So, how do you feel about the hero worship of, say, a Mike Doss? :D

If we had Mike Doss You might as well go ahead and hand the Colts Superbowl rings. Just ask Marcus Pollard, he would agree.:D

Oh, ok, so “people” thought this. I just looked at the thread, and here’s a list of the predictions made:

Hoopsdoc - between 4 and 9 wins
JesusChrist – 4-6 wins
Dr. Spaceman – 8 wins
Colts and Orioles – 11 wins
Sherck – 9 wins
Indystu2 – 6 wins
Dewey 5 – 3-5 wins
FatDT – 7 wins

Averaging barely over 7 wins, even including C&O’s 11-win prediction which was ridiculed by several at the time. No prediction by you in that thread, of course, though I did come across this little nugget you wrote at about the same time – “in the 2nd year of being the gm, this team has very little talent. it doesn't look good for ballard right now.”

I’m sure I can find lots more if I look, because you’ve very pessimistic about the Colts under Ballard – a far cry from your suggestion now that you knew all along that we’d perform this well.

Not a complete team? No team is perfect, but the Colts won 14 in a row in 2009 and were typically one of the top seeds going into the playoffs during the Manning years. And comparing the current approach to Polian’s approach is ludicrous – Polian signed tons of free agents. Even at DT, off the top of my head he signed/traded for Booger McFarland and Corey Simon. Simon, if I’m not mistaken, had even been designated as a franchise or transitional free agent. Not to mention the fact that it appears we are currently drafting well.

Nobody cares what you are “calling for” - particularly since you believe Ballard has so much more info than you and therefore can make more informed decisions. And as to Mitchell and Inman, we signed them so what are you complaining about? You should be singing the Colts praises.

Don't bother arguing with this guy. We're on the cusp of a playoff berth, riding a five game win streak, but yet we're wasting Luck. Ok, whatever.

But wait, doesn't Ballard know more than you? He has more info that you, remember, so how do you suddenly feel qualified to question his decision making?

This same point was argued about Grigson in his first 2 years.

I guess it's wrong to question a guy until hindsight is 20/20.

Because it is a football message board. I come here to express opinions and read others. I have never pretended to know more than Ballard. Pagano maybe but that isn’t saying much.

Just because Ballard knows more doesn’t mean he is right. The dude will not be 100% on his decisions. No idea why you think everyone should be a cheerleader and suck his nuts like dam does his dad.

Mike Doss was a true football champion. Won at every level. Absolute champ

I am just arguing wherever we end up this year, we could be better and that is a shame to me. Ballard had some great hits, I fear he will continue sitting on cash for years and we will be on the outside of a championship for that reason.

See, they dont think it's ok to have an opinion. You just have to drink the koolaid no matter what

Hell I hope he proves me dead wrong.I just agree that it doesn't make sense to sit on that Cash.Meanwhile teams like the Pats,Saints and Steelers realize they just need to keep reloading with their franchise QBs.

We are one game over 500. The way you post it sounds like we are undefeated and not playing some bad football at times. I am pretty sure I predicted that if luck is healthy we would be at 7 to 9 wins. I never bought into this division being good. And this team does lack talent. Our all world QB is masking some talent deficiencies

Polian signed tons of free agents? The fuck he did

I am giving him props for Mitchell and Inman. Should have had them earlier. With some other dudes

And spending the cash doesn’t mean you don’t get to draft young guys. You can do both

1 game over .500 playing one of the easiest schedules in the NFL. Have the Colts beat one team that will make the playoffs?

Don't think I'm coming at you with this - it was just your comment that inspired me to post one.

An opinion on Ballard doesn't have to be binary. It's not either all good or all bad. I would remind people that just about everyone else's opinion on this is probably as nuanced as their own.

When people criticize Ballard for something specific, they're not saying he's a failure of a GM and in over is head.

When people defend Ballard's decisions, they're not saying he's an infallible genius with a magic binder.

Everybody on this board (fuck, everybody everywhere) always assumes that if someone disagrees with you on one little point, that their entire perspective is clear 100% over on the other side of whatever it is. That's almost never true.

My own opinion of Ballard is that, while he's basically a rookie GM and is still prone to certain mistakes, overall I respect and agree with what appears to be his philosophy: play the long game, build your team through the draft and supplement the roster with low-risk free agents that are either solid vets or have a good ratio of upside relative to their cost.

Moreover, he appears to also have a good, collaborative relationship with Reich on which players fit the schemes and doesn't seem to try to interfere with the depth chart. Basically an anti-Grigson. This is all good.

My primary criticism of him at this point, aside from a few totally predictable and also practically inevitable draft misses, is that he appears to be a bit of a cap hoarder. Whether it's because he's being protective of the locker room atmosphere and team culture, or if he's adamant about having the cap space to resign talent, or he's just so risk-averse that he's afraid to spend any money and repeat a T-Rich situation remains to be seen.

Great post. Hopefully he is hoarding all that cap space for a reason other than saving money (and that does not seem to be something Irsay is concerned about).

yes thats it. that pic was from a twitter account that I saw on B/R

The Redskins *might* make it

They beat themselves a couple of times

I provided named examples but was ignored, unless Veve is your personal assistant. So the point of even complying with the whole exercise was?

Indeed you did. And I think you are correct. If we had signed wide receivers who did not have the dropsies we would have a better record. Brown/White seem like they would have been better than who we got. I'll ding Ballard for that. But it is a small ding as I am not sure anyone would have guessed that those guys would have dropped so many passes. On that subject does anyone have any idea why they seemed to have stopped doing that? Seems like since Inman got here its really improved

Doyle came back, and all the WRs after Hilton got pushed down the depth chart by Inman. And I'm sure they worked on it in practice.

Not sure what you mean here. You’ve got to read my post in context. I was making the point, and perhaps not as clearly as I could have, that Omaha was being hypocritical. When I earlier challenged him to set forth how he would have done things differently than Ballard, he refused and said it wasn’t his job and he didn’t have access to the same info that Ballard does. Yet only a few posts later, he’s back to railing against Ballard’s decisions.

He can’t have it both ways - if he’s going to fall back on the “Ballard’s got more info than me so you can’t expect me to have better ideas” defense, then in my mind you have to live with that position and it’s pretty hypocritical to then start questioning Ballard’s decisions a few posts later.

You are a funny guy, I’ll give you that. Nobody said that Ballard is infallible, and just because I take a position different than yours doesn’t mean I endorse everything he does. However, I do like his management style, and I’ve been pretty consistent from the beginning about that. That doesn’t mean, as RM1369 and others seems to think, that I advocated that we avoid signing any big name free agents this last offseason. I didn’t. Indeed, as FatDT correctly pointed out, Ballard himself didn’t have this mindset, and he actually tried to sign a few last off season.

Nevertheless, while Ballard’s plan might not have been to completely avoid free agency, his philosophy (or at least how I interpret it) makes it unlikely that we will ever – except in perhaps very rare instances – be seriously in the running for the top free agents. I just think there will almost always be another team willing to pay more than Ballard will. The truth is that most top-end free agents are vastly overpaid for what they produce. Ballard’s value-oriented approach will lead us to signing a lot of mid-level free agents like Ebron, Grant, etc. He’s betting on himself to be able to draft star players and to find diamonds in the rough in free agency.

Right now, all of this means there’s a lot of cap space because there’s nobody to spend it on. But if Ballard’s good at the talent evaluation part of his job, it won’t be long before we’ll be spending lots of money keeping our own players from hitting free agency. Either way, the cap money will be spent – it’s only a question of when and on whom.

I dont really agree 100% with your second point, but it made me think about my thoughts on Grigson. Grigson got a lot of benefit of the doubt in his first two years. The start of the Luck era, he drafted Hilton, Pags stepped aside for a season to beat cancer, and we made the playoffs under Arians.

Even the media thought the Richardson trade was a good idea. It's easy to put blinders on when you make the playoffs three consecutive years, advancing further each year. The 2014 colts had about as much business being in the AFC championship as the 1995 colts did.

The check engine light was on, and a good deal of fans put black tape over it.

The wheels didn't really fall off all the way until the 45-7 deflategate game when it became clear that he'd really decimated the roster. 8-8, 8-8 (luck injury), then 4-12...

Sure I can have it both ways. I can also use hindsight like a motherfucker. And I have no problem being hypocritical

Well at least we agree on something then.

That's why I like Omaha, he doesn't give a shit like me. He pretty much says what comes to mind and doesn't stress over who doesn't agree.

If we all agreed on everything here it would really suck more sick than Tom Brady and maybe even more than Dam. Stop getting your panties in a bunch because we haven't chose to fall before Ballards feet and claim him as the Amazing GM you do.

Nothing screams insecurity like projecting onto others.

I apologize Dam, my insecurities got the best of me.

Finally I understand. You are a five year old.

Actually it sounds like you have become Donald Trump.

That is cold brother

Exactly, a five year old