• The Colts kicked off the week with a contingent in Southern California, working out both Alabama QB Bryce Young and Ohio State QB C.J. Stroud. These workouts have to occur, by rule, either on campus or near the player’s hometown. That Young and Stroud are both from Southern California and doing their draft prep there made it easy for Indy to knock both out at once.
The Indy group will be in Lexington to work out Kentucky QB Will Levis on Thursday, and they’ll get to Florida’s Anthony Richardson in their travels, too. And this is a pretty nice window into how Colts GM Chris Ballard runs his shop.
The Colts didn’t have a rep at Kentucky’s pro day a couple of weeks ago. They had only area scout Mike Lacy at Ohio State two days before that. And while top exec Morocco Brown attended Alabama’s pro day in between those two, he wasn’t exactly joined by an armada of lieutenants. That was in stark contrast to how the Panthers have handled all this (with about a dozen folks, and a digital media team on top of that, traveling to the QB pro days).
What does it mean? Well, I asked an exec from another team why his club sent only a single scout to one of the most prominent pro days, and his response was pretty direct and to the point: “Pro days are dumb.” Maybe Ballard doesn’t feel that strongly about it—but he’s clearly comfortable working off the tape from these dog-and-pony shows and more focused on getting the players in close quarters (be it in private workouts or visits).
And one good example of that came last year, when Ballard led a group of Colts officials on the 90-minute drive to work out Cincinnati QB Desmond Ridder at the Bearcats’ practice facility. Indy didn’t wind up drafting Ridder, but it did use a second-rounder on one of the guys he was throwing to that day, Alec Pierce.
