Insider: Pressure mounts on Colts GM Chris Ballard in NFL draft

INDIANAPOLIS – Chris Ballard has a plan. You know he does because he always does.

The man walked into Indianapolis Colts headquarters with a binder several inches thick when he arrived to take on the general manager’s job last year. It was his blueprint, pruned and perfected through years of experience and from wisdom absorbed from some of the sharpest minds in football.

So, yeah, he’s got a plan.

What none of that ensures, however, is that his plan will actually work. This is something no one – not even someone as perpetually prepared as Ballard – can guarantee. Better men than him have failed at this whole team-building thing, so who is he to think he's got it all figured out?

Yet, here he is, less than a week shy of his second NFL Draft – the Colts’ most pivotal in years – undeterred and determined as ever to execute that very plan.

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Ballard has his Colts doubling down on the draft, resisting the temptation to fill his team’s many gaping holes with accomplished free agents, and putting the onus on his coaches to develop the young talent the front office is stockpiling.

Everything hinges on this. The team’s current fortunes, its future and, certainly, Ballard’s reputation. Yes, the pressure in on, to which Ballard says, “Pfft!”

“Is it any different than giving a player $14 million or $15 million?” he said. “Is the pressure any different than signing a big free agent and then all of a sudden you don’t get it done? To me, there’s pressure either way.”

The bottom line here is this: You’re not going to talk Ballard out of this. He is well aware there are doubts and whispers and, in some corners, outright laughter about his team and his methods. Spend a few minutes talking to Ballard about this subject and you come away assured he is very perceptive of this. He’s just not going to be swayed by any of that.

Here is something you should know where Ballard is concerned: His future actions are generally shaped by his past experiences. Name a decision Ballard has made and he can typically cite the exact milepost in his career where the same thing happened somewhere else and a similar decision played out favorably.

Ask him, for instance, why he is so determined to address his roster issues by taking this hardline stance against binging on free agents, preferring to acquire and play young players?

“In Chicago, in (2002-04), we really drafted the core of our team,” said Ballard, who worked in the Bears’ front office for 12 seasons. “We did a great job in free agency in Chicago of supplementing with some big-name players. But Lance Briggs, Charles Tillman and guys like that, they all came from the draft and they ended up being good players in Chicago.”

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That team went on to reach the Super Bowl after the 2006 season, losing to the Colts. Granted, the progression took time. The Bears went 4-12 in 2002, 7-9 in 2003 and 5-11 in 2004. But they made a run in 2005, finishing 11-5, followed by a 13-3 campaign in their Super Bowl year.

In 2006, Chicago’s very best players all had one thing in common: They were drafted by the Bears. The quarterback (Rex Grossman). The All-Pro linebacker (Brian Urlacher). The leading tackler (Briggs). The top defensive back (Tillman). The sack leader (Mark Anderson). The star return man (Devin Hester). Every single one was a homegrown player.

And Ballard had a front-row seat for all of it. Those images are burned into his memory. And they are foundational to that plan of his.

But there’s more. A similar thing happened later in Ballard’s career, in Kansas City. After the team’s January 2014 loss to the Colts in that epic AFC Wildcard Game, the Chiefs parted with several key veterans. They were a more talented team at the time than the Colts are now, so, it’s not a perfect comparison. But the stories are similar in that both teams put their immediate fortunes aside, opting instead to invest in their future.

“It was so much that we ended up getting four (compensatory) picks,” Ballard said of Kansas City's return on losing the free agents. “But that really kind of set the stage the next year to draft. First, we signed only low-level free agents. But that next year, we had (nine) picks and we were really able to get a young core going.

“So, I’ve been through this a couple times and it worked.”

But, again, Ballard is all-in here. He’s put the bullseye on himself, and he’s done it with a full understanding of the stakes.

“We know how we’re judged,” he said. “We’re judged on wins and losses. We have to be making progress. We want to be in the player development business. We want to be the best in the league at player development.”

And Ballard believes he can acquire those promising players who can be developed. The Colts have set themselves up with nine picks this year, including four in the top 49 after last month’s blockbuster trade with Jets. That trade also netted a second-round pick in 2019. The next two drafts, Ballard believes, will make up the core of a team he hopes can eventually make a run.

The team Ballard found upon taking the job in 2017 had no upside, in his estimation. That is, perhaps, why his subsequent team-building decisions have been so dramatic.

“I’m not going to be critical of what’s gone on in the past,” he said. “But we are where we are. We have to draft. With the nine picks we have this year, that gives us a lot of flexibility next year. And we think we’re going to get a comp pick next year. That’s 18 draft picks over two years to really replenish the young players.”

When and if that happens, the strategy will change, Ballard said.

He’s prepared to utilize free agency as much as necessary, when the time comes. That time is most certainly not now, he says, not when the Colts aren’t contending for anything. Ballard believes jumping too deep into free agency right now will impede the potential progress of the team’s young players. If they don’t play, they won’t develop, he says. Now is not the time to stunt the growth of Quincy Wilson or Marlon Mack or Chester Rogers, not to mention the slew of draft selections they’re about to add.

“There will come a time here when we will go all-in and people will look sideways at us because we’re giving (players) a huge amount of money,” Ballard said. “We just didn’t feel like we were there yet. We don’t think we have a good, young nucleus of players that has really built the culture in the locker room to take in free-agent guys. That’s why we were pretty selective. That’s why all the guys we did take in we felt good about and we felt we got them at a good price for both the player and us.”

Ballard added, later, “I don’t want everybody to think we’re just averse to free agency. I just think that right now, we’re in the team-building mode.”

When that approach eventually begins to change, so, too, should the Colts’ results. That is, if Ballard’s plan works. The one he put together in that big binder. The one he’s been thinking about for so many years and now is executing just as he intended.

Ballard has never wavered in his belief in that plan. All he’s got to do now -- with the Colts coming off a 4-12 season -- is make believers of everyone else.

Follow Colts Insider Stephen Holder on Twitter: @HolderStephen.