Denico Autry

Scouting Report

In March of 2018, NFL free agency was highly active. To not many people’s surprise, the Colts were the exception. This was Chris Ballard’s first full offseason and the silence from him and the team was deafening. They brought in one higher-profile free agent for a visit Ravens’ OL Ryan Jensen. He left Indy without a deal and signed a lucrative deal (4 years 42 million) with the Bucs without ever even making a Pro-Bowl. The reaction to the Colts’ moves (or lack thereof) spawned similar criticism like what we heard this offseason. After free agency came and went, Denico Autry was the highest-profile signing. Cue the jokes and the sneers. Who? Irsay’s penny pinching again.

For the record, Jim Irsay undoubtedly wants the Colts to spend the money they have available. Ironically, the general manager he hired does not. Ballard has Irsay bought into his plan of reluctantly passing on the inflated price tags off free agents and building primarily through the draft. This year’s criticism for not being active in FA may have been magnified considering the team held the honor of the largest amount of cap space. But here’s the truth: it’s working. The Colts already have one of the more talented group of young core players and money to complement them where it necessitates. To say the Colts are in a great situation fiscally would be an understatement. While noting this, I wanted to take a closer look at a FA signing that embodied a lot of the vision and results in what the team is doing.

On the defensive side of the football, Ballard and his scouts have a type of player they are seeking depending on what part of the field they line up. Upon taking over, one of his first tasks was purging the roster of the toxic Grigson contracts and replacing them. Bloated contracts that have guaranteed money can hamper a team for years and the 2017 season was probably one that involved bleeding the roster out (mainly on the defensive side of the ball). Next was replacing those players with someone from an entirely different blueprint. This is easier said than done. Jon Hankins was a great example of this purge.

Johnathan Hankins was simply a casualty of cap-space clearing and the aforementioned evolution of the defense. He was a really good 3-technique that I hated to see go. Apparently Ballard saw the 3 year 30 million dollar contract as bloated after one year and released him. I was confused as others were, but Chris Ballard had a plan and he doesn’t care what anyone thinks of it: he’s sticking to it.

On the surface, cutting one of your best run-plugging d-lineman and replacing him with a discounted hybrid d-lineman will not earn you brownie points with the fans. But the truth is that it has largely worked. While I do acknowledge that the lack of girth may be an issue when stopping the run, Eberflus’ schemes didn’t allow a 100 yard rusher in 2018. Now with Al Woods and Hassan Ridgeway gone, it looks like a tough challenge to replicate those kind of results.