General off-season news thread

[Chaka]

Originally Posted by rm1369

I can see him sticking with Brissett. Ballard has been extremely conservative in nearly all of his moves. I don’t see him pursuing Bridgewater as a FA - he’s going to get a good contract. That’s risky. I don’t see him trading up as that is a significant risk as well. If he’s in love with someone at 13 he’ll pull the trigger. Other than that I believe Ballard when he says he’s not going to panic and set the team back by making a mistake. I’m not saying that’s the right path, but I’d be surprised if it’s not the one he takes. Hope I’m wrong.

What’s wrong with not panicking and setting the team back by making a mistake? Everyone can nitpick, but the truth is that Ballard’s long term strategy appeared to be working exactly as planned until the rug got pulled out from beneath him by the Luck retirement a couple weeks before the season was to begin. Even then, we demonstrated a marked improvement from the last time we were without Luck (2017), when we went 4-12 and looked depressingly bad.

Honestly, with even an average kicking game we might be in the playoffs this season (though admittedly probably one-and-done) despite the Luck retirement. Criticize Ballard all you want keeping Vinatieri around too long, but the guy had perhaps the best track record of any kicker EVER, so betting that Vinatieri would right the ship over the alternative - bringing in an unproven or disgraced kicker jettisoned by other teams - did not seem too unreasonable to me. Notably, he jumped on McLaughlin when he became available, so hopefully we caught a break there.

Bottom line: the future remains bright, despite all the hand-wringing here, though finding a workable QB is undeniably a major issue that will dictate the success of Ballard’s plans going forward.