Chris Ballard's Conservative Approach has Doomed Colts to Mediocrity
The Indianapolis Colts are in dire straits this year, as they sit with a putrid 1-2-1 record through four weeks. To make matters worse, all three of the Colts' non-wins have come against divisional rivals. With the team falling apart and the road to the playoffs looking out of reach already, who is to blame for this disastrous start?
The common fall guy has been Head Coach Frank Reich thus far. While I am in no way trying to absolve Reich from blame, I implore you all to look at the bigger picture of the Colts' issues. Reich may be worth firing after the season, and he absolutely will be the guy tossed aside if this team misses the playoffs, but the Colts' issues run much deeper than just the head coach.
The main issue with the Colts is the process and the conservative nature of their General Manager. Chris Ballard has been the local, and National, golden boy for GMs during his tenure, but his lack of self-scouting and his lack of overall aggression has turned this once successful franchise into the textbook definition of mediocrity.
The Colts aren't going to get out of purgatory under Ballard. His process is simply not the way to build a team in the modern NFL (if you don't already have a legit quarterback).
The Poor Usage of Free Agency
Before we get into this part of the article, I do want to say that Ballard's approach to free agency isn't wrong (in theory). He is very Bill Polian/Ted Thompson-like in how he views this aspect of the offseason. He won't overpay for middling talent and he never views his teams as being one good free agent away from being complete.
Here is what Ballard has said numerous times over the years about free agency:
We’re just not the biggest fans of right out the gate free agency where you’re paying B players A-plus money… There’s a cost to that… Our players know we want to keep them. We’ve done a pretty good job so far of keeping the players we wanted to keep in-house… I think we have a really good culture. It’s one of accountability. One where they care about each other, and one where they want to win and do special things.
This is the correct way to view free agency. Oftentimes, in the NFL, the teams that spend the most money in free agency tend to be the worst teams in the league the following year. All of the problems on a team can't be fixed by throwing money at it. This is what Ballard believes, and I personally tend to agree with him on this.
Where his philosophy fails is how he completely neglects the usefulness of this phase of the offseason. Ballard spoke with Joey Mulinaro prior to the last offseason about his free-agency approach. In that conversation, he mentioned how he adhered to a similar philosophy as teams like the Pittsburgh Steelers:
The Steelers.. I think they are one of the great organizations and they are very disciplined in what they want to do. They draft most of their team and they work to develop them. Every once in a while you will see them dip into free agency, but not very often. When they do, it’s to plug a hole. We have a very similar philosophy.
The problem with this is that Ballard rarely uses free agency to actually plug a hole. Let's compare Ballard to one of the best GMs in the sport in Brandon Beane for a moment. Flashback to 2018 and the Buffalo Bills finished the season with a 6-10 record with their young quarterback running for his life on almost every snap.
Going into that offseason, Beane didn't come out and drop $20 million per-year deals on every free agent that he saw to fix these problems. Instead, he used free agency, and the draft, to plug a hole. The Bills brought in interior offensive lineman Spencer Long ($4 million per year), center Mitch Morse ($11 million per year), guard John Feliciano ($4 million per year), tackle Ty Nsekhe ($7.5 million per year), guard Quinton Spain ($2 million), and guard Cody Ford (38th overall pick).
Did every single one of these moves work? Absolutely not. Ford was traded to the Arizona Cardinals a few years later, and Nsekhe certainly didn't live up to his contract. The point, though, is that the Bills threw resources at a position of need and ended up better as a result (despite a few misses and bad contracts).
The Bills and Beane threw countless resources at a major problem area and, as a result, the team was able to take a major step forward in 2019 with a 10-6 record. There are multiple examples of Beane and the Bills doing this, as that team has continually taken steps forward with their usage of both free agency and the draft.
Now let's look at the Colts and Ballard. Heading into the 2021 offseason, the team had a MAJOR hole at edge pass rusher. The team went into the offseason with just Ben Banogu, Al-Quadin Muhammad, and Tyquan Lewis as the team's top rushers off of the edge. Ballard elected to sit out of free agency at this major area of need (outside of signing journeyman Isaac Rochell) and elected to fix this problem area with two draft picks in Kwity Paye and Dayo Odeyingbo.
The problem with plugging major holes with only draft picks is that those picks take time to develop. With Paye figuring out his game and Odeyingbo recovering from injury, the Colts boasted one of the worst pass rushes in the entire league. This was a problem area that was easy to spot heading into the offseason and Ballard simply failed to provide the depth and consistency to properly support those rookies.
You all know my philosophy on free agency. You cannot buy a championship. You cannot buy a locker room. We will continue to go down the same road we've been going down.
You can't buy a championship, but you can buy depth. You can buy the bottom of the roster. You can buy stability. Ballard's conservative nature and fear of giving out a bad contract has had a disastrous impact on the bottom of the Colts' roster. We are even seeing the impact of this approach in 2022, as the Colts' offensive line was plugged by in-house options rather than grabbing veterans to compete in camp (like the Bills did in 2019).
The frustrating part about all of this is that Ballard is actually great at identifying talent and hidden gems in free agency! Rodney McLeod appears to be a great signing this year and past signings like Chris Reed and Denico Autry worked wonders for the team. We just rarely see these signings at major positions of need.
Nobody is saying that Ballard needs to come out and spend monster contracts to fix this roster. He does, however, need to do a better job of actually fixing the many holes that this team does have. By completely sitting out free agency each and every year, the bottom of the team's roster has greatly suffered and the holes have become even more apparent.
The Quarterback Process is Utterly Broken
The other major aspect of team building that Ballard has been way too conservative with is the quarterback position. We can all agree that Ballard was dealt a terrible hand in 2019 when his superstar quarterback Andrew Luck decided to hang it up at just 29 years old. While that is a tough event to bounce back from, that was nearly four years ago. The excuses run out eventually.
Ballard has had multiple offseasons to figure out the quarterback position since that fateful day, and he has yet to provide this fanbase with any hope for the future. Ballard spoke about drafting a quarterback last offseason and the inherant risk that comes with making that move:
Taking one will get y’all off my ass for a little bit, but the second that guy doesn’t play well? I’m gonna be the first one run out of the building ... I promise you that position never leaves my mind.
I totally understand self-preservation and valuing job security, but at some point, there has to be a real shot taken at the most important position in all of sports. With every single move the Colts have made at quarterback since Luck's retirement, none of them have been risky for Ballard or his job security. Let's even take a look at the disaster that was the Carson Wentz trade.
The Colts sent a first and a third-round pick for veteran Carson Wentz early in the 2021 offseason. While this seems like a big risk on paper, Ballard was planting the seeds all offseason that this was 100% Reich's move. Ballard even said at the 2021 NFL Combine that Reich "stuck his neck out" for Wentz, and Ballard was entirely non-committal to Wentz throughout the whole ordeal.
By planting the seeds that that whole disaster was Reich's fault, Ballard essentially escaped blame (on the surface at least). With that context in mind, Ballard has never made that aggressive move for this insanely important position. He may have helped his job security by doing this, but the Colts as a franchise have suffered as a result.
Ben Solak of The Ringer wrote a fantastic piece on Ballard and the non-aggressive approach at QB this offseason. The entire piece is phenomenal, but this paragraph really stood out to me:
But it’s not just that 2021 was the year to be aggressive—it’s that every year is the year to be aggressive. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and in a hypercompetitive league in which winning championships essentially necessitates quality quarterback play, Ballard and the Colts have been far more focused on the fragility of their eggs than the tastiness of their omelet. Taking a rookie quarterback who doesn’t play well may get Ballard run out of the building—but refusing to ever take that leap will get him run out of the same building as well, just a little bit slower and with a few more mediocre seasons to cushion the fall.
The last line is what it all comes down to. Kicking the can down the road year after year may buy job security, but it will eventually run out. Ballard is essentially a college kid constantly asking for extensions on a big research paper that is due. Will he ever turn in his paper? All the evidence we have at the moment points to no.
I'm not even saying that the Colts have had ample opportunity to draft a young quarterback of the future over the past couple of offseasons. The issue is the process. Band-aid after band-aid doesn't do anything for the future of this team. It just prolongs your own job security (for the time being).
The Bottom Line
Frustrated ranting aside, Ballard is not a terrible general manager. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that this team would be among the best in the league every year if Luck were still playing. The conservative approach works exceedingly well when a GM is a fantastic drafter and the quarterback is already in place. At the end of the day, though, Luck is gone and the Colts have yet to recover from that.
Ballard is a fantastic talent evaluator that drafts well and finds gems when he actually uses free agency, but his fear of giving out bad contracts and his mishandling of the quarterback position has doomed the Colts to mediocrity. This roster has a lot of holes, and not a lot of answers at the moment. Personally, I'm not convinced that Ballard is the man that can fix them.
Need your fill on daily Colts' content? Head over to the Locked On Colts' YouTube channel where Jake Arthur and myself hit on all the major topics surrounding this team. Hit that subscribe button while you are there!
Follow Zach on Twitter @ZachHicks2.
