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Just Whose Failure is It? Ballard or Irsay?


philba101

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The blame is Frank Reich for the following reasons:


Remake the play book to match the strength of your offense. He did not do that, starting with accessing what he had on the OL, RB, WR and TE.

 

He tried to fit his existing players into his Philly playbook. 

 

Lastly, he lacked in evaluating and judging performance.  He absolutely missed on how bad his OL was. Yes Ballard screwed up in not resigning Glowinski and Reed. Strasser and Mawae are weak coaches. Without Howard Mudd overlooking their work these guys are useless. Another area of failure was his TE. He lost Doyle and he did not find a decent blocking TE. I am sure if he insisted on one, Ballard would have found him one.

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It continues to baffle me that Ballard is still in charge of this losing team. Zero conference championships. It's the owner, no it's the interim coach, no it's the fired coach, no it's the coordinator, no it's the whatever.... Teflon Chris slides by again.

We can like him as a person but still admit he is not a winner. Call him mediocre at best at his job. Wasted contracts on the wrong positions where each of them had a dropoff in pefformance after getting paid. 

 

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On 1/18/2023 at 1:27 PM, NewColtsFan said:


Luck spent three years of his life trying to get back to being able to play at a high level.   Three years.   That doesn’t strike me as someone who had his foot out the door.   
 

Luck suffered a sprained shoulder in the snow boarding accident.  In the recent ESPN profile Luck said he had sprained both shoulders numerous times and had always been able to come back from them.   
 

The shoulder sprain from snow boarding was entirely different than the severe damage caused by the football hit against Tennessee.   I think the check out didn’t come until after the 2018 season.   Luck didn’t like the person he had become.  He hated that guy.  A complete control freak.  And he became that person in order to play football at the highest level.  It put a huge strain on what was once a very happy marriage.  Then he suffered the mystery lower leg injury at the Pro Bowl in Feb of 19.   I think THAT’S when the foot out the door happened.   As he said when he retired, four straight years of constant pain and rehab sucked the joy out of playing the game he had always loved. 

I freakin love Andrew Luck and all he gave for the fans. His timing just killed this team and that ghost still haunts us.  

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On 1/17/2023 at 4:52 PM, Blueblood23 said:

It still could be. Look at Tampa, Los Angeles, Green Bay, Denver, to mention a few. They have a franchise quarterback and things still go wrong. 

Half of them won a Super Bowl though and Aaron won 2 MVPs. This year you are absolutely correct.

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On 1/17/2023 at 5:12 PM, GoColts8818 said:

It was everyone.  People want one person to blame but there isn’t.  It all started with Luck retiring and things slowly came apart from there.  This is what people were talking about when they said that would set this franchise back for years to come.  
 

Regarding Irsay’s letter he’s the owner and leader that’s what they do when things go wrong.  They take accountability even if it wasn’t all their fault.

Perfect......

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On 1/17/2023 at 7:56 PM, John Hammonds said:

I believe that Jim Irsay did Chris Ballard a HUGE favor.

 

In the beginning of the season, our failures were failures of Plan.  We put on the field the team that we intended.  We weren't blindsided with a rash of injuries or other misfortune.  This is what we meant to do.  And it failed.  It was a failure of Plan.  And when the Plan fails, the architect of that Plan should face consequences.

 

However, Jim Irsay overshadowed that failure of Plan with failure of Biblical Proportions.  He chose to hire his Friend as a head coach.  A friend who had no NFL coaching experience.  At all.  While at the same time having not one, but two ex-head coaches on staff.  Both of which had coached in the superbowl.  He passed up on these entirely reasonable and respectable options to place a completely out of his depth Friend at the top.  And it's not just that the team, as a result, experienced monumental, historical game failures that one can easily lay at the feet of a coach completely out of his depth.  This decision set his organization back 30 years.  He made it plain to his players, his coaches, and the rest of the league, that this team makes decisions based upon the day-to-day whim of its owner.  Not by what is reasonable or respectable.  Not by initiatives or ideals.  And now, what prospective coach would consider coming here, but this black cloud doesn't appear to him?  Do you really want to?  Really?  It's gonna follow Irsay for a decade.  Maybe more.

 

And in the face of this failure of Biblical Proportions, the failure of Plan sponsored by Chris Ballard doesn't seem so much.  If anything at all.  Ballard gets a pass.  A pass undeserved.  But he gets it anyway.

 

It's a dangerous thing to ask "What's the worst that could happen?"  You might just get it.

Dude... This is so good. I hadn't thought of it this way.  Thanks!!!

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On 1/18/2023 at 9:43 AM, philba101 said:

I guess the point of the thread was not to point blame at one particular person but to question why it seems this organization took so long to get to this realization, and now it seems (at least to me) they are not on the same page about how to fix it. Maybe I am wrong about this and the guys who created this mess can fix it in the foreseeable future. I am not confident in this path, but if I am wrong I will admit it. I get that this stuff has been re-hashed many times but it is just frustrating that the FO seems to be doubling-down on the problems they have created.

 

  Doubling down.

  You haven't a CLUE who the coach will be, who the QB will be, so you have ZERO knowledge of the direction they are going.

  Yet you feel compelled to blather on about it.

  It will be a joyful day when our new coaching staff is filled and we can raise our head up and rally around our new direction with hope and... Go Colts!

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On 1/18/2023 at 11:32 AM, DougDew said:

I agree with 95% of what you are saying.  On the field talent dictates what a coach can do over the course of a game and a season.  For example, Eberflus had to play with DBs who were basically being signed off of the street, and he kept catching flak last season like he was incompetent...........until a team PROMOTED HIM to HC, LOL.

 

My beef with Frank was that he seemed to try finesse or cutsie plays when the situation suggested more power.   I never saw a series where we went with 3 TEs, as an example.  Can't figure out why we didn't practice executing screen passes until we got them right.  He just seemed to have tunnel vision at times.

I think Frank couldn't keep up with everything on his plate. Especially on game day. It seemed like his message was stale and the locker room had tuned him out. 

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On 1/24/2023 at 10:08 AM, AustexColt said:

The blame is Frank Reich for the following reasons:


Remake the play book to match the strength of your offense. He did not do that, starting with accessing what he had on the OL, RB, WR and TE.

 

He tried to fit his existing players into his Philly playbook. 

 

Lastly, he lacked in evaluating and judging performance.  He absolutely missed on how bad his OL was. Yes Ballard screwed up in not resigning Glowinski and Reed. Strasser and Mawae are weak coaches. Without Howard Mudd overlooking their work these guys are useless. Another area of failure was his TE. He lost Doyle and he did not find a decent blocking TE. I am sure if he insisted on one, Ballard would have found him one.

Irsay because he’s lost his mind and his love of Saturday. He keeps meddling and it’s not good for the team at all. 

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Frank paid the piper.  So we could say it's his fault from that perspective.  And we could say it's typical for the coach to pay the price.

 

But I think when you lose it is time for everyone to look in the mirror.  The areas where you're deficient--and everyone is deficient somewhere--may have made the difference.  Maybe if the vet QB signing doesn't play like a rookie things are different.  Maybe if the owner doesn't reject the QB reclamation project his head coach asked them to bring in, or otherwise enables a better effort to find a QB, things are different.  Maybe if the GM does a better job with the OL or offensive weapons things are different.  And so on.

 

What really matters now is everyone who didn't pay with their jobs, which is everyone other than the coaching staff, should be focused and ready to do better.  Starting with the owner, who is part of the failure whether he likes it or not.  And for the record I do think Frank had to go.  It was time.  But maybe with this next OC hire for HC everyone around him will perform better in support.

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On 1/17/2023 at 4:49 PM, Hoose said:

Personally, I don’t want to see Ballard fired. There’s been too much turmoil this past season; fire Ballard and the already shaky rep owned by Jim Irsay and the Colts just gets worse. And that makes it much tougher to right the ship.
 

Right now stability and a calm, focused approach is required. Ballard has to step up and hire a top caliber leader to coach the team and then pivot to FA and the draft. If he screws this up he’s done, but I don’t think he will. 

If you go back to the Andrew Luck announcement that's when everything began to unravel. We have to draft a QB and hope for the best. If you draft the wrong guy we will be a doormat for years to come. I think Irsay and Ballard felt they made good solid decisions with Rivers,Wentz, and Ryan. Things went wrong ,really wrong. Now they are really up against a wall. This draft and off season is very important going forward. 

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