grampi wrote:chiefhog44 wrote:anyone thinking that this team was not on the slide before Snyder took over is fooling themselves. The team has not done well consistantly since the advent of free agency in the early 90's. Snyder hopefully has put together a winning formula...unfortunately, if the league does away with free agency, he may have to re-learn. It's going to take more than 11 games to undo 15 years of mismanagement. More like 3 years.
Snyder's had this team for 11 years, not 11 games, and if he was going to turn this team around it would've happened by now....
Although it's taken him a long time to figure it out, I am hoping that he has learned how to be a good owner. Last year seems earily similar to how Irsay started his second year as owner of the Colts. By the way, Irsay is a guy that was in the business (GM at the time he took over ownership) and knew he had to bring in football people to run the team. It's taken Dan much longer to learn that...A bit of a recap for those that don't know. We'll see how things go in this upcoming draft.
Irsay's first year as sole owner did not go well, however, as the Colts finished with the worst record in the NFL. The Colts only won three times in the 1997 season (although all three of those wins came against teams with winning records, including the defending Super Bowl champion Green Bay Packers), and wholesale changes were made following the season. Irsay hired Carolina Panthers general manager Bill Polian, who had won NFL Executive of the Year four times with the Panthers and Buffalo Bills, as the team's president and general manager. Polian promptly fired Infante as coach, released Harbaugh, and hired Jim Mora, Sr. as the team's new head coach.
The Peyton Manning Era (1998-present)
Polian employed a strategy of rebuilding the Colts through the draft, and his first two first round picks as GM proved to be keys in the Colts' rise to their current status in the NFL. In 1998, Polian used the first pick in the draft to select University of Tennessee quarterback Peyton Manning, son of former NFL quarterback Archie Manning.
While the Colts finished their first season under Polian at 3-13 again, success would come quickly after that