ColtsSpeak: Sean Combs
PhilB: What you thinking about with your Colts?
Sean: I like everything GM Chris Ballard has been doing and kind of how he has a plan in place in growing the team through the NFL draft and starting with the young talent. Obviously that benefits us in a lot of ways, especially financially, right? You hear a lot of talk in the media about how the Colts are all-in …
PhilB: I’m kind of wondering about that.
Sean: For me, with the move of (QB) Philip Rivers and (DT) DeForest Buckner, was it a year too early? Do we have a strong enough young core to go out and make those big moves? But at the same time, I think Ballard has done a good job of mitigating risk. For instance, DeForest Buckner, it was high reward, low risk. With Rivers, I don’t know how I feel about him. I think it can go either way. He is an upgrade on Jacoby Brissett, but of course I’m always thinking about a dynasty. I think that’s what we’re all shooting for, so I’m always thinking ahead, what’s going to be a long-term solution? I don’t know if we see that from the quarterback position yet. I’m hoping Ballard made the right moves and it wasn’t too soon and we’re on the right track.
PhilB: I’m going to try to keep an open mind on Rivers. He said from the get-go in a first call with media that he hopes to play more than one year with the Colts. And he also said his ultimate goal is to coach his sons in high school, and you saw he just accepted a job at an Alabama high school. Finally, if Rivers wants to get paid well again, he has to have a really good year this year, because I don’t think Ballard can justify spending $25 million on him again if Rivers is just OK or the Colts don’t make the playoffs. Ballard rolled the dice for one year because head coach Frank Reich probably pitched it hard to him, and Frank and (offensive coordinator) Nick Sirianni have experience with Rivers from their days with the Chargers and saw the quarterback as an upgrade. I don’t begrudge Chris for taking a shot at it. But like you said, when you look down the road, if Rivers doesn’t play exceptionally well or lead this team to the playoffs, you took your shot, you missed, you move on. If he plays well, if he’s a Pro Bowler again, then maybe you’re looking at two or three years and it makes more sense in a longer-term. Maybe not the longest term, but a longer-term.
Sean: I hear a lot about Rivers is on a decline. Do you see the same thing from a physical standpoint?
PhilB: Frank gets on conference calls and right from the start, he brings that up. You and I being in this Colts world, we can deduce instinctively that Frank is hearing the criticism and acknowledges it by bringing it up. Frank said he watched Rivers film from last year, he believes he still has the arm strength and still be the quarterback he was in 2018. Without saying the obvious, I’ve started to look at film of Rivers’ 20 interceptions last year, seven of them were in the final five minutes when he was behind. And the Chargers offensive line was terrible, just awful. He had to get rid of it quickly. When pressured, quarterbacks make mistakes. If that were Jacoby, he would have eaten the ball or tucked it and tried to run all the time because he wouldn’t want to throw the ball up and take a chance. That was the problem. That’s why when things went South and the team needed a big play or Jacoby to step up and lift ‘em a bit, he couldn’t do that the last nine games. His weaknesses were exposed. What I saw mostly from him was a lack of vision. So for as much as Ballard and Reich want to be good Colts and never say anything bad about a player and how much they believe in Jacoby, I think they were wrong about him. I’m trying to believe them when Frank says he sees that Rivers still has it and his arm strength is still there. I’m going to accept that’s what they believe and go into the season with an open mind. Now if he starts throwing the ball all over the place, doesn’t take care of it and those long, risky throws are just his nature, then I’m going to think the Colts were probably a little off in their thinking.
Sean: You brought up a good point about vision with Brissett. The other day, I was watching a re-run of the Colts’ last game at Jacksonville. He had a receiver out wide on the left and a receiver who ran a route on the right side. He tried to squeeze it in between two people and hit a receiver on what looked like a flag route to the sideline. The receiver on the left side had beaten his cornerback off the line pretty quickly. Had Jacoby recognized that sooner and dropped it into his hands, it would have been a good play instead of an incompletion. A lot of people are talking about Brissett not pushing the ball down the field. I think people think of that as arm strength or confidence in his accuracy. Like you said, I think it’s more about vision.
PhilB: You started to see that every game. And if we saw it, you know the Colts saw it, too. We might hold Jacoby to a high standard, but understand, we’re used to Peyton Manning and Andrew Luck.
Sean: Philip will bring a different intensity and nastiness to the offense, kind of like what (left guard) Quenton Nelson does for that O-line, I think Philip will bring that to the offense and it’s something we haven’t had in a while.
PhilB: I heard from a friend of mine who covered Rivers in California, he says Philip is one of his ‘top-five, all-time locker room guys.’ His candor, his nature, he fights tooth-and-nail for his teammates. He’s all about taken his shot. We only have today to live for, tomorrow is never promised. That personality is what the Colts need. Now if he doesn’t have the skills anymore, that will become apparent in a season, but I like that gunslinger mentality of making the most of it, how a team has to go for it.
Sean: Absolutely. I think that will have a big impact, especially late in games.
PhilB: Yeah, it’s go time. Do you have a guy who is going to give it a shot or not? What did you think of the NFL draft?
Sean: My biggest need was wide receiver. I think everybody would agree with that. I was hoping for somebody who would be a No. 1. That’s not to say anything against T.Y. Hilton, especially with all the contract talks. I hope we can have T.Y. as long as we can. But from a performance and talent perspective, we need another No. 1 on our team. From the film I watched in my amateur scouting analysis of wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr., it’s funny that I really got a Vincent Jackson vibe from him. That’s funny because Rivers was his quarterback. Pittman is fast but he’s not going to burn you like a Tyreek Hill. He’s got great jump-ball skills. We’ve been missing on a lot of big receivers. I don’t think we’ve had one in a while. So we addressed a need there with the first of our picks in the second round. Like everyone else, the (running back) Jonathan Taylor pick was a bit of a surprise. I know I was shocked. Then right after the shock was excitement. I’ve heard Ballard talk about this, too, I love Marlon Mack but he gets tapped on the ankle and he goes down. Jonathan Taylor will add a little bit more ruggedness to that position as far as breaking tackles, extending plays, and as simple as it sounds, just falling forward on a tackle. That can make a world of difference.
PhilB: I was pushing running back with that second pick in the second round in my last mock draft. I know Mack is entering a contract year and is injury prone. So often you put an opinion out there and you’re wrong. But I had the Colts taking a wide receiver at 34 and I had them taking a running back at 44. I got the players wrong, but not the positions. So what else is on your mind?
Sean: Maybe a little off-topic, again I’m not from Indianapolis and don’t have much of a connection to the city except for my love of the Colts, but I had a chance last year to go down to training camp and I caught the Browns preseason game. I kind of made a little trip out of it for myself. I went by myself. I had a great experience. I was really happy with what the Colts put together from a fan experience perspective. It came at a time where I continuously heard about other teams limiting fan experience, shutting these kinds of things down, or having private practices. So I thought it was really cool, what the Colts organization was doing. I was seeing fans play catch with wide receivers. I don’t know of any other team doing that. I thought I should mention that. I had a really good time there. The fans were awesome. The fans I met at the stadium were great. It was just a great, overall fan experience. That’s something I’m really appreciative of.
PhilB: It really has come a long way in a short time. People enjoy it when they visit. It’s kind of a secret maybe in the NFL world. Some people still don’t think of Indianapolis in NFL terms, but it’s been pretty strong since Peyton Manning got here. It’s a good time. How worried are you about the season?
Sean: I think we have enough talent on this team to make the playoffs, absolutely. You think about last season and how that went. You could point to two or three games, and obviously we all love the guy, but kicker Adam Vinatieri was dealing with some injury issues and you can name two or three games that were decided by field goals. That changes the record from 7-9 to 9-7 or 10-6. And we had some other close games, too. From a talent perspective, we haven’t lost a lot if at all as far as major impact, and we’ve added a lot of potential. So yeah, the pieces are there to make a run in the playoffs. I love the (cornerback) Xavier Rhodes signing. Again, you’re talking about that high reward, low risk. It’s a one-year deal. If he finds that 2017 All-Pro form, that could be the steal of free agency. DeForest Buckner is going to do some pretty great things. And I think he’s going to make the players around him on that D-Line a lot better. I can always think back to the past season and see that edge pressure, oh, we were just a couple of inches away from getting a hand on the quarterback, we’re so close to getting him. But the internal pressure just wasn’t there. So that changes a lot and helps out the other guys on the D-line who I think have an important season for them coming up, these young edge rushers like Kemoko Turay and Ben Banogu. This will be a big year for them to prove they belong. I think the D-line is our most-improved position group.
PhilB: How worried are you about getting the season done with the coronavirus pandemic?
Sean: Obviously worst-case scenario, there’s no season. But I’m hoping maybe they’ll do something with no fans in the stadiums. That could be a responsible move by the NFL. I know it’s not ideal for fans, but you’ve got to think about fan safety, player safety, and everybody connected with what it takes to put on that production. I will be watching. Even if there aren’t fans, I don’t think it will stop fans from watching. Maybe it’s a chance for opportunities to create some new experiences by doing it virtual and just on TV. It’s a chance to try some new things here. We saw it in the NFL draft, how surprisingly and smoothly that went virtually. I think we can do the same thing with these games, a different experience but something engaging. I’ll end this by saying, go Colts!
(If you’re a diehard Colts fan and want to share ColtsSpeak opinions, send an email to phillipbwilson24@yahoo.com. The response has been overwhelming, so your name will be added to a growing list.)
