Colts to Sign Eric Fisher 1 yr / $9.4M
 

Per Schefter:

https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/sta...81673986035717

So there's our LT for next year.

Good! But when can he get on the field?

I have little doubt that the staff and medical are sure that Fisher will be get on the field. Perhaps not at the beginning of the season but by the time it counts.

And, now, the off-season is a great success.

Let’s Go!

Good signing if healthy

Zak Keefer + Stephen Holder have both written that Fisher could possibly start practicing in September. Other reporters are saying there is no official timeline for return. Obviously the September timing would assume no setbacks with the rehab process.

https://twitter.com/zkeefer/status/1391786072573681667

https://twitter.com/HolderStephen/st...84029897338883

If he can be on the field by week 5, it is still a great signing. They can cobble something together for four weeks to keep Wentz upright, and then use the whole playbook afterwards. Having him for 3/4 of they year, plus the playoffs, would be exceptional.

Woo!!! Hoo!!!

Paging Jack Doyle.

Paging Jack Doyle.

Permanent Position = Left side tight

Permanent 1st Assignment = Blocking the defensive end

Permanent 2nd Assignment = Blocking the defensive end

Permanent 3rd Assignment = Okay, if the defensive end is contained, keep blocking the defensive end

Permanent 4th Assignment = If the defensive end is on the ground AND the offensive tackle is lying on him, go out for a pass.

Depends how long we have to ride out the season with Tevi, Davenport, or the guy we drafted last season. Is this a signing for just the playoffs and would Leno be a better signing?

Fan-fucking-tastic! Hope he gets on field quickly without rushing the rehab.


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Fuck yes!!

At $9.4M, Fisher is being paid roughly $6.5 million less than Castonzo was scheduled to be paid. Fisher is also a few years younger than Castonzo, but obviously coming off a major injury. So the discount on a formerly solid LT is pretty steep, suggesting that the team/player are acknowledging a significant amount of risk regarding recovery and/or timing.

On the other hand, we apparently chose Fisher over Leno, who is healthy, apparently favored the Colts, and also has strong ties to the Colts organization. So unless Leno was making exorbitant contract demands, this suggests to me a fair amount of confidence that Fisher will return close to his former self.

I’ll add that when the final contract details come out, it would be nice if there’s a team option for a year or two attached, but its probably unlikely.

I doubt he would do that. There is always a demand for LTs. He will want to go into next offseason a FA. Fisher was tied for 16th best OT in the league last year. That is similar to what Castonzo was before Nelson. I expect that to rise some with Nelson next to him. Maybe say 12th. That’s serviceable with this line.

So Ballard stays true to his draft board and hopefully fixes our defensive line in the draft. Then because he doesn’t overspend in free agency, pissing off a ton of freaks, he has plenty of money to address our last major issue LT. I appears that there is enough to extend Leonard/Smith. On top of that word is that we were Leno’s preferred team, a tribute to the whole organization and Ballards development is the locker room that anyone with a choice of NFL cities wants to live in Indianapolis. Now I’m hoping Tevi plays so well Fisher ends up being the best backup in football.

Agreed, probably unlikely. I guess it also depends on the exercise price of the option - an option at $15M or even 18M for 2022 would be easier to extract than a $9.4M option obviously. And its a good point that if he's healthy, Fisher is likely to look better merely due to the fact that he's playing on the Colts OL.

I'm good with this. Former #1 overall pick, multiple time Pro Bowler, only 30 years old, and able to get him well under market because he suffered an injury last January that he should be back from near the start of the season. Plus this gives the Colts franchise rights at the end of 2021 should he perform well. I like everything about this, and although I still wish the Colts had Jenkins for the future, I'm now happy with the offseason overall.

Our dline is fixed? That was fast.

If Ballard stayed true to his draft board then he would have known a month ago he wasn’t going to take a tackle that would compete for the starting position. Therefore he could have had his choice at the beginning of free agency. Assuming he wasn’t going to sign Trent Williams, all other options would have been cheaper per year than Fisher and they would be healthy at the beginning of the year.

https://www.spotrac.com/nfl/free-agents/left-tackle/

What I bet really happened, Ballard wanted to see how the draft panned out. All the tackles went between our first and second round. We are then forced to go to free agency. We overspend a little for a partial season from an injured player. I suspect Fisher was the cheaper option between he and Leno. But when completely healthy I think Fisher is slightly the better player.

Signing a LT was never going to threaten the upcoming contracts, we will have 100 million again next year.

And please find me the Colt fans who want him to overspend in free agency, I’ll wait.

Well, that weight has been lifted and I'm now happy with the draft and everything else so far. A one year deal seems weird for a LT contract, but like everyone else has said, it's because of the injury and I just hope he's ready to go. Push that LT need to next year, maybe re-sign him (who knows), and just focus on winning the division this year. I feel relieved.

Both sides probably like the one year. It’s popular around the league until the cap goes back to normal. Contracts should go back up then and there will be more spending. We can try him out and see if he fits. If we like him we may have the inside track. If he has a really good year there might be some demand for his services. Gives us another chance at filling the position through the draft.

This also gives the Colts franchise rights if he does really well. Could buy 2 years to fill the void or determine if Fisher is the guy for maybe 3-5 years.

I don't think that he will ever be worth the franchise tag. But they could use at as bargaining chip to a longer term deal.

Not 100% on compensatory picks, but if he signs with another team in 2022, Indy can get one, even if he was only here a year, right?

Personally, I was hoping at this point for a 2-year deal for Charles Leno. I realize the ceiling is much higher with Fischer than Leno. However, Fisher missed a good portion of 2019 with a core injury, then this Achilles tear in January concerns me. I'm not a big fan of the huge risk with Fischer’s recovery. Our ability to protect Wentz now falls on turn-style Tevi filling in until our new 30-year-old Left Tackle who is rehabbing from one of the worst injuries an athlete can have (in terms of ability to rehab and return to form, historically) in record time and then be able to still play at a high level when he returns?

Most research I have read says it's an 11-month recovery, on average. Outliers are 9 months. For Fisher to play in September, he'd be an outlier. No one bets on outliers without acknowledging the risk they're taking. If Fisher's recovery is typical, he probably won't play until December. And if he has a setback, he might not play this season at all.

I would much rather take a chance of consistently average play starting game number one, from a healthy Leno all day over the uncertainty of Fisher's possible elite level of play. This is not my favorite FA move by Ballard. With this being a 1-year deal, I am less concerned with the $9.4M and more with his ability to actually play and do so at a high level. I am not a Ballard bootlicker as some or most here seem to be. I disagree with a lot of the things he is doing recently.

Hopefully our medical staff gets this one right?

:cool:

Chromeburn. Putting an adjective such as hopefully before a statement about our defensive line being fixed alters the meaning of that statement to one of unknown but thinking it is within the realm of possibility. Never said it was fixed.

They obviously did medicals on him, so they must feel comfortable with where he is in the rehab process. Also, everything I could find on Achilles tears said the healing time was 6 months on average, with 9 months being the high end time. I understand wanting the more certain thing in Leno, and this does have a higher risk factor, but it also has a higher reward factor, as Fisher is a better LT at his best than Leno.

Believe I mentioned everything you stated ? Only difference being in time frame for recovery. As I said hope our medical staff got this one right. :cool:

Can’t wait for the schedule release let’s fucking go!!!

Sooooo. we got 2 DE a QB AND a TE AND a top LT Damn. Ballard may know more than us


Just goes to show. None of us know the behind the scenes going ons.


This has been a freakin awesome off season!!!!

Where to?


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Seems like a Ballard move to take the guy with the higher upside

To the games and enjoy this shit unlike last year being in empty ass stadium having to do air high fives and shit

That and the difference that I seem to like the move a lot more, which was the main point I was making.

Is the TE you were referring to Granson? Because a 4th round TE, especially in this class, doesn't exactly move the needle for me, at least not until he goes out on the field and proves it. Of the people who weren't hanging on Ballard's ballsack throughout the draft, I think pretty much all of us said that the draft would look a lot better with a FA signing at LT, and clearly Ballard was waiting for the comp pick portion of FA to expire to go shopping for his LT, and had that luxury because there were 3 options sitting there on Day 1 of the draft, and 4 the day after the draft (Fisher, Villanueva, Leno, Okung). That said, I'll continue to say Jenkins would've been the better pick at 21 until Paye proves me wrong with production. I hope he does, but I have my doubts.

That would be an adverb.

You are obsessed with someone being right and someone being wrong. The normal people on here want Ballard's decisions to work out for the better. If that is hanging on his ballsack to you, then you have even more issues to deal with.

Thanks for reminding us that Ballard did indeed have a plan and he executed it. It didn't waste a pick on a RT hoping to move him to LT. He got a legitimate pro bowl LT AND 2 of the best DE's in the draft. And yes. The TE is someone I'm excited because he brings a different wrinkle to the offense. He can also play slot receiver. He's a little small for a TE but has multi position playmaking ability.

There were and are valid criticisms of Ballard this offseason, but pretty much everyone here (the exceptions I've noted being myself, Chromeburn, and Smitty) has been all about deference to Ballard and the front office's roster building and decision making ability, as though they could do no wrong. I'll certainly give Ballard his due credit, he's built up talent on this roster quickly and well, especially given the extenuating circumstances he's had to deal with that likely would've sunk most GMs and teams. He's certainly a top tier GM today. But even the best GMs will tell you that if you're hitting 50% of the time, you're doing a fantastic job. That's why I don't get all of you pretending that no move Ballard makes could be wrong. He'll tell you himself he's probably going to get half or more of them wrong. Furthermore, I feel there's a great deal of validity in the criticisms that Ballard seems to avoid high end free agency to the detriment of the team, that he seems to overfocus on fixing one thing each offseason, and that he tends to leave some holes on the roster that he had opportunities to fix in that offseason. All of that happened at the DE position this offseason. It scares me that Paye is DE1 on a team that is supposed to be a contender, in part because he's raw even for a rookie and in part because DEs rarely come in and have early success as rookies. And if you don't believe Paye is DE1, go watch the fourth episode of "With the Next Pick" and listen to the words come out of Eberflus's mouth. I really hope the first thing they did with Paye was enroll him in martial arts classes, because a lot of great pass rushers, including Jared Allen who was a master technician, credit that with learning good hand usage, handfighting, and leverage, and those are the things Paye needs to work on the most.

Mathis should be able to help with that, but we got killed by QBs rolling out and scrambling around not many QBs should be able to outrun Paye

https://theathletic.com/2579030/2021...-at-tight-end/

The only problem is I don’t see how Granson gets on the field. We will need left side blocking help till Fisher can play. And you have Cambell and Hines as a third receiver.

The nice things about Paye is he should be a complete DE. Strong enough to bull rush and contain running QBs. Fast enough to get around strong tackles to get to less mobile QBs. Just can he develop and how long does it take? I still think we would benefit from a FA pass rusher. Let’s see if Houston resigns. Although I think he is almost over the hill.