Blaming personnel decisions made by Grigson on Pagano isn't productive. Guy was a productive player here, but was inexplicably cut, just like Freeman was inexplicably allowed to walk. Hughes never got a shot under Pagano because he was behind Freeney and Mathis in 2012 and got traded in 2013. Mario Addison was even deeper on that depth chart.

It is very convenient that such high draft picks were so easily dismissed by the great dam as complete trash.

Pagano can't change the depth chart? Fucking poor guy had his hands tied didn't he

Simple answer: Grigson sucked at drafting, and so did/do the Browns. Richardson wasn't worth trading a 1 for, and Werner's ceiling was never elite, and that was what I said at the time in each case. High draft pick + bad GM = No talent.

I think it's more ... why does Pagano get credit for Henry Anderson (who is way overrated here, FWIW) but Grigson gets blamed for, say, Montori Hughes, and that's not Pagano's fault? What is the logic to that?

I mean, I could argue players on your list like Mewhort and Allen actually REGRESSED under Pagano.

And there are a ton of notable absences, including D'Joun Smith & TJ Green, who Pagano personally advocated for.

Khalid Holmes, who Pags personally worked out.

To me when develop is used that means the coach takes someone and makes them better, or help reach their potential that they would have done otherwise.

The one that really comes to mind in terms of pagano "developing" would be vontae. I didnt really follow his career in miami, but wasnt he kind of a mess there? He came here, got his shit together and became a really good CB. Pags was supposed to be a good DB coach so I could see that.

Could make a case for McGill and Freeman... other than that?

(I am not including Doyle as I doubt pagano had any influence in his success)

This is all opinion, though. No one really knows how much of an impact Pagano did or didn't have on any player's development. But the fact remains that a good number of players have improved under Pagano, enough that it seems plausible that the ones who didn't either had bad circumstances like injuries, or just didn't have the talent to make it work at the NFL level, and this theory becomes even more plausible when you consider that Ryan Grigson was the GM and was awful at talent acquisition throughout his tenure here.

The answer to why Grigson catches the blame for bad draft picks is that these guys don't go on to other teams and become productive players. If that was happening consistently (And I don't consider 3 players over 5 seasons "consistently", the fact that Lawrence Guy was being used by Pagano as a rotational backup here when Grigson cut him notwithstanding), then there's a strong argument for bad player development. But when they don't produce here, go somewhere else and don't produce, and lather, rinse, repeat until they're out of the league, that's not Pagano failing to develop a player any more than it is any other team failing to develop that player. Scouting is not an exact science, and the absolute best in the business at it have success rates in the 40-50% range. Grigson's success rate was more like 25%, which is why he's no longer here.

Not that I agree with your assessment, but assuming I did, injuries would be the biggest factor in both cases. I think the strength and conditioning group that this team was using had done an awful job for a long time, and I was happy when I heard the Colts switched, but they haven't seemed to produce much better results to date.

I left Smith off because, again, injuries were the biggest factor. It's not really possible to develop an injured player. As for Green, he's a second year player, and he was always going to be a project. Early returns don't look promising, but it's too early to completely write him off.

Two words on player development where it is obvious Pags is inept: Jerry Hughes

Caldwell and his staff (nearly the identical staff that developed Freeney and Mathis) got nothing out of him in 2 years, he was still behind Freeney and Mathis during the one year Pagano had him, and Grigson traded him for a bad ILB before he had a chance the next year to compete for a starting spot. How you see this as a failure of player development on Pagano's part is beyond me. Further, even if that were the case, if you can only find one example of this in five years, your argument that he's bad at player development doesn't hold water.

Tom Zbikowski, who was a Pagano guy, he did real well for us. :rolleyes:

Do all you guys argue with Stop signs? :cool:

Anyone who thought he was a starter was fooling themselves, he was terrible from the moment he came into the league.

And yet your hero advocated for his acquisition in Indy. Go figure.

1) Pagano is not the GM, his job is not talent acquisition.

2) The 2012 Colts were rebuilding, they needed a body to take reps at safety. Zbikowski was essentially a warm body, nothing more.

3) No one in the Colts organization ever thought of Zbikowski as anything more than a placeholder.

You are really reaching for evidence to support your argument and still coming up short.

And yet, he advocated and got his guy. And the guy sucked. Badly. Worse than replacement level player would have.

That's the point. Pagano does nothing in particular well.

that isn't true


he gives dam boners very well.

This is a reach at best.

To sum up your argument: "A bad player, who everyone knew was bad going in, played badly and was released, so that means Pagano is bad at things."

I just don't follow the logic.

pagano wanted to bring in a known bad player.

how do you not get this?

Does not fit his narrative.

It was 2012, they just cut half the roster and had about half the cap in penalties (that last part may be exaggerated slightly, but a good chunk of that team's cap figure was penalties). They weren't expecting to compete and they needed someone to play safety. He was a body that they likely were looking to replace immediately. If you expect every single player the team signs or drafts to be successful, you're going to be disappointed.

What narrative? That looking at the facts and circumstances behind an outcome is important? Because that's all I've been doing here.

The stop sign puts up a better argument.

Hahaha you are saying this. About guys to defend pagano. But rip grigson in the same breath.

Holy shit two face

Exactly this a serviceable guy that wouldn't cost much

Your criticism lacks merit. Pagano isn't in talent acquisition, so the only thing we could really be talking about with Zbikowski in relation to Pagano is his development, or lack thereof. That said, they have a saying in the analytical world for this sort of thing: garbage in, garbage out.

Zbikowski played for Baltimore when Pagano was there. Pagano brought him to Indy because he wanted a guy that was familiar with his type of system. Pagano wasn't able to see that Zib sucked even though he saw him day & day out. Zbikowski was all Pagano. It's pretty simple.

Not to dam. This is black and white when it suits his purpose.

Why are you all so obsessed with Zbikowski? He was a bad player who they knew was bad and sought to replace as soon as possible. He was also necessary because they needed a body.

Yeah guys there were literally no other safeties available. Zbikowski, with his bad play and admitted alcoholism, was the only guy they could possibly get.

Obviously not having Luck is by far the current biggest issue on the team; however, you have conveniently not commented on Clappy's obvious incompetent week 1 decisions and moments such as:

-Starting TJ Green at CB (I'm sure you'll still try to blame this on Grigson)
-Running a hurry up play to prevent a replay from occurring which would have awarded us a TD (I'm sure you'll say something like all head coaches make really stupid decisions and bring up Belicheat's going for it on 4th down in '09 again).
-Not even knowing the fucking team we were playing (really looking fwd to reading what you have to say about this one.)

I don't think he was trying to prevent the reply, he was trying to catch the Rams D unprepared and score an easy TD on them. Still it was a dumb decision, just throw the red flag and get the TD that way.

Not at all what I said. Zbikowski was the scrap heap FA Grigson chose. They needed a cheap scrap heap FA. If it wasn't Zbikowski, it would've been a safety of similar quality.

What are you not getting?

On the player acquisition front, Pagano never had anything to do with it, even when he clearly advocated for the player, that doesn't count for some reason.

On the coaching front, when coaching decisions were botched, that was clearly because Grigson was shouting the fake punt formation into Pagano's headset. Hell, this past week on the Marlon Mack no-challenge, Dam probably thinks that Grigson hacked into the headset frequencies and was shouting "NO CHALLENGE" at Pagano.

It all makes sense if you don't think about it.

On top of that Grigson has and still does prevent Clappy and his staff from implementing any sort of game plan whatsoever, so we can showcase Andrew Luck's comeback ability even against terrible teams like the Jags.

Dam sees Grigson as trash, but not Pagano. The problem is, both are trash, but only one piece of trash is still ruining our team. Time to take out the last bit of trash!

Grigson really fucked up the halftime adjustments

I can't believe a Grigson didn't have the team ready for the Seahawks in the second half... I can't believe Grigson didn't see it coming.

We need to fire Grigson

No team that gives up two return TDs is going to win. QB play has cost this team dearly in all 3 of its losses. Can't have Luck back soon enough.