Locked On Colts - Daily Podcast On The Indianapolis Colts - LOCKED ON COLTS -5/12- Ballard Was Right To Praise Grigson & Some Of The Pieces He Had In Place

Episode Date: May 12, 2017

Recently Chris Ballard praised former #Colts GM Ryan Grigson for putting together an offensive line heavy 2016 draft class, and he was right to. While the large majority of fans were repulsed by him, Grigson helped out his successor quite a bit with the transition before it even began. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

No, I'm not for sale. You are Locked 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. Thank you all for joining me on this, our 170th episode of Locked On Colts. It's kind of crazy to see that we've put that many forward, but thank you guys. And those of you new listeners who have been joining us since the offseason, the draft, or whatever,

thank you all for coming aboard. We really appreciate it, and I really appreciate it. And I know that this has grown quite a bit for myself and the listeners. It's gotten to be a lot of fun. So thank you all for all the new listeners, and thank you all who have been here since the beginning. But thank you guys all for joining me here Friday. Today, I've got a couple things I want to run through real quick. Not a lot of news necessarily, but a couple things that I wanted to touch on.

Like I mentioned just a moment ago, if you guys have been here through the regular season, when we are going through game kind of recaps or discussing who should be, you know, starting this week or just whatever it was throughout the regular season, you guys heard me talk a lot about our offensive line, our offensive line, how the offensive line obviously was struggling with new blood in there. And I still had hope for them to eventually be one of the top 5, 10, maybe even 15 units in the next couple years. And we've talked about that a lot. To be quite honest and to give credit where it's due, Colts Twitter has been on this for a while as well. So, I mean, this has been something that a lot of us have had discussed if you guys are in the conversation on Twitter.

But not everybody, you know, subscribes to that thought process. They still think that, you know, because last year was such a disaster as far as how many times Luck was hit, that he was injured, that it's just not the case, that there's still a need to have a massive revamping of offensive linemen there for the Colts up front. Well, there was a good, and I'll give it the credit to Ballard as opposed to Breer, but Albert Breer put an article up on MQB, and it touches on a lot of this. It touches on about how Ballard has gone about his ideas as far as how to restructure this team. When Ballard was first hired, he came through and basically said, I'm going to watch tape of all these guys.

We're going to see where our weak spots are at, and then we're going to address it. Well, he didn't do much to the offensive line did he you know and that's something that you I mean look we all think that Ballard is a really smart guy and we think that he knows what he's doing he uh is a great talent evaluator he's bringing in evaluators around him who are also extremely talented and one would suspect that if he's not messing a great deal with the offensive line, then that's a pretty decent offensive line. I've also said as of recent and probably before as well, that Ryan Grigson does deserve the credit for bringing in Joe Haag, LaRaven Clark, and Kelly, and just a couple of the other bodies as well that, you know, we can all

sit back and look at all of the functional disorderly or the lack of function, I guess you could say, not only with draft picks and stuff in the past, but some of the big swing and misses in free agency. But you've got to look, I mean, and it's hard to sit there and say, well, you look at his 2012 class and his 2016 class. Well, that 2012 class is mostly gone too. I mean, the only two that are on the roster right now currently are Andrew Luck and T.Y. Hilton. At first blush, you know, you got Kobe Fleener, Dwayne Allen, Hilton, Josh Chapman, who was supposed to be the next nose tackle of the Colts, Vic Ballard, who was supposed to be the next running back. Those weren't terrible.

It wasn't a terrible draft. LeVon Brazile looked like he could be something special. Justin Anderson looked at least to be a functional guy. Tim Fugger, he used to be, or Fugger, he used to be, that's a scary name to say on a podcast. It's supposed to be clean. But he looked like he was going to be a decent pick as well as late as in the seventh round. Chandler Harnish is one of those guys

you're just throwing dart at a board and hopefully you're finding a nice backup there out of Northern Illinois. But that didn't come with anything. He did make the roster. But when you look at that draft class up front, it looks like a solid draft class. If Ballard doesn't go down to injury, Chapman just doesn't completely underwhelm. Lavon Brazil doesn't get himself into some legal troubles. Fugger, I don't believe. Man, that's crazy. I think that he got injured a lot right up front. So did Anderson, I believe.

But if that doesn't happen, that 2012 class is considerably stronger. Not only that, but Dwayne Allen's gone now. Fleener left in free agency. And so it's just Hilton and Luck. When you go to the next one, though, bad ones. There's some bad drafts there. A lot of it. A lot of it after the first and second picks are just kind of useless. Justice Cunningham was one of those guys that looked like a good, solid draft pick, although he got himself in some issues as well. Not a great pick, but a seventh-round pick, a guy that could contribute most definitely. And then now you've got the 2014 draft with just Muhor and Moncrief left out of that. And Andrew Jackson and Jonathan Newsom aren't even in the league anymore.

Ulrich Johns in Arizona, if I'm not mistaken. Dorsett, a lot of people were super upset with that because it was a first round pick. He's functioning. I mean, the guy can play. He's not a first round draft pick. We've established that already. DeJune Smith, bust. Third round pick. Henry Anderson, fantastic pick so far. He's been injured, so a lot will tell with this year. Clayton Gethers, he looks to be a great pick. David Perry was a solid pick. He would have been better if the Colts already had a starting nose tackle

that was good as a backup, possibly, Perry could be. And, you know, he's still in the mix, even with all his legal troubles. So Josh Robinson was a total, you know, I didn't understand that pick to begin with, but it was a, a waste. Amarlo Herrera was a waste. That was one of the biggest ones I continue to refer back to on a production pick. Didn't have the athletic traits, a lot of it, uh, as far as from what I knew and his was all based on tackles and, you know, tackles for loss and stuff like that as a linebacker at Georgia. So Denzel Good, totally unknown seventh round pick. He's still depth there at the offensive line. So that's a

nice little pick. And then you get to last year's draft finally. Blythe, solid pick so far. Nothing flashy, of course. Trevor Bates, I think the Colts let him go, man. I don't think that Trevor Bates is going to win the sack title or anything like that in the NFL, but I still think Trevor Bates is going to be a possible player in this league at some point. Joe Haig, Antonio Morrison, Hassan Ridgway, LaRaven Clark, TJ Green, Ryan Kelly.

Green up in the air. Clark came on late. Kelly was fantastic last year. Hassan Ridgway, really like him. Antonio Morrison, all the physical traits in the world, but he's got to get right upstairs. Joe Haag, fifth round pick. And he's basically, if you listen to Jake Arthur and I talked the other night, he is their Swiss Army knife. That guy can ultimately fill in just about anywhere. I don't think about center necessarily, nor that center would be all that difficult to fill in, but the guy can move around. Now we look at the offensive line the way it's set. We got Costanzo at left tackle, Muhor at left guard, Kelly at center, Hague at right guard,

and LaRaven Clark at the moment at right tackle. I mean, as long as LaRaven Clark plays well, like he did towards the end of the season last year, that's a nice little pickup. And a lot of people were talking about LaRaven Clark coming out of Texas Tech that he really had a lot of transitioning to do because he was coming out of a kind of an air raid offense that where he's not pass blocking in the same way that he would be for a traditional NFL offense. And, you know, he grew leaps and bounds. Let me tell you firsthand, just from what you see on tape, you know, you can listen

to someone talk about how he was in the beginning. I saw him at training camp and he was awful. He was awful in preseason. So whether it was Philbin that was just expertly teaching this guy the ropes or a lot of these guys doing it, you know, a lot of the talk was that Clark was doing really well in practice throughout the season. A lot of us, even the guys who are down there for practice, only get to see a glimpse of what the practices hold. So a lot of them weren't able to see it and actually visualize it themselves. But that was the talk.

Bremer said the same thing George has on our show, that a lot of the talk was that Raven Clark was really coming along nicely. He's going to eventually be a possible starter in this league. And he is, as far as I'm concerned, at least at this point. Now, he may not be the end all and be all at right tackle for the Colts over the next five, six, seven years, but right now, he's what they've got, and I think that that's a pretty good spot. Not only that, but Denzel Good, a guy that can play tackle and guard, as far as I'm concerned, wasn't great at guard last year, but right tackle the year before, I thought he played pretty well. I really liked him there. He's a little slow, but I mean, if you look at their recent

pick, the fourth round pick of Zach Banner, Denzel Goods, world's better than him and world's lighter on his feet too. So I don't understand that aspect of it. If they're trying to make him a guard, I'm not really sure as for what, maybe short yardage type stuff. He's a, such a big dude. He has a hard time getting low. And I mean, if you want to, you know, mask him, so to speak with a center and a tackle on either side of him, then, you know, maybe that's a possibility, but he's got a long way to go. And I think that Denzel Gooden may not be here for an extended period of time, but he's a guy that can fill in at both of those spots as well. So basically what I'm getting to is the

Breer conversation that he was talking to Chris Ballard and was talking to him about how much credit he's given to Grigson for being able to bring all those offensive linemen in. He did it, guys. I mean, a lot of people will knock on him for a lot of what he did, and rightly so. Don't get me wrong, I am certainly not a Ryan Grigson apologist. But the man put together a pretty good offensive line here his last year in office, so to speak. The notion as well that he never addressed it was kind of bogus as well. A lot of things just didn't work out. A lot of what they did in free agency his second year, I believe, in 13, Donald Thomas, a lot of different guys, guys are chairless, not a lot of young talent. And granted, that's ultimately where it backfired. But they tried to put some

guys who were talented enough to last a couple years to allow the draft process to take hold if they were to go get some. Now, a lot of guys didn't play out. Ulrich John, they didn't like him. They shipped him off, and he ended up landing with the Cardinals. And so when you look at all this stuff kind of holistically here, you see that he didn't ignore the position. A lot of it just didn't work out. And this position now with the 2016 draft with these guys looks to be a pretty solid draft class. Blythe can move around from guard to center. There's just a lot more there than

people nationally will give it credit for. Now, I've not necessarily listened to Herd Breer knock on the offensive line or anything like that in the past, but a lot of national guys don't give this offensive. They're awful. just listen to them. Other podcasts will sit there and any in national radio shows, just whatever you'll hear them. Oh my God, they've got to do something about that offensive line, but that's, you know, what more do you want? Do we need 10, uh, first and second year players on the offensive line? Because as of right now, Muhor and Costanzo are the two senior guys on that offensive line. Costanzo, ultimately, he's been here for a little while, I think 2011. After that, you've got Muhor in 2014, and then you've got Kelly of 2016,

Haig 2016, and LaRaven Clark 2016. Why do we need 10 rookies, second and third year players all on that offensive line? We can't keep all those guys. What's the point in all that? Right now they've got a starting five and I think it's a pretty decent starting five, a starting five that can certainly grow. The one thing that we've talked about in the past is that they definitely need a guy who can back up Costanzo. He's been largely healthy throughout his career, but they definitely need a guy who can move over there. Last night, Jake and I talked about possibly, you know, Haig could move that over in that route if that was something that was, you know, just came at the spur of a moment. Possibly. I'm not saying it'd

be great. Left tackle's different. You have to do a lot of stuff. I mean, you can't just say he can do right tackle or whatever. He can do left tackle. That's not the case necessarily because there's a lot of different... I mean, everything's backwards from what you're doing from one side of the line to the other. Not saying he couldn't do it. I think that he could. I think he's skilled enough. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, he played left tackle in college. I think that's right, actually. And he was for Carson Wentz. He played North Dakota State. So, I mean, the guy ultimately knows how to protect on either side now. He's played on the right side the past year for the Colts. And if I'm not mistaken, he played North Dakota State on the left side. So that's a guy that you can ultimately move around and do just about whatever

you want. The Colts are in a pretty good spot with their offensive line, despite what casual observers who just look at box scores want to say or want to think. That's definitely not the case. So I definitely am giving Ballard extra credit here for giving Ryan Grigson the credit that he definitely deserved for that 2016 draft class. I think that was, I mean, at the moment, it's about as close to a triple or pretty close to a home run as you can get as far as drafting three offensive linemen and being able to get this. In fact, four offensive linemen because of Blythe as well. And then you get TJ Green, a guy that you think is going to be a functional safety there for you that year. And then you've also gotten defensive line help. I mean, Hassan Ridgway is very good. Like I said,

Antonio Morrison, all the athletic capabilities in the world, he's just got to get his mind right. And then you took a chance on a pass rusher or an inside linebacker, you know, a guy that could move around a little bit in Trevor Bates. That's a knockdown draft. I mean, I don't know what else you could get. You know, maybe you can argue that so-and-so should have gone before whoever they picked, but they've got a very nice draft class in 2016 right now. Looking at the 2017 draft class, you added more pieces to it, and what didn't he have to do? And I stress the word have in air quotations. He didn't have to get an offensive lineman at all. I didn't like the offensive lineman that he got, so we'll kind of stop there because I've talked more than enough about that.

But he didn't have to get a right now plug and play offensive lineman. I thought that he could have. I thought a Luminor was a better offensive lineman, a guy that could if he really wanted the competition. That was my main argument. Ballard really wanted the competition at that offensive line. He and Asiata, and there was a couple other guys that I thought could really, really offer that competition to some of these guys up front. He chose to go with a guy that is a project, to say the least. Whether he's got his own thought process specifically for that reason that he wanted to do that, you know, I don't know, but otherwise the offensive line is in very good shape as far as I'm concerned. And, and when you look at it in, you know, uh, a larger context, the offense in itself is really in pretty good shape.

Moncrief's been injured. Dorsett hasn't lived up to expectations. They've still got T.Y. He gets nicked up quite a bit here and there, but there's a lot of depth at wide receiver that can help and that can be functional. Chester Rogers, you guys all know my pining for him, really like him. There's some guys that are behind them. Quan Bray, he's definitely a quality receiver, even though he does typically the return duties in kick return. He's definitely a better wide receiver than most of us probably had thought. Watching him in camp last year, a lot of the stuff he did at Auburn was pretty impressive. He's definitely a quality guy, nice height and everything else.

They've got Tavon Smith that's still there. There's a lot of guys that can play in this wide receiver role, especially with a quarterback like Andrew Luck. The more protection that he's able to get a little by little as this season, next season goes on, a little bit of bolstering maybe to that line, which is never a problem. You can always draft a guy or bring in a younger guy in free agency to help that offensive line kind of solidify itself. But largely, after the Marlon Mack pick, that offense was really pretty set.

I mean, if you want to look at it that way. It can always improve. Everything can improve. But if you're looking for a top, you know, their eighth-rate offense last year in the league, you added a home run hitter running back, at least a possible one, and you tried apparently to bolster the offensive line a little bit, and you brought in some nice guys as undrafted free agents

at the receiver position. For some guys who may, if they fall off, there's some backup plans and some tall physical backup plans. It's not only that, but a guy that I keep forgetting about is Kamar Aiken. I mean, that guy is going to add a lot right there as well. So the offense is in really good shape. The defense has been completely reworked. And like I said, I'm not trying to reiterate what Breer's column is. In fact, I don't have it up or anything like that, but it just is a lot of very good points that people still refuse to buy into going forward with this Colts team. This entire defense needed reworked, and I don't think

anybody would disagree with that, even the draft of an offensive lineman in the first round crowd. This defensive front was helped out a lot by Hankins. Hankins is going to do great. Hassan Ridgeway, T.Y. McGill, love those guys in and out with Henry Anderson at three tech. I don't know what you do with Kendall Langford at this point. I think you bring him in. He was effective last year. I like Langford. I do, and I still do. I think that you can move him in there as well. I think that's a really nice rotation, to be quite honest with you. And that's something that is definitely going to help this Colts. You know, I watched a lot of T.Y. McGill in the past couple days. I'm getting ready to do an article on him.

So I was doing a lot of film work on him. And one thing that I noticed a lot from that front four or front three, whichever it was, the front seven in general, is that a lot of the way that they did it when Kerr was still here, Kerr and Lankford would often be on the field at the same time. And also when McGill was in, you know, there was somebody else in. It was almost like every other drive from the opposing team's offense that those guys would switch in and out. Very seldom, at least at the point, I'm about halfway through the season with on McGill, but a large portion of those situations

were like that, where it was kind of back and forth between. I thought that when Kerr and McGill were both on the field at the same time, and Lankford as well, was a really nice front three. Hassan Ridgway was typically the guy that came in with McGill a lot. And those were good. But you're looking at a rookie and a guy who hadn't played a ton of snaps in McGill before that. And you can definitely see as the season goes forward, they get a little more comfortable with each other. That's why McGill starts being a little more effective.

Hassan Ridgway starts being more effective. This is what you want from a team is a team that is starting to grow and grow within itself through young players and through players who were brought in that were kind of dismissed at other places. That is what ultimately how you build teams and, you know, being able to pick those guys intelligently. So I really liked the Breer column. And the reason I liked it is because Ballard and also the way that he allowed his scouts, Grigson's scouts, to speak on these drafted guys. It just shows you, I mean, the way that it is. And everybody wants to hang Grigson for a lot of his misses because, granted, like I said,

a lot of his misses, you know, I said, a lot of his misses, you know, he deserves the lip service that he gets for that. But Ballard will not allow you or allow us to forget that Grigson did some good in that office for as much of a jerk as he may have been personally. How many people he rubbed the wrong way, or how he acted in those halls. Ultimately, when we look at it as fans and people dissecting the Colts game in itself, there's a lot of places right now that are better off after Grigson left. And I will say a lot because that's probably giving it a little too much. But that offensive line is one. It took a few years,

don't get me wrong, but a lot of GMs don't just get a four or five year stint. His downfall, ultimately, Grigson was his personal, the way he acted as a person within those halls, looking down on others, the team, and, you know, ultimately just trying to be more than a GM. He was trying to be a coach and everything else, and that was not his job. So outside of that, you know, that's kind of my spiel on it. I just thought it was a really good article, and you guys should read it because Bauer really makes a ton of good points on this, and it's just something that is very interesting to look into. Now, when we look at the growth of this roster, like I said, the offense is pretty much solidified.

I really like the way the offense looks right now, and you guys should too, ultimately, at this point at least. But the addition of Hooker on the back end, Quincy Wilson, Terrell Basham, Marlon Mack, Nate Harrison to a degree, and maybe even Anthony Walker as a primarily a special teams guy over the first year, maybe two years. Obviously, there's a lot of talk about Grover Stewart. I mean, this could be one of those drafts that could go either way. I mean, look, look at the defensive guys. Henry Anderson, often injured. Vontae Davis, often injured. Sean Spence and John Bostick, both injured major injuries throughout their career. And then look on the back end.

Darius Butler, injury prone. Gethers, missed most of last season. And then Malik Hooker comes in, who could be a guy that's susceptible to injuries as well. This is a defense that really needs to hit a home run. They have to be healthy because all this work on the defense this year will not mean squat if they don't stay healthy. If Vontae Davis goes down, the Colts number two is Rashawn Melvin. I know that you guys understand that I like Rashawn Melvin, but that still puts the Colts at the corner position in a very similar spot to where

they were last year. And ultimately, no matter how much we like Quincy Wilson on the onset, we don't know what he can do in the NFL yet, right? I mean, he hasn't done anything in the NFL quite yet. I love the guy. I think that a lot of Colts fans do, but when you look at just where they could be, we don't know. Quincy Wilson could be a bust. He could be just average. He could be toller or he could be Robinson. We don't know. Hooker could be a guy who sprains an ankle, twists a finger, has some sort of a little nagging knee injury or hamstring stuff that just nags. We don't know what's going to happen. Henry Anderson could have another injury issue. And then if Spence and or Bostic go, then we're right back to the same inside linebacker core. We're right back to the same front four. Aside from Hankins, I don't know,

there hasn't been any injuries that I know of him. I'm not going to set that in stone. I just don't know of any. Or we could be set in the same spot for cornerback and we could be back in the same spot for safety as well. So this defense this year, while looking on the surface like it is vastly improved, it's very much a week-to-week situation, guys. We can't get too hype about it. I mean, we can. We can be excited about it, of course, because I am excited about it. But to just blatantly say this defense is so much better than last, we don't know anything yet. We don't know. No matter how many pieces you bring together, those pieces have to work together. And

if the pieces don't work together, or if the pieces aren't there because of injury, or because if the pieces aren't any good, we don't know. All that's going to have to come to fruition this year. And all of it is something that we're looking forward to. All of it is something that we know that this defense drastically needs to take the next step and the roster and the team, because we could very well be at a losing record next year. We could very well be at 500 or a game over. We don't know. We just don't know. They could also win 10 games next year. They could win the division. They could be last in the division. There are so many ups and downs with this Colts roster right now when you look through it, and you look through it without rose-colored glasses. Look at it realistically, because ultimately, it isn't going to do you any good to walk around telling people how great this Colts

roster is going to be until the games start happening and you can actually get something back from what you're looking at. So that's kind of my rant for today, guys. Uh, not much of a rant, really just kind of long-winded talk there. So thank you guys all for joining me again here on Friday. Uh, we're going to have a really good set of shows on the first half of the week next week. Well, I mean, they're all going to be good, but especially the first half of the week. Next week, we're going to have representatives from all of the other AFC South teams, Titans, Jaguars, and Texans. And we're going to talk about their draft, their look ahead, and their look ahead to the 2017 season. And kind of how they see not only the division shaking out, but kind of how they see their own team, how they see everybody matching up.

And I'm bringing some guys on that I don't necessarily believe are homers, but they're optimistic about their own teams, of course. But I didn't think that they were overt homers or anything like that. And the guys that are going to give realistic viewpoints on it, and I think that it'll shed a little bit of light on what the Colts are up against, uh, in the 2017 season. So, uh, as I said, thank you guys for joining me again, make sure you guys get to iTunes, getting a five-star ratings and, uh, throw a review on there. Let me know what you guys think about the show. Always appreciate that. Don't forget the call in line either. 5 7 4 5 1 6 28 81. You guys can call in anytime. It doesn't make a difference. Leave a message anytime a day, anytime a night. Uh, we'll put it on the show. If you guys have a question,

always just, if you want throw a question at me on Twitter or anything like that, we'll talk about it on the show. Uh, thank you guys for joining me again. You guys are making this thing happen and it looks beautiful so far. So I'll talk to you guys all 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. We'll see you next time.