Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS -1/20- Ramblin' Friday Colts Talk

Episode Date: January 20, 2017

Today Matt touches on several #Colts story lines. The news on Andrew Luck's surgery; are the Colts really comparable to some of the more disappointing organizations in the #NFL?; the tension with the front office situation; is #Irsay proceeding to turn over the team to his daughters sooner rather than later? -- and much, much more all in under 30 minutes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, where are you going, Jim? The elevator's over here. Taking the stairs. But our meeting's up on 8. Yeah, I know. But that's 8 floors up. That's like 8 times... I don't... a lot of stairs. That's the point. I've already lost a few pounds and earned almost $100 in wellness incentives. Whoa, you're getting rewarded for working out? Yeah, I know. I'm just as surprised as you are, Bob.

Fearless is full of surprises. That's the power of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Federal Employee Program. Learn more about our healthy benefits and sign up at fepblue.org slash choose blue by December 11th. No, I'm not for sale. You are lockeded On Colts, your daily Indianapolis Colts podcast. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day. Welcome back to Locked On Colts, ladies and gentlemen. I'm your host, Matt Dainley. And thank you for joining me here on a Friday, January 20th. And, you know, we got a little bit of news today.

First thing this morning, there was some news about Andrew Luck having some surgery on his shoulder, on his throwing shoulder. And, you know, kind of throughout the entire last year, they said that it started in 2015, which makes sense, you know, with all the beating that he took, but it's a concerning injury. I think, I don't think there's any stretch there. Anything with a labrum, you know, is an issue. I've had a couple of friends who have played pro ball, semi-pro baseball, stuff like that. And a couple of them have had to hang up their careers because of it. Now that's baseball, so that's a different throwing motion and all that, but the point is still the same. I mean, that isn't something that's concerning for me because that's not something that is, I don't think it's totally fixable.

In fact, my father even had some issues with his shoulders. I think his was more rotator cuff, but that stuff just doesn't go away. I mean, it's a, anything with a joint, you know, I mean, think about it that way. Uh, think about people's knees, how much work they have, like just simple cleanup detail on their knees. That stuff just doesn't come back, you know, full strength. I mean, there's cartilage in there and stuff that just doesn't grow back. So, uh, it's concerning for me. They can, you know, they, I was happy actually happy actually I don't want to mean and happy of sorts that it was reported accurately because you see these guys with injuries

and some of you may or may not have played you know sports at whatever level in high school or college or just whatever but a lot of these injuries you know I've suffered myself I know people who have suffered them and then I hear that they're going to come back in like two to four weeks. And I'm like, there is no way that, uh, that they're coming back within that. They did say that he'd be out for six months with, which I thought, you know, okay, that's a realistic timetable, you know, because that's a, that's something he's going to have to do a lot of rehab on once the surgery heals. So I was happy to see that they actually gave him a realistic timetable for return. It says in April.

You know, that's awfully close to everything going on. Hopefully he is able to do simple movements and simple, you know, small-time throws and everything like that without re injuring that just from the, uh, throwing motion itself, you know, but that's a thing about that. Shoulders are scary. Uh, one of the things we, uh, if you were listening, uh, George Bremer and I were talking about Dante Moncrief about how scary it is for him as a receiver even, uh, because he gets hit so much or, you know, receivers get hit a lot, and then those shoulders seem to just continue to re-aggravate.

Well, we all know how much of a beating Andrew Luck has taken over the years. This is another situation where he is going to be behind center and throwing the ball. He's going to have to put some mustard on, some mustard on it. And then he has to worry about getting hit and how much he's actually going to, uh, be able to, uh, recover from that, you know, from each hit, you know, it could be a Tony Romo deal where every time he lands on a certain spot, it re-aggravates it or tear something or, uh, injure something or get something inflamed. A lot of that stuff, that's just, it's not good in my opinion. I don't think that it's necessarily,

it's not any kind of a guarantee. I don't think to screw up his career altogether, but I don't think that it's totally implausible either for a few bad hits or hard hits to put a serious damper on his career. That's just my opinion. It's not good, I don't think. It was nice to see that he did as well as he did this year with that kind of injury, constant aggravation through it. I think the assumption is that the inflammation got so bad that they really didn't have much of a choice not to have surgery. So that tells you right there that it was aggravating him and bothering him. He pretty tough dude. I mean, you know, that's, that's not, uh, not something that's fun. I mean, just even, you know, me, uh, local softball leagues,

like eight to 10 years ago, you know, there was, uh, my shoulder, uh, had similar, uh, local softball leagues, like eight to 10 years ago, you know, there was a, uh, my shoulder, uh, had the similar, uh, issues and I had to short arm everything, you know, from that point out playing the outfield. So, uh, anytime he's going to have to throw, uh, anything, you know, with any kind of, uh, velocity on it and power, there's just that possibility that he's going to have to change maybe a throwing motion as well. And to think that he just got to the point where his, uh, accuracy has been dead on this year. And a lot of that stuff was really coming around. I would hate to see this drop him a couple steps because, you know, we, I mean, this roster is basically a lot of role players, some old guys, a couple of nice young pieces and Andrew Luck. And that's why they haven't

been very successful. I mean, just aside from the coaching and, you know, whatever you want to blame on the GM as far as his drafting. So this is, it's concerning for me. It's a good time to have it. I wish they would have had it immediately after the season was over. That would have given him, you know, an extra few weeks. Not that it's going to be any, you know, two weeks is two weeks. And if it's going to be six months out, you know, that's, you know, it's whatever, but it just kind of makes me wonder that, uh, maybe four months where they said originally that he could be back in April four to six months. That's, uh, that's quite a span between possibilities, my opinion. Um, I think that we're looking probably more towards Luck not playing next preseason.

I think that's a realistic possibility. I wouldn't play him in the preseason next year. I think they'll go through, they'll have him, and whoever the backup is is going to get in a ton of reps in camp, and I don't think that they'll play him in the preseason. I don't think they should. So that's a long way away. If he gets in and out and his shoulder is just golden as can be, you know,

come April or even early May, then, you know, no harm, no foul. But my opinion is that if there's any kind of an issue with it at all, because you always run the risk of having to go back in and clean stuff out. Another example, like I said, my dad had stuff. He had a couple of them on there because they had to go back in. So you just never know. I would realistically at this moment just forget about Luck playing preseason and seeing him until opening weekend. There was something else yesterday that kind of stuck out to me and it was kind of, I mean, it was funny. I thought it was funny because I don't watch Colin Cowherd. I don't listen to him. I used to in the past a little bit, you know,

just to kind of hear some different angles on stuff. I didn't really ever find him very truthful or, you know, or anything like that, but sometimes he'd bring up interesting points, and I would like that. I did hear somebody, I think somebody shared something on Twitter that had the video on it. I didn't watch the video, but basically what it was is that they were saying that the Colts are basically the Cleveland Browns with Andrew Luck. It was funny to me because I was all set to come down here. It was one of the ideas for the podcast here over the next few days that I was basically making that same argument. And as soon as it happened, I kind of just, I mean, of course, you know, I come up

with this idea to kind of try to relay a little bit of how bad I feel like the Colts are altogether and how much they depend on Andrew Luck and somebody else does it before I do, but that's okay. But his point, I mean, I think that his points were likely valid. I mean, if you look at last year's team and you look at them under Matt Hasselbeck, okay, if you at Football Outsiders DVOA model, the Colts were 23rd overall. They were 30th on offense, and somehow they were 13th on defense. I'm not sure that I get that at all, but we'll just go with it because that's kind of how we're going through this. When you look at Cleveland's this year, Cleveland has the 29th ranked offense, the 31st defense, and they're just terrible on special teams.

I think that's the major difference. If they were better on special teams, I think these two teams would look a little more alike. Obviously, their record is different, but when you look at their record, they had a far more difficult schedule than the Colts did this year. The Colts went eight and eight and could have gone six and 10. So, um, I think that the argument is valid. I think, uh, like I said, I don't really want to go into this too much because I didn't watch it. And, uh, I kind of tossed it to the side because somebody had gotten to it before I actually did. And I thought, uh, that it was it was a smart argument, you know. But there's a lot more consistencies between those two teams than we as Colts fans would like to admit.

Andrew Luck was, and if you guys missed this, man, I don't know how many weeks ago it was, but we were talking, and I had a guest on, I can't remember who it was, but we were talking about when Luck was coming out of the draft, the Cleveland Browns literally offered their entire draft for Andrew Luck. There was no joke. That was absolutely on the table. They offered their entire draft for him and the Colts obviously turned it down. But, oh, you know what it was? It was with Rick McLaughlin and he was saying, you know, that could have possibly been a turning point in the Colts organization for the other reasons. You know, we got Andrew Luck, that's a franchise

quarterback for 10, 12 years. Or you go the other route and you use all those picks, you trade a couple of those picks for higher picks, next year's picks. The Colts could have legitimately had 10 to 11 picks over maybe a two or three year span and really solidified a lot of areas that have given them trouble since Gregson and Pagano took over. Now, of course, the argument always comes in, you know, do you trust them to make the right picks or, you know, be able to coach up a team like that? But it's kind of funny when you think about it that way because you could really make the argument either way, I think. If you tell me that you're going to give me eight picks, I'll be able to trade a couple of them, and I'm going to be able to get ten picks over the next three drafts,

especially in the one, I think it was 2014, where they only had five picks, that would have been vital for the Colts. I mean, it could have been, you know what I mean? And, you know, do they have a solid quarterback by now? I don't know. But I know that the Colts went 8-8 last year with Matt Hasselbeck largely playing a better role than what Andrew Luck did. Now, I don't think Andrew Luck – I'm not saying that Matt Hasselbeck gave the Colts a better opportunity to win. I think that's just stupid. But Andrew Luck did not have a good year last year when he was playing.

Those seven games largely, other than Carolina, I think the other one was Denver and the Patriots actually. He had the Colts in all three of those games. The other games, the other four games, you know, it was just he just played like crap. And it was one of those things where you look at it and an average quarterback sometimes has a weird effect on opposing defenses. So we've seen that plenty when the Colts have gone up against, you know, replacement level quarterbacks. They seem to tear our defense apart because the offense

gets so simplified that simple four and five yard routes are easier for receivers as well to accommodate. And so that's not an argument saying that that makes your team better. That's simply one of the things that you see. It's almost like a phenomenon in the league every so often where you'll see a bad offense play better than what they actually are. this year. A lot of issues with the way that the routes are designed for a downfield approach with some struggles up front on the line, especially real early in the year, probably through about the first eight or nine weeks, maybe 10 weeks even. But that offensive line has youth, and even if they get a lineman or two between free agency and the draft or a combination of the two that offensive line I'm still gonna I mean I'll keep it that way until

they prove me wrong but that offensive line I think is going to be very good over the next couple years and I certainly hope so of course but I definitely believe it because they've got the youth they've got some guys that I think can be starters. Man, I can't tell you how glad I was to be wrong or at least temporarily wrong about LaRaven Clark. You know, he looked awful in camp. He looked awful in the preseason. And when they brought him in the last couple of weeks of the year, he looked pretty good.

Really impressed by him, actually. I think Joe Haig is going to be a possible really good piece. I still think that Denzel Good is better than what he played this year. And I think that Austin Blythe is a fantastic guy who can move between guards and the center as backups. Whether or not Muhor can stay healthy long enough over the next few years, you know, to really have an impact. He's proven that he's a fantastic offensive lineman. I think Anthony Costanzo could use another couple good years, but I think that he's got it in him, and I think that he's still the best offensive lineman

on that crew. So, you know, there's a lot of reasons to look forward, but the Colts this year are in such a weird position, guys. I mean, I know that you're all tired of everything, and I am too, but when you look at the future, the future is not Pagano. I don't know if the future is Grigson or not. It seems that it very well could be, but I mean, guys, we don't know. And if you're wanting, I went through why I wasn't fond of Gruden in a past show. I'm still not. He's not the answer either. He may do a little bit of work with luck that some other guys couldn't do, but he is not a Hall of Fame coach, okay, or anything like that. There are other coaches out there, not many anymore because they've all been hired. Shanahan would do wonders with this Indianapolis offense, and I think

there's probably a couple more that'll come up in the next couple years that, you know, would be legitimate replacements. So we'll have to see with how that turns out. But there are, I mean, right now, what are we going to get? Even if Jim Ursae was to get rid of either or both the head coach and the GM, we don't really know what we'd have at this point. I mean, a lot of the coaching and hiring processes have already been done, and the Colts will be picking up sloppy seconds and scraps off others. Not to mention the way that Jim Irsay has gone about this whole situation. I mean, I would assume that it would turn off any prospective hires.

You know, it would turn me off. I wouldn't want to go there. I mean, that would be putting you in the same realm as Cleveland. It would put you in the same realm as Buffalo as far as how their front office is working. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if Jim is starting to get his fill of it, you know, and I think that there's a real possibility that he could expedite the process of handing over the organization to his daughters. I think we could possibly see that in the next couple few years. It wouldn't surprise me a bit, and with the way he's been acting,

or let me put it this way, the way that he's been so quiet and how little he's been willing to talk publicly would that almost seems like that's something that's uh in the works at the moment no i know i'm saying for next year anything like that it just seems like you know he wants to do something but he can't commit and then he doesn't want to do something, but he's getting itchy. So it's hard to tell. Right now, this Colts situation is probably about as bad as it's been that I can remember. If you guys listened to Amy Trask on the show the other night, she did tell us that basically

we as a Colts fan base are spoiled. I mean, we went from Andrew Luck, or went from Peyton Manning to Andrew Luck and, you know, perceivably were to get another franchise quarterback. And it seems like this transition's been far more rocky than it should have been. Looked like we were going to be, you know, touching the Super Bowl three to five times in a 10-year span after going 11-5 the first three years. And it's gone downhill from there, and it's kind of staying there. And I'm not saying because of luck, but I'm just saying the entire group as a whole. Poor coaching, poor roster.

There's a lot of things to fix. There's a lot of things that need overhauled. I think, you know, Jim Irsay might just be looking in the mirror a little bit with that. Maybe, maybe not. But there are a lot of things that need to change, and they need to change in a hurry. Or this Colts organization could really find themselves in the dumpster quicker rather than later. And if you don't think that the Colts could turn into the Cleveland Browns in the drop of a hat, you are absolutely wrong. It would not take long. It would be super quick. The only thing that would keep them from getting quite to the Cleveland

basement would be the fact that Ursae is nothing like Haslam. He's not a guy who treads in coaching and GM decisions, I don't think. He doesn't stick his nose where it doesn't belong, so to speak. He delegates well, allows people to do their jobs. But at the same time, he's got to be more disciplined himself with making decisions, sticking to them, and being able to pull the trigger when a change warrants itself. I think we can all agree that Pagano needs to go. I see a lot of Pagano lovers out there, but I'm telling you right now, if you look at the way things are done, the way he's coached this team,

he is not a good coach. There is just no two ways about it. Grigson is not a GM. If you guys read the article that Josh Wilson put up, I'm sorry, not put up, but he shared it. It was from one of the, I think it may have been the Bleeding Green Nation or something like that, something for the Philadelphia Eagles. A lot of the people in that organization were flummoxed

when Ryan Grigson was hired. They said that there were other people even in that building that were far more ready to run a team than Ryan Grigson and thought that he was going to just be patty-caked forever because he got Andrew Luck and that he was basically going to be getting all these accolades for Andrew Luck carrying this team. Well, Andrew Luck did carry the team for the first three years, but now Ryan Grigson has no choice but to find a way to be one of the best GMs in the NFL.

That's a stretch. He needs to do it, though. And I'll tell you what, if he knocks it out of the ballpark this year, guys, there's no more excuses. He's built some depth on the line. And if he can get two to three quality defenders and maybe even one really good one out of this draft or two, there's no excuses. Hassan Ridgway looks like he's going to be on the rise. They need an edge terribly bad. They can get one in the draft. They can get one in free agency. They need another corner, but they can do that in free agency depending on how they want to do it. There's a couple young ones. We've talked about this already. But they've got pieces in place where if you put a few more pieces around them,

this defense could make a huge come up next year. And obviously, when you're in the basement, there's really only one way to go. However, I still believe that there's the talent on here, that if you surround them with a couple other pieces that the overall perspectives of this defense is going to climb exponentially. I did like the thought that they are still talking about putting Gethers in as a full-time linebacker. I think that's a great possibility. We've talked about that. I believe Jake Arthur and I talked about that a few weeks ago. That's something that is going to be very interesting to watch and watch closely,

especially when it comes to free agency, what they do with Darius Butler, how they treat gethers as far as bringing him in, his injury history. Is that something that his body can withstand? We don't know. We'll find out. They'll have to look at that too, or they may have to just settle at him being safety. Finding a spot for him in this defense in a huge area of need would be ideal, as long as they can do something on the back end, replace him with some good cover guys at the cornerback position. If we can build that front seven up, especially that front four, in the next two years, the defense could be solid.

We could have at least the majority of the pieces in offense. And then, you know, I think we're two years away. I still do. I think next year we could start seeing them climb back up. They could possibly still win the division. You know, I mean, it is the AFC South. It kind of depends on what kind of leaps and bounds the Titans make what the Texans do for their quarterback decisions going forward for next

year but it could be a very competitive AFC South next year it'd be very interesting to see and kind of find out what that turns into but they could still win the division. And if they do that, get in the playoffs, then the next year, you know, find those extra couple pieces that they need to round everything off. And then you never know what happens. I mean, the Colts with Andrew Luck and a lot of work are a lot of help around him could be one of the best teams in the league here pretty soon. Brady's looking to retire a couple other guys, you know, maybe soon Breeze. I mean, although he's NFC, you just don't know. Some other AFC guys, you know, as well. So, you know, Luck could have the pick of the litter when it comes to the AFC. If he does get

some help around him, he'll still have Roethlisberger, Flacco, some other guys to be fighting with. But there's a lot of things to look forward to. Um, that went sideways quickly. So, uh, I hope you guys didn't mind me rambling there for a little bit, but, uh, this is our Friday show. It's the last one of the week. We'll come back with more shows next week, obviously. And we will try to get us some more, uh, interviews on for next week. Start talking about, you know, how people's boards are changing, talk about a couple other positions and try to get some new voices on here. And we'll try to bring some of the guys back that we've already talked to because their boards change by week by week.

These guys do tons of film work, and in just a three- or four-day span, a lot of these guys have changed their minds on certain players, seen some skill sets develop, and skill sets kind of flatten out a little bit depending on what game they're watching. And then they have to get a holistic view of that prospect, and we'll have to see here in the next week or so what we're going to get. We'll have Rick McLaughlin back on here for sure, and we'll have some other guys on here as well.

Your listenership has been fantastic. I really appreciate it. This is our 100th show for Locked On Colts, so thank you guys all. I can't express it enough. I continue to tell you, you guys have been subscribing to the podcast like crazy. It's been great.

The ratings and the reviews have been fantastic. I can't thank you enough for it. The feedback I'm getting from you guys from the Gmail account, LockedOnColtsPod at gmail.com, LockedOnColts on Twitter, mdanley underscore NFL on Twitter, and the Facebook pages. You guys have been fantastic. Please keep it up. I do enjoy hearing from you guys, seeing what you guys think.

I don't always get to all of them. I try to at least for the majority of the time. But you guys have been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me every single day here on Locked on Colts. Thank you for 100 great episodes, and we'll do 100 more. So thank you guys for joining me. We'll talk to you next week right here on Locked on Colts. You are Locked on Colts, your daily podcast on the Indianapolis Colts,

part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day.