Doyel: Whatever Colts do at quarterback in the 2023 NFL Draft, it will impact all of

[JAFF]

https://www.indystar.com/story/sport...t/70130700007/

INDIANAPOLIS – For the Indianapolis Colts, everything to now has been a drill. All those NFL drafts before this one, going back to May 1984, five weeks after the Mayflower reached the new world of Indiana? Those were just rehearsals for what starts Thursday outside Kansas City’s Union Station, an old train depot where for decades people passed through in search of something … more.

Metaphor much?

To remind you of what you already know, the most important position in professional sports is the NFL quarterback, a job that gets more crucial, expensive and difficult to fill. Remember when the Colts were on the clock with the No. 1 overall pick in 1998, and in 2012? They were said to be facing tough choices then, even “dilemmas,” choosing between Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf in ’98, then Andrew Luck or Robert Griffin III in 2012.


That was cute.

This is real, and while it’s not impossible, the choice won’t be nearly as simple for Colts General Manager Chris Ballard or owner Jim Irsay or whoever will make the Colts’ first pick of the 2023 NFL Draft.

For one thing, it’s not the first pick of the draft, not like in 1998 and 2012, when the Colts could control every variable before submitting the names Manning and Luck. The Colts could’ve eliminated the variables this time around, but it would’ve meant putting on their big-boy pants and trading with Chicago for the Bears’ No. 1 overall pick. They didn’t do it, didn’t even try to do it, and now they will get whatever they get, and they will like it.

Or people will be fired.

Oh, this is the biggest draft in Colts history, not because whoever they land at quarterback will be better than Manning or Luck – get serious – but because the Colts have no idea if whoever they land at quarterback will be any good at all. The margin for error is minuscule, the potential for mistake massive.

Get it wrong, and Chris Ballard will be gone after the 2023 NFL season, maybe even before it ends if the failure is bad enough. Get it wrong, and the clock starts ticking on new coach Shane Steichen, too. His leash is much longer than Ballard’s, for obvious reasons, but unless Steichen is a bona fide offensive genius – and maybe he is – he can’t win without a quarterback. He’d get a pass this season, and probably next season too, but Irsay is getting antsy. He replaced his franchise quarterback, fired his offensive coordinator and fired his head coach during one two-week stretch last season.

Think he’ll be patient with Shane Steichen?



This one draft, that one pick, is the franchise’s most consequential move – and most difficult decision – since old man Irsay loaded up the Mayflower in Baltimore. Now the attention turns to an old train station in Kansas City, a city that has what we once took for granted around here.

INDIANAPOLIS, IN - AUGUST 24: Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay and general manager Chris Ballard watch pregame warmups before a preseason game against the Chicago Bears at Lucas Oil Stadium on August 24, 2019 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (
Colts need luck

Shortly after 8 p.m. the Carolina Panthers will take Alabama’s Bryce Young, and then it begins. The Colts won’t be on the clock for 30 more minutes, technically, but that’s when the vice will start to tighten around Chris Ballard’s throat.

Think he’s been feeling it since the season ended? Sure he has. But this will be different, because once the Houston Texans are on the clock with the No. 2 overall pick, Ballard loses all control. He’ll be sitting in the Colts’ draft room on 56th Street while other teams are calling Houston, trying to pry away that No. 2 pick. They’ll want a quarterback, but which one? Once upon a time the choice was obvious – Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud would go second after the Panthers pick Young No. 1 – but media shenanigans in the last week have thrown the draft order into question.


Doyel:Where is all this C.J. Stroud slander coming from?

Whatever happens, the Colts will tell us they ended up with the guy they wanted all along. If it’s Stroud, if it’s Will Levis of Kentucky, if it’s Anthony Richardson of Florida, even if it’s Hendon Hooker of Tennessee, that’s what they’ll say. It’s what they’ll have to say. Leadership at that position can make or break a season – Carson Wentz, etc. – and the locker room has to believe their young quarterback, whoever he is, was the guy the Colts’ front office decided it had to have.

Hey, it could even be true. But as we’ve heard about the chatter at this time of the year, “Everyone’s lying.”

Who told us that? Chris Ballard did.

Last week.

Doyel on the draft:Yes to C.J. Stroud, no to Will Levis


Doyel on the draft:Gardner Minshew clears the way for drafting Anthony Richardson

Hey, the draft could fall the Colts’ way. They’re due some luck. But to be clear, at this point, it will take luck to get the quarterback they want. They cannot control what Houston does with the second pick, or what Arizona does with the third pick, and as Ballard told us – and on this point, he wasn’t lying – the Colts have no clue how other teams view the top quarterbacks in this draft.

“We do our best, like you do, to dig, but we’re all guessing,” Ballard said. “You don’t know. Everybody’s draft board is a little different. Who we have ranked high, they might not have ranked high. We’re not in those draft rooms. We line it up, and how they fall is how we take them.”

Most important – most difficult – decision in decades for this franchise, and that’s how it’ll shake out:


How they fall is how we take them.

The quarterback will be Indianapolis, for better or worse

The Colts aren’t about to just draft a quarterback. They’re about to rework the narrative of Indianapolis. We were Peyton, just like we were Andrew, just like for a brief but miserable time there – sigh – we were Carson.

You can argue that it shouldn’t be this way, that sports shouldn’t be that important – you’d get no argument from me – but that doesn’t make it any less true. An NFL city is vaguely defined by its NFL team, and an NFL team is absolutely defined by its quarterback.

Lucas Oil Stadium will be full eight or nine times a year, with the accompanying boost to local businesses, or it won’t. Playoff games will come back to Downtown, or they won’t. Ballard will return in 2024, Steichen will succeed, Irsay will stay behind the scenes.


Or they won’t.

Doyel on the draft:What if Chris Ballard wants the hurt QB from Tennessee, and more picks?

The quarterback is that important. You saw attendance at Lucas Oil Stadium last season, right? Never mind the announced attendance for 2022. Those numbers are malleable, but thousands of those seats? They were empty.

Around here, we’ve seen more and more teenagers with the name Peyton. Think it’s because their parents were cheering happily for the Colts in the 2000’s? Here’s another factoid: In the last dozen years the popularity of the name “Andrew” reached a peek in his first three magical seasons – one of the 20 most popular names for boys born in Indiana in 2012, ’13 and ’14 – but by 2019, when he was injured and then retired, it ranked 42nd.

In 2020 “Andrew” had fallen to 49th, and in 2021 it was No. 63.


The Colts don’t have a roster that can win with Gardner Minshew at quarterback. They don’t have the offensive line, receivers, tight ends, cornerbacks, maybe even linebackers. Not yet anyway. The draft can plug some of those holes, but not all, and not with much pizzazz. Not with the first-round pick devoted to quarterback.

Do the Colts have a roster that can win with a rookie quarterback? Maybe not, but at least that’s a shot at greatness, whether it’s this season with Stroud or down the road with a more developmental quarterback like Richardson, Levis or Hooker.

Gardner Minshew? He’s a shot of decaf. He’s not here to play, but to not play, not unless there’s an emergency. A mistake at quarterback in the 2023 NFL Draft would qualify.

If you’re expecting a viable NFL team and a bouncing baby boy, good luck. Colts tickets remain for 2023, and C.J. Stroud’s given name is Coleridge Bernard Stroud