Good Job Chris Ballard: Indianapolis Colts Land "The Best TE in The Draft" Without Having to Give Up a Thing

As a Colts fan, this pick was awkward for me. I worked up nice hatred of Tyler Warren over the course of last college football season. For once in my life, my alma mater Bowling Green State University had a national relevant player in TE Harold Fannin Jr.. He set all the records a TE could set. Put together one of the best seasons in college football history. He was going to win the John Mackey Award for nation's best TE. But nope. In the end, they just had to give it to the Penn State guy. Wasn't enough that Penn State made the college football playoffs, and have a top 10 team to cheer for every year. They gotta get the TE award too. C'mon, college football. Why can't you just give the award to the little guy one time? Just let Bowling Green have one nice thing. God damn it I'm getting myself worked up again. I already wrote a whole ass Tyler Warren slander blog once. I don't need to do another one.

But that doesn't matter. We're on the same team now. The man who I thought was the consensus TE1 in the NFL Draft fell into the Colts lap last night. Every mock draft I looked at  had the Colts either drafting Colston Loveland at 14, or moving up in order to take Tyler Warren. I even saw a mock draft where the Colts moved up to 10 to take Loveland as the 2nd TE off the board. But this ain't no Reinhold Schunzel film*. The Colts got the best TE in college football last night (as voted on by a committee of former Big Ten TE's).

Ok sorry that's the last dig. Even if I don't think he had the best season, a big part of the reason Tyler Warren won the John Mackey Award is because he was so clearly the best, most talented TE in the college football. For the Colts to get him at 14, filling their most glaring need, without having to give up a thing... I don't know how you could give them any grade other than an A+ for their first round pick. It was maybe the most obvious pick of the night. Watching the draft on ESPN, I don't think the countdown clock ever even appeared next to the Colts logo. It went from "13. Miami Dolphins - Kenneth Grant", straight to "14. Indianapolis Colts - The Pick is In". Quick and easy. Not a person in Indy lost a wink of sleep over their first round pick last night.

Now all the Colts need is for Anthony Richardson or Daniel Jones to show up to camp this season as entirely different humans than the humans they've been playing football as the last two years. If one of them can manage to do that, then the Colts might have something this year. 

As far as the Colts' second round pick goes, I've seen draft experts predict players at almost every position. I'm no draft expert, but the players I've seen thrown around are primarily at DL, OG, and LB. They could use a player to replace E.J. Speed. They may simply grab whoever the best DL or OG available. Nate Adkins of the Indy Star put together a nice comprehensive list of names for Colts fans to watch for.

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Carson Schwesinger, LB, UCLA

Mike Green, EDGE, Marshall

Donovan Ezeiruaku, EDGE, Boston College

Nic Scourton, EDGE, Texas A&M

Demetrius Knight Jr., LB, South Carolina

Jordan Burch, DL, Oregon

Jonah Savaiinaea, OG, Arizona

Marcus Mbow, OG, Purdue

TJ Sanders, DT, South Carolina

He also has Shedeur Sanders in there. That one seems pretty farfetched. I've never been high on Shedeur as an NFL QB. Although now that he has the whole, "everybody passed on me" thing… I still don't want the Colts to go in that direction or anything… but with as much hate and he's been getting this past week, I'm starting to think he's going to end up working out. That's just how the football gods work sometimes.

Good job so far, Chris Ballard. You're pitching a perfect game. You haven't had to do anything. But sometimes doing literally nothing is harder than it looks. Every year there's at least one GM who fucks things up because he refuses to do exactly that (i.e. Jacksonville Jaguars, James Gladstone)

* The 1937 Jewish-German director who was temporarily allowed to continue filmmaking after the Nazi takeover, but soon after his film Land of Love hit theatres, Joseph Goebbles caught wind of him and had it pulled from theaters. At which point Schunzel feed to Hollywood, America to avoid the Holocaust. I wanted to work that reference into our En Eff El Draft show for the Colts pick last night. I was gonna say the Reinhold Schunzel film line, then Brandon Walker would ask what that meant, then I'd give the whole explanation. Would have been real wacky. If I was better with words/more confident I would have done it. Instead I just rambled nervously about Harold Fannin Jr. It was Yom Hashoah** yesterday too. The timing couldn't have been better. 

** Yom Hashoah is Holocaust Remembrance Day in Hebrew. It ran from sundown April 23 to sundown April 24. Nick Turani could have made that reference work.