If I’m Chris Ballard, I’ve got to decide if this year’s squad…
 

Has real Super Bowl potential or is it a team that will get to the playoffs and go one and done?

How you see the team has real implications for how you spend the rest of the offseason, who or if you add before now and the first kickoff of the season.

That question didn’t much factor into the pursuit of Trey Hendrickson. Hendrickson wasn’t a one year stopgap, a way to jury rig the roster and spackle over a hole. He was young enough, with enough left in the tank, to offer production for another few years. You could add him to the roster in preparation for a real run in 2027.

What’s left on the market, now, are a bunch of players best described as once were’s. You might get a decent short term return if you sign a Clowney, but he’s 33 years old. Calais Campbell is 39, Von Miller 37.

If you truly believe, you sign one of those guys, assuming that he’s the piece that shoves you over the finish line. If your expectations are more modest, you hold the hand you’re dealt. You hope to scheme your way to a pass rush, explore whether Tuimoloau, Cumbs, or Curry have the right stuff. If one of them does, you’re playing with found money. If they don’t, you go into next year’s free agent class and pay whatever price is needed to snag your guy.

To a certain extent, the same logic applies to Wide Receiver. Do you ante up big bucks for Jauan Jennings to be a number two? Do you bide your time and hope that an upper echelon option emerges before the season, an AJ Brown or a DK Metcalf? Do you explore the upside of guys already on the roster? How good is Aston Dulin, can Laquon Treadwell live up to his 1st round potential, how much does Westbrook-Ikhini bring to the table, does the Burks kid have what it takes to morph into TY Hilton 2.0?

"

I'd still go after Bosa.

I would have to ask myself if this team is good enough to win it all. There are probably 6-8 teams every year that fits into this category. If I felt it was good enough (not today, but at the start of roster cut-downs), then I would have to ask myself a follow-up question: Is this team ready to absorb injuries, because they are coming. Every team gets them, and usually it is the team with the least, or the best depth that wins it all. If I felt it was not good enough, I would have to ask myself which players fit into the 3-year window, or if it was time to offload the aging players and start over (likely with a new coach and GM).

What does it take for him to keep his job?

I personally think it should be a division title and a home playoff win. That would be an improvement, and should give him some grace for another year. He might get away with just a playoff win, since the organization (Outside of McAfee on draft night) has not made it clear that a division title is absolutely necessary. IF they have, I haven't seen it.

Ballard should be expending every resource possible to field the very best team he possibly can this year.

I disagree, i think the teams that win the Superbowl are generally the least injured teams at the most important positions. No team can absorb any significant amount of injuries to their top level guys.

Depth is only so good at certain positions.

If you lose your starting QB, or a top level LT, Pro Bowl DE or CB, the drop off in talent gets really hard to replace to any suitable standard.

Losing a star receiver hurts, but an opposition can't "target" that weakness, as an offensive co-ordinator or head coach you adjust your playbook accordingly. But a CB replacement will immediately get targetted. A DE means your pass rush is no longer elite and is now mediocre and the QB gets longer to throw. A LB missing can be patched up to some extent and differing schemes deployed. A RB, you throw more often etc.

Steichen was brought here in part because he was able to win a Super Bowl with a back up QB (Nick Foles). While I think you are absolutely correct that the least injured team has a huge advantage, depth is also a huge factor. Missing on all those athletic non football player types with so many high draft choices has hurt. It may be that Ballard is changing his ways with new ownership and years of mediocrity. He never would have drafted an end with short arms like he did this year and this wasn't an all RAS draft. He seems to have gone more for actual football players. Gives me some hope

That, I'm afraid is incorrect. Steichen was coaching as QB coach with Chargers, when Foles and the Eagles won the SB.

You actually agree with me. I just worded it wrong.

Sounds like a solid road map to becoming the Jets 2.0.

Please explain.

Gutting rosters, firing coaches, purging GM’s and staff, simply because there’s no realistic hope of winning it all, is something that bad teams do. Beyond that, I think that judging the state of your team through the lens of how well they’ll perform should catastrophic injuries occur is too high a bar.

The Ravens, the Bengals, and the Chiefs all saw their seasons implode after injuries struck. Should they start over?

That's not what I read him saying. Perhaps I'm wrong.

I pulled that he was saying players that don't fit the three year plan should be looked at further, assuming Ballard doesn't think he has a championship level team.

I didn't read him suggest throwing out the baby with the bathwater was the better plan.

What he said was that on cutdown day, a GM should look at his roster and decide if the talent level is such that his team can win the Super Bowl, even after sustaining a rash of injuries.

That, if the answer is no, they should unload any player who wouldn’t still be effective in 3 years. Further, in addition to cutting anyone over a certain age, presumably 28 or so, they should purge the front office and coaching staff and start over.

I think you are taking my statement much further than I meant. What I am saying is that we made moves for last season. If they see Buckner not returning to form, Ward retiring due to another concussion, and DJ not recovering to play as last year, it might be time to start a new window of opportunity with guys who can replace those three. If thy think they are on the roster now, no need to gut the team. If they do not see it happening soon, it would be time for a rebuild. Maybe Carlie sees Ballard and Shane as the guys to maneuver through it, but a lot of fans will bail on the team.

I was using cut-down day as an example as opposed to how some fans think it needs to be done today. It could be the trade deadline. My point was it was not something to be done today.

In fact Frank Reich was the OC on that Eagles SB winning team. But, Frank had never called plays, even on that SB winning team. Doug Pederson was the play caller. I wasn't a Reich fan as a play caller. I think the Jests, and in particular Aaron Glenn will rue the day they hired him. I mean, look how much he had Bryce Young screwed up in Carolina.

I believe, that Steichen has always called the plays when he was the OC at San Diego and Philly.

For that reason, and many more, Steichen is very respected in the NFL as a play caller. Steichen usually has 3 to 4 plays a game that are called to produce mismatches that have the opportunity to provide chunk plays.

I was more saying i disagree about the depth part of your comment.

OK

I guess my question is where do you stop? If you’re moving on from Jones, Ward, and Buckner, why hold onto Q, Jonathan Taylor, and Grover Stewart?

And, who makes the decision to initiate a rebuild? For any coach or GM, making even the more limited moves you suggest would amount to professional seppuku. Heads would roll after what amounts to a race to the bottom.

In practice, teams make the kind of assessments you suggest at the end of the season. Ownership decides if they want to make changes at Coach and GM. End of season meetings occur. The roster is put under a microscope, rosters are tweaked, decisions are made about which players to retain in free agency, veterans are eased out the door.

In the last few weeks, the Colts cut ties with Braden Smith, Zaire Franklin, MPJ, Kwity Paye, Nick Cross, and more.

Next year, they face decisions about Deforest Buckner and Q.

Suggestions like this give me a sense of deja vu. At the end of a 10-4 1971 season, 2 years after winning the Super Bowl, Bob Irsay fired Don Klosterman as GM and brought in Joe Thomas. After a slow start, Thomas fired his head coach and ordered the successor to bench his older players. After a 5-9 run, he fired the coach and shipped out stars like John Unitas, Earl Morrall, Tom Matte (RB), Bill Curry (C), Billy Newsome (DT), Norm Bulaich (RB), Jerry Logan (S), and others.

Joe Thomas was brilliant and was lucky that the trade of Newsome snagged the Saints 1st round pick which he used on Bert Jones. But, something was lost which was never recovered…organizational stability and the trust of the fans.

A couple of years later, Thomas was gone, after losing a power struggle with Ted Marchibroda. A few years after that, they folded their tent in Baltimore and decamped to Indianapolis.

o


You stop by not continually treating our beloved Colts as though they have been playing like the Kansas City Chiefs' dynasty between 2018 and 2024. And you stop by not being so sensitive to the slightest criticism of Chris Ballard and the Colts players, and giving long, detailed defenses and explanations of why that poster's critique was erroneous and/or inaccurate.

You think that Chris Ballard is a good GM, and that he has built complete teams that are not overly dependent on an all-world quarterback to be a contender. We get it. And I actually agree with you. I think that the fact that the Colts were essentially relegated to a 4th-string, 44 year-old quarterback by the end of the 2025 season was absolutely horrible luck, and I think that the Colts are probably going to be a playoff team in 2026 that looks a lot like the team that started the 2025 season at 8-2 before Daniel Jones broke his leg during the overtime loss to the Chiefs on their homefield in eastern Missouri ...... but you don't necessarily need to repeatedly point that out with new threads, and/or taking exception to posters who critique Ballard's track record in terms of the Colts' lack of playoff appearances and middling/mediocre records over the past 5 seasons (2021 though 2025.)


Before you respond, keep in mind that I agree with you about Ballard being a good GM, and I think that the middling teams that the Colts produced prior to Daniel Jones coming on board last year were a sign of Ballard's success at putting together competitive teams that were
simply lacking a solid, top-8 NFL quarterback ...... and I think that the 2026 Colts are going to finish what they started in the first 10 games of the 2025 season before Daniel Jones broke his leg ...... but it's OK to just let some critiques of the team and the front office go in one ear and out the other without responding to all of them.

o

Kray, your read history differently than I do. Organizational stability and fan trust were lost because Bob Irsay was who Bob Irsay was in my opinion If your ownership is stable they can and do change administrations until one produces a winner. Bob Irsay was of many things but stability wasnt usually one

Well, they let Moore walk - https://www.nfl.com/news/colts-relea...-to-find-trade

I'm not impressed with Anarumo about stuff like this.

Whatever though, Moore is a loser just like the rest of these guys so it is what it is.

Maybe he can win somewhere else.

If you don't think losing Moore is a big deal, why would it lower your opinion of Anarumo that the team is getting rid of him?

Let me start out by saying that I respect everyone who posts here. Colt fans are a proverbial band of brothers, often bloodied, never bowed. We don’t always agree on the details, but we all are united in our hopes that more than one Super Bowl trophy will reside in Indianapolis.

While I do believe that Chris Ballard is a good GM, by no means do I miss the kinks, the flaws. Turn him loose in a roomful of Edge rushers and one ballet dancer, and there’s a pretty good chance he leaves raving about the dancer’s character and off the wall RAS score. Cornerback hasn’t been much better. Recently, he seems to have recognized the issue. He delved into free agency to fill one Corner spot and traded to fill another. He lucked into Daniel Jones, and he set off in hot pursuit of Trey Hendrickson.

As far as my defense of players, coaches and the front office, I don’t think that a football board is a sewing circle. It’s a forum for the free exchange of ideas. I assume that no one comes here to have people line up and tell them they agree. We are not a collective of ditto’heads.

I don’t mistake the Colts for Kansas City. Over the past few years, it’s almost as if they were in different leagues. Maybe that would have been different had Andrew Luck not retired. Maybe it won’t be true if Daniel Jones returns to form.

I won’t promise to take off my rose colored glasses. If they win by 30, I’ll sing their hosannas; if they lose by 30, I’ll probably try to convince you that the ship hasn’t been torpedoed. If this season ends in disaster, if the Irsays decide to part ways with Ballard, I’ll suck it up and stay on the bandwagon.

o


I don't want you to ...... I was simply suggesting that every questionable post does not necessarily need to be met with a retort or a rebuttal. For me, I will occasionally give some blow-back to something that I strongly disagree with, but other times I just let it go because I'd be using a lot of mental energy if I did it often. But if you're comfortable with your style, have at it.

Strangely enough, after reading your last post, I think that I actually have more confidence in Ballard than you do.

o

I agree. But some posters do not know when to stop arguing over stuff. It's like the one who stops loses the argument, when the truth is that some posts do not deserve a response because they are too over the top, and likely just one guy misreading the other post..

I'm being apathetic, and sarcastic.

I think Moore is an excellent backup and 3rd/4th corner for us. I think with Moore we might have had the deepest CB room in the entire league. That's a scary fucking room.

I don't like the questions it makes me ponder.

Is Moore washed up? Why do we not have a role for his skill set? If he's not washed up, WHY doesn't he want to be here?

Pagano proved his scheme sucked when he couldn't incorporate an all time great in Freeney. Moore is not on that level, obviously, but the principle remains.

I'm not out on Anarumo like I am on Ballard. There are some positives there and he is allowed to make an argument. How Moore plays on a different team this year may settle it but my initial gut reaction to that is a negative one.

The proof will be in how we play this year but right now how the colts have handled AR and Moore leaves a ton to be desired. They don't seem to have a plan and just let circumstances run the team. If Moore wasn't in the long range plan why not do something before his value is zero, same thing with AR-the coach and organization have seemingly totally given up on him, let the whole world know how they feel, and can't unload him for shit. I still find it hard to believe that they drafted this guy at 4, completely raw, and have totally given up developing him after 2 years (they gave up last year clearly). No real plan, no mature QB to help learn how it's done-just throw him out there and see what happens (at least that is what seems to have happened). I'm all in on Kray keeping up his posts. It gives me something to think about and hopefully he gets to make people like me eat a ton of crow this year (I doubt it though).

With Richardson, could it be that some guys just fail no matter how many resources you employ to develop them? Most Quarterbacks fail. It’s just a fact of life.

Part of the problem is that we just don’t know exactly what the process for developing Richardson was. We do know that they didn’t bring in a mentor as a backup. But, then again, neither did Buffalo when they drafted Josh Allen.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending Ballard, Steichen or the organization. Ballard picked the wrong guy. Maybe he was prodded into the decision by Jim Irsay. We don’t know. But, by the time the draft rolled around, Ballard must have been getting, if not desperate, then something akin to it. The fact that your owner likes you only helps so much when you thrash around from Jacoby Brissett to Joe Flacco to Carson Wentz to Matt Ryan.

On the outside. It certainly looks like the coaches have failed AR. But I don't believe that.

I was big on the AR pick and very happy we got him. Obviously I'm not a scout. I DO think it was forced by Jim.

I just think AR has arguably the best physical traits as a QB ever. (Lamar too)

But AR doesn't have QB smarts. I didn't think Lamar did either but he has proven me wrong. AR is still young. Maybe he can turn it around

AR may someday become a good QB. But how long should we wait?

1st test. Beat out Riley for #2. Then lets see where we are at.

I wonder how much of a factor all of the injuries have been? The rationale behind starting any QB you draft is the premise that the best way to learn the position is to play it.

His first season saw him throw 99 passes. In year two, it was 299. He might have picked up a couple of hundred more, might have had a chance to prove that he had licked the accuracy issues that plague him, if he hadn’t been injured when Jones went down.

I hope that he’s given a chance to truly compete against Leonard this offseason. He’s been working on accuracy, and it isn’t impossible for a Quarterback to overcome that. The between the ears issues might be the thing that holds him back, but we can only hope that, as he’s matured, he’s become more dedicated to that part of the game.

I have no doubt in my mind that AR, was in essence an Irsay decision. Let's just say that Irsay used some very strong persuasion techniques to convince Ballard and Steichen that AR was the guy at #4.

I am not trying to be difficult but I hear a ton of people on this board who are convinced that Ballard/Steichen were forced to take Richardson at 4 by Irsay. I have not heard anyone who is a covers the team say this. Nobody nationally. It confounds me because if there ever was a player that fits the incredible athlete profile that Ballard has used his entire time here as a GM it is AR but somehow everyone is sure it was forced on him. Look I know Jim was nuts about the guy but Jim was nuts about almost every Colt player. With AR such a huge failure, people getting fired for taking him supposedly (Morocco Brown) nobody leak anything to take responsibility off of them? Not really human nature or what others have done when they are blamed for something they didn't do.

I agree. We've all seen the video where Ballard is literally jumping for joy when he finds out we'll be drafting AR at #4. I'm sorry, but that's just not a reaction someone makes when their boss is forcing them to make what they believe is a bad decision. Not saying that Irsay wasn't a big proponent of drafting AR, but it's pretty obvious Ballard was as well.

And the it's Morocco Brown's and not Ballard's fault statements are absolutely ridiculous. Unless Ballard doesn't have the balls to tell one of his top guys no, which I really doubt is the case.

Ballard made the pick, Ballard owns the results, just like every other fucking player he has inked over his 10 years of futility.

Maybe. I'm not saying. Jim forced him. But Jim did have a lot of input IMO. Ballards reaction was probably happy that he got the guy they were after. And he was able to please the boss as well.

Look at this past season. Ballards approach to me seemed different. Even to the point of trading for Sauce.

No facts just my guy feeling

Yep Ballard is the final say.

Has he ever suggested anything else?

Did I say he had / has? My response is more around the innuendo that Ballard doesn't fully hold the cards for the AR debacle because he was highly influenced by Jim to select him. I could care less if Jim literally held a gun to his head and forced him to select him, he is ultimately the GM of the team and as such responsible for the performance of the players he drafts. Nothing more, nothing less.