Quote:
Originally Posted by rm1369
I’ll give Ballard credit for cutting Howard. He’s also cut his two most productive free agent signings though so we shouldn’t be that impressed. However you slice it his record in free agency isn’t good. But yes he will move on from a free agent acquisition pretty damn quick - even if productive unfortunately.
For all his talk about it not being all about Luck the only thing keeping this roster from a top 3 pick again next year is Andrew Luck. No one is expecting Ballard to be perfect in free agency or the draft. But when you’ve had the resources available that Ballard has had over the last two years (draft picks and salary space) I certainly think it’s fair to criticize the state of the current roster. You can defend any individual mistake as “it happens to all GMs, nobody gets them all right.” And it would be accurate. However, when I look at the roster as a whole I’m not impressed with what Ballard has done with the resources available.
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But there’s a real difference between squandering your available resources (Grigson) and preserving your resources to make better use of them later (Ballard). It seems to me that the predominate criticism of Ballard boils down to his lack of spending on free agents, rather than spending unwisely. I’m convinced that will be remedied later – it has to be, under the salary cap rules.
In the meantime, I think Ballard is focused on implementing his vision and figuring out what players can best help him do that. When players don’t fit, he won’t hesitate to get rid of them in favor of other players who he thinks will better help him realize this vision. You can say that’s arrogant or inflexible, but you can also say its strong and clear leadership.
All of the controversial guys cut/traded were victims of scheme change – they no longer fit the type of defense that the Colts intend to play. Many here seem to be in favor of the theoretical concept of large scale changes (not hard not to be when the Colts were as bad as they were last year) but now don’t seem to like what that means – they want Ballard to half-ass it, implementing a “soft” rebuild by keeping a number of veteran guys who don’t fit and won’t play a role in the team once the rebuild is complete. Ballard instead insists upon full-assing it (sorry - is that an actual term?), and everyone gripes.