Will Different Chris Ballard Words Mean Different Actions?
INDIANAPOLIS – We are about to get some answers if those different Chris Ballard words in 2025 will mean different actions, too.
Following the end of the 2024 season, a 4th straight year without playoff football, which is the longest playoff drought for the franchise in more than 30 years, Ballard sounded like a man ready to change his ways.
Stubbornly, a word choice the GM uses to describe himself, Ballard has long been staunch in his belief of building a roster through the draft, relying on continuity, with plenty of hesitancy towards free agency.
But this Ballard, the one from back in January, sounded different.
“I’m emotional and I care about our players, and I think sometimes I’ve let that bleed into how I built the team. Coming off (2023) when we were 9-8, I thought we were playing really good football at the end of the season. We lost a tough game at the end to Houston, could have gone either way. I’m thinking, ‘Okay, we’re trending up.’ Instead of really creating competition throughout and throwing new blood into the locker room, new players into the locker room, I said, ‘You know what? We’re going to run it back.’ That was a mistake.
“I didn’t do a good enough job creating enough competition throughout the roster, and keep everybody on edge.
“I didn’t create enough competition on the roster for it to want to achieve in the way it needed to achieve. There’s got to be some stress. There has to be. There has to be real stress within that locker room, an uncomfortability that if I don’t play well enough, my (expletive) will not be on the field playing. That directly falls on my shoulders. I mean, it’s a lesson. It’s a crappy lesson that I learned. I do a pretty good job self-evaluating. Now I’m hardheaded, and I will talk myself way back into I was right. But this occurrence, I was wrong. I was wrong.”
Those quotes from Ballard all came in just one answer to a question about where the Colts go from here, without a playoff appearance since 2020, with only 3 NFL teams currently carrying a longer postseason drought.
Specifically, when it comes to free agency, Ballard has always expressed a tune of not wanting to be active in that market.
Despite some Ballard hits in free agency, a desire to use free agency more has not been part of his belief.
That sounds like it is changing though.
“We’ve got to be better about making sure we identify the right free agents that can help push this team to where it needs to go,” Ballard said back in January. “Right now, we’re not close. I’m going to make this really clear. Like close is losing on the last play of the Super Bowl. That’s close. Going 8-9, that’s not close. No. I’m not saying we won’t be closer when we get to the start of the season, but right now sitting here today, we’re an 8-9 football team and we’ve got to own that. We are not good enough. We’re not, and we’ve got to be able to address and identify the right avenues to acquire the right players that can move the needle – and have not done that in the last four years. Haven’t.”
“We have to do a better job identifying the free agents that we want to sign and then being able to close the deal on them. And that’s up to me. It really is. It’s not Mr. (Jim) Irsay, he’ll let me do what I need to do – and my staff. We have to be able to do that.”
At last week’s Combine, speaking for the first time in a media session since those different words in January, Ballard didn’t sound as emotionally charged, but still went back to the focus of knowing running it back can’t be the actions again.
“We have to make the team better, plain and simple,” Ballard said. “I told you all at the end of the season…we need to make this team good enough to win and I have not done that. I need to make this team good enough to where our staff has enough to win games.”
All of these words will start to get actual answers starting next week.
The NFL’s legal tampering period starts Monday (unofficial start to the new league year), with free agency kicking off Wednesday (official start of the new league year).
In that first week of free agency, the Colts have often sat on the bench.
That’s especially been true in the first years of a manageable rookie contract quarterback, which is not the norm for many NFL teams.
Heading into next week, the Colts are sitting right around the middle of the NFL with about $35 million in cap space. If they’d like, opening up even more cap space is a possibility, although that has never been a Ballard mantra.
As mentioned above, only 3 teams in the NFL are currently in a longer playoff drought than the Colts (Jets, Panthers, Falcons).
That’s ugly.
Two months of words are finally going to be put in the rearview mirror.
Hello, (different) action season.
