I come to praise Chris Ballard, not to bury him.

[IndyNorm]

Of the 7/9 times we've not made the playoffs under Ballard I think you can legitimately excuse 3 of those seasons: 2017 b/c of rebuilding and Luck not being available, 2019 b/c of Luck bailing right before the season started, and 2025 b/c of the ridiculous amount of injuries that have happened to key players.

Just for fun here are some tongue is cheek excuses from all of the other years:

2021 - It wasn't Ballard's fault that the QB he traded for couldn't do a 180 deg. turnaround to his career. It also wasn't Ballard's fault that a rookie w/ 11.5 sacks in his entire college career and another rookie coming off an a torn achilles couldn't adequately take over for the loss of pass rushing vets Justin Houston and Denico Autry. And finally, it definitely wasn't Ballard's fault that the Jagoffs actually decided to play to win the final week of the year and not roll over and play dead like they had for pretty much the 2nd half of the season. That was just not fair!!

2022 - It wasn't Ballard's fault that Matt Pryor didn't work out at LT. He had the one game where he started at LT in '21 and played ok, so this was a total shocker. It also wasn't Ballard's fault that Pinter sucked at ROG. He and his staff only had 2 years to evaluate Pinter, which just isn't enough time. It also wasn't Ballard's fault that Matt Ryan's arm was shot. It's not like there was any film showing this in Ryan's last season or 2 in ATL.

2023 - To be fair the Colts exceeded any realistic expectations this year. Although it can probably be said that it wasn't Ballard's fault that starting one of the rawest QB prospects in history who had no idea how to protect himself from hits in the NFL got hurt.

2024 - It wasn't Ballard's fault that a QB who had a completion percentage in college of 55% couldn't improve on this in the NFL. It also wasn't Ballard's fault that he couldn't figure out that said QB wasn't willing to put in the time to be a good NFL QB during the predraft interviewing process. And it definitely wasn't Ballard's fault that the defense he put together didn't show up against the 2 worst offenses in the league that year (@ Jagoffs and @ NYG).