Colts acquire QB Matt Ryan for a 3rd Round draft pick

[Chromeburn]

Originally Posted by rm1369

I agree to a point. I don’t want an owner involved in individual personnel decisions, but I do want an owner that sets a level of expectations for the franchise. I quit following the Pacers because it became obvious their priorities as owners didn’t match mine as a fan. I believe Irsay’s priorities align with mine. I’ll be very happy if his displeasure with last season results in a little more prioritization of now by Ballard.

Irsay is a lot more experienced and knowledgeable than a lot of owners. He grew up with this team, he was the GM for awhile. I would say he knows more about football than 90% of owners. Some of these guys think of the team as a write off or trinket status symbol. It tells you the difference between Snyder and Irsay. He’s been around Unitas, Berry, Manning, Luck, Harbaugh to name a few. So if he sees a QB and is convinced he doesn’t have what it takes. I will value his opinion over a majority of people. Including dudes like Cowherd who are 1000 miles away from the situation.

[Hoopsdoc]

Originally Posted by Chromeburn

Irsay is a lot more experienced and knowledgeable than a lot of owners. He grew up with this team, he was the GM for awhile. I would say he knows more about football than 90% of owners. Some of these guys think of the team as a write off or trinket status symbol. It tells you the difference between Snyder and Irsay. He’s been around Unitas, Berry, Manning, Luck, Harbaugh to name a few. So if he sees a QB and is convinced he doesn’t have what it takes. I will value his opinion over a majority of people. Including dudes like Cowherd who are 1000 miles away from the situation.

That’s an excellent point. People love to make fun of Jim but he’s not an idiot. He’s a smart dude and he knows football.

[Oldcolt]

I happened to live through irsays GM time. He was shit. If he knew about team development he would have stayed as GM. He’s not as bad as Snyder but who the hell is. I give irsay a ton of credit that he knew he was shitty at the job and letting others do it. I also believe he had a big hand in Wentz leaving which goes a long way to undermine my whole argument Good owner. Shitty GM

[YDFL Commish]

Originally Posted by Oldcolt

I happened to live through irsays GM time. He was shit. If he knew about team development he would have stayed as GM. He’s not as bad as Snyder but who the hell is. I give irsay a ton of credit that he knew he was shitty at the job and letting others do it. I also believe he had a big hand in Wentz leaving which goes a long way to undermine my whole argument Good owner. Shitty GM

Don't forget that he was working for his drunk dad. Jim had no power, just like Accorsi had no power.

I'm not arguing that Jim was even a good GM, just that he has learned more from his failures and more so from Tobin, Polian and Dungy than any other owner could ever experience.

[JAFF]

What I think, but cannot prove.

1. Jim Irsay loves football.
2. Jim Irsay loves football players.

From the smartest to the dumbest, they all have something in common. They are dumb enough to risk their health in an accelerated form of a kids game. Even Manning called himself a meat head. Jim loves those guys and how they play for each other and an owner who cares.

I also believe that Jim Irsay wants the ticket holders to get their monies worth. He has never hesitated to spend money on the team or the city or the state. Why are the state football finals played at LOS? Jim pays for it, in exchange that every state playoff tickets have the horse shoe on it. Genius advertising, in a rural state where people remember who supported their local HS team.

I believe Jim Irsay expects his players to put forth the same effort he and the entire organizational staff put into the team. Which is why he was pissed about Wentz. He was making the same dumb plays in the last two games as the first five games.

The only comparable owner would be the Roonys. Colts fans are lucky to have him

[AlwaysSunnyinIndy]

The below article is a few weeks old, but I don't think anyone posted it.

It gives some behind-the-scenes details on the Matt Ryan trade.

https://www.si.com/nfl/2022/03/28/mm...-falcons-colts

PALM BEACH, Fla. — It was summer in South Florida, Matt Ryan was still the Falcons’ quarterback, and after the team’s joint practice with Miami, Dolphins general manager Chris Grier went to his new Atlanta counterpart, Terry Fontenot, to give the first-year GM the proverbial pat on the back.

You guys are going to be better than people think.

Grier was right. The Falcons found a way to win seven games, and if you looked hard enough at how the season went, you might’ve come out of it convinced that Atlanta was indeed closer than people had thought six months after that conversation. They even beat that Dolphins team, one that sure looked like the more talented group in August, two months after Grier offered Fontenot that small piece of encouragement.

Fontenot wasn’t fooled, though. He knew a reckoning was coming. And the truth in the Ryan trade . . . is that a year in as Falcons GM and coach, he and Arthur Smith simply went through with a conscious decision—the time for that reckoning was now.

That didn’t make trading away a 14-year veteran and face of the franchise—one who helped dig the Falcons out of a deep ditch back in 2008—any easier. But where it might’ve appeared that Atlanta’s failed run at Deshaun Watson forced the team’s hand on Ryan, the facts were that the calls that Fontenot and Smith made, the former to Colts GM Chris Ballard and the latter to Ryan himself, were 14 months in the making.

But now that it’s done, the Falcons’ rebuild is really underway.

There’s one number that best illustrates the problem that Smith and Fontenot faced when they started working in Atlanta two Januarys ago—$105 million. That was the combined cap charge for franchise cornerstones Ryan, Julio Jones, Jake Matthews and Grady Jarrett for the 2021 league year before any decisions were made.

That was also 58% of the NFL’s 2021 cap number.

After years of restructures, mortgaging charges against the limit into the future, something was going to have to give. And it did. Smith and Fontenot decided that, at least for a year, they were going to work to field a competitive team with the Atlanta’s longtime leaders in place to try to establish the kind of foundation they’d need to lean on when the time did come to rip the Band-Aid off.

So they restructured Ryan and Matthews. They traded Jones. They decided to swallow hard and keep Jarrett’s number where it was. In doing so, they went young in a lot of areas, cheap in others and lacked depth across the roster. It was enough to give Smith and his staff a chance to coach the team into playoff contention until the new year before the wheels came off at the end of the season.

And yes, the Falcons could’ve restructured Ryan again, kicking the can down the road another time. But in the end, what would that have accomplished?

Over the last few weeks, what crystallized for everyone involved was how the team and player, in this case, were in much different places—the Falcons needing to turn the page, clean up their cap and get younger and deeper, and Ryan, at 37, being at a win-now age for a team that simply couldn’t operate that way.

Which meant that as the team started negotiating extensions for Matthews (that one’s done) and Jarrett, it was time to do with Ryan what it did with Jones last year and consider all options on perhaps the greatest player in franchise history.

The process started at the combine when the Falcons met with other teams, and Fontenot and Smith wanted to get a gauge on Ryan’s market value—while being careful about how his name came up in those conversations. The plan was to be communicative and above board with Ryan throughout, so Atlanta couldn’t create the appearance it was shopping Ryan because at that point the Falcons weren’t.

But the small circle involved had a way of getting the information it needed. When Ryan’s name came up, the answer would be, We’re not shopping anyone, but we’ll listen on everyone. And then, Well, if you’re looking at what the Lions and Rams did, then we can talk. That’d elicit a laugh because the Matthew Stafford price would certainly be too high. But then the Falcons would follow back up with, O.K., then what’s the value?

Based on Ryan’s age and price tag, it became clear that getting more than a fourth-round pick was going to be difficult.

Over the course of last season, the Falcons had heard Watson would have an interest in playing in Atlanta, which is an hour away from his hometown of Gainesville, Ga., and wouldn’t be afraid of being part of a rebuild if it meant getting to play in front of his friends and family. The Falcons knew that wasn’t going to be possible last summer or before the trade deadline—but going into 2022, it’d be feasible.

So they launched an investigation into Watson’s background, and when the grand jury in Harris County, Texas, returned no charges on nine cases filed against the quarterback, they decided to throw their hat in the ring.

But first, they wanted to go to Ryan. Smith told him it was a unique opportunity to get 11 years younger at the position and promised to keep him apprised throughout—and involve him in a trade if it came to that. From there, Ryan agreed to push back the “earned” date of his roster bonus to grease the skids on a trade, if the Falcons were to land Watson. The $7.5 million roster bonus had been due on March 18. It was moved to March 21.

At that point, Colts assistant GM Ed Dodds and Falcons vice president of player personnel Kyle Smith had started preliminary conversations on a trade, and Arthur Smith and Frank Reich had spoken, too. And around the time that Fontenot, Arthur Smith, Falcons owner Arthur Blank and president Rich McKay met with Watson over Zoom on March 16, Fontenot called Ballard for the first time, knowing that groundwork had been laid by Dodds and Kyle Smith.

“Is there really interest?” Fontenot asked.

“There is,” Ballard responded.

Ballard and Fontenot resolved to keep talking as the situation with Watson drove toward a conclusion.

On March 18, Watson stunned the NFL by reversing course and choosing the Browns, a team he’d eliminated already, with the Falcons and Saints having been the presumed finalists at daybreak. And where some assumed that the Falcons would then try to patch things up with Ryan, Smith called his quarterback and told him that the Colts had called about him and asked if he was interested in going there.

“I’d love to look into it,” Ryan said.

Ryan’s agent, Todd France, affirmed to Fontenot that the quarterback wanted a meeting.

So on that Saturday morning, Fontenot called Ballard and gave him permission to call Ryan over Zoom—with an email communicating that the Colts would have a four-hour window, from 4 to 8 p.m. ET, to talk to him. Ballard got Reich, offensive coordinator Marcus Brady and assistant quarterback coach Parks Frazier rounded up to make the call with him.

Over a long talk, Ryan’s passion to keep playing, and start winning again, resonated with the Colts’ group.

On Sunday morning, Ballard reached out to Fontenot and told him he’d call him around 3 p.m. When he did, Ballard’s message was simple: Yes, we want Matt, but we can’t do more than a fourth-round pick for him.

Ballard had, more or less, nailed the market price that those talks at the combine established for the Falcons, and made the argument that it was tough to find a comp for a player like Ryan in a trade. Fontenot threw out names that were a little younger, like Alex Smith’s. And eventually, the cajoling got the Colts to move their offer up to the lower of their third-round picks, 82nd overall (the Colts acquired the 73rd pick in the Carson Wentz trade).

For the Colts, Ryan represented the type of opportunity that Ballard hoped would arise if the team was just patient in filling the hole, which wasn’t an easy position to take, given that they simultaneously thought being aggressive in moving Wentz would get them ahead of the market and, thus, a better return.

On Monday, Arthur Smith had a speaking engagement at his alma mater in Chapel Hill, N.C., in conjunction with a book tour Blank was on and was meeting with UNC prospects to try to get the most out of the trip. Fontenot was at Kenny Pickett’s pro day at Pitt. Ballard was in Indianapolis, huddled in draft meetings with his scouts.

Ballard called Fontenot from his office with just a few hours left until the roster bonus would be earned at 4 p.m. ET to push the deal over the goal line—Pick 82 for Ryan. Fontenot was on the field after the workout was over, waiting for the team’s private meeting with Pickett.

Arthur Smith called Ryan and told him. Fontenot called Ryan while that call was still going on, and Ryan called Fontenot back after he was done with the Atlanta head coach. And that was that.

Fontenot was then called upstairs and went to watch tape with Pickett.

Normally, these things can get messy. But the Falcons resolved this one wouldn’t, and the Colts made sure they wouldn’t be the reason it did, either.

So the upshot for the Falcons?

The page is officially turned. They’ve maintained a veteran presence by bringing back Matthews, working on an extension with Jarrett and signing economical pros like Casey Hayward. They’ll be young this year. They have the eighth pick in the draft, an extra two from the Jones trade and an extra three from this trade. They project, as it stands now, to be top three in the league in cap space in 2023.

Meanwhile, the Colts have their quarterback. And Ryan has a new home.

He never said to the Falcons specifically that he wanted to go to the Colts. But it was clear from the minute Indianapolis was raised as a possibility that he’d be good with it. Ryan knew it was time.

By then, everyone did.

[HoosierinFL]

Originally Posted by JAFF

I believe Jim Irsay expects his players to put forth the same effort he and the entire organizational staff put into the team. Which is why he was pissed about Wentz. He was making the same dumb plays in the last two games as the first five games.

I like this especially. I think that it may have been clear that Wentz didn't have buy in as a "colts guy". Maybe it was a mercenary mentality, maybe its just that he's withdrawn, or different or whatever, but he never adopted the Colts identity that Irsay (and Ballard) want.

[njcoltfan]

Originally Posted by HoosierinFL

I like this especially. I think that it may have been clear that Wentz didn't have buy in as a "colts guy". Maybe it was a mercenary mentality, maybe its just that he's withdrawn, or different or whatever, but he never adopted the Colts identity that Irsay (and Ballard) want.

I think, he thought he didn't have to because he had the backing of the head coach !!

[Oldcolt]

Really great article by Joel Erikson in the Star today (behind firewall). Discussion about Manning and Ryan. First thing that really stood out to me was this:

"The day after the Colts’ 2021 season ended in collapse, Manning sat next to Jim Irsay for the better part of an hour at the College Football Playoff National Championship Game between Georgia and Alabama, having a healthy conversation with the frustrated Indianapolis owner about the state of his franchise.

The legendary quarterback has also had several conversations about leadership with Colts star Quenton Nelson this offseason, conversations that touched on the team’s needs in the locker room."

I kind of verifies what a lot of Freaks have been saying. Irsay and Nelson didn't like Wentz for this organization. The rest of the article spent a ton of time talking about preparation and that being what Ryan brings to the table, just like Manning did. Manning said Ryan will be the first in the building and the last to leave. Music to my ears. THAT is how you lead. Asked what the best piece of advice Manning gave him he answered in a somewhat surprising manner:


"Manning’s biggest piece of advice was something that might not seem like a big deal, at least at first.

“Using my snap count,” Manning said. “That’s a little thing, my cadence, but this is my cadence, that I’ve used my entire life. Can we just use this?”

Reich, a former quarterback himself, understood immediately.

Done deal. Ryan can use his own cadence."


I am getting pumped to see what Ryan/Reich can put together on offense this year. I think at this point, with the additions on defense we have already made to go along with Ryan, we have the making of a damn good all around football team. I look at the NBA this year. With all the emphasis on great offensive players it is the defensive teams that have the look of champions right now. That will be us in January. We are going to be a happy group of Freaks.

I don't know how to work this board well so my quotes form suck. Sorry

[Ironshaft]

I agree completely.

While our final roster is not done, I think this is one of the strongest teams we are going to field in a LONG time. The addition of a couple of rookies making contributions and a couple of vets signed to summer, low contracts will fill out the 53.

My one worry is offensive line. We have zero quality depth at this time and two new starters. Ballard needs to find some more help on the O-line to make me feel warm and fuzzy.

I am not worried about pass catching options as I believe that Ryan will make everyone look better. Good golly, if Brandon Stokley was a 68 catch, 1,000 yard receiver under Manning and he was not a great receiver, Ryan will make our guys look good.