Indianapolis Colts, Ryan Grigson Must Shift Free-Agency Strategy in 2015

To call Ryan Grigson a polarizing figure among Colts fans would be an understatement. 

Despite the overall success the team has had over the last three seasons (three playoff appearances, two division titles, three playoff wins, a trip to the AFC Championship Game), ending the season with blowout losses in 2013 and 2014 left a bitter taste in fans' mouths. 

There's a definite split among fans as Grigson and Co. enter the fourth season of the Andrew Luck era. 

On one hand, you have fans and media who tend to look at the big-picture results; the playoff trips and division titles. Those fans, along with some media and ex-personnel guys including NFL Network's Daniel Jeremiah, tend to rate Grigson among the best GMs in the business. 

On the other, you have fans and media who see the Colts as a collection of bad-to-mediocre talent around a once-in-a-generation quarterback. This group tends to look at the individual moves, such as a rough 2013 draft, few late-round contributors from the last three drafts and some questionable free-agent moves.

The truth likely lies somewhere in between. 

Grigson and his staff aren't going anywhere, and they shouldn't be. The list of successful additions is impressive, and it balances out the list of failed draft picks and overpaid free agents. Grigson hasn't been perfect, and the talent around Luck is lacking but good things have absolutely come out of the young front office. 

But one thing that certainly must change for the Colts is their free-agent strategy, which has yielded poor results over the last three years. 

These aren't random successes and failures. You can see a pattern of mis-handling in the bulk of disappointing signings. 

You can excuse the team for the 2012 debacle in free agency, to some extent. The Colts cut a large part of the aging, expensive core from the Bill Polian days in order to prepare for the future, and the holes had to be filled with cheap contracts. Now, holding on to guys like Mike McGlynn and Samson Satele as long as they did could be criticized, but the 2012 free-agent class was doomed from the get-go. 

The next two, however, was a case of bad philosophy. 

In 2013, the Colts had oodles of cap space, and had a decent core of young players to build around after trading for Vontae Davis and drafting the sublime class of 2012 (Luck, T.Y. Hilton, Dwayne Allen, Coby Fleener, etc.). 

Instead of using that bundle of cap space to sign some high-quality starters, however, Ryan Grigson went after players he thought could potentially be high-quality starters. The hope was that all these players would develop into studs in Indianapolis, namely on the defensive side of the ball. Grigson overpaid for guys like Greg Toler, Erik Walden and Ricky Jean Francois, all players who had never been full-time, quality starters. 

It came back to bite them. 

It doesn't hurt because Toler, Walden and Jean Francois are terrible—all three were starters in 2014 and project to be starters again in 2015—but because they are mediocre. But they are mediocre players that are costing the Colts $16.2 million in 2015, and since the team wasn't able to draft viable replacements, there isn't a contingency plan available to get that money back. 

Grigson signed these players to be starters, and now they are paying them starter-level money. If they had developed into good players, Grigson would look like a genius. But they have capped out at average, and the Colts are literally paying the price.

Then you have the high-priced guys. It's a similar situation for the Colts, who paid players like Gosder Cherilus, LaRon Landry, D'Qwell Jackson and Arthur Jones premium contracts because they had starting experience, unlike that initial group. 

But like that initial group, all four of the above players had significant risk. Rather than paying premium money for premium players, the Colts paid premium money for risks.

To some extent, that's always the case with free agency, which is an awful way to rebuild a franchise. 

But there were better, less risky moves that could have been made.

The Colts could have signed guard Louis Vasquez, who had been a top-end, stable guard for three seasons, instead of Gosder Cherilus, who had been inconsistent and coming off of one great year. They could have signed any number of safeties over the last three seasons, including Glover Quinn, James Inhedigbo, Jairus Byrd or T.J. Ward, rather than the injury-prone, disappointing Landry. The list goes on. 

This isn't because these were the Colts' second choices. They didn't even try to go after the top-end guys, instead shooting for riskier players, offering them big contracts and signing them early in free agency. 

The reclamation projects (Hakeem Nicks, Donald Thomas, Darrius Heyward-Bey, Donnie Avery and Ahmad Bradshaw) haven't worked out, save for Mike Adams and Darius Butler. But the reclamation signings aren't supposed to work out. A lot of them will flop, but they are generally worth it for the few that pan out. 

That's where Grigson needs to start in 2015. 

There should be two different kinds of free agents the Colts go after: legitimate, established starters and cheap projects with little downside. 

If they can start at a high level, pay them starter money. If they maybe could start if they develop or uncharacteristically stay healthy, I'll pass. 

The Colts don't need more average players. They need to surround Andrew Luck with high-quality talent. They aren't going to get that by signing Waldens and Tolers. 

Kyle Rodriguez is Bleacher Report's lead featured columnist for the Indianapolis Colts. He is also the editor-in-chief of Colts Authority and Colts Academy and a PFWA Dick Connor Writing Award recipient. Follow him on Twitter for year-round Colts and NFL analysis.