Riley Leonard made a very compelling argument today that Rivers should never have been signed. To me, that move turned out to be the most egregious mistake they made, and it was all on Steichen.

If they would have fired them all because of that move alone, I would have been fine with it.

What Carlie Irsay Gordon is saying is that we won’t fire the pilot after a wing falls off the plane at 35.000 feet.

Leonard looked great and, in retrospect, playing him might have been the right move. But no one could have predicted that he’d play this well.

After Jones went down vs Jacksonville, he completed 18 of 29 for 145 yards, with 29 coming on a single play. He tossed 1 interception and finished the game with an NFL rating of 60.

The team was demoralized, and starting him would have been perceived, far and wide, as going belly up and running out the white flag.

When they brought Rivers in They still had a chance to make the playoffs. RL had just injured his knee and he was the only available QB on the team. They knew they needed a QB to either back up Riley or start. They brought in Phil. He already knew the offense with no learning curve. He has experience and he gave them the best chance of beating the teams on the schedule. We were in 2 of the three games until the final drive.

Leonard played very well today, but IMO he was not ready to put the team on his shoulders to get us in the playoffs.

That is what happened to AR. He was rushed into it and failed I am glad they haven't rushed RL. That was a mistake with AR and I hope the coaches have learned. The kid probably has a future but he won't if he is put under to much pressure right out of the gate.

We did't have much of a chance to make the playoff once Daniel went down,
maybe even before that. Everyone bitching about Phil not getting the wins. Can you imagine that kid getting all that thrown at him if he didn't win. Yea some will say we would have understood. But there would be a lot of people trashing him and saying he should have never been drafted.

The Colts did the right thing in my mind.

I like Riley a lot. Loved it when he was drafted. But he is not ready yet and ANYONE wanting to rush him in there needs to take a step back and think about the entire situation.

The plane manufacturer sucks ass. Every fucking year the plane he builds has the wing fall off, and typically the engines catch fire first, the shitter explodes mid flight, and the pilots are asleep at the wheel because they were drunk off their ass when they boarded the plane.

Do you not see the fucking recurring pattern with what shitbag Ballard has built?

What will it be next year, the turf in LOS turns out to be made of toxic chemicals and all our players have Lupus????

Dude, every year it's some fucking dramatic collapse of shit with this fucking moron----- EVERY FUCKING YEAR!

Honest question. Do you think that Jim had any influence on the way CB built the team? The way he used FA? Who he drafted?

Really really really interesting question. I can't say that I am confident in an answer one way or another.

I think Jim was definitely a shit stirrer. I am confident the Saturday debacle was Jim just being so fucking pissed he just made a desperate reach to something he personally trusted- which to me is a sign Ballard should have been canned right then and there due to a lack of trust.

In terms of team design though, I am not sure I go there too much. Jim clearly loved the fireworks and gonzo offense and I think he put Polian in a position where he was challenged to field a defense that could hold up because so much of the money went to Peyton and co. So looking at it from that prism, perhaps he and Ballard had more of a relationship where Ballard convinced him we needed to be more balanced and focused on the big uglies to compete in today's NFL- the whole build from the inside out model he always espoused.

I think Ballard is a cocky fuck that isn't good at identifying football players. I look at a guy like Cignetti- dude could give no fucks if you ran a 4.2 or benched 590 20 times- he gives a fuck whether or not you love to beat the shit out of people and think that the only fucking thing that is fun, is putting pads on and getting into a fucking physical war. Instead my read is Ballard is obsessed with your fucking metrics and your character assessment. So, when it comes time to just line up 22 fucking dudes, we frequently find that the 22 dudes on the other side, they are just better football players than our 22, which then extends well into the 30-40, and even 50 players on the roster. I think our "back end" roster guys are typically very very low quality football players, whereas when I watch other teams, I don't always look at their 2nd, 3rd tiers and see guys that just BLOW at the game of football.

We were really good early in the year. A lot of his high metrics guys were on the field. But he doesn't have very many of them, so when they go down, well the quality of play just immediately begins to dramatically decline because he hasn't assembled enough of them. I see other teams that still look good even when a couple "stars" go down, we sure as fuck don't though.

This franchise is just stagnant and continues to be

Rofl. I needed this. Comedy gold even though you failed to mention the stewardesses were required to wear flat billed caps!

Fucking love it!