Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - INDIANAPOLIS COLTS: Chris Ballard Lays Out What Went Wrong, Plans for Offseason

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

Indianapolis Colts GM Chris Ballard broke his silence after another failed season, breaking down what went wrong and where they need to go this offseason. What breadcrumbs did Ballard leave behind? E...VERYDAYER CLUBIf you never miss an episode, it’s time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans.Click here to learn more and join your team’s community: https://lockedonpodcasts.com/everydayerclub Find and follow Locked On Colts on your favorite podcast platforms:🎧 https://lockedonpodcasts.com/podcasts/locked-on-colts/📺YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLdpxJspi1hMh5HL7ExpWOQLocked On NFL League-Wide: Every Team, Fantasy, Draft & More🎧 https://lockedonpodcasts.com/podcasts/locked-on-nfl/ Follow Jake's written work on roundtable.io/sports/nfl/colts/ and Zach's on si.com/nfl/colts/, and give them a follow on Twitter @JakeArthurNFL, @ZachHicks2, and @LockedOnColts! Today's episode is sponsored by PrizePicks. Download the PrizePicks app today and use code LOCKEDONNFL to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Rocket MoneyLet Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at http://RocketMoney.com/LOCKEDONBetterhelpThis episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp makes it easy to get matched online with a qualified therapist.  Sign up and get 10% off at http://BetterHelp.com/LOCKEDON. DripDropRight now, DripDrop is offering podcast listeners 20% off your first order. Go to http://dripdrop.com and use promo code lockedonnfl.Ultimate QBUltimate QB is totally free to play, has no ads, and works 100% offline — perfect for when you want to sneak in a quick game or two on the go. Just head over to http://ULTIMATE-QB.COM. FanDuelToday's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. So before tip-off, check the FanDuel app and see what’s dropping during NBA Happy Hour — every Friday from 6 to 7:30 PM Eastern. A little basketball, a little action, and a whole lot of Friday energy.FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as non-withdrawable free bets that expire in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)PrizePicksDownload the PrizePicks app today and use codeLOCKEDONNFL to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup.Click Here: https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/LOCKEDONNFLGametimeDownload the Gametime app, create an account, and use code LOCKEDONNFLfor $20 off your first purchase. Terms apply. Download Gametime today. What time is it? Gametime.ZocdocStop putting off your doctor’s appointments and get the care you need.Go to http://Zocdoc.com/lockedonnfl to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Indianapolis Colts general manager Chris Ballard spoke to the media today and it wasn't good enough and the sense of urgency is risen and he needs to be better going forward. You are Locked-on Colts, your daily Indianapolis Colts podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome to the Lockdown Colts podcast, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network. Now, the number one sports podcast network around today's episode is sponsored by PrizePix. Download the PricePix app today and use code Lockdown NFL to get $50 in lineups if you play your first $5 lineup. Hello, my name is Zach Hickshaw, resident film nerd of horseshoe huddle.com, and I am joined, as always, by our crocks on the ground, Jake Arthur, over at Roundtable Sports.
Starting point is 00:00:54 We're here diving into everything Chris Ballard. He spoke to the media today at 11 a.m. Jake was there again, crocs in hand and not in hand, I guess, crocs on your feet. I just walk around barefoot holding my shoes. That's actually how I love. Yeah, yeah, yeah, boots aren't on the ground. They're in your hand, I guess.
Starting point is 00:01:11 But Jake was there at the press conference. So we're going to get his first hand reaction to everything that went down in that press conference. I think it was like a 45 minutes that he was talking to media. He's always pretty gracious, actually, with his time to the media. the end of the season. We're going to talk about a couple of the most noteworthy news and notes from that. Talk about how it's kind of the same old Ballard, though, and we could have played bingo with some of the things he said. And also, what we think this offseason could be,
Starting point is 00:01:38 what we could have in store for this off season with some of the things that he kind of inferred at in his presser. But Jake, before we get into anything else, what do you think that was kind of your main takeaway? Was this anything notable from Chris Ballard? Or, again, this is, we're about to going to year 10 with this guy in charge you you've gotten to know this guy pretty well you know because of that um did you kind of sense anything different or kind of a little bit of the same old baller today uh quite a bit of the same you just kind of have to go about it year by year on like what the specific objectives of the off season are and what he's willing to say about that um we'll get to the quarterback stuff in a bit we talked about it for like the entire squad show last
Starting point is 00:02:18 night. He did address it, but the most exciting thing to me is what he said about the defense. He acknowledged multiple times that they need to get younger and faster. The defensive front wasn't good enough. It felt like almost a chore when he was tasked with talking about the linebacker group. He paused for like five seconds before he said anything, and then he kind of sputtered out, you know, compliments about Jermaine Pratt and Sire Franklin. So, I think we're about to probably see another defensive overhaul, which is crazy because, like, we saw a lot of turnover last off season and apparently just didn't hit hard enough. And then, but there's also ones you, you know, Mooney Ward that's up in the air.
Starting point is 00:03:03 Like there's some things you have to get Wally and Woller worked in there. Like there is some organic things happening here, but they, I feel, are going to bring in. I would imagine several outside sources to make the defense again. younger and faster. So I know you had mentioned some names on the defensive line earlier today over on X, but I genuinely think it's at every level of the defense. And again, another thing we'll touch on later in the show is, by all indications, they're going to keep being very active in the offseason.
Starting point is 00:03:40 You know, stoking the flames with competition, but also knowing that their defense is, is a bit older, a bit slower, a bit banged up, and guys just, they don't have the same pop that they may be used to. So there's a lot that's probably about to go down on the defensive side of the ball, which is exciting because you and I, when there's not like a quarterback to be had and like that's not the main objective of the offseason, we get to just nerd out about the entire defense. That's like 500 players now we get to watch the draft. Yeah, I think it was kind of interesting because while there was a little bit of an overhaul,
Starting point is 00:04:17 call this past off season, it still was largely the previous regime, not the previous regime, the previous defensive coordinator's guys coming in and playing under Lou Anarumo. And we saw how weird and messy that got throughout the season. Whereas like Lou specifically wanted guys like Mooney Ward, Cameron Bynum, Justin Wally. Clearly Jonathan Edwards was a guy he liked a lot. Not saying that that panned out super well, but Jonathan Edwards he liked. You go to the defensive line like the Neville Gallimores. And there were a couple guys that that transitioned seamlessly over to this system on the D-Lyat-Latu-Latu and Atatomiwa Atabore, but we did see kind of this weird meshing at some points like the Jalen Jones,
Starting point is 00:04:57 the Juju Brant, Sam Womack, Zire Franklin, Kenny Moore, kind of, to a degree, the older edge rushers in Taekwon Lewis and Sampson Ebukom, and there was just this weird mixing and matching that had to be done. So when we say overhaul, like, I think if you really want to just give it this one big push and say, like, you know what? We believe in the coaching staff on both sides. We believe in what they can do. Give Lou what he wants on that side of the ball.
Starting point is 00:05:23 Don't keep saying, like, oh, I'll give you Mooney Ward, but, like, keep Jalen Jones around for me. I think he's pretty good. It's like, I don't think he fits this system, you know, and you kind of get that headbutting back and forth. So I want to see, like, more of that overhaul, like you said, Jay, getting younger, getting faster. You know what helped getting younger and faster on defense, though, is hitting on your draft picks on defense in the last couple years. That's kind of where they've struggled. but yeah, Wally will play a big part of that. Hunter Woller, if he's healthy, he'll play a big part of that as well.
Starting point is 00:05:51 But yeah, I did think that was kind of one of the bigger takeaways I had today, too, Jake, was Carly Ursae wants them to be aggressive in free agency. I think that's been a pretty clear imperative that she's put down to Chris Ballard, chain stuyken, just when it comes to player acquisition, don't sit on your hands, don't bring in a bunch of, you know, waiver-wire guys. And we saw them be aggressive all last year in terms of trading for sauce Gardner, even signing guys like Jermaine Pratt, Xavier and Howard. It's not like they all worked out,
Starting point is 00:06:18 but it wasn't just we're only going to put our Dallas Flowers level undrafted free agents, you know, plugging holes. We're going to try to be aggressive if we can. And I think that's what Carly Ursae wants Chris Ballard to be. So I do think we're going to see a pretty active free agency. And it seems clear from this press conference that especially on the edge on defense, and I get the feeling linebacker as well, but 100% on edge, but linebacker as well, he's going to attack that pretty hard this off season.
Starting point is 00:06:47 That's going to be one of the biggest focal points, whether it's the draft, whether it's free agency, or whether it's both for this team this off season. Yeah, and I'll own it if I'm wrong, but I think a couple things that almost guarantee some turnover is you got a lot of guys with expiring contracts. And that gives the Colts a reason not to be like, oh, we cut them. They just don't have to re-sign them. You know what I mean? Like Quitty-Pay, Taekwendo, the Samson-Evi.
Starting point is 00:07:13 Com, Jermaine Pratt, Nick Cross, like they got a bunch of guys exiting stage right just because their contracts are up. Now, they might bring a couple of them back. But letting those guys walk right off the bat, that's turnover because they're going to have to bring in other guys to replace them. But also Chris Ballard, when his back is against the wall, tends to put the onus on personnel on the coaches, finally. There's a lot of times, especially like, I feel like in the draft, it's.
Starting point is 00:07:43 It's the scouting department in front office that are really getting their guys. But in a free agency, they're getting a lot of like scheme fits for the coaching staff specifically. And knowing that this has to be a team effort and that they have to win, it's now or never like you can't keep investing in a bunch of draft and develop guys right now. You need instant impact players. I think they're going to have to get a bunch of scheme fits. And like maybe that means the guy's not going to have a nine and a half RAS or something. and you know what I mean, but they're going to have to listen to the coaching staff and bring in players to replace some of these exiting free agents.
Starting point is 00:08:23 I don't know what the draft is going to look like. I feel like Bill DeBallard is going to be so up in the air this year because they may buck the standards again like they've kind of started to in the last couple of years. But I'm almost certain we're going to see a rather large overhaul on the defensive side. Yeah, no, for sure. And I think that's the way they need to go because, again, there was too much of Ballard just wanting the guys that he's had on the roster
Starting point is 00:08:46 to fit Lou's system, and they just weren't very good players. You know, like, we're having a dialogue here in the comments here with Owen, but about Womack and Juju Brent's, for instance, Juju Brent's played like two games this year for Miami and then was out for the year again with another injury. Sam Womack's not currently on a roster, I don't believe. And those were the guys that Chris Ballard was like trying to push to Loo, like, oh, these guys can be good.
Starting point is 00:09:09 And they had horrendous off seasons. Wilmack went to Tennessee, if that tells you anything, and I don't think he's there anymore. No, he got cut, yeah. And Jonathan Edwards beat him out in training camp, like, pretty clearly. So it's like, we got to overhaul the bottom of this roster. And he even mentioned it, like the depth was not good enough this year because that's kind of what the unspoken thing has been this year, right? Where a team like Sanfran overcame all of their injuries because they had the depth
Starting point is 00:09:35 to overcome them. The Colts didn't overcome their injuries because they did not have that depth on the roster. and Ballard and his staff needs to do a better job of identifying that talent and not going into camp with three guys at the top of the roster that we trust and then a bunch of undrafted free agents that Ballard likes. There needs to be a little bit more of guys that we like. And it's just not feasible to do what they did last year. So, yeah, I think for sure that they're going to be a little bit more aggressive going
Starting point is 00:10:05 to this now. Do I think he's going to come out and sign 12 players? I don't know. I've never seen him do that outside of 2017. I'd like to see him do it. He has pretty good success when it comes to those like one year, like three million dollar contract guys, I just posted over on excerpt before he jumped on about how much fun I had with Neville Gallimore as a player this year.
Starting point is 00:10:25 Like give me 10 Neville Gallimores to fill out the bottom of the roster and your depth will be perfectly fine, you know? And even if you only hit on six of those 10, that's better than not having any of them, you know? So I want to see a little bit more aggressiveness when it comes to that, especially when we talk linebacker later, like linebacker, you can find these guys on low-end deals that can come in and fit your system. So just be more aggressive in the offseason. Don't roll into the year with Chad Muma and Cam McGrone and all these other guys being like significant players. I think that's kind of what he was inferring at. But coming up guys, Chris Ballard did also say a lot about the
Starting point is 00:11:00 quarterback position. He was a little more generous with Anthony Richardson than other people have been the last couple days. But does that change our perception, Jake, that Richardson will not be here next year. We'll talk about that here in just a second. Let's be real. Managing your finances can feel overwhelming between subscriptions you forgot about, bills that keep going on, and trying to figure out where all your money actually goes each month. It's easy to feel like you're losing control. And who's got time to track every transaction or hunt down hidden fees? But that's where rocket money comes in. It's the personal finance app that helps you take control. It finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings.
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Starting point is 00:13:42 If you were playing bingo, you probably nailed it within the first 15 minutes. But you know what? We are getting into some of the more consequential things that he said here. We talked about the fact that we think there's going to be a lot of moves on the defensive side of the box. They want to get younger. They want to get faster. But he kind of verified some things we already thought with the quarterback position as well. everyone has been talking about Daniel Jones in 2026 as if it's some foregone conclusion that he's going to be the quarterback, but he's a free agent.
Starting point is 00:14:12 He has to be signed to a new deal first, and he does have the Achilles, but he is one of the more attractive quarterback options on the open market, if he does even hit the open market. So if the Colts, you know, lollagging, they don't lock him up relatively soon and let it get to March, there's going to be some competition for his services. But Chris Ballard basically said today, like, yeah, there's mutual interest. We want him. He wants to come back. We're not super worried about the Achilles. We'll work that out with his agent. We like his agent.
Starting point is 00:14:44 We'll figure it out. So, I mean, I don't know what else we need to hear. I think that would be an enormous fumble of the bag if they found a way to not land Jones. Because they also would be totally screwed in the quarterback department. Yeah, they're going to have Daniel. Jones back. I think the last couple days, it was like, okay, 95% sure he's going to be back. Today, 100% sure he's going to be back. The way they were talking about him today, especially Chris Bowers talked about him, like they view him as their franchise quarterback. They view him as
Starting point is 00:15:17 their long-term option at quarterback. So I think anyone here, especially us like last night, even speculating about it, like, oh, maybe he does get like a one-year deal. I don't think it's going to be a one-year deal with Daniel Jones. Probably three. I think it's going to be a three-to-four-year contract. Honestly, I think it's probably going to get close to that $40 million per year. I think it's going to be on the higher end than what some people are expecting. I mean, look, if you view him as your franchise quarterback and you're not worried about the Achilles like they've been saying, I mean, if I'm the agent for Daniel Jones, I'm looking at everything they've said the last couple days and saying, hey, you view him as a franchise quarterback,
Starting point is 00:15:54 you accepting that he is your guy and you don't really care about the Achilles, why are you not paying him like what darnold got last year you know like what's the excuse for like and i think that's what it's going to be so we'll see i said it last night on the show so i don't want to keep harping on it too much but i think it's going to be one of the most fascinating contracts of the off season how much that achilles plays into it uh but from everything they said i'm anticipating that their contract didn't really change much after the achilles i think it's still going to be like that darnoldish type of deal uh and we'll have to go from there one but one point positive to that is it could lower the cap hit and you're won a good bit with the signing bonus
Starting point is 00:16:32 and could help them spend at other positions. So that is one bonus to giving him potentially a two to three year contract. So for anyone think about that, though, I think that was one of my biggest takeaways is like their quarterback is Daniel Jones going for and they feel pretty good about that. Yeah. And outside of that, Chris did admit that they made some calls. I was looking into other quarterbacks after Anthony Richardson went down last year. And of course, they didn't have the foresight yet that Daniel Jones would as well. But he was also asked, you know, given Daniel Jones Achilles injury and the fact that you tried to find someone after Richardson went down last year, might you try and do something similar again? And kind of him hauled a little bit, but came back to Riley Leonard and the fact that they really liked what they saw out of Leonard.
Starting point is 00:17:25 Ballard said he thinks there's something there, which I think is fair. In the two games we saw, two good defenses on the road, I know the Houston game was, the second half was backups, but the first half was starters. I'm comfortable with Leonard being the backup. Like bring in competition, if you want to, sure, that's totally fine. But it just depends if the offseason goes along and the prognosis for, Jones Achilles maybe doesn't start to go as quick as they want. Like maybe his progress is slowing down a little bit
Starting point is 00:18:03 and he's not going to be ready for training camp or whatever their target date is. They keep talking about his work ethic and everything. And it's like, that's great. But like your body has to respond to the treatment as well. So we'll see. There's more quarterback stuff probably coming down the pipe. It may even just be like a one more Brett Rippin level player.
Starting point is 00:18:25 But quarterback behind Jones is probably not quite done being tinkered with. Yeah, I think they'll certainly bring in another quarterback there. But for sure, I think that Riley Leonard is going to be the backup next year is what it seems like. And while he was more complimentary of Richardson than Carly or Shane were, I don't think. I think there were even times, though, where it's like talking about other quarterbacks, he brought up Leonard before bringing up Richardson, you know, and I thought that was kind of telling to me. I still firmly believe that Richardson's going to be dealt this offseason. I just think that's the direction this is going. But Ballard did try to be a little
Starting point is 00:19:06 bit nicer with him than the last couple of days. So yeah, I think that, I think it's going to be Leonard, QB2. I think it's going to be Jones, QB1. And we'll see about QB3, like they spent another draft pick on one or like another veteran to round out that group. Yeah. And I think he did say that's a position you kind of always have to continue working on so with anthony i when i got the transcript i read back over it again and i thought chris could not have been doing much more dancing around the subject when it came to anthony richardson than he did today uh he normally is not that he wasn't complimentary because he was actually very complimentary but he always gives it we're not giving up on Anthony. We still think he's got a bright future. You know, I don't want to give up on the kid and
Starting point is 00:19:57 then he goes somewhere else and flourishes. This was the first time I've heard him say none of that. He kind of gave a lot of the Shane answer where it depends on his health. We're waiting on to see if his vision comes back. But he poured on like he's a great teammate, tireless worker. We like the way he responded after he was demoted to QBT to all this stuff. But talking about, talking about his future, there really was none of that like there normally is from Chris. Chris is the biggest defender in the building of Anthony publicly. And although he did compliment him plenty, he really did not comment much on his future with the Colts. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:38 So I still think that trade is coming for sure. But we'll see, I guess, what's coming with that one. The Colts, as of right now still, again, they have five draft pick projected to have seven. And I think with a Richardson move, they could get back to eight, maybe nine, depending on teams' desperation for Richardson. But coming up, guys, we're going to talk about some other news and notes from this presser, talk about some off-season targets and some ideas that we have going forward based off of the things we heard from Chris Ballard. In yet another postseason press conference without a playoff for her. All right, guys, the draft pick positions for their first rounder set.
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Starting point is 00:23:08 So aside, Zach, from just the defensive side of the ball, which we talked about to lead off the show, I'm being an active outseason. I still think that Chris Ballard overall is going to be pretty active in acquisition, not just in free agents, because the offensive side of the ball, I think they really like it, but they're not quite there. You know, they clearly have a couple things that they're missing a little bit because it's not like the offensive line was Sterling's, or the offense in general was Sterling's over the entire time through, right?
Starting point is 00:23:40 you need some offensive line depth, which we talked about recently as well. But, you know, in the draft, I keep kind of wondering, they're going to wind up with a handful of day three picks, especially if they make some more trades. Do you package some of those and move up into day two a little bit? Like, I still think overall it's going to be a pretty active off season.
Starting point is 00:24:02 Yeah, I think so. But I will say the biggest takeaway for me in terms of like the way that he, the overall motif, I guess, of everything he was saying was every time he had a chance to talk about each side of the ball and talk about these like things or whatever very complimentary of the offense in general the defense a lot of it was getting younger getting faster changing things up adding more to the defensive line so i think this is going to be such a defensive heavy off season in terms of just getting guys who fit louana rumo getting guys who are just younger faster and fit more
Starting point is 00:24:33 of where they want to go and making more their changes there because i think um one of the funnier things is when he was talking about offense and defense back to back, he talked about like, oh, on defense, we need to get more younger and faster and getting these guys in your own offense. I think we have a good blend of young and old. Yeah. It's producing, you know, and stuff like that. So every time he had a chance to talk about both sides of the ball, he was pretty complimentary of the offense and saying that's in a good place. And then with the defense, it was like, we need to make these changes. So like, I think there's going to be so many differences coming with this defense and just to put like this out there because we alluded to it in
Starting point is 00:25:09 the first segment too jake some people were getting upset about how complimentary ballard was about zire franklin and jermaine pratt i think this is one we have to watch the clip more than read the transcript because again it it was more like reluctant compliments of those guys i'm not saying that he thinks that they were terrible i don't know what he truly thinks of those linebackers but you could tell kind of from the way he answered that he did not like the linebacker play this year and he immediately started flashing back to when they had better linebacker plays like oh we had this time when it was so great and yeah i think these guys were good but i think linebacker is going to be one to change but my biggest question for all of you guys for
Starting point is 00:25:50 baller for everything right the biggest question i have going into this off season is does ballard have what it takes to do what needs to be done in terms of the zire franklin contract the michael pitman junior contract potentially the keny more con like there's a couple other ones in there as well like we talked about a couple days ago, does he have the guts to do what needs to be done? Because outside of pushing a lot of Jones's money to the future, which a guy coming off in Achilles injury is probably not smart to do, there's not many other ways to free up a bunch of cap space. So how are you going to free that up?
Starting point is 00:26:20 Franklin's contract, Pittman's contract, and a couple other ones. Does he have the guts to do it? He didn't commit to that at all in this press conference. And not that I'm saying that he needs to come out here and commit to cutting players because that would be kind of weird, but I'm curious to see if that's the, that's the next change we haven't seen from Pallet. He's been more aggressive in free agency. He made a big trade.
Starting point is 00:26:41 He's, you know, been a little bit more aggressive in player acquisition, but will he cut guys that he's drafted? That's going to be the big question here this offseason. Yeah, and that's kind of to answer Owen Stevens here where he says, you know, how will the offseason be more active? It's not just only necessarily in player acquisition. It's willing to roll up your sleeves in every area, kind of. You know, it would be new territory for him to cut date on active veteran contracts for players that are homegrown.
Starting point is 00:27:14 You know, again, $29 million for Michael Pittman Jr. next year, that's the seventh highest receiver hit in the NFL. Can't that, that's crazy. He can let that happen, but it would probably be malpracticed to do it. But he said they're going to be confident in their salary cap space. And I know him, he makes that space. Like, he's not comfortable with that $45 million they have right now. Because again, we've talked about Alec Pierce, who we're very confident, is going to be a high, high priority.
Starting point is 00:27:46 He said so himself, Daniel Jones. After you do that, well, that eats away a lot of $45 million. So how do you make more? Well, you're just going to have to have these tough conversations, which he did say they're evaluating the roster right now for that stuff. He was not committal on specifics, of course. But then also he made a concerted effort last year to kind of try to shake things up with the roster overall and not let guys get complacent.
Starting point is 00:28:15 Some of that was manifested in just not resigning some of their in-house free agents. Like E.J. Speed was a big example of that to me. Dioa Dangbo as well. Will fries. Now, some of those were overpriced, but they were willing to get new guys in there. So it's about creating, creating assets through extra cap space, trading away guys, kind of along that same line for extra draft capital. But then obviously, like, signing outside free agents as well. It's, it's just not ignoring any avenue to create more resources, essentially. Yeah, a couple other things that I had as noteworthy from this press
Starting point is 00:28:57 conference, one that I really needed to add as a joke in here was when Ballard was defending his past signings of Achilles torn players or his past having an Achilles torn players saying that Julian Blackman and Samson to become were positive examples of guys coming back from Achilles injuries. I don't know what football he's watching with those two guys, but they were very different players post their Achilles injuries. I thought that was one of the craziest things that he said in his press conference. Most of it was like milk toast, but that one I thought was like, man, come on. Like, let's get out of here with that.
Starting point is 00:29:30 DeForest Buckner, I thought some of the comments on him were a bit interesting. This might just be weird, like just the words he used might have been off. But I thought it was interesting when he said Buckner will be playing football next year and didn't specifically say for the Colts. Now, I don't know if you could trade him or anything. I don't think that would be valid would probably trade one of his kids away before trading Buckner. But I did think that was kind of interesting, at least. But that just might be that his brain automatically goes to Buckner never going anywhere. So that's why he didn't say anything
Starting point is 00:30:02 with that. And then the last thing, Alec Pierce, they mentioned that he's going to be a priority this offseason. Now, we obviously knew that everyone else has been saying that as well. He's going to be a priority. But for him to outright say, like, I always believed in Alex Pierce, thought he's always been a good player, love seeing his growth, and he's going to be a priority. I'm not going to go to the same level with Daniel Jones saying he's 100% being back because if Pierce wants to go, who's stopping him, you know? But if Pierce wants to be back, if his agency gets the deal they're looking for, I feel like the Colts are going to pay him to be back as their top receiver next season. So those are my other notable takeaways. I don't know if you had
Starting point is 00:30:37 any other quick ones you wanted to go through too, Jake. Yeah, it certainly seems like we're going to see the beginning of the Jalen Travis era, right tackle with Brayden Smith. A lot of the same tone talk about Braden Smith as it was last year during the combine I think it was when they were like he was like I don't know we'll see we'll see how we can figure it out now they ultimately did but now they have tape of Jalen Travis who they liked coming out of the draft and they like what they saw him playing on the field so I certainly think Jalen Travis is probably your right tackle the future right now let's see what the other ones were I think That was about it.
Starting point is 00:31:19 Very complimentary of the offensive line, although his Gonzalez compliments were a little bit lesser than some of the other guys. Yeah, I don't know. I feel like Gonzalves is like the red-headed stepchild, so to speak. I don't know about that one, but yeah. Yeah, he was kind of like ups and downs, but overall decent. I was like, I thought he played better than that. Come on, man, but it's fine.
Starting point is 00:31:37 Very complimentary of Bordellini, though, and of Berenhard Riemann, which I thought were very deserved. Mostly complimentary on the offense in general. It was just the defense that he was kind of. a little upset about for sure yeah without question i will say i'm what what's going to be the position group that we all know is a clear need that gets abandoned this year now linebacker is probably going to be over corrected now so you're going to get like four new guys um and you know i i think when when he quipped back to talking about you know basically 2017 to 2020 with all the guys they had all at once i think that really was a flex by him saying i know how to draft linebacker
Starting point is 00:32:17 it's like all right man well then you got to do it you like actually have to do it i believe he can draft linebackers very well but it just didn't manifest last year but it really needs to now uh because when you look at the positions on the field that you say are getting older and need to be faster well oh my god imagine the linebackers playing run and chase over the middle of the field all year it did not go well they looked old and they needed to be faster. So I think linebacker is one he wants to do. And between Edge and Detackle,
Starting point is 00:32:52 very curious which one he like really sets his sights on because you can get into a real mess at defensive tackle. Because Buckner's hurt, Grover and Buck are both 32. But also your starting edges right now where Liotto and JT2 and the lowout, who Lou was apprehensive to play for a while. so shoot maybe they add six new guys on the line who knows i think i'm with owen here in the comments i think the neglectful position is going to be o line depth from him this offseason it's going to be
Starting point is 00:33:25 he's done that before i think was it two years ago when we were like they got so lucky that they didn't have this amount of aligning yeah yeah i think that's going to be the one and we're going to be looking back after you're like oh my gosh why didn't you bring in like one veteran swing tab. But that's more of a conversation for later day. We want to thank you guys for tuning in to Locked on Colts today and every single day. We'll be back tomorrow to continue breaking down this offseason. Make sure you subscribe and follow Locked on Colts so you get all the latest episodes. And if you don't already, make sure you're following at Lockdown Colts at Lockedon Colts 2 all on socials. And if you never miss an episode, the Everydayer Club is built
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