PFF has some thoughts on Collins:

Not sure it's anything that we don't know. He's basically a better Clayton Geathers without the long injury track record.

Erickson chimes in .

I think Farley will be for sure. And geathers would be easy to get back if they want.

Yeah, he would fit into our defense. Is young, 3 time pro bowler, good in the box safety. He is their best defender, just surprised they are letting him walk, but they want to trade O'dell also. I'm not impressed with Gettleman, I don't think he will be there in a couple of years.

Multiple reasons to get him.
 

First off, he is a quality character. So he fits Ballard's locker room build.
Secondly, he is similar to Geathers, only better, with less injury history.
Thirdly, he's not used to having a real secondary around him. Our Corner's might be young, but they are very disciplined in the scheme. A nice change for a safety that is used to trying to make up for deficiencies of others around him, (which is one reason I think his coverage skills were lacking, he had too many things on his mind) .
With Hooker beside him playing sideline to sideline, He can just play 'free', and make plays. This is what he is really good at.
Hooker is a close friend, so I think if we really wanted him, he could be sold on coming here, and probably cheaper than what the Giants could have re-signed him for.
P.S. I'm probably going to put this question in my next pod, and plug this site as the reference for this question.)

Yeah, it definitely seems to make a lot of sense on paper. I would be very interested in what Eberflus thinks of Collins.

Was watching NFL network and they said 5 pro bowl safeties will be on the market. Earl Thomas will be a free agent at 30. Looks like Houston wants to resign the honey badger.

I still think Collins is the best option when considering youth, production and scheme fit.

He and Amos are very close for me. I'd rate Amos lower, but also expect he'll sign for significantly less (say $9-10m vs $12-13m AAV).

Apparently Ebron is trying to recruit Collins on Twitter.

Sorry didnt see this.

Those Detroit fans are all over his twitter. Man are they haters.

Haha I had to stop reading after the guy in Detroit said nobody wants to go to Indy.. lmfao!!

Like they are lining up to get to Detroit. :rolleyes:

Collins seemingly is a player that checks most/all of the boxes of a player that Ballard should be interested in, but here are a few concerns I see with signing him to the kind of deal some of you are talking about (5 yr/65M, etc)

1. Is it concerning to anyone that the Giants - the team who should know his capabilities best - thought the franchise tag number was too much for him? I didn't get the sense that this was a situation where the Giants hated him personally or were forced to allow him to leave because they couldn't afford him - they just thought it would be an overpayment.

2. Is this the best use of our resources? Several have pointed out that safety isn't the greatest need on the team. So paying big money to a player who, even if he performs well, will only incrementally improve the defense may not be the best strategy. We could get better bang for our buck by spending that $13M to improve the areas where greater improvement can be achieved - even if it isn't a high profile signing.

3. Related to point #1, the safety position has been devalued in recent years as several have pointed out. Lots of good players have gone unsigned or signed greatly reduced contracts. The signs suggest this may happen again this year, given the number of seemingly high quality safeties that will be flooding the market. So is it necessary to pay top dollar for this guy? Is he that much better than the rest of the safeties?

I'm asking these questions out of honest curiosity. Usually the top free agents end up being overpaid, sometimes massively so, and as a consequence I'm perhaps biased against signing those guys. I know one of the responses is likely to be that we've got lots of cap space, which is true, so why not sign him? But I believe Ballard when he says that the cap space will start to disappear when he starts resigning the Colts own free agents, so I expect him to keep a large chunk of that cap space intact this offseason.

Signing Collins is not critical but it's fine. He's a young All-Pro with a great team-first attitude and only 5 games missed in 4 seasons. We have the cap space to sign him to whatever he could possibly want and still have just as much flexibility as we need going forward.

That said, based on what we've seen so far, I don't think safety needs to be a top draft pick or FA to be successful. There are other safeties available in FA that will be cheaper and despite Collins talent I'm not convinced he will be in position to impact that many plays. If we were in a tighter cap situation I would say the money would be far-better spent on a front 7 player.

If we do sign him, that will tell me that either Eberflus wants to do some things differently with the DBs, or that Ballard is relaxing his approach a bit to FA.

They are a toxic fanbase. Have been for a long time. They just can't let Ebron go.

But it is pretty delusional to see the Lions as a better spot either historically or when projecting the future.

1) Gettleman completely devalues DBs, see his tenure in Carolina for more proof.

2) Fair point. Adrian Amos could provide 85-90% of the player at 70-75% of the price.

3) Safeties are important to this scheme, regardless of their leaguewide importance. Further, if the Colts are deriving value from leaguewide devalued positions, they're going to get bargains and be ahead of the curve.

In other news, Brad Wells is still a retard:

@BradWellsNFL
Tweeting this late, but I do agree with many of you followers that Landon Collins would be great in Indy. However, signing Collins to a huge deal would be Ballard admitting that Malik Hooker isn’t the answer at safety. I don’t see him doing that.

What? Because we only field one safety or does he mean Geathers who was a Grigs draftee? :rolleyes: Is this troll bait or does he actually believe this?

Brad Wells is a well known idiot :rolleyes:

Can it be both?

Every aspect of anything Wells says is stupid.

Yeah, I read through it. So if Ballard signs Collins they, therefore, are admitting Hooker is not good and worth resigning to a second contract. Because only a stupid team pays two safeties second contracts. That's a leap of logic. Really it's just another attempt to feed his anti-Ballard narrative that he has adopted for some reason.

Signing Collins IS help for the front 7. He is a primarily box defender. A guy with great instincts, and tackling ability. Another person an O-line and coach HAS to account for, and even game plan for. Eberflus loves blitzing with DB's, and with Collins athletic ability, he'd be a dangerous person on our defense. Look at what DC's did with athletic safeties in the past,...Troy P., and even last years DROTY- runner-up. Used effectively, A really good box safety is dangerous.
And Like said above,...It does free up another draft pick where this years D-line class is deeper than it has been in over a decade.

Funny, because 90% of Well's stance is PFF stats,..Yet PFF rated Hooker VERY high last year...you don't see him posting that all over twitter...lol

Fair. I should have said that signing Collins does nothing that adversely affects the team's ability to add on the DL/EDGE.

Just to add to your comments on what he offers the defense, I look at these zone defenses from a bit of a basketball perspective. You need players who can soak up more space, taking it away from an offense. A guy like Collins who can knife across the field, especially downhill and in the box, is something this defense really needs. He would be like adding another Darius Leonard, but in the secondary. Those two guys would eat up so much space and limit extra yards via the run and short passing game. That'll get the team into good down and distance situations, but they still need more pass rush to consistently capitalize on those situations...

Well put, thank you. I'm not quite as sold on him as others here unless the price is lower than expected (and I'm hoping it will be). I just think there are better values to be had elsewhere. I don't care how much cap space we have, I want the money to be spent smartly. Except in rare instances, I think that signing the top free agents isn't good business. They are very expensive and have lots of negotiating leverage so you end up with lots of guaranteed money, so if they don't work out they will damage your team for years. That's what concerns me here.

1. Maybe - after reading your comment, I ran a brief Google search and found this article discussing what I think you're referring to:

https://247sports.com/nfl/carolina-p...ons-129743945/

The problem is that each of the referenced decisions Gettleman made, while controversial at the time, ended up working out in his favor.

2. Agreed, though I'd hope a lower profile player like Amos wouldn't cost 85-90% of Collins.

3. I don't disagree, but I'm not sure I understand how this responds to my comment. My point is that because the safeties are devalued, we don't need to pay top dollar for one like Collins. We can get most of the production we need from a MUCH less expensive player because there are so many good ones available. We probably could get one of them to sign a Ballard one year with options deal, too, rather than committing to a long term guaranteed contract.

1) The Giants thought enough of Collins to make him a co-captain of the defense. This is strictly a decision from the GM, who I might point out drafted a RB in the top 10 each of the last two years and ignored the QB position in favor of Eli Manning last draft. I don't give their hesitancy to extend Collins any credibility.

#2 and #3 really play together, so I'll address them that way. You have to view this through the prism of the Colts scheme. After pass rusher, a slashing SS is the biggest need on this defense. Collins is a perfect fit in that regard and there isn't a pass rusher available who justifies a premium investment. Thus, Collins should be considered.

However, after that, it all comes down to value. If Ballard and Eberflus think Collins is worth $9MM/year to them and he signs somewhere for $12MM, then they'll address the position in another manner.

Collins is getting a minimum of $12MM no matter where he signs.

I think so, but there's a possibility that his deficiencies keep some teams from pursuing him. Those drawbacks to his game aren't as big of a factor in the Colts scheme.

Anyway, my broader point is that the Colts should consider Collins. If the market is too high for them to justify, so be it. They've earned some trust over the past year.

Holy shit, I always knew Wells was stupid, but he clearly has no understanding of football at all. Hooker and Collins really do not play the same position at all.

I would be ok with Amos. He can lay the wood and play deep safety. He is a different kind of safety than Collins though and can play more deep coverage. If they went after Amos instead of Collins that would tell me they expect more coverage out of the position and less in the box run defense. Depends what kind of 4-3 we are emulating, something like the Seattle defense, or something like the Cowboys or old Bucs.

Exactly. FREE safety and STRONG safety are two distinct positions, especially in this defense. Much like Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor played two completely different positions, Landon Collins would play a completely different position than Malik Hooker. Hopefully the latter duo turns out as well as the former if the Colts sign Collins.

Wells was arguing that safety positions are indistinguishable from each other in their responsibilities now. But that isn't quite the case with our D. Which he should know. Sometimes they do mix it up with Hooker and Geathers, but most of the time they wanted Hooker to play the deep defense.

He is just a weird dude. Even going back to his stampede blue days. He would get in these weird arguments with fans all the time. Guy is just a strange angry ginger.

Don’t forget the importance of open field tackling on short passes. Consistently taking away those yards will make QB hold the ball longer and give the pass rush more time.

Collins is by far the better tackler. Guy is a machine. PFF even wrote an article saying he should be moved to linebacker.

.


Apparently I’m on to something

Thank you. As far as your first point is concerned, to be fair the RBs Gettleman drafted (Saquon Barkley and Christian McCaffrey) have worked out pretty well, so it's hard to fault him for those picks - particularly if he wasn't enamored with any of the available QBs in last year's draft. If the guy was making wild picks and reaching for players instead of taking obvious upgrades, then I'd place less weight in his decision making. So while I don't question that you're right that this decision comes from the GM, it doesn't really address my original question of whether the decision he made (not to tag Collins) causes any concern. From what I've read (and admittedly it's a fairly small amount of info - I knew next to nothing about Gettlemen until this thread was created), the guy isn't afraid to make unpopular decisions, but they are often proven right in retrospect. So I remain concerned about this.

As far as the importance of the safety position in our defense, I'll defer to you and others who are more knowledgeable than me about the X's and O's. I can accept that a good SS may be more valuable to us than to other teams, but that should mean that the other teams won't be willing to pay top dollar for him, and we should be able to get him more cheaply. Ultimately, it's really a question of how much to pay, rather than whether to sign him. Here's an article I came across when looking up Gettleman info which makes the observation that 7 of 8 best paid safeties are free safeties and that strong safeties are usually paid much less:

https://www.bigblueview.com/2019/3/6...dave-gettleman

So by paying Collins as one of the best paid safeties in the league, we'd be shattering precedent more than most realize. It bears noting that this sort of thing worked out pretty well when we drafted Nelson, of course.

Shattering precedent? The Colts made Bob Sanders one of the highest paid safeties in the NFL.