired, and Ballard gets another year or two. that's likely what's gonna happen, and I'm gonna complain on here every day about it.
So be wise and put this piehole on IGNORE and move on.
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28 minutes ago, GoColts8818 said:
1. Waiting does often times lead to players lowering their asking price because they realize they aren’t going to get what they wanted.
2. I think Ballard made the decision to move on from Blackmon for better or worse. Hence Blackmon not being signed and unfollowing the Colts on social media.
3. I think they need a vet safety back there too. What is Ballard going to do? I have no idea.
4. I still find it interesting some fans have been hammering Ballard for spending all his money on keeping his own and not going out and getting other players while also wanting to know why Ballard hasn’t re-signed Blackmon.
My shot is that knowing the S draft is weak, the 3 good safeties agents have their heels dug in for multi-year deals with good pay for their clients. It is the job to get the most guaranteed $$ as the market will bear. The Colts are one team that is going to pay one of them as our cupboard is as darn near empty.
It's safe to say the Colts are interested in more than 1 of them so now it's a game of chicken about how close does the FA get to the draft before his agent decides on getting his guy a locked in job for the best offer available.
Ballard can easily wait till one of them signs, then he will have to step up his aggression.
Unless, he feels good about there being acceptable players coming available right up to final cuts. But I seriously doubt that. He will sign someone shortly before the draft I wager. One year $7.8 M
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4 hours ago, ShuteAt168 said:
I’ll give ol’ Sub .500 Ballard credit for one thing: His constant gaslighting and excuse making has conditioned his army of fans to be ready with an excuse whenever a good player moves teams but not to the Colts.
- He costs too much.
- He might have a bad knee.- Not even the best CB on his own team
- Too old
- We already have Paye
- Only the trenches matter
- Fans in city X don’t like him
- Luck retired, we don’t have a young QB
- We have a young QB now but he’s not ready
- We’re not good enough to go for it
- Doesn’t fit our culture
- We trust our own guys more
- Better to build through the draft
- He must not like Indianapolis
- There are still other free agents out there
- B player wants A money
- We got Dulin coming back healthy
- We like our X room of guys
- Our guys will get better with new position coach
- Let a dumb GM spend on player X
- AR will take a big step so we don’t need player X
- Delay your gratification
- Our approach has us in the upper quartile
I was hoping this was a post worth reading.
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1 hour ago, throwing BBZ said:
The Colts played zone vs man about 71/29. Most teams played more zone than Gus. That with our secondary stinkaroo. Gus had to love Gilly.
Gus also will call the defense as Steichen tells him what is in our best interest.
Q Mitchell singularly offers the best bang for the buck. If he is gone next is Brian Thomas.
Mitchell is arguably the best click-and-close zone cornerback in the class, with high-end athleticism and major competitiveness. He looked great playing in press coverage during drills at the Senior Bowl. One scout told us he had a case as the best player in Mobile this year, and he’s a picture-perfect fit in Gus Bradley’s heavy Cover-3 defense. From pff
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5 hours ago, Jason_ said:
It has been explained multiple times in this thread and others that:
1) The draft is not about THIS YEAR. It's about the next several years. It's about continuing to build your core players for the long term
2) It would not be a "waste" to pick a DT at 15. He could very well wind up being Buckner's replacement.
3) The only way a CB is selected in round 1 is if Gus is going to start employing more man coverage. If they're going to stick with being a mostly zone team, then I doubt we ever see a CB selected in the first round.
The Colts played zone vs man about 71/29. Most teams played more zone than Gus. That with our secondary stinkaroo. Gus had to love Gilly.
Gus also will call the defense as Steichen tells him what is in our best interest.
Q Mitchell singularly offers the best bang for the buck. If he is gone next is Brian Thomas.
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On 3/27/2024 at 8:31 AM, lester said:
The last two seasons worth of leadership moves could be as simple as a desire by the regime for consistency.
Anyone here ever try to fix a business that was under-performing? You don't cut the whole thing to pieces all at once. That is counter productive.
The leaders knew which of the big things they wanted to tackle last year. Now they have new challenges to solve for this year. Solve those, then decide if another change makes the machine work better.
There are posters who may disagree with what I am trying to describe. I know from my career in business that doing it all at once makes the process seem faster (action!) but does not mean the changes are necessarily the right changes; and speed does not ensure the change is in the right direction. Ever notice how some teams blow it all up every couple years? Again and again? That is what I am describing.
The Ryan and Leonard guaranteed $$ cost us at least one real nice free agent add. That is a setback. We are free and clear with the ability to add a few really good players in areas of significant need in the draft and still room for another hole filler for this season. 2024 will be a much more solid team.
And we have the HC to get the best out of our guys.
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Julian Blackmon Returning for 2024
in Colts Football
Posted
Nothing has held Ballard back from building a talented back seven.
His belief in providing big, slow corners, and a LB in Franklin that struggles defending the middle of the field playing back in his zone, limits our safeties being aggressive. Gus and his coaches seem incompetent.
Someone above Ballard/Dodds must weigh in.