NFL Open Thread: the Ballad of Ballard Edition

The big NFL news of the week was the decision by the Colts to bench Anthony Richardson for Joe Flacco. On its face, this doesn’t make a lot of sense. I wouldn’t have used a #4 pick — or even any first round pick — in Richardson, because the combination of inaccuracy and lack of starts is just deadly. (Josh Allen, the unicorn who will be cited anytime a team reaches an athletically gifted QB who was inaccurate in college, made 27 starts with Wyoming.) But once you’ve done it, I’m not sure why you would abandon him when he turned out to be inexperienced and inaccurate, OTOH, this might be a Bryce Young situation where continuing to start him after he tapped out of the game was untenable in the locker room. Either way, it’s a bad look for Chris Ballard, who has milked an awful lot of rep out of one good draft and many years of mediocrity:

On some level, I think Irsay — a significantly more shrewd and football-savvy man than commonly portrayed — already knows this. Technically, Ballard still has personnel control in Indy, but the chances of him fulfilling the promise proclaimed by his owner are dwindling by the day.

Quite possibly, Ballard will be fired at the end of his eighth season as the Colts’ GM.

Quite frankly, it’s surprising it hasn’t already happened.

Ballard, with one victory in two playoff appearances — and zero division titles — hasn’t done enough to justify his sustained employment. However, there is one superlative he’s worthy of: Most Overrated General Manager of the 21st Century.

In fairness to Irsay, he only started the fire. Ballard, whose accessibility and folksy conversational style have endeared him to fans and media members, has earned more praise with fewer achievements than anyone in the business.

After Ballard’s second draft, when he selected an ultra-physical guard (Quenton Nelson) with the sixth pick and an undersized playmaking linebacker (Shaquille Leonard) in the second round, he was hailed as a team-building superstar.

The reputation stuck, even as Ballard didn’t come up with a proper plan at left tackle after Anthony Costanzo’s retirement (the Colts chose to keep Nelson at guard) and Leonard succumbed to a slew of injuries and washed out of the league. In April 2021, NFL.com’s Gregg Rosenthal did GM power rankings and put Ballard first, ahead of Super Bowl winners Kevin Colbert, Brett Veach, John Schneider, Howie Roseman, Bill Belichick, Jason Licht, Jerry Jones and Mickey Loomis.

Ballard’s bravado played into the hype. That same spring, the team aired a draft series, “With the Next Pick,” on its website, with the GM having final say over what ultimately aired. Included was a scene from an Indianapolis steakhouse dining room during the week of the NFL combine. Ballard, in a room with the Colts’ personnel and coaching staffs, raises his martini glass and says, “To create something special is really freakin’ hard, but dammit, we’re gonna do it. Here’s to kicking everyone’s ass.”

Narrator’s voice: They didn’t.

From Rivers to Wentz to Ryan to now Flacco. Ballard keeps trying to milk out a playoff spot out of QBs either past their prime or too immature to have a real prime, with a prospect with exceptionally high bust potential he appears to have given up on after 10 starts thrown in for texture. Even if Flacco can get them into the postseason with the Texans reeling from injuries, what’s the plan here? And despite his nice late-carrer run I wouldn’t bet on Flacco holding up to get them there either (cf. Wentz and Ryan.)