Please explain.

Gutting rosters, firing coaches, purging GM’s and staff, simply because there’s no realistic hope of winning it all, is something that bad teams do. Beyond that, I think that judging the state of your team through the lens of how well they’ll perform should catastrophic injuries occur is too high a bar.

The Ravens, the Bengals, and the Chiefs all saw their seasons implode after injuries struck. Should they start over?

That's not what I read him saying. Perhaps I'm wrong.

I pulled that he was saying players that don't fit the three year plan should be looked at further, assuming Ballard doesn't think he has a championship level team.

I didn't read him suggest throwing out the baby with the bathwater was the better plan.

What he said was that on cutdown day, a GM should look at his roster and decide if the talent level is such that his team can win the Super Bowl, even after sustaining a rash of injuries.

That, if the answer is no, they should unload any player who wouldn’t still be effective in 3 years. Further, in addition to cutting anyone over a certain age, presumably 28 or so, they should purge the front office and coaching staff and start over.

I think you are taking my statement much further than I meant. What I am saying is that we made moves for last season. If they see Buckner not returning to form, Ward retiring due to another concussion, and DJ not recovering to play as last year, it might be time to start a new window of opportunity with guys who can replace those three. If thy think they are on the roster now, no need to gut the team. If they do not see it happening soon, it would be time for a rebuild. Maybe Carlie sees Ballard and Shane as the guys to maneuver through it, but a lot of fans will bail on the team.

I was using cut-down day as an example as opposed to how some fans think it needs to be done today. It could be the trade deadline. My point was it was not something to be done today.

In fact Frank Reich was the OC on that Eagles SB winning team. But, Frank had never called plays, even on that SB winning team. Doug Pederson was the play caller. I wasn't a Reich fan as a play caller. I think the Jests, and in particular Aaron Glenn will rue the day they hired him. I mean, look how much he had Bryce Young screwed up in Carolina.

I believe, that Steichen has always called the plays when he was the OC at San Diego and Philly.

For that reason, and many more, Steichen is very respected in the NFL as a play caller. Steichen usually has 3 to 4 plays a game that are called to produce mismatches that have the opportunity to provide chunk plays.

I was more saying i disagree about the depth part of your comment.

OK

I guess my question is where do you stop? If you’re moving on from Jones, Ward, and Buckner, why hold onto Q, Jonathan Taylor, and Grover Stewart?

And, who makes the decision to initiate a rebuild? For any coach or GM, making even the more limited moves you suggest would amount to professional seppuku. Heads would roll after what amounts to a race to the bottom.

In practice, teams make the kind of assessments you suggest at the end of the season. Ownership decides if they want to make changes at Coach and GM. End of season meetings occur. The roster is put under a microscope, rosters are tweaked, decisions are made about which players to retain in free agency, veterans are eased out the door.

In the last few weeks, the Colts cut ties with Braden Smith, Zaire Franklin, MPJ, Kwity Paye, Nick Cross, and more.

Next year, they face decisions about Deforest Buckner and Q.

Suggestions like this give me a sense of deja vu. At the end of a 10-4 1971 season, 2 years after winning the Super Bowl, Bob Irsay fired Don Klosterman as GM and brought in Joe Thomas. After a slow start, Thomas fired his head coach and ordered the successor to bench his older players. After a 5-9 run, he fired the coach and shipped out stars like John Unitas, Earl Morrall, Tom Matte (RB), Bill Curry (C), Billy Newsome (DT), Norm Bulaich (RB), Jerry Logan (S), and others.

Joe Thomas was brilliant and was lucky that the trade of Newsome snagged the Saints 1st round pick which he used on Bert Jones. But, something was lost which was never recovered…organizational stability and the trust of the fans.

A couple of years later, Thomas was gone, after losing a power struggle with Ted Marchibroda. A few years after that, they folded their tent in Baltimore and decamped to Indianapolis.