Anderson, Ridgeway, Parry, Simon, Sheard, E Jackson, Morrison, Geathers. Green. Most are in the "solid" to above average category. None are in the "great" category but if Anderdon could return to form he could be.

Add 4 more solid players from the 2017 draft to add to V Davis and a stud or two from next year's free agency class and we are much closer to a solid defense than a "gloom & doom" prophet like you will admit.

Cheers,

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I'd say Butler, Davis, Langford, and potentially Simon

Yeah, that's the elephant in the room about not bringing any big names in. I'm thinking along the same line as sherck's last post. Some of the foundational guys will have to come in the draft, but we have some guys already who can do it this year. But I don't know who the Redding-like leader of that group will be (if anyone).

That is a very laughable list. Especially since green is on there. But pretty much all of that foundation is grigsons.

That is a foundation of backups.

Yeah, it pretty much is. But it's a foundation containing a lot more youth with potential than what we had before. What would you have done differently? Spend $40M on 3-4 established players and roll with what we had?

The only way to tke that list is that Grigson is gone for being an ass, not for being inept at building a team.

Sorry, can't take anything that lists Antonio Morrison as "solid", a "foundational player", or anything other than "needs replaced immediately" seriously. You've seriously overrated a lot of those players, mostly the Grigson holdovers you listed. I wouldn't consider any of Ridgeway, Parry, Jackson, Morrison, Geathers, or Green to be "solid", aka an average NFL starter. Some of them have the potential to get there, but even that list is short (Ridgeway, Geathers, Green). This is why defense needs to be the focus of the draft, the Colts defense is still bottom half of the league at best after adding a lot of pieces through free agency because they lack top end talent at most positions on that side of the ball. That talent is most often and best acquired through the draft.

So who should they have pursued in this free agency? Should they have offered 10-20% more in salary than what those players received? That's probably a minimum the Colts would've had to add to an offer, assuming each player's decision was based solely on money. Joe All-Pro gets an offer of 4 years 40 mil, Colts can't just offer 4 years 41 mil and have them begging to sign here instead since the team is in a bit of structural disarray.

Your arguments are a bit contradictory here. If it was all about the money for the players, a 4 year, $41 million deal would in fact top a 4 year, $40 million deal.

I'm saying that the Colts aren't a top destination for free agents so an additional million dollars isn't typically going to be enough to get someone to change where they ended up going in free agency. The Colts would have to offer more than just the offer the guy signed, plus a dollar. Their offer would have to be considerably more.

Any marquee free agent could choose from a dozen other teams who have as good as, or better, of a situation than the Colts, especially when talking about the defensive side of the ball. Situation meaning everything from coaching structure, philosophy, teammates who will pull their weight to help the marquee player keep his numbers up (so he's not always covering for some JAG next to him who isn't getting it done).