[Colts And Orioles]

o


A physically battered and emotionally battle-weary Andrew Luck retired suddenly and unexpectedly just prior to the start of the 2019 season. He had been the Colts' regular QB overall since 2012, save for the year and-a-half that he missed due to injury in 2015 and 2017 ...... so the 2019 season with Jacoby Brissett at QB was an extremely rare situation that the Colts had to deal with on the run. The 2019 Colts went 7-9, with 6 of those 9 losses having been very close games with a very limited Jacoby Brissett at quarterback. Ballard inserted a still very capable 39 year-old Philip Rivers at the position in 2020, and the Colts went 11-5 and gave the Bills all that they could handle in the playoff game in Buffalo.

We knew that Philip Rivers was a one-year (or 2-year at the most) stop-gap that we were hoping would have a solid overall season, and perhaps lead the Colts to the playoffs (both of which he did.) I wanted Rivers back for a 2nd season in 2021, but I knew that he wouldn't be the long-term solution even if they had done so ...... so overall, I don't see the Colts' QB position as a particularly desperate situation, especially considering the fact that Ballard has built a solid overall team that is not extremely-reliant on the quarterback position (like many of the Peyton Manning-led and Andrew Luck-led teams were between 1999 and 2018) since he came on board in January 2017.

If a 39 year-old quarterback with no mobility (Philip Rivers) could oversee the kind of successful season that the 2020 Colts saw, then I believe that the chances are pretty good that a 28 year-old Carson Wentz playing quarterback for the Colts in 2021 would at least be able to equal that kind of team success, if not fare even better.

o