Ballard

[IndyNorm]

Originally Posted by Chromeburn

I think this is part of it. Ebron left as soon as Luck did. If you don’t have a QB it’s harder to win. We just tried to sign a DT, and Eberflus called him up and talked him into signing with the Bears. It’s harder for small market teams to compete. Look at the Pacers.

Well Ebron turned into a giant douche after Luck retired as well, which gave the Colts little incentive to re-sign him.

Agreed that having uncertainty at QB probably has something to do with it. When we had Peyton and Luck it was probably pretty easy to sell the Colts to FAs since they knew they'd be on a winning team unless the QB went down to injury.

But you can still land good FAs in smaller markets when uncertain at QB if the FO is willing to spend a little bit. For instance look at the Bungles last year. They, like us, were in dire need of pass rush. They were coming off a 4 win season and had plenty of uncertainty at QB with Burrow having had his knee blown up in Nov. '20. They had plenty of cap room, so they overspent a little to bring in Trey Hendrickson, who went on to have 14 sacks and 27 QB hits in '21. Imagine what that kind of production would have meant to the shit show that was our pass rush this past season.