Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS -2/27- Playing GM: Signing The Field In Free Agency

Episode Date: February 27, 2017

After signing the in-house free agents, Matt dives all in the free agency field attempting to sign quality talent for the #Colts. A lot of money left to spend in #FreeAgency - and a lot of holes to fill as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more about our healthy benefits at fepblue.org slash getmore. 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 first and foremost, I just want to get this out of the way before we get into myself looking at the free agents to be and who I can bring into the Indianapolis Colts.

I wanted to say thank you to everybody for all the kind words and all that, whether it be on Twitter, through the email, just anything. I appreciate you guys giving me your kind words about the podcast. I love doing this. I'm glad that you guys enjoy doing this, whether I'm with you on your ride to work, with you on your walk at night, or whatever the case may be, whether you're walking your dog or just whatever. Thank you for joining me every day. I appreciate it. per week in the off season, but I am trying to give you guys at least four a week, whether that be, uh, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, or, you know, one on the weekend, like I did last week, just kind of depends on my schedule and whatnot of how we go about things. But I'm trying to give you guys at least four shows a week. Thank you again, like I said, for being with me

each and every week, several times a week, it means a lot to me and I appreciate it. And I'm glad that I can be a part of your day, uh, possible. So let's kind of recap what we did on last week's final show. So I went through the Colts, free agents, and signed Walden to $4 million a year. I know that some of you aren't exactly overly excited about that, but I brought him in because he's, and I explained to you why. He's a guy who's been there. He's still a quality guy, giving him one year guaranteed salary, and then we'll work on it from there. I don't think he's going to be around much more than any other year. Going to Doyle, gave him 6.2 a year. A lot of people think that's too much.

I don't because I think he's one of the top five tight ends, all-around tight ends in the league. He can catch everything, 80% cash percentage throughout his career so far, and he's just a phenomenal blocker. We've got plans at the position going forward. Robert Turbin kept him around for under a million, kept Daryl Morris and Chris Carter both for just under a million as well. And I misspoke about the available cap room. It's more along the lines of 46 million. I think I told you guys 47, 48 million, 47.9, I think, but we're looking right at about 46 million right now in available cap room for going forward. So we're looking at these free agents available. And, you know, I think that it's a fair

assumption that being that I did not bring Mike Adams back, we need to address the safety position. I don't trust TJ Green. I don't think you guys trust TJ Green. He's just literally, air quotes, green right now. Not a great coverage guy. He's got a lot of good length, got a lot of speed, but the guy has trouble covering, you know, whether he's down in the box and he's covering up the seam or just whatever, has a difficult time tracking the ball as well. And that's not great for a safety. I mean, you want your safety to be the ball hawk, right? You want your corners to be sticky and to be able to cover guys like paint and your safeties have to be able to cover pretty well,

but they've also got to be very aware, and I don't feel that T.J. Green's there yet, and he's going to end up being the third guy at least in this death chart going forward, and looking at a couple guys like Bradley McDougal, who is a free agent from Tampa Bay, really liked him towards the end of the year. Not so sure that he is maybe that consistent, but he did a really nice job there in Tampa Bay. And one of the guys that I was considering as I'm looking through all these, you know, I'm looking, again, I'm looking at age. I'm looking at all sorts of stuff.

Now, also looking at Tony Jefferson out of Arizona. Really good guy. Now, this guy has it all, in my opinion. He's very good in coverage. He's big enough to match up just about with anybody that you need, whether you want him to come in and be that dime safety or that dime linebacker, whatever you really want him to do, although we've got gethers for that, so that's not necessary for him. He's not an ultimately physical guy, but he's a very good tackler finished with over 90 tackles on the season. And with an Arizona defense that tackles

up front really well, that's something special as far as I'm concerned, a guy in the safety at safety position that tackles has that many tackles, uh, throughout the season, but his front sevens kind of garbage that that's kind of a, you know, well, you've got to be the guy that tackles, you know, well, Tony Jefferson did it with a pretty solid defense. And he's, like I said, he's a guy that can cover just about anywhere too. And he's got good ball awareness. So, and ball skills for that matter. So in this regard, I mean, looking at the safeties that are available, I'm going with

Tony Jefferson. His market value right now is 5.7 million a year. I have a feeling that his market being that he's going to be driven up a little bit. I think a lot of people are going to want to know about him. I don't think a lot of people are really aware about him right now, but he's really good. And I think that the teams know about him and I think the teams are going to drive his value and his price up a little bit. I'm going to give him $6 million a year because, like I said, his market value right now is at $5.7 million. I think he's a guy who can definitely earn that. He's plenty young enough.

You give him a three or four-year contract, that's going to bring some consistency to that safety position. If TJ doesn't develop, then he doesn't develop. And he's ultimately, you know, a cheap guy in the future to relieve of his duties. And you've still got Tony Jefferson and you've got Clayton Gethers back there. That's a hell of a safety core as far as I'm concerned, at least a one-two. So I'm signing Tony Jefferson to six million a year. And also we go to this inside linebacker core. It's necessary, right? I mean, we got Antonio Morrison and Edwin Jackson that started the last few games of the season last year. And while they're good depth guys, they're not starters as far as I'm concerned. Even Jackson. Jackson played quite a bit,

but I don't think he's a starter caliber. And you know what? If he's a starter caliber, he's a starter caliber on last year's defense. He's not going to be a starting caliber on this year's defense for me. So I'm looking at a few guys. Obviously, we're looking at Zach Brown in Buffalo. We talked to Jared Brown, coincidentally, a guy who covers linebackers for Bleacher Report, their Bleacher 1000 series. And he was telling us that Zach Brown is a good option, but he's going to be more expensive, and he's a little bit more athletic as well, or quite a bit more athletic as well, but there's cheaper options out there that are going to give us a really good set building blocks.

He was talking about Hodges out of San Francisco. He told us about Kevin Minter out of Arizona, saying that those two basically would be better options for Indianapolis, not only for price-wise, but they're also going to give us a good combination of coverage from that inside linebacking core, as well as run-stopping ability. So another guy that we need to look at, though, out of Carolina is A.J. Klein. I don't know what his assumptions to either come back to Carolina or test the market are. I really don't. Either way, he's a guy that I think that I deserve to look at and that he deserves that I look at him. But as I'm going through this, I realize that I've got two guys that are depth

right there. I see that there's some solid guys in the draft this year that I would really like to see. And we're trying to build this defense, not all in one year, but we're trying to build it intelligently for the right price throughout. And just bits and pieces. I've got depth. I'm going to get me a starter. And then we're going to look into the draft for a guy who can possibly start, if not right away, a plug and play type of guy, but a guy who is at least a solid depth. And we've got a couple depth guys there. So it's going to be a bit of a competition in camp right now. I'm going for the, probably in what I would assume a slightly more expensive situation between AJ Klein and Kevin Minter. And I'm going to give Kevin 3.5 million a year.

I don't know if that's going to sign him. I think that it will probably just because I, uh, trying to look through his, uh, market value versus, uh, all the other guys in there. And I'm going to assume that that's a fairly reasonable price, maybe a touch more. I mean, maybe 4 million signs him. I'm not sure either way, anywhere in that area right there's just no two ways about it. So we've got a coverage linebacker who can also stop the run, and we've got a coverage safety who can also stop the run. And you may even want to call him a run-stopping safety who can also cover really well. It doesn't really make a difference, but our defense is already more diverse and already better in both against the run and the pass.

So now we get into the big boy conversation here where we get into our edge rushers, our outside linebackers. And I mean, I myself have talked up Melvin Ingram since day one. He's going to require, I even did a piece for FanRag Sports talking about that I thought that that 10% value was quality to get him because that's $16.8 million a year. That's not huge in the grand scheme of it all when you look at it, but when we've got an estimated $60 million to start with, we're down to about $46 million. We can't spend all of it. We've got to spend 90% of it. We have to spend 90% of the cap. But we've also got to be smart enough to save enough for our draft.

So what I'm doing is I'm looking through all these guys. I really want Melvin Ingram. There's no two ways about it. But I also understand that there's other quality options out there. Also looking at Nick Perry out of Green Bay, John Simon out of Houston especially. So I'm looking at these two guys, kind of figuring that last year Nick Perry got a little over $5 million for his work in Green Bay. Did a good job, played through with an arm injury, played with a cast in the playoffs. I mean, that's a tough dude, right? I mean, so yes, we hung on to Eric Walden, but we've also got to think of, like I said, the whole puzzle,

not just do we need one guy who can just rush every single time. We need a total balanced defense, and we're going to do this, like I said, all throughout, all inclusive, not just through one position. So I'm already looking at these three guys. John Simon's probably one of the most under-the-radar guys in the NFL right now. Not a lot of fans probably know about him because he's dealing with, you know, merciless. Watt wasn't there this year, but you've got him and Clowney

and other guys over there that get all the big-time talk. And now that Watt's coming back, he's going to be adding even more to that D-line. So now you've got John Simon possibly on the outside looking in. They're going to be kind of cap strapped as far as I can tell. What looks like with Osweiler signing, they may have to go after a quarterback, whether it be in free agency or in the draft. So I think I'm pretty certain that John Simon's going to be on the available list. So I'm looking at this, and I'm going after John Simon. He's an outside linebacker out of Houston.

Like I said, his market value right now should be right around $5 million, I think. He's a quality dude, still 26, 27 years old, young, really a good ball player, kind of like Tony Jefferson. Teams know this guy. A lot of fans may not, but teams know this guy, and he's as hard-nosed as they come. He only racked up four sacks this year, but you also have, like I said, you have to include everything, and he had 51 tackles, 10 QB hits, and a forced fumble. That's a pretty good, I mean, he's getting to the quarterback, right? And like I said, for a guy who's a little bit under the radar, that's going to save us a little bit of money and get us some production.

So I'm taking John Simon for $5 million a year. That's a pretty nice little price tag. I mean, it's not bad. It's probably going to go up. I mean, you want to sign him, a guy like that, for three to four years. But I think that after a couple years, he's going to want a little bump in pay because I think he's going to be overly productive. I really do.

So then we look at where we're at for the rest of it. I mean, do we stop there? I'm not stopping there. I'm going after Nick Perry out of Green Bay, and I really think he's going to cost around $8.5 million. That sounds like a lot, but that's two secure guys on the outside. Simon can rush, Nick Perry can rush, but they're both really good against the run. So taking Perry at eight and a half, he's basically getting that off of what he did last year plus his pay. So maybe that's a little high. I don't know. I just kind of think that that's right about where he falls. And to be quite honest with you, that's real close to what SpotTrack's got him for his projected market value going forward.

So I'm going to take it at that. I don't think that Nick Perry necessarily is going to drive the market. So I'm not too worried about that price going up, maybe $8.6, $8.7. I don't see it going up significantly. I just don't. Those are two guys I think that the Colts can target, and they're going to pay $13.5 million for those two and save that money. They're still saving money if they were to sign Melvin Ingram for what his projected market value is at $17.2 right now.

So that's a little more than 10% of the cap, but don't get me wrong. Love Melvin Ingram. I do want him, but I also want to make sure that this team can be built inside to out and all the way through. So right now we've got a nice little lineup here. Tony Jefferson, Kevin Minner, Nick Perry, and John Simon. We got our back end, we got our middle, and we got some edge rushers plus some run stopping. So, so far so good, right? Another guys, a couple guys that I've talked to you guys about in the past, Brandon Williams, defensive tackle out of Baltimore, and Nick Fairley, defensive tackle from New Orleans. Fairley was on his third team.

A lot of people, you know, he's 29, not old, but, man, what a productive year this past year. I mean, seven sacks, 22 QB hits. I think we've talked about this. The entire Indianapolis Colts defensive line this past year. I mean, seven sacks, 22 QB hits. I think we've talked about this. The entire Indianapolis Colts defensive line this past year had something like 32 QB hits the entire year. I mean, all guys on the front line, defensive ends, defensive tackles, and Nick Farrelly had 22 on his own. I like that. I don't care about how many teams this guy's been on. He wants, right now at 29 years old, to have his oomph contract, right? He's going to get paid.

Don't get me wrong. But he is, I think, a cheaper version of what a lot of guys, say, for example, Brandon Williams, are going to cost. His production may drive this price up. But right now I've got him at about $6.5 million. I'm taking Nick Fairley all day long. I'm taking that slightly cheaper contract, and this may be another one. If he has a standout year, I'm going to sign him for two years, three years, but I know that he's going to be a standout player. I'm looking that I have to make sure that I've got the available cap for the future for that contract to rise at least $1. a half, $2 million. I think they're in good shape for that. I'm going to do

that whether I need to reconstruct that contract at some point on within that three years. Not ideal, but I'm going in with eyes open. So maybe that, like I said, maybe that goes up to $7 million right now, but I'm not really worried about that. We're in pretty good shape so far. We've spent a lot of money, but we've also got a really nice, thorough defense right now that we're building almost entirely through free agency. A little scary, but we've got some youngins in there. We've got a lot of young defensive linemen, T.Y. McGill, Henry Anderson, Perry, a lot of defense, whether Kendall Langford sticks around or just whatever. He's not young, but he's a guy who's there and was pretty solid

last year. We've got a couple young guys in the secondary, mostly guys who were brought in through attrition last year. And we've got some safety help that's young with gethers. And we've got two young inside linebackers that are going to be there for at a minimum depth. So, so far, we've got a nice little mixture of young, solid free agents that I've pulled in and young guys who have been there either through the draft or been undrafted and been brought in. Now, our secondary is a little lacking through, and I haven't really addressed it right now through free agency right now other than Tony Jefferson in the secondary, but I think that's as important as anything right now. So there's another place we're going to go to. So far we've gotten Nick

Fairley, John Simon, Nick Perry, Kevin Minter, and Tony Jefferson. Looks pretty good, right? Like I said, we've spent a lot of money. We're still in good shape. So looking at these offensive linemen, I'm not wanting the Colts to address this through the draft. I don't want to, as Chris Ballard, don't want to address this through the draft. There's not a lot of quality talent through the draft as far as I'm concerned. A lot of people are high on Cam Robinson. I won't lie and say that I've watched hours of tape on him, but I have watched a couple hours of tape on him, and I'm not all that impressed. I've seen him get beat by substandard talent

and pretty badly and consistently. Garrett Bowles, I like him. His age doesn't really concern me, but it's not something that I want to do through the draft. A guy bringing in, what if that 24, 25-year-old goes to crap right away? You've ultimately wasted a draft pick. And that would be more likely, if it was Garrett Bowles, would be a first, second round draft pick. I'm not ready to do that. So what I'm wanting to do is I'm going to look at a couple guys in free agency, looking at TJ Lang. I mean, there's Pastor. There's several guys along the offensive line, namely at guard,

that are available. And what we need to do is we need to find a guy who's got some good talent, not a guy who's driving the market, but is going to be a guy that we can bring in either for depth or possibly, depending on how he does in camp, maybe he could start. It just depends. There's a lot to be determined. Luke Jokel, sorry. That guy's not coming to Indianapolis with me. Ron Leary, 27, out of Dallas. He's going to be expensive.

Kevin Zeitler out of Cincinnati. He's going to be expensive. 26 years old. Would love to have him. He's going to be double-digit million. So I'm not going there. Past are the same. These He's going to be expensive. 26 years old. Would love to have him. He's going to be double digit million. So I'm not going there. Past are the same. These guys are going to be expensive. Not looking to spend a ton of money on a starter right now. I like TJ Lang though. Okay. Like TJ Lang. Talked about him in the past. He's looking at about an eight and a half million projected market value. That's a little more than I want to spend for offensive linemen right now.

I think that we can either bring a guy in here, look for a guy that kind of fits a little closer to what we want to spend. And then when we were looking at a draft class with the offensive line kind of as substandard as it is right now. I want to wait a year and kind of see if that offensive line class can improve next year maybe. You know, we've got depth. We can keep a lot of that depth along the offensive line. But I'm looking at a guy out of Detroit right now, Larry Warford. Not a guy who's breaking a bunch of banks throughout the league. Not one of the best offensive linemen probably that you're going to see. Maybe a top five, six offensive linemen in this free agent class,

but I can get him for just about $6 million, maybe a touch more. And right now, that's okay with me. I mean, I'm all right with $6 million. That might be a touch high, but I think that market value, being that this offensive line class is so bad, at least not deep, I think that there's a few guys, especially guards, people need interior offensive line help, and I think the Colts are one of them. I don't think we need a ton of it.

We don't need to address it several times this offseason. We do need to address it, though, and we're going to do it through free agency just for the reasons that I've already mentioned. So I'm going to go get Larry Warford. I'm going to tell him, look, you can come to Indianapolis. You're going to protect Andrew Luck. We've got a nice young offensive line around you that is going to help. You're going to be working next to the future of the Indianapolis Colts

under center, which is Kelly, and you're going to have one of a few guys on your right-hand side, either LaRaven Clark, if he develops real nice, Joe Haig. You may be moving around. Hey, look, Jack Muhor, he's been a little dinged up over the past year. You may be moving a left guard. So you're going to get playing time. And not only that, but that allows these young offensive linemen that we've drafted this past

year you know give give griggs some credit he brought in some uh offensive linemen finally and that have actually you know uh although a small sample size have worked out pretty well we're are working out pretty well anyway so we've got a lot of depth and warford's going to get some snaps so maybe if you want to consider that that's a little high for him, I don't, because of what that can mean for the development of that offensive line altogether. So I'm bringing in Larry Warford at six, a little bit more than six million. I think that's right at about where they've got him listed as his projected market value, $6.2 million. We've spent a total of $35.7 million.

And right now, I think that I'm probably getting some high fives, you know, some handshakes around the office. Thanks, guys. You know, I appreciate it. Thank you guys for helping me get these guys in the building. I think we've got a nice defense that we've thrown together through free agency. We've got a couple guys that have been here that we've re-signed. Maybe Chris Carter sticks around. Maybe he gets kicked down because we got a couple guys through free agency, but we've at least got some depth now at the position, and I think we're in good shape. Now, I'll recap this real quick. Tony Jefferson at six a year, Kevin Minner at 3.5, maybe a little higher. Nick Perry at eight and a half, John Simon at five, Nick Fairley,

6.5 million a year, Larry Warford at 6.2. I think that's a pretty good showing in free agency. If we're being totally honest, I don't expect the Colts to quite go this deep into free agency. Maybe a couple of those guys. I would be happy with just a few of those guys, to be honest with you. If the Colts can spend around $15 to $18 million total, maybe even $20 million in free agency, I'd be pretty happy. That would bring them down to right around $30 million, $25, $35, just depends on who they re-sign on the team.

But if I'm Chris Ballard, that's what I'm doing, and we're down to about $10.2 million, and we've got some work to do in the draft. So maybe this is a little low. I think that I should have probably kept us around $15 million or so, but I'm going to do this right now because, like I said, I have to get to the floor. I probably gave a couple guys a little bit too much money. But look, that's what the market does to you every so often. And I think that we've got a hell of a

team right now already spitting up. We've got young guys in free agency, not a lot of old guys walking around with canes. I think we've done a pretty good job so far. So right now we've got about $10.2 million to spend on the draft. I think that's more than enough money, although I wish I had probably saved another $4 or $5 million just in case. But look, this is a good start for us. And not to mention, Morris and Carter are definitely not guaranteed paychecks. So if we're looking at guaranteed salaries throughout this season, we're still probably even around the $12 million to $13 million range. So that's what we got so far. So tomorrow I'm going to be drafting live on here.

We're going to go through one of these sites that allow us to draft. I'm going to, I'm trying to find the most realistic one. I've done a couple of these on a couple of these automated sites and I swear Ms. Trubisky continues to go number one every time and just blows my mind. So that's what we got so far. Still working through that. I'm going to try to find, make sure that we've got a realistic one to go through. And so far I've gotten a couple and we'll see if I can find us a couple more. So right now Colts stand just at about, we'll say $12 million on the cap, ready for the draft. We've got a nice haul in free agency. We kept some important guys, I think,

from our own team in free agency or kept them away from free agency. And I'm all set to draft. I hope you guys are too. So I'll see you guys tomorrow right here on Locked on Colts for our draft. Thank you for joining me. Always appreciate you guys listening in with me. Always appreciate you guys giving me the ratings and reviews on iTunes. Those do tremendous help. And I will talk to you all tomorrow 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.