Ballard ten years ago
 

Would we have traded the pick with BDB? I say yes. Kept P and won two SBs. Jim fucked up, but we are on the right track.

I think he would have taken Luck. It was the smart move

100%

I will never forgive Irsay for letting Peyton suit up in any uniform other than the Colts. If any player in the history of the league deserved loyalty and the benefit of the doubt, it was Manning.

We saw what the Redskins gave up for RGIII. What would they, or another team, have given up for Luck?

I agree. And, if not for the 18 million dollar roster bonus due to (a yet to be certain of his health) Peyton Manning, I think they would have drafted Luck and kept Manning for at least one more year. The roster bonus forced their hand to make a decision in the dark. If they passed on Luck and Manning never recovered, and Luck went on to have a stellar career with another team, :eek:

I mean, its interesting to think about trading that pick for a huge number of picks, and maybe being able to get someone like Dontari Poe or Luke Kuechly and other high defensive picks in later years (assuming the trade would have come with first rounds in the 2013 draft too).

But like omaha says, taking Luck was the smart thing to do.
What was not the smart thing to do was blowing up the entire organization and the decade of winning culture that was ingrained in that locker room.
The second not smart thing was doing that while hiring Grigson who had no bonafides as a potential GM.
The third not smart thing was trying to dial back the clock 30 years and take an old fashioned run the ball and stop the run approach to rebuilding the team.

The smart move, in hindsight, would've been to trade the #1 overall pick, draft Fletcher Cox with the top 5 draft pick acquired, draft Russell Wilson at 65, and use all that additional draft capital to build a superteam that Manning and Wilson would've led to multiple SBs.

Ballard would have absolutely done the same thing because it wouldn't have been up to Ballard. It was up to Irsay. so it can't be counted a Grigson pick. Besides, Grigson's best pick was TY Hilton.

Even if it was up to Ballard, he would have taken Luck bc it was the smart move.

I've been trying to figure out, who the hell is BDB ???

Seriously? Our GM.

It wasn’t a fuck up, and everyone involved agreed it would’ve been unfair to have Luck sit behind Manning he was ready to go from day 1

That's what I thought, but I still don't see how you get Chris Ballard from BDB ?

That kid was ready to go day 1. I remember watching the ball leave his hands against the Rams (was it the vikings?) in the first few plays and I think we all already knew. That motherfucker was different off the rip.

Hindsight is 2020. Should have kept Manning. I do believe they made the right decision at the time to go for Luck. I can't blame Irsay pulling the trigger like he did to make that move. If Luck was really who he sold himself to be, he would have been under center this year and this team would have been fucking scary.

It is what it is.

"Big Dick Ballard"

When I read the title, I wasn't sure which Ballard this was. Vic Ballard was about ten years ago, wasn't he?

o


Though his NFL career was brief, Vick Ballard has a permanent place in Colts lore.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgOcvZw3m8w

o

I feel like I don't even need to click it to know what that is.

This is kind of a crazy discussion. The decision to pick Luck was the only rational decision to make at that time, and Manning endorsed it himself. There was no certainty at the time that Manning would even return due to his neck problems. Even Denver, who won the multi-team sweepstakes to sign Manning after he was cut, had enough leverage in their negotiations to include a "neck clause" into their contract which would have voided their contractual guarantees after the first year, so Manning's neck issue was a serious, real world issue and not just an excuse to move on to Luck.

https://www.denverpost.com/2012/03/2...jury-clause-2/

I mean, can you imagine the blowback if we had traded the #1 pick and Manning never returned, or returned and then had to retire shortly thereafter?

It was an unquestionably difficult and unfair situation for everyone involved, and there was no easy way to navigate through it. However, I thought everyone (the Colts, Manning and Irsay) handled it about as well as could reasonably be expected, and I think the decision the Colts made was pretty clearly the right one at the time. I'm sure Manning had some hard feelings though to my knowledge he's never said that.