According to who was Braden the 7th best interior lineman?

What about being able to run the ball? Colts got real fucking nasty on the O-line.

Not only running the ball but how about real play action. How about being able to score inside the 5 yard line without some fancy misdirection. These guys may not pan out but the idea of being able to wear down a defense and dominate them late in a game would be great with me. And we need to be able to win in cold shitty weather come December and January. I get how people may disagree with the player taken but am baffled as to why you don’t like the philosophy behind it. I love the direction these guys are taking us, mean physical football not the soft shit I’ve had to endure. Oh yeah, speed. Guys may need coaching but that is what we hopefully have. Go Colts and kick some ass!!

I don’t know Old, the Colts had speed on defense during the Dungy years and those were the “ star war” numbers years with only one championship, with one of the best QBs to ever play the game.

That's his point, those teams were pretty soft, finesse teams. They had a good o-line early on (which got much worse later in Manning's years) and the d-line was bad outside of the pass rush for most of the Manning era. Having speed on defense is great as long as you have some guys up front who can allow those speed guys to flow to the ball. Ballard is trying to do it correctly by building up the trenches.

It's not like BP didn't try to get quality DT's, Josh Williams, Trippiett, Simon, Booger, Raegor, Quitcock, Moala

Sure he tried, but he wasn't very successful. When he was, the guy didn't stay for long.

Ballard is trying to make sure the lines get built up, which is the right thing to do.

Gonna guess that Reich might have had some influence in the drafting of the OL:

https://www.profootballfocus.com/new...ne-of-the-year

Everyone keeps calling Smith/Nelson Luck’s personal bodyguards and that’s true to some extent. It’s also true that both of them are run-blockers first. Clearly, Reich is going to try to implement the part of his system where the Colts would have a speedy, explosive run game.

If the defense has to respect and account for that, that’s going to protect Luck more than paying Hall of Famers to pass block.

One thing I like about having Frank Reich as a head coach is that we're finally going to see some creativity in the Colts playcalling and usage of offensive players. Hopefully with a larger infusion of talent, the defense will be able to hold up its end of the bargain in short order.

It was either NFL.com or CBS.
Nelson was the undisputed #1.
Then after Nelson there were several C/Gs ranked higher.... Frank Ragnow, James Daniels and Billy Price.

Then pure guards that were ranked higher....
Isiah Wynn, Will Hernendez and then Braden Smith. But Austin Corbett was ranked around Smith and he was taken in the 1st, so we gotta trust our coaches evaluations.

7th ranked is a fair assestment, even if he could end up beong the 2nd or 3rd best after Nelson.

The ranking doesnt bother me as much as the strategy. We have a mean offensive line now, minus a quality RT. But we could have gotten better players with those 2nd round picks.

Every pick in the 2nd round felt like a reach. Turay could end up being special but the kid has already had 2 shoulder surgeries. Is that what we really need? Another frequently injured player?

Leonard is okay, but we could have probably gotten him with one of the later 2nd rd picks.

I am picking up on lip service by Ballard. He was high on having players compete. He was high on Matt Jones just recently. Yet he cut Matt Jones today. Why, because we drafted Hines? What happened to that competition motto?

Ballard is signing free agents he falls in love with, gets bored of them after playing with them for 1 year and then cuts them and gives excuses like "didnt fit the new system".

This is going to have even more blowback in free agency. We were quite in free agency bc no player wants to sign with a whimsical GM. Ballard didnt turn into Polian over night after a quite free agency.... he got snubbed by all the good ones we went after. Thats my opinon and im sticking to it.

eh, we are talking about matt jones here, not some real high level talent. He had something like 5 carries last year. We drafted 2 RBs and have several others on the roster, there is plenty of room for competition there. I doubt a high level FA will point to matt jones and say thats the reason why he didnt come. With FAs it mostly comes down to 2 things, #1 is money, #2 is if they are older and have made their money they may go to where they have the best chance to win.