Still Rebuilding

[OJl]

Oh well.  The way I see it, today's game was gravy.  We are only in year 2 of the rebuild.  We made the playoffs in both years of the rebuild which is pretty freaking incredible if you think about it. 

 

Grigson has a LOT of work ahead of him.  Too bad we gave up our first round pick to find out that Trent Richardson is a pedestrian RB.  We could have signed Payton Hillis or some crap like that and still kept our first rounder pick.  Oh well...

 

The offense should naturally be better next year just by getting the IR guys back...Reggie, Ballard, Allen, Thomas, etc.  Rogers needs to have a BIG off season.  He's in.  He's a part of the plans for the immediate future.  He needs to work hard because he'll be given a shot to be a Gamewrecker next year.  Brazill showed enough to be brought back over the last several weeks.  Good game today by Brazill.  O-line was a mess at times this year.  Then there were flashes of solid play.  Just bring in more talented guys and figure out who your best 5 are.  Let them play together and build continuity.

 

Defensively, this team was terrible in the playoffs.  They closed the season with three straight really good performances.  But they fell apart the last two weeks.  Prior to all of that, they were bad in the middle of the year.  But early in the year, they were pretty good.  Like the O-line, they just need talent everywhere.  Their secondary depth is terrible.  Davis, Toler, and Davis were good when they were all healthy.  But once injuries hit, the depth wasn't there.  Werner was the invisible man this year.  Hopefully he takes a leap next year.  D-line is supposed to be bigger and more stout against the run.  Tonight they got gouged and they have been shredded several times this year.  That was disappointing. 

 

Yet, despite all of that...Andrew...Freaking...Luck.  He's going to be the best QB in the NFL before too long.  He's got something about him that just screams winner.  T.Y. looks like he will be another Desean Jackson/Victor Cruz type at worst.  At best, he can be Marvin Harrison-lite. 

 

And for the love of God, FIND A KICK RETURNER!!!

[Andy]

I actually agree with the majority of your reasoning, but the Colts are not rebuilding. 

 

The Colts are not starting from scratch. They rebuilt quickly last year and now they are building a mansion. They've laid down the foundation and finished the first floor. They need to add on a 2nd level and a 3rd level in the next couple of years.

 

Not rebuilding anymore.

[OJl]

I get where you are coming from but let's not fool ourselves.  The Colts are a rebuilding team.  They are not starting from scratch because this was year 2 of the rebuild.  Grigson probably came onboard with a 4 or 5 year plan.  At this point, I would say he is a little ahead of schedule in terms of the results.  The potential problem is:  Did we play over our heads the past two years or Is our talent really that good?

 

If the talent in place is really that good then we can sustain it for the long term.

 

If we played over our heads a bit the last two years, there will be a crash back to earth season looming (the proverbial one step back to take two step forwards type of thing).

 

The thing is, Luck is so freaking good it will be hard to gauge things because he covers up a lot of flaws on the team.  Excited for the draft, even though we don't have a number 1.  Go Denver Peytons!

[azcolt]

Agreed. Luck covers up the many talent deficiencies just as PM did. Without AL we'd be about 2-14 again. However Grigson has a short window to build up the talent before Andrew is taking $20 mil of the salary pool. He'd better spend more wisely this offseason. And no more Trent screwups.

[#12]

Too bad we gave up our first round pick to find out that Trent Richardson is a pedestrian RB. 

 

We wish he were that good. 

[Smash Mouth]

I get where you are coming from but let's not fool ourselves.  The Colts are a rebuilding team.  They are not starting from scratch because this was year 2 of the rebuild.  Grigson probably came onboard with a 4 or 5 year plan.  At this point, I would say he is a little ahead of schedule in terms of the results.  The potential problem is:  Did we play over our heads the past two years or Is our talent really that good?

 

If the talent in place is really that good then we can sustain it for the long term.

 

If we played over our heads a bit the last two years, there will be a crash back to earth season looming (the proverbial one step back to take two step forwards type of thing).

 

The thing is, Luck is so freaking good it will be hard to gauge things because he covers up a lot of flaws on the team.  Excited for the draft, even though we don't have a number 1.  Go Denver Peytons!

We have played over are heads but teams can do that when they have a franchise QB.  But to get further we need a more complete team and a stout defense.  We were down one score with 5 minutes left in the 3rd Q last night and had opportunities to tie it up.

[#12]

I do think people need to take a step back.  2013 = 1999.  That's how early in this process we are. 

 

We have 14 more wins(including one playoff win) than Aikman and Jimmy Johnson did in their first two seasons in Dallas. 

[Jay Roland]

Talent is there i believe. We need to fix the OL as they cannot block on running plays. OL did better this year pass protecting but still can't run block. They blocked better for Brown than Richardson. Yes Richardson didn't play well this season and has some problems. I think he will improve next year with a full OTA mini camps and training camp. but some of his problems was he was getting hit in the backfield. he hast to improve his reading of his holes and stop the dancing and hopping. He also was not used in the pasing game which i think he helps us the most. We should have all our players that were injured this year back and hopefully they all stay injury free next year. Luck hopefully learns from these two playoff games andcan get us at least into the AFC championship game. He has to improve on not staring down his recievers and make better decisions. Recievers must improve on gtting seperation and running better routes.

 

Defense has to improve some we have most of the pieces there. we will need to improve on our run defense the most.

[FearTheNeckBearded]

Luck proved to us this year he can learn from his mistakes, he reduced his mistakes in the regular season.

 

I think he felt that he had to do a lot to win and force some things and we were unlucky in some other plays, but overall i hope we can improve next year and I know with Luck we have a chance to win every week and that's all that matters

[colts_100nascar17fan]

Its not that hard to see that this team has made the playoffs n has had good records,but this team has so many holes in it/so many issues in so many areas its gonna take more than one off season to get to where they need to be. Plus grigs dont like to sign the BIG free agent,rather sign all average guys to hope atleast two of the accually work out.

[John Waylon]

We have the talent to be a dominant team. We're not rebuilding. You're not re-building when you go 22-10, a division title, and a playoff win in two seasons. 

 

We've rebuilt. No excuses.

[coltsfanatic24]

We are still in rebuilding because without Luck this is a 3 win team. The Rams are the perfect example of a team that's ready to win a SB the only thing they need is a QB. The talent level on the Colts is one of the top 5 worst in the league. Only team we have more talent then is the Raiders, Jags, Jets, and Titans. We still have a long way to go before the team becomes great. Luck is great but he covers up all the weaknesses on the team. 

[deedub75]

I just don't know.  Something is just fundamentally wrong with this team.  I don't know if it's talent or coaching or what.  Talented, well-coached teams just don't get behind 15-20 points almost every game and have to fight back to win.  When the Colts win, they get down early and barely win in the end.  When the Colts lose, they lose big and get the hell beaten out of them.  There is no consistency at all. 

 

I still think we overachieved for the second consecutive season.  We were fortunate to have had a couple of teams collapse in the second half of games and I really believe that we caught Denver and Seattle at the right time.  The Denver game was pretty emotional for Peyton and Seattle's o line was banged up when we played them. 

 

Pagano seems to be a bit soft.  He gives the players too much time off when they need to be working on deficiencies.  After the KC playoff game they should have been fixing problems instead of celebrating so much. 

[dw49]

IMO , pretty crappy 2013 draft and not NEARLY enough bang for all that off season "Irsay buck." We're not in a rebuild , just a victim of a bad year by Grigson when he had a chance to hit a home run.