Ballard and Steichen are safe
 

Reports are that they’ll be back next year

After this amazing season and successful track record, of course they are.

The Socials are exploding in rage at this. With good reason. We are rewarding failure, over and over and over again.

Aw, poor beat writers.

Not sure how I feel about this. I can see both sides of the argument.

We're screwed. Is Ballard banging Carlie?

I was on the boat of, if they went good. If they stayed, good. I know SS is green and he shows flashes of being a great coach. Then he does stuff remedial football players know are wrong. Since he is going to be here I hope he watches film on himself and sorts it out. Ballard struggles with certain aspects of talent evaluation, and excels at others. Maybe he can put his ego aside and get someone to help him where he is weak. A stretch I know, but as a fan I can wish.

I agree. We saw how it looks when were full strength. Shane has obviously done a very good job when he has a good QB. Injuries screwed us.

I will continue to say this even though many disagree. Jim held Ballard back on FA. IMO This yr he went for it and it made us a pretty good team Again Injuries screwed us.

IIRC Both Ballard and Shane are under contract through 2026. They will get paid no matter what. So they would have to pay their replacements also.

replacements would be coming in knowing they do not have a 1st round pick for the next two drafts.

I do expect we will be losing some players like some or most of us want gone

No one should be surprised. Until their starting Quarterback broke his leg, they were one of the most dominant Offenses in the league. On D, few teams could overcome the avalanche of injuries that sank that side of the ball into mediocrity. In addition to losing Ward, Gardner and Buckner, they lost Walley before the season began and injuries kept their most promising cover Linebacker, Carlies, on the sidelines.

Some will try to say that it’s possible to overcome injuries. They’ll point to San Francisco as evidence. The difference is that the 49’ers were never reduced to signing someone like Phillip Rivers off the street. They never played a game in which they started a 6th round draft pick who was 4th on the depth chart.

If you want to see the impact of a catastrophic rash of injuries at QB, look no further than Kansas City, where their 3rd stringer managed 260 yards passing in 3 games and KC scored a cumulative 34 points.

Same. It's probably the best for next year, but not so sure long term. As I said in another post if inherit a business that's been in the red for 5 straight years and 7 of the last 9 then it's probably time to move on from your COO.

Also, I'm pretty disappointed that we lost to HOU after they put in most of their backups in the 2nd half. Especially disappointed w/ how our OL performed against their backup DL.

Riley Leonard made a very compelling argument today that Rivers should never have been signed. To me, that move turned out to be the most egregious mistake they made, and it was all on Steichen.

If they would have fired them all because of that move alone, I would have been fine with it.

What Carlie Irsay Gordon is saying is that we won’t fire the pilot after a wing falls off the plane at 35.000 feet.

Leonard looked great and, in retrospect, playing him might have been the right move. But no one could have predicted that he’d play this well.

After Jones went down vs Jacksonville, he completed 18 of 29 for 145 yards, with 29 coming on a single play. He tossed 1 interception and finished the game with an NFL rating of 60.

The team was demoralized, and starting him would have been perceived, far and wide, as going belly up and running out the white flag.

When they brought Rivers in They still had a chance to make the playoffs. RL had just injured his knee and he was the only available QB on the team. They knew they needed a QB to either back up Riley or start. They brought in Phil. He already knew the offense with no learning curve. He has experience and he gave them the best chance of beating the teams on the schedule. We were in 2 of the three games until the final drive.

Leonard played very well today, but IMO he was not ready to put the team on his shoulders to get us in the playoffs.

That is what happened to AR. He was rushed into it and failed I am glad they haven't rushed RL. That was a mistake with AR and I hope the coaches have learned. The kid probably has a future but he won't if he is put under to much pressure right out of the gate.

We did't have much of a chance to make the playoff once Daniel went down,
maybe even before that. Everyone bitching about Phil not getting the wins. Can you imagine that kid getting all that thrown at him if he didn't win. Yea some will say we would have understood. But there would be a lot of people trashing him and saying he should have never been drafted.

The Colts did the right thing in my mind.

I like Riley a lot. Loved it when he was drafted. But he is not ready yet and ANYONE wanting to rush him in there needs to take a step back and think about the entire situation.

The plane manufacturer sucks ass. Every fucking year the plane he builds has the wing fall off, and typically the engines catch fire first, the shitter explodes mid flight, and the pilots are asleep at the wheel because they were drunk off their ass when they boarded the plane.

Do you not see the fucking recurring pattern with what shitbag Ballard has built?

What will it be next year, the turf in LOS turns out to be made of toxic chemicals and all our players have Lupus????

Dude, every year it's some fucking dramatic collapse of shit with this fucking moron----- EVERY FUCKING YEAR!

Honest question. Do you think that Jim had any influence on the way CB built the team? The way he used FA? Who he drafted?

Really really really interesting question. I can't say that I am confident in an answer one way or another.

I think Jim was definitely a shit stirrer. I am confident the Saturday debacle was Jim just being so fucking pissed he just made a desperate reach to something he personally trusted- which to me is a sign Ballard should have been canned right then and there due to a lack of trust.

In terms of team design though, I am not sure I go there too much. Jim clearly loved the fireworks and gonzo offense and I think he put Polian in a position where he was challenged to field a defense that could hold up because so much of the money went to Peyton and co. So looking at it from that prism, perhaps he and Ballard had more of a relationship where Ballard convinced him we needed to be more balanced and focused on the big uglies to compete in today's NFL- the whole build from the inside out model he always espoused.

I think Ballard is a cocky fuck that isn't good at identifying football players. I look at a guy like Cignetti- dude could give no fucks if you ran a 4.2 or benched 590 20 times- he gives a fuck whether or not you love to beat the shit out of people and think that the only fucking thing that is fun, is putting pads on and getting into a fucking physical war. Instead my read is Ballard is obsessed with your fucking metrics and your character assessment. So, when it comes time to just line up 22 fucking dudes, we frequently find that the 22 dudes on the other side, they are just better football players than our 22, which then extends well into the 30-40, and even 50 players on the roster. I think our "back end" roster guys are typically very very low quality football players, whereas when I watch other teams, I don't always look at their 2nd, 3rd tiers and see guys that just BLOW at the game of football.

We were really good early in the year. A lot of his high metrics guys were on the field. But he doesn't have very many of them, so when they go down, well the quality of play just immediately begins to dramatically decline because he hasn't assembled enough of them. I see other teams that still look good even when a couple "stars" go down, we sure as fuck don't though.

This franchise is just stagnant and continues to be

Rofl. I needed this. Comedy gold even though you failed to mention the stewardesses were required to wear flat billed caps!

Fucking love it!

I know that nobody wants to hear this. But both Ballard and Steichen are being graded on this season, and this season only.

The sins of the father were not taken into account.

If this is true we have a moron for an owner and are fucked until well after I am pushing up tulips. Let's look at this year. Injuries supposedly destroyed us. Why? Lack of back up talent in all positions except offensive line. Why on earth would that be an issue with this team? Just look at the last 5 years of drafting. That is where back ups come from. And Ballard drafted every one of them. So the gamble going forward is the first 8 games are actually who we are and we will be mostly injury free n 2026. Worst collapse in NFL history and we bring everyone back. Responsibility lies with bad luck I guess.

Okay, name a team that’s deep enough to excel at Corner when the first 3 guys on the depth chart go down?
How many survive intact when they lose their best D’Lineman?
Have you checked out the Chief’s Offense since Mahomes and Minshew bit the dust?
How many survive the loss of a starting bookend Tackle without missing a beat? What happens when both first string Tackles go down and they have to cobble together a line out of spit and baling wire?

I suspect it is true. I suspect ownership is more comfortable with Ballard working to the end of the contract given what they allowed him to do with draft capital this year. I wouldn't be surprised if they still let him go even if they have a decent year next year (what a fantasy that would be.)

I saw someone state this on Reddit and I think it's true; This team is rotten to the core. It very well may be 5-10 years before we see anything change. My dad will be closer to 100 at that point if we still have him (God willing); I hope it doesn't take that long.

I guess Carlie is just another Irsay. All sincere talk, no real action.

Again the best thing you can say is 'he had injuries to deal with'. Unlike other teams. Nobody ever lists all the fabulous players Ballard has drafted, the depth he has given this team or the incredible culture of winning he has developed. Nope. His best (and apparently only) defense is injuries.

If you are looking for a team that was injured but still survived and did well look no further than the 49ers. Lost Aiyuk for the season, Trent Williams (all pro tackle), Ricky Pearsall, linebackers Dee Winters (ankle) and Tatum Bethune (groin) , with Fred Warner (ankle) and Nick Bosa (knee) already out for the season and to top it off Brock Purdy missed 6 games with a toe (While our boy Jones missed 4) . They finished 12-5 without excuses.Imagine that.

I have played this card a few different times, yet to see any good counters to the play either. It's as if some don't accept the premise that it is his JOB to make sure we are good enough when adversity hits. Instead to some he is only gauged on how good he is when EVERY condition is primed for success. He isn't paid whatever millions of dollars to be successful when the temperature is 74, it is a cloudless day, humidity is 3% and the bar tender is 24 with a beautiful smile and an endless bottle of tequila. His JOB is to build something that can manufacture success when it is -12, the wind is blowing 60 miles and hour, there are predictions of a biblical avalanche and the only liquor left is a 1/4 full pint of McCormicks vodka.

I just don't get it, I really don't. By any meaningful assessment his tenure here has been a massive fucking failure yet some are applauding bringing him back. Me, yeah I don't expect we will suddenly have 74, sun, low humidity and a bombshell bar tender next year (which is apparently the belief among his supporters), that's a very rare thing in the NFL where the only certainty is if you play long enough, you won't play.

https://x.com/Colts_Law/status/2008199361075757070?s=20

Lawrence Owen
@Colts_Law
The teams the 49ers beat without their starting QB:
Saints
Rams (OT)
Cards
Falcons
Giants

They lost to almost every winning teams they faced during that span.

Quit giving me the #49ers as an excuse of why Ballard should have been fired.

Wasn’t doing that. Was answering a question give to me to name a team with injuries as bad as ours that didn’t fold. Making it seem like injuries are an totally valid excuse. I had to search to see if he was correct and then came up with 49ers. I think and thought Ballard should go because of Ballards resume period. And furthermore please explain to this dullard why the fuck showing that other GMs are able to navigate injuries while ours can’t is somehow illegitimate.

Something I read in one of the RATS articles that I didn't realize is that a majority of our high prices vets are set to become UFAs after the '26 season: Defo, MPJ, Nelson, JT, Grover, and Kenny Moore. So kinda makes sense to tie Ballard and SS to that. If things don't work out next year then you can give the new GM a pretty clean slate to work with.

If Brock Purdy’s replacement had been a practice squad refugee, they wouldn’t have sniffed the playoffs. If the Colts hadn’t finished vs 6 straight 11 win teams, they might have.

Damn I wonder who is responsible for that?

You keep saying San Francisco, San Francisco, San Francisco, and I say Kansas City, whose offense withered and died without Mahomes and Minshew. I say the Bengals who managed 1 win without Burrow. I say the Ravens who managed 13 points in their first 2 games without Lamar Jackson. I say Minnesota who, without JJ McCarthy managed 2 wins…1 against a wretched Browns team and one vs a Joe Burrow’less Bengals.

If Jones had never broken his leg, if he’d never gone down for the season, the Colts would have been a lot more competitive. Given they lost 5 of their last 7 games by a cumulative 16 points, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that they might have finished with 13 wins…even with all the injuries at other spots.

I shouldn't get into the trees with folks about Ballard. He isn't a horrific GM and was excellent to start with so many of his moves can be seen and are very good moves. My bottom line is that a decade of not being able to produce a winning team should be enough. It isn't and we will be back here next year again watching the playoffs I fear. He isn't a winner in this long and now is going to lead us to the promise land. I hope so but man it is a hard sell.

Would you rather have Chris Grier?

I would say yes, but I would also have more confidence in Dam's asshole making personnel decisions than I would Chris Ballard.

On another note, ol' boy Shane, it's pretty interesting to see him getting a hall pass despite repeatedly demonstrating the ability to coach with any form of sustained success. He is 7-22 against teams with a winning record, and 3 of those 7 came in the month of September so absolutely not in the throws of a pressurized playoff vice.

Dacich had an interesting observation about the incredible ability to look the other way for Shane. Jim Caldwell (who I am no fan of FWIW) made it to the SB. Peyton Manning was out a year, terrible season, Jim was terminated; because injuries are not an excuse- Carlie even said so, while of course giving Shane a pass because of "adversity".

Man this organization just needs to be blown the hell up.

He’s not a horrible GM, he’s mediocre. He gives guys like Kray just enough ammunition to convince themselves and others it’s someone else’s fault (Reich, Irsay) or it’s bad luck. And many will tell you how it could be worse, so better not make a change. To me it can’t get much worse than the mediocrity. I’d rather they be bad honestly. 8-9 or 9-8 every year sucks. Watching teams in our division beat us, bottom out, rebuild, and beat us again sucks.

Sadly it makes sense to bring Ballard and Stechein back next year. Should be the last run for them though - short of a true contender run. And like you, I don’t see it with this team.

So I am supposed to be scared to let Ballard go because it might get worse? I don't believe you think this is a reason to keep Ballard. We both know it is tough to win when you are afraid to lose.

The Irsay stuff is weird. Maybe there's some actual evidence of it other than message board speculation, but if Jim had been meddlesome to the point that he was preventing Ballard from doing his job then you would think Ballard would have bailed.

if Ballard truly did this happily for 9 years then that is who he is, and that isn't a dynamic leader in the least, more like a toady. I do not believe for a minute Ballard was or is that weak.