PHOENIX — For all intents and purposes, there is only one question that matters in Indianapolis this spring.
The question everybody’s asking. When team owner Jim Irsay is out in the community. When general manager Chris Ballard meets with the media. When new head coach Shane Steichen ran into other coaches at the owner’s meetings in Arizona last week.
Who are the Colts taking at No. 4?
“I think it’s funny,” Steichen said. “People go, ‘Hey, who you guys drafting?’ It’s like, ‘We’ll see on draft day. I’ll know two minutes before the pick.’ Unless you’re the No. 1 overall pick, you don’t know who you’re taking.”
The Colts passed on that chance.
A chance Carolina seized. When the quarterback-needy Panthers traded into the No. 1 pick, they all but ensured at least two quarterbacks will be off the board by the time Indianapolis makes its selection, a reality the Colts knew might happen.
Ballard wasn’t ready to make that kind of move. The Colts wanted to go through the interview process with each of the quarterbacks, and Ballard believes this class is deep enough to still produce a potential franchise quarterback outside of the top two picks.
But the stakes are clear.
“If you don’t feel like you have one that can absolutely change the franchise, in terms of leading you every year, I think you’re always going to feel some pressure to get that guy,” Ballard said. “Now, whether we need to take one at four ... if the right one’s there for us, that we feel good about it, then we’ll do it.”
The Colts know they have to get this decision right.
“Once you make this choice, there’s not going to be any exit ramps for a while,” Irsay said. “You’d hate to be going 65 miles an hour in the wrong direction.”
There are five quarterback options in the draft
By now, the options the Colts have at the top of the draft are clear.
Four quarterbacks — Alabama’s Bryce Young, Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud, Florida’s Anthony Richardson and Kentucky’s Will Levis — are considered potential top-10 selections. A fifth, Tennessee’s Hendon Hooker, has reportedly impressed teams in the predraft process despite the fact that he’s coming off a torn ACL suffered in late November.
When Irsay talked about the options in Arizona last week, the Colts owner mentioned “five guys” the team could debate taking early in the draft.
“I think it depends on each team: What kind of quarterback do they want?” Irsay said. “Do they want a mobile guy? Are you willing to take a chance on a guy who’s maybe undersized, but has proven he has incredible vision and playmaking ability? Do you want more of a pocket quarterback with a strong arm? Do you think there is someone lurking later in the draft, maybe first round or second round, that you can maybe get?"
A team’s offensive philosophy typically dictates the kind of quarterback it wants. But Steichen has repeatedly said he has no prototype; that it’s a mistake to assume that the run-heavy offense he directed in Philadelphia is the offense he’ll run in Indianapolis.
A lot of coaches say they build their system around the quarterback.
Steichen has proven it.
In his time as an assistant, he’s built offenses for Philip Rivers, Justin Herbert and Jalen Hurts, three quarterbacks with distinctly different playing styles.
“Quarterbacks come in all shapes and sizes, and have different athletic abilities, whether it’s running or throwing,” Steichen said. “Is it an added bonus when they can run? Yeah, but it’s not the end-all, be-all, where it’s like: ‘I need a guy who can run.’”
The new head coach’s flexibility makes life easier on the front office.
Ballard’s scouting staff can evaluate each quarterback on their abilities, rather than on the box the offense needs them to fill.
“You go from Rivers to Herbert to Jalen, all three different skill sets, and he’s used each one of them in a different way,” Ballard said, “which does open up all the quarterbacks to you.”
For the Colts, the mobility debate is almost moot at this point.
All five of the draft’s top quarterbacks have shown some type of mobility, either as a runner or buying time in the pocket, and with less than a month left to go before the draft, most draft analysts and NFL reporters expect Stroud and Young to go to the Panthers and Houston Texans, respectively.
Those two quarterbacks picked up the fewest yards with their legs in college.
If the experts are right, the three quarterbacks left available to the Colts will all be dual threats to some degree.
And that fits the desires of Ballard and Irsay perfectly. While he was talking about the NFL’s shift toward mobile quarterbacks at the owner’s meetings, Irsay brought up his team’s loss to the Eagles last season, saying Steichen’s Philadelphia offense had an enormous advantage on the game-winning drive because they had “four downs and 12 players on offense,” because of Hurts’ running ability.
Ballard agrees with his boss.
“I’ve always believed that when you have an athlete that can move, it puts more pressure on a defense,” Ballard said. “The ability to create a play when a play’s not there with your feet is vital. I don’t think my thinking on that has ever changed. Eventually, defenses are so good, (mobile quarterbacks are) going to have to be able to complete passes from the pocket.”
The trait Steichen is trying to find is a little harder to identify, at least for the people who can’t see how a quarterback prepares behind the scenes.
Steichen keeps saying it.
The quality that links Rivers, Herbert and Hurts is an obsessive pursuit of their craft, a desire to get better that the game’s best quarterbacks all share.
“Do they love it? Do they love the process?” Steichen said. “Do they have the skill set, first and foremost, and then, can you take it to another level with those guys? … I truly believe that the guys who put in the time and the work and the effort, it’s going to pay off at some point.”
That kind of obsessiveness is the trait the Colts are trying to identify over the rest of this month.
The month leading up to this monumental choice.
Why the Colts didn't trade for the No. 1 pick
Indianapolis stayed out of the race for the No. 1 pick because of this final month.
The chance to get to know these guys, beyond the traits the Colts can see on tape.
“There’s a difference between studying the tape, which is the most important part of it, and then spending actual time with them,” Ballard said.
Unlike the Panthers, who have taken an enormous traveling party to each of the top four quarterbacks' pro days over the course of the past two weeks, Indianapolis has largely stayed away from the prospect showcases, preferring to do their work in private, either in top-30 visits or private visits on the road.
Ballard and Steichen haven’t been spotted at any of them.
The reason is simple.
By virtue of holding the No. 1 pick, Carolina can get almost unrestricted access to each quarterback at each pro day.
Indianapolis wants more control over the visit.
By meeting with prospects behind the scenes, Steichen can be in control, designing the visit to get exactly the answers he needs, rather than watching a throwing program put together by the quarterback’s handlers.
“You’ve got to have the right questions,” Steichen said. “You’ve got to have the visit set up exactly how you want it to get these questions answered.”
Do the Colts already know who they're taking?
At least one reporter tried to call the Colts’ bluff at the NFL owner’s meetings last week.
Halfway through Steichen’s interview availability, he was asked if he’d already found the quarterback he wanted to draft.
“No,” Steichen said with a laugh. “Not yet.”
A lot of people aren’t going to believe that answer. For one, Ballard and his scouting staff have now spent two years evaluating this class, and for another point, this is the time of year when NFL teams do whatever they have to do to keep their intentions a secret.
If the Colts have a target in mind, they’re not going to let it slip in the next month.
“Everyone assumes on a big decision that they know, they’re not telling us,” Irsay said. “But more times than not, you don’t know. You’re still doing the research.”
Ballard’s gone a step further.
The Indianapolis general manager spent part of his time in Arizona saying the Colts need to look into the possibility of signing franchise-tagged Ravens free agent Lamar Jackson — a possibility Irsay downplayed later that same day — and suggesting the Colts might take a quarterback at a pick other than No. 4.
“Everybody talks about the top four, but there’s more guys out there who are pretty good players, and I think history’s shown here, especially the last few years, with (second-round pick) Jalen being good, Brock Purdy (a seventh-rounder) coming in and playing pretty well, they come at every level,” Ballard said. “We’ll do our work on every one of them, and we’ll try to get one that we like, that fits us.”
But it’s clear the Colts, and particularly Irsay, wants a rookie quarterback to draft and develop.
Irsay has long wanted to draft a quarterback to develop, a desire he says he’s wanted to fulfill ever since Rivers retired, and the team’s owner sees the No. 4 pick as a rare opportunity to land that player.
“It’s not impossible to move up to No. 3, if for some reason you thought you needed to, or to trade down and get someone you think you can (still) get,” Irsay said. “But it seems like there’s going to be a great prospect there.”
An answer to the question that has plagued the Colts ever since the shocking retirement of Andrew Luck.
The only question that matters.
“We’re looking for the future guy,” Irsay said. “The guy who can be there for the next 10 years.”
The Colts hope they answer that question at the end of this month.
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04-06-2023, 09:22 PM
Insider: Which quarterback are the Colts drafting?
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