I get the feeling its up to rivers. Retire or comeback. If he comes back it will be another one year deal.


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Who were the players?

If you give Autry and Rhodes market value, that's $15 million AAV according to OTC ($6 million for Autry, $9 million for Rhodes). Also according to OTC, Stallworth and Dulin are ERFAs that can be tendered for $1.7 million combined and Alie-Cox, Pascal, and Odum are RFAs that can be tendered for $6.7 million combined. For sake of ease, we can call that combined total $8.5 million, for a total of $23.5 million. I also resigned Green and Hunt at vet minimum (~$1 million apiece), so that's $24.5 million. Rookie pool is $6.3 million, so that's about $30 million gone (this is where all the rounding up caught up). Sign Rivers at $15 million, and you leave yourself with about $13 million for free agency and roster churn. Maybe you can get Rivers to sign for $10 million? That would allow pursuit of one big ticket FA, my suggestion being Ngakoue. I signed him to a 4 year/$50 million deal with $34.5 in "guarantees" that can be gotten out of fairly easily in Year 2 (a June 1 designation would constitute a cap savings of $6.5 million) and beyond. That left me with ~$6 million of churn space after the rookie pool.

He’s gonna have to give us a hell of a discount

I would eventually like to hear Ballard's thoughts but I doubt he shares much. He can't seem desperate if he intends to make a trade.

Fixed it for you.
- Philip


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If you picked Za'Darius Smith, you'd've gotten more production than Houston, but Preston Smith fell off in Year 2 of his contract and only got 4 sacks and 11 QB hits.

Since 2019:
Z. Smith: 26 sacks 85 pressures
Houston: 19 sacks 52 pressures
P. Smith: 16 sacks 50 pressures

Obviously Za'Darius Smith would've been the best choice with the benefit of hindsight, but you'd be rightfully upset if the Colts handed Preston Smith well over double the money of Justin Houston to give them less production. You could've guessed that Za'Darius Smith would become what he's been the past two years, but you would've paid him nearly three times the money of Houston to find out, and it would've been at best an educated guess. You could use hindsight to criticize a lot of any GM's moves (for Ballard, just about every pick of the 2017 draft except rounds 4 and 5), but I don't think there are many GMs in this league even on par with Ballard's ability to find and evaluate talent and assemble the best possible roster, especially given the circumstances he's had to deal with.

Our guys that most of you named. I closed the site, or I would give you the numbers I used.

The problem is people have been pointing out the issues in the position groups for awhile. It’s not hindsight if going into the season we know our passrush isn’t that great. If we can see it, they can see it. We knew the receivers were a weakness. Something is wrong if your RB leads the team in receptions two years in a row. We knew LT was thin, Castonzo has missed some game and we knew there wasn’t much behind him. Tackle play was a big influencer on the steeler game. I’m not saying get rid of the guy, I think he is a good GM. But it is frustrating that obvious issues aren’t addressed.

When you get into the mindset of BPA instead of need then it will be clearer to you.

Ballard is not going to draft for need

No just asking. I doubt we resign many of those guys.

I’m fine with BPA. I think that’s the proper way to go. But you can still supplement with FA, especially if you have a lot of cap room.


Just FYI for everyone. Reich just said they are going to seriously consider moving Q to LT.

Q is very athletic, but he doesn't have the right type of athleticism for LT. His athleticism is more about strength and straight ahead power (and to some extent speed). LT requires a more agile player, and like I said when he was there for a game, he did an adequate job, and likely could be an above average LT, maybe even top 10 in the league if he really worked at it. If you keep him at guard, he's the best player at his position hands down.

That said, this really feels like a classic offseason/pre-draft smokescreen to me. It's very obvious that LT is one of the team's top needs, so they need to make it seem like they have internal options for it.

Who’s eyes are the trying to pull the wool over??

o


This is an awesome game thread. I really hope that the Colts pull this one out.

o

The rest of the league. Polian did it all the time. Before the 2006 NFL draft because it was so obvious the Colts needed a RB, he did a whole bunch of interviews saying how confident he was that Dominic Rhodes could be a workhorse like Edgerrin James had been for the Colts. I don't think even Polian believed it, but he sure went out and tried to sell it.

The Colts have lots of cap flexibility, not only because they're under the cap, but because very few (if any) of their existing contract structures are complicated/backloaded. If they restructured a few of those deals, they could sign pretty much anyone this offseason if they wanted to. Not saying they should, just pointing out that that option is available if the Colts deem it necessary.

Oh, and we're not resigning Rivers for $10M-$15M. More like $25M.

If they have to pay Rivers $25 million, you can either forget about Rhodes and Autry coming back or forget about the Colts being active on the free agent market.

I strongly suspect that Rivers will be back, and my guess is that neither Rhodes nor Autry will return. Nothing wrong with either player, and I'm not saying we wouldn't want them back, but both will probably get better offers elsewhere, and I just don't see Ballard matching a big dollar multi-year deal on a 30-year CB or DT (not that Autry will get a mega deal or anything, just that I'd expect it to be more than the Colts would offer)

As far as free agency, I'd expect a similar approach to what we've seen in the past. However, I don't think that what happens with Rivers, Rhodes or Autry will really dictate whether or not we sign someone in free agency.

Smokescreen for draft purposes?

I don't see Rivers coming back unless he signs a very low deal. He won't be better next year than he was this year and this year proved he's not going to lead the team to a SB.

That’s where we disagree I suppose. I honestly don’t understand your comment that Rivers proved he could not lead us to a SB. The guy played pretty well overall. Certainly, you can point out many mistakes he made during the year and a few rough patches, but he was above average and good enough for our purposes. His play did not deteriorate over the course of the year, despite an ongoing toe problem, and I thought he played more than well enough for us to win on Saturday.

The idea that some are suggesting that should get rid of Rivers and Brissett, and find a rookie QB to play instead, seems pretty out there to me. There is no way that the Colts are going to start a rookie QB with this roster. This is a developmentally mature, improving team. They won't place an inexperienced QB at the helm. We will have a veteran QB leading the Colts next season, and to me everything points to Rivers. He’s already in our system, he played well and we won. The coaches seem to like him, and Rivers himself seems to really want to return too. A trade is the only thing that could derail this in my view.

As far as salary, I really don’t know what he’s done that would merit a reduction there. He played fairly poorly in 2019 yet we paid him $25M to come here anyway. He played much better this year. Yes, he’s a year older, but he showed no signs of slowing down and several other high profile QBs have shown that they can remain strong and effective into their early 40s. And the reality is that $25M is the going rate for a good starting QB, probably even more. Thus, to me, a salary increase is more likely than a salary reduction, though if the cap is going down I suppose that will work against him. I think it will be a one year deal, though, possibly with an option year (or a second year with little or no cap consequences if we cut him, which would effectively be the same thing)

On 4th and goal, he overthrew an open receiver and we came away with no points. On the final drive, he failed to get the team in FG position with 2 minutes on the clock. He played well for most of the season and for most of that game, but when we needed him the most? ...

Overall Rivers was fine, probably the best option we had for this year. He played as well as he could but I agree with Ed here, I dont think he has enough to take us all the way, especially against the better teams. Its not like this is a new narrative for him, he has been this way his entire career. I have friends that are life long charger fans that basically said “welcome to our world” after the game. Maybe we have one more year with rivers at the helm, but they need to take a ling look at their options before making any decisions, like how reich said he definitely wants him back next year.


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Tom Brady also wanted to come here. Throw out the hate and look at it objectively. He might have been a better option since he has traditionally been very accurate on short and intermediate throws. Would not have gone over well with fans though.

He did? I didn’t know or hear that. Regardless, as you said it probably would have never happened based on history


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I didn't really see that on Saturday. He made several clutch throws including the one to Pascal at the end. The failed pass to Pittman in the end zone during the 2nd Quarter was disappointing but a tough throw of more than 20 yards under the circumstances. Still, I think its a fair criticism, and he's definitely not perfect. Most of the problems on Saturday were coaching though.

I'd rather they burn the franchise to the ground than put that cheater in our colors on our team. He's human scum and I'm glad Irsay was smart enough not to let him infect this franchise.

Yeah, Tommy Cheater indicated that he was interested in playing for the Colts.

I think McVisor's stunt made it a non-starter for Ballard.

At the time, it was hard to know if the rift between Belicheat and Tommy Cheater could be repaired or not. If the Colts tried to negotiate with the Cheater, Kraft might have stepped in and intervened and brought him back to the Cheats. It wouldn't be a good look for Ballard if that happened twice.

As much as Tommy Cheater likes to prank and troll people / teams / fans, you also had to wonder how serious the Belicheat / Tommy Cheater rift was in the first place.

** The Official will the Bills go down like Omahas mom vs the Colts Game day thread**
 

Like i said, he played fine, I am just not sure he has enough to take it to the next level.

I mentioned earlier in the year I feel like his longer passes are almost slow motion. Praying the ball actually gets to the receiver. Contrast that with how the ball comes out from other older QBs like brees and rodgers. Maybe thats just my perception.


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Agree 1000% - you could not give those nutsacks an opportunity to scam us twice, and Brady in particularly as he undoubtedly harbors anger over being caught cheating in the whole deflategate thing. I would not trust his supposed "interest" in the Colts for one second.

He's human scum. He has no right to be angry at the Colts or the Jets (Spygate) for catching him cheating and he deserves every bit of tarnish that puts on his "legacy" and then some. The fact that he's still allowed to play and hasn't been banned permanently from the game and all mention of him scrubbed from NFL history shows how spineless Roger Goodell is and how much more they care about money than actually protecting the integrity of the game.

I know it's a low bar, but Rivers has much more zip on his passes than Brees.

Rivers knows exactly what sort of protection and throw to set up in.

Trusted

Still crying

What the hell is going on with your posting recently?


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Let me take a stab at interpreting this - I think Discfinger is saying that its not an issue with Rivers' arm strength because Rivers knows just how much touch to put on the ball depending upon the protection. Discfinger put his trust in this skill, but the Colts lost anyway and now he can't stop crying. Is that close?

I'm pretty sure Brees is hanging them up after this year.

About as close as “dogs cant fly without umbrellas “