John Waylon

And let’s just be honest with ourselves: some of his 2nd rounders would have been vast improvements if only they had ever been able to attain “JAG” status.

Too many of Ballard’s second rounders are.

Also, grigson and Ballard could not be any farther apart when it comes to their FA approach so take that last sentence and just go throw that one in the trash, because it was a flat-out lie.

Well he can’t be a bust this year then, can he? We’re talking about in the hypothetical situation that he doesn’t pan out, not whatever is about to happen in September.

If Richardson is a bust there’s a 0% chance he keeps his job. What owner in the league would keep a GM for 10 years with no division titles, who obviously can’t land a QB to do what he wants? We’ve sat around for over a year now and talked about how tied to Richardson Ballard is with absolutely no dispute, and now all the sudden he’s magically not?! No. If Richardson is a bust Ballard is going to be someone else’s problem. There is a 100% chance.

Oh what the #? What the * #?

It’s entirely justified. I love Richardson. I love what I’ve seen, I believe in him as the guy. But we need to see him on the field this year. He was injured in every game he played last year. All 4 of them. 😑 It’s still early to crown him as the savior. We need to see he’s durable enough to earn wear the crown, and that’s a very real and valid concern heading into this season. Hopefully he is. Would love to see it. Would love to see him light the league on fire this year. However, that’s not a given, and in the event (just in the hypothetical event,) that it doesn’t work out with him, Ballard has done nothing to make this team any better than it was in December when they lost the division to the Texans. The a Texans who actually have done things to get better since taking the division away from us in our house in December.

Bargain bin bandaid Ballard and his little buddy the binder. Just keep throwing lime green RAS bars at the problems and hope for the best.

We won more games last year because we actually had more than a loaf of bread at QB. Matt Ryan showed up with the stink of grizzly death permeating around him, and we finally had a coach who wasn’t a complete and blithering simpleton. We absolutely did not win any more games because of anything our defense did. In fact, we probably would have won more games last year if our defense hadn’t sucked on average. Yeah, let’s run that back.

I saw the work our own guys could do last year. Every awful drive of it. Bend, bend, bend, and then break. They didn’t cut it. Anyone who didn’t spend last season stuck on the dark side of the moon didn’t need much help to arrive at that conclusion Putting 0 effort into fixing that doesn’t actually fix it. We can’t even bring guys in for a visit and at least pretend to make an effort. Something about the definition of insanity and doing the same thing over to the same results or something like that…

If Richardson busts, I’ve no interest. None. 0. Less than 0. No matter what pick we end up with and what prospects are available to us at that pick. We could have a 20 year old Peyton Manning available to us and I wouldn’t have any interest in seeing Ballard get a chance to make that pick. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen every bloody bit of what he’s capable of, and it is not good enough. We've seen that there are multiple facets of his process as a GM that are critically flawed, and that’s just not going to cut it. It hasn’t cut it. I have no interest in this team continuing to swing and miss on him while he swings (or sits by idly,) and misses on improving this team. That is not a recipe for success.

Because his * is on the line. Square on the line. If Richardson doesn’t work out, he’s curtains. We've given this guy a pair of presidencies now to make this team into anything, and it’s stuck squarely in the middle, if not slightly worse, and his record reflects that. If Richardson doesn’t work out, the absolute best thing Ballard could do to keep as much of that stink off of himself as he could would be to build a team that showed improvements in other areas. It’s the ONLY thing that gives Ballard any chance of surviving a Richardson bust. But he can’t point to any of the units on this team and say “at least we’ve made that better” in his own defense. This “sitting around to wait and see” approach hasn’t worked. It doesn’t work. It won’t work.

Every year grigson flailed wildly to fix the offensive line his entire tenure. And still never accomplished that. Just because you draft a guy ≠ fix. Especially when you have a history of day 1 and 2 whiffs as long as Ballard does. A swing and a miss is a swing and a darn miss no matter how much effort and good intention go into the swing. Now the misses are starting to pile up, and they’re getting dangerously close to out-weighing the hits. It’s just more bandaids, now at positions other than QB. There were ways to noticeably improve this defense without breaking the bank in FA, but we’re doubling down and running it back instead. If we sign anyone it’s going to be some mid player on a short, team-friendly deal and our secondary is gonna look like a bunch of jabronis out there this fall. Again. Then we’ll have to sit around in the fall and talk about why the defense hasn’t gotten any better and is the difference keeping us from being a contender. Hell, we still need WRs just two years after “I like the guys we have” and now it’s a problem that’s made its way to the secondary. If only someone could solve this inescapable mystery of the universe. If only, I say! We've seen the effect, we’ve seen the cause, why people are putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 5 is beyond explanation at this point.

How can it be? A backup DT and Joe Flacco are our additions. And I don’t want to sit here and muse whether or not Joe * Flacco makes this team better than it was 3 months ago because his impact needs to be as close to nil as possible. We drafted a guy for that very reason.

We already saw what our secondary is capable of doing. Or not doing, as it would be. Running it back is not exactly a bright prospect, and wouldn’t you know what it seems Ballard is fine with if they didn’t go after Sneed, or seemingly anyone else. Its “I like the guys we’ve got at WR” all over again. As we still need a WR who can make any kind of impact in the first or second round of this draft just two years after the last time we spent our first draft pick on a WR. The pattern is there, you just have to pick up on it.

So they haven’t tried to get Sneed and Ballard just ignored DBs in FA? Alrighty then.

Well that whole thing about getting a backup that we didn’t have to change the offense for has died on the floor…

They like Zamir White, and if they were every actually going to give him a chance, this would be the time to pull the trigger.

I guess we’re not getting Cousins then…

Enjoy! The wife and I just started to finalize all our trips to the track in May yesterday. The excitement is already building.

Indycar season starts this weekend, FA starts Monday, what a time to be alive.

This cap increase, knowing it was coming and would be substantial, is why I never put any stock in any of the ballyhoo about making Taylor one of the highest paid backs in the league. This increase takes a significant sting out of that, and after yet another record breaking profit margin it’s going to happen again next season. Woe is us, how will we ever be able to afford to field a team in the future with one of the highest paid RBs in the league?

Blowing out Philly at home without Haliburton was definitely nice.

Awful rough stretch the Pacers are going through right now. Got Haliburton back and now he’s gone again. And the rest of this week doesn’t get any easier. 😑