az_prof

Indianapolis: Have we given the starting job to Ballard too soon?  

 

We didn't. His Head Coach did.

 

 

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Coach Chuck Pagano confirmed that Vick Ballard is "sitting there as the lead guy" in his backfield.

Pagano was quick to add that Donald Brown "looks fantastic" and is a "home run hitter." But for now, the Colts are planning on rolling with Ballard as their feature back and Brown as the change-of-pace option. Both figure to see a bigger role in the passing game as the vertical-minded Bruce Arians is out and the West Coast scheme of Pep Hamilton is in.

 

As someone who interprets words for a living, I find "he's sitting there as the lead guy" pretty weak, especially given the high praise he goes on to accord Brown.  "sitting there" doesn't sound like he is a solid starter.  He's sitting there...until he gets hurt? Sitting there until Brown hits a few home runs?  How many home runs until Ballard is "sitting there on the bench"?   Look, we can parse coach speak all we want but this is hardly a settled line up.

Need one more, which I think describes me.

1) The Elephant.

The elephant is slow to make moves.  He trusts his draft picks and hangs onto players a bit longer than others.  He scours the waiver list to find promising players that he has had an eye who get dropped by others.  He does not make many trades, but when he does, he has a clear strategy (to shore up a weakness; to try and get good value on a player he thinks is overrated; to acquire a player that others may under value).  Mostly he stays pat and trusts in his draft and rarely 'rebuilds" or "blows it up," making big moves only when serious need dictates.

Strengths: He often gets more value from players than others because he sees the long picture.  He rarely ends up at the bottom of the league because he is steady---replenishing his team with youth on a regular basis (because he doesn't trade his top picks often)--and because he is not reactionary.

Weaknesses: He sometimes hangs onto players too long.  Sometimes he misses out on trade opportunities because of his overly strong faith in his players and his tendency to overrate them compared to others.

He is a pedestrian back, stuck in a pass happy offense, who has no elite skills.  Despite what people say, he will share touches with Donald Brown, who is far better as a receiver and possesses home run ability, and could lose the starting job with an injury if Brown plays well in his absence.  Brown has played well when healthy.  About the only advantage Ballard has is that he was healthier last season.

179 carries, 700 yards, 3.9 yards per carry, 8 TDs.  20 receptions/7.5 yards per reception, 150 yards.

Who catches those 60 passes this season, assuming Andrew Luck's workload is the same?  More passes to his Tight-Ends?  Bump Hilton?  60 catches is a pretty substancial, lol.

The TEs were rookies last year and TEs experience significant growth in second year.  I expect the TEs to both catch a lot of those 60 balls.

Here was an interesting back and forth about Hunter in another thread with some more examples of some of the hand positioning things Waldman was talking about.

 

 

 

Justin Hunter has some of the worst catching technique I've seen. Doesn't consistently get the hands in the correct position. Asymmetrical at times. His hands are too soft to a fault. Doesn't attack the ball enough for my liking.

Can you expand on this?  I rewatched some stuff and I'm just not seeing it.  What exactly needs to be symmetrical? thumb and index finger curvature? and does it have to be perpendicular to the path of the ball as well?
 
If this is some of the worst catching technique you've seen how do you account for all the catches he does make, is there anything he does well?  If you were his coach what would the major technique overhaul be or would you just move him to DB?

What do you think of the symmetry of this guy: http://youtu.be/e04Q5AihGD4

 
I would say Nicks has much better technique than Hunter, and is a better WR overall anyway.  He, too, can improve his technique as he's had cases of the drops before.  Most WRs can improve their technique.  It's just that Hunter is the worst I've seen.
 
He doesn't need an overhaul.  It's a simple fix.  Get the hands symmetrical and closer together and do it early.  Is that really that hard to do?  It's like his hands are "lost".  They have no kinesthetic awareness.
 
https://si0.twimg.co...ee5ad567ac.jpeg
http://cdn.fansided..../02/6759538.jpg
http://media.govolsx..._Lute5_t607.jpg
http://media.dev-cms...stin_Hunter.jpg

 

The hand should move as one unit:
 
http://cdn.fansided....mbineBanner.png
http://assets.sbnati...an_DSC04589.JPG

 

Several of those pics are from his gauntlet run at the combine:

http://www.nfl.com/v...t-Justin-Hunter

 

Which is interesting because he didn't have any drops our double catches but he does kind of show a lack of body awareness on the last catch where instead of planting inbounds and turning upfield he turns the wrong way and goes out of bounds and then figures out where he's at and goes upfield.  I can see how maybe you'd get a little turned around catching passes from both sides but c'mon.  

I've watched all his highlights and to be honest, I don't know what this talk about catching technique is about.  He has fine technique.  Sometimes you can over analyze, and people are over analyzing Hunter.  Obviously TN disagrees because they traded away quite a bit to move up and take him.