A BIT OF INDY LUCK
With quirky way 2011 season worked out, Colts wound up with another No. 1 overall pick and franchise QB
In the period before Bill Polian was fired as Colts vice chairman after they went 2-14 without Peyton Manning in 2011, he went to team owner Jimmy Irsay with a quarterback plan. He suggested to Irsay that even though Manning was coming off serious neck surgery and missed the 2011 season that he pick up his $28 million option bonus and then with the first pick in the draft select Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck.
Polian knew it would be a drain on the Colts’ salary cap, but he wanted to keep Manning — he obviously went on to make a full recovery from the surgery — and let Luck sit and learn from Manning.
“Andrew would have backed him up for a couple of years,” Polian told the Daily News on Wednesday. “When the time was right, he would have stepped in. What the team around Andrew would have looked like at that point, given the salary-cap issues, was a question. It would have been tight, but it could have worked. It would have been my preference, but Jimmy still had final call.”
Polian’s plan became moot when Irsay fired him and then the Colts pulled off the smoothest handoff in NFL history: Manning to Luck.
Some teams search for generations and never find a franchise quarterback. They have the first overall pick and select Tim Couch, David Carr or JaMarcus Russell. The Colts had the good fortune to be terrible in the right years (1997 and 2011), allowing them to first take Manning in 1998 and Luck in 2012. They have gone from one of the greatest players in NFL history to the best young quarterback in the game.
“They deserved good luck after what they went through in 1983,” Ernie Accorsi said Wednesday.
Accorsi was the Colts general manager in 1983. He picked John Elway first overall, but he refused to play for coach Frank Kush, and owner Robert Irsay traded him one week later to the Broncos without Accorsi’s knowledge or approval. “When you look at the Colts franchise, they went from (Johnny) Unitas to Bert Jones, then end up with Peyton Manning and Luck,” Accorsi said.
In the final nine years Manning played for the Colts, he won four MVPs, went to two Super Bowls and the playoffs every year. “Suck for Luck,” became the battle cry in Indianapolis in 2011. The Colts took it seriously.
Luck, considered the best quarterback prospect since Manning in 1998, was sitting right there for them with the first pick. The Colts cut Manning less than two months before the draft rather than pay him the option bonus and then handed the franchise over to Luck.
Manning signed with Denver and will face the Chargers in the divisional round on Sunday. Luck goes against Tom Brady and the Patriots on Saturday night in Foxborough. If they both win, they face each other in the AFC title game on Jan. 19 in Denver.
“I’m sure they didn’t want to go 2-14,” Accorsi said. “What happens if they go 2-14 and there is no quarterback? People have good luck and bad luck. In this business, you have a tendency to dwell on the heartbreak. It just broke well for them. God bless them. Luck is some quarterback.”
Manning was the starter the opening game of his rookie year against Dan Marino, who was nearing the end of his career. He retired after the 1999 season. In the 14 seasons after Marino, the Dolphins have started 17 different quarterbacks. It started with Jay Fiedler and now they hope they have found their guy in Ryan Tannehill, picked seven spots after Luck in 2012. Tannehill has started all 32 games in his two seasons, but has yet to make the playoffs.
In between, the Dolphins started such stars as A.J. Feeley, Gus Frerotte, Joey Harrington, Daunte Culpepper, John Beck and Chad Henne. The Colts stink for one year and get the best quarterback prospect in more than a decade. It almost isn’t fair.
“It’s just serendipity,” Polian said. “It just happens.”
The 49ers went from Joe Montana to Steve Young, but the circumstances were different. Bill Walsh traded for Young in 1987, but he didn’t take over as the starter until 1991 when Montana was out with an elbow injury. The Packers went from Brett Favre to Aaron Rodgers, but Rodgers was a late first-round pick who sat on the bench for three seasons until Favre retired, unretired and then was traded to the Jets.
Polian said the Colts “were in the right place at the right time,” to get Luck. “More power to them.”
He revealed that if he knew how serious Manning’s neck injury was at the time of the 2011 draft, he would have taken either Colin Kaepernick or Andy Dalton in the first round. “We loved them both,” he said.
That, of course, means Luck probably wouldn’t be in Indianapolis.
But because of the lockout, the Colts and their trainers could not have any contact with Manning from March 12 to July 25. When the Colts realized later in camp that Manning was not going to be ready for the season — he eventually needed surgery — Polian had to scramble. He talked Kerry Collins out of retirement, he got hurt in the third game, then the Colts went with Curtis Painter and Dan Orlovsky.
That led to 2-14 and a little bit of luck.