we're a young team taking our lumps

[CR91]

I will forever bleed blue, but the reality right now is the colts are a young team learning what it takes to win. There is no more reggie wayne or robert mathis on the field to teach our young guys what it takes to win in this league and luck is no where near returning so there is no real leader in our locker room. we need to learn to be patient with this team because there is potential, but for now the season is very bleak as we are most likely heading for a top 5 draft pick

[Sumo63]

I'm an advocate of being as patient as you can be.  We all HAVE to be, but we've had a Mathis (player and pass rush consultant), we've had a Wayne, we've had 5 years to draft and develop talent......and as far as a leader in the locker room, how about the head coach?  Shouldn't he be leading with or without Luck? The product on the field is trash and has been for 3 years.....there is ALWAYS potential but it has been burried under this head coach since he took over.  Blame Grigson, or coordinators, or position coaches, or whoever you want, (we have and many have been fired and replaced)  but at some point coaches have to develop talent, or at least scheme to the strenghts of the talent they have.....Hasn't happened.....won't happen under Pags.  I like your optimism, and wish I could share it, but this isn't year one.......

[BertJones]

Colts fans have nothing to worry about. Its not like the Colts will be bad for another decade. They were recently in a Conf. championship.. theyll be getting playoff spots in a year or two again as theyve done off and on since the 60s

[AZColt11]

I see a 3-4 year rebuild.  They will still have Luck.  They just need to surround him with more talent.  I think the real "blessing in disguise" here is that without Luck the Colts are finally getting a good look at just how bad the roster really is.  Now they can go about fixing it with a high draft pick and another starting-caliber QB in Brissett.  They will have some leverage come April.

[RollerColt]

I'm just waiting for the nightmare to be over... I hope Ballard can fix this, but in reality, there's just too many holes and too many injured players coupled with too many faltering coaches. 

[Defjamz26]

This is far beyond being a young team. There are a lot of factors at play here. The biggest issue is the HC and his staff.

[tikyle]

Can we stop and really look over the season.  I said it when we were 2-3 coming off of the SF win that this team was terrible and it was lunacy to think we could win three of the next four and be in first in the AFCS.  I got ripped a new one in the threads for that.

 

How is it lunacy?  We match up well vs Titans and Jags.  Are you really a Colts fan?  You don't know what you're talking about.  We built up big leads vs SF and CLE.  Etc. Etc.

 

The Colts have played terrible ball all season.  We literally have only played 2 good halves of football in all of seven games.  Our defense has been getting gashed and we still can't run the ball at all.  A few plays against SF or CLE go different and we are 0-for.  This is beyond being young.  This team needs to learn HOW to win.  Some unit of this team needs to take the lead and play solid all game.  We have yet to have that.  It is apparent now that Pagano and staff are hurting us.  It's time to clean house and maybe get the jump on our new HC search.

[ColtsBlitz]

1 minute ago, Defjamz26 said:

This is far beyond being a young team. There are a lot of factors at play here. The biggest issue is the HC and his staff.

We brought in a lot of youth, so it really is a young team. The coaches aren't young, but most of them aren't good enough to coach at the NFL level. That doesn't mean we aren't young. There are just too many underperformers and the front office seems to be allowing it. I'm telling you right now if anyone on the Patriots offensive line allowed 3 sacks for a total of 10, one of them would be benched based on film or cut. They don't allow or permit that on their team, and look where they go every other year. 

[ColtsBlitz]

3 minutes ago, tikyle said:

Our defense has been getting gashed and we still can't run the ball at all.  A few plays against SF or CLE go different and we are 0-for.  This is beyond being young.  This team needs to learn HOW to win.  Some unit of this team needs to take the lead and play solid all game.  We have yet to have that.  It is apparent now that Pagano and staff are hurting us.  It's time to clean house and maybe get the jump on our new HC search.

The poor play definitely attributes to being young, but also these:

 

- poor coaching

- bad play calling

- lack of talented players

 

A clean sweep of coaches (besides a select few) and getting more talent in the locker room will be Ballard's mission for the next 3 years. 

 

Just a few players that that need to go:

- TJ Green

- Chris Milton

- Aiken, Moncrief or Bray (or 2)

- Davis (probably)

 

They also need to start playing Q Wilson unless he's a major injury risk. He needs experience. Already shows great promise. Hopefully a new D coordinator will create a better scheme than Monachino has created. 

[Pelt]

12 minutes ago, Defjamz26 said:

This is far beyond being a young team. There are a lot of factors at play here. The biggest issue is the HC and his staff.

You can even take that a step further and throw Irsay in on this when it comes to how rough it's going to be next year too,

 

And I'm not trying to be negative about this - just realistic.

 

This staff is full of 'dead men walking' so to speak, because Irsay made sure to give Pagano one last shot and saddle Ballard with him.

 

I'm assuming (yeah, I know) that Ballard probably would have brought his own coaching staff in and at least this team would be going through those growing pains and learning those new systems this year while waiting for Luck to come back at full strength. They would be ahead of the learning curve, so to speak.

 

But as it is, it looks as though this staff will be gone at some point, as they should be, and we will be learning new systems next year along with Luck, instead of having a team of players already knowing the new systems to ease things.

 

I think keeping Pagano has set things back another year at the very least.

[Old Colt]

If we are young, might as well make Mathis Head coach for the rest of the season.  He has some skin in the game, being a former Colt player, and maybe would light a fire under some of these guys.  I am really disappointed in Ballard too.  Where is he at, he may be a GM, but coaches are his responsibility too.  when we see a disaster like yesterday, he needs to take a stand and either fire the coach or take more control of the team.  March into the locker room at halftime and tell them they are playing for their contract as of now, maybe send a few out the door right there and tell them the rest will follow if they don't step up and play with some effort.  Effort was sorely lacking yesterday.  He made an example of Dwayne Allen, time to do it again and bigger.  Send Hilton packing,  Practice squad won't do much worse...

[krunk]

28 minutes ago, Defjamz26 said:

This is far beyond being a young team. There are a lot of factors at play here. The biggest issue is the HC and his staff.

I'm in total agreement now at this time.

[oldunclemark]

9 hours ago, CR91 said:

I will forever bleed blue, but the reality right now is the colts are a young team learning what it takes to win. There is no more reggie wayne or robert mathis on the field to teach our young guys what it takes to win in this league and luck is no where near returning so there is no real leader in our locker room. we need to learn to be patient with this team because there is potential, but for now the season is very bleak as we are most likely heading for a top 5 draft pick

I'm always optimistic but I cant argue with you.

We all mouthed the words 'Andrew is carrying us' and 'With Andrew, we'll always score 24-28 points a game'  but they were true words and now we see what happens without the guy who was leading us.

One guy gave the offense a spark and the defense hope to stay close.

 

This is the worst case scenario

 

 

[oldunclemark]

6 hours ago, BertJones said:

Colts fans have nothing to worry about. Its not like the Colts will be bad for another decade. They were recently in a Conf. championship.. theyll be getting playoff spots in a year or two again as theyve done off and on since the 60s

That's what I'm hoping..Bert

That this is the 2-14 year between Peyton and Andrew.

 

If we don't beat Cincinnatti next week, I dont know when the next win will come.

Don't look at the December schedule

There's just not a lot we can do right now except keep playing

Edited October 23, 2017 by oldunclemark

[PeterBowman]

you know part of me is thinking that this was part of the long term plan. Even Irsay was saying he'd take a bad season in order to be a title caliber team. Maybe they we're thinking it would be THIS bad but I'm thinking they were expecting it to be a down year in order to build for the future.

[deedub75]

56 minutes ago, ColtsBlitz said:

We brought in a lot of youth, so it really is a young team. The coaches aren't young, but most of them aren't good enough to coach at the NFL level. That doesn't mean we aren't young. There are just too many underperformers and the front office seems to be allowing it. I'm telling you right now if anyone on the Patriots offensive line allowed 3 sacks for a total of 10, one of them would be benched based on film or cut. They don't allow or permit that on their team, and look where they go every other year. 

 

We were a really old team and now we are a really young team.  The only constant is the head coach. We have a handful of young talent that I think can be developed into really good players. Now that the division has gotten a bit better we no longer have that automatic 6 wins. 

[krunk]

The staff mainly needs to go because no matter what condition the team has been in  High or Low the things that have always been consistent are bad defense, play design that leads to more hits on the qb, questionable judgement,  bad execution, abandoning things that have produced good results, poor game plans and slow to almost no adjustments made to deal with changes from the opposition.   The bulk of that is on the staff to shore up in my opinion.  These things have remained consistent during Winning Seasons and Losing Seasons.  The issues have never been addressed even with Luck behind the saddle.

[Defjamz26]

1 hour ago, Pelt said:

You can even take that a step further and throw Irsay in on this when it comes to how rough it's going to be next year too,

 

And I'm not trying to be negative about this - just realistic.

 

This staff is full of 'dead men walking' so to speak, because Irsay made sure to give Pagano one last shot and saddle Ballard with him.

 

I'm assuming (yeah, I know) that Ballard probably would have brought his own coaching staff in and at least this team would be going through those growing pains and learning those new systems this year while waiting for Luck to come back at full strength. They would be ahead of the learning curve, so to speak.

 

But as it is, it looks as though this staff will be gone at some point, as they should be, and we will be learning new systems next year along with Luck, instead of having a team of players already knowing the new systems to ease things.

 

I think keeping Pagano has set things back another year at the very least.

I think the time to put Irsay under the microscope is long overdue. You can forgive him for getting it wrong in 2012 with Pagano and Grigson, but he got it wrong again with the extension of both, and again by only letting Grigson go. As Ed York said, you don't dismiss owners but Irsay should be held partly responsible. He set the team back as well by allowing this to continue for way too long.

[Coffeedrinker]

I think the Colts have some talent on both sides of the ball.  And Andrew Luck will make a huge difference.  But the Colts just suck and a lot of it has to do with coaching.  I think I am going to petition the team to change Monachino's name to "ManAlwaysOpen"  I've been saying this for a while now but he is the worst DC in the league.  And I think he is so bad, that if the Colts were to grab the second worst DC in the league they would be a .500 team right now.

 

The D is lacking in ILB but the rest of the D is good enough to play winning football.  But ManAlwaysOpen just does not know how to design a defense and call plays.  People will claim it's a lack of talent but over the last couple of years, no matter who is in the lineup there are gaping holes on pass plays in that 12-18 yard range every game... That indicates poor coaching not poor talent.

 

Chud is not a lot better and I think we are learning that Brissett is not a very good QB.

[mikey287]

The "Generation X" Pittsburgh Penguins were also a young team, but they never came around...why? 

 

Two reasons: 

1. The young players weren't good. They were young, but they had limited to no upside. 

2. Any upside they might have had was lost by poor coaching who couldn't develop players (I coach ice hockey, development is not just about going out and playing games...you need to practice skills, build players up piece by piece, players don't just get better like a video game...you need to develop them from a technical perspective).

 

40 players suited up for the Penguins in 2004, only 8 were still in the league (in the league!) in 2007. Only like four of them even stuck with the team past 2007...three fourth liners, two bottom pair defensemen, then Ryan Malone (2nd line winger), Brooks Orpik (second pair d-man) and Marc-Andre Fleury (starting goalie). 

 

Apologies for the hockey analogy (it's all I know) but just because you're young doesn't mean you're going to be good, doesn't mean you're going to get better...that doesn't mean that we're going to be like the 2004 Penguins, but I'm just saying, it's not video game...players don't just develop linearly...I don't know if we have young talent with a steep development arc, I really don't...but just playing young players and thinking that will create a super team in three or four years is not necessarily right...