Colts still not committing to Andrew Luck for season opener
The Indianapolis Colts were handed a golden ticket.
After watching Peyton Manning dominate the league from his rookie season in 1998 right through the 2010 campaign, the Colts endured a single year without the fiuture first-ballot Hall of Famer due to a neck injury. Sans Manning, the team went 2-14 and magically earned the first-overall selection in the 2012 NFL Draft, just in time for the biggest quarterback prospect since John Elway in 1983; Andrew Luck.
Luck, who ironically attended Stanford, the same school Elway starred at, ended up going to Indianapolis. Manning was released and eventually signed with the Denver Broncos, where he led a second franchise to a pair of Super Bowl appearances and a title in 2015 before retiring.
Indianapolis got a star in Luck, who won AFC South titles in each of his first three seasons at the helm, with 2014 culminating in an AFC Championship Game appearance. For all the world, it looked like the Colts would be dominating the league for years to come, but it hasn’t happened that way.
The last two years have seen Luck injured, ranging from a lacerated kidney in 2015 to a torn labrum in 2016. Luck had offseason shoulder surgery and was expected to be back in time for Sept. 10 when the Colts visit the Los Angeles Rams. Instead, that seems increasingly in doubt with Indianapolis not having activated its superstar off the Physically Unable to Perform List.
At this juncture, it seems more than likely that Luck will not only miss the first game of the season, but perhaps have an extended absence into September and maybe further. Without their star quarterback, the Colts have a punchless roster, one that will struggle to win a game with Scot Tolzien under center. Tolzien is barely a capable backup quarterback, and certainly has no business being a starter.
Indianapolis is wasting an incredible opportunity. The Colts have played in an awful division for years, one that if the roster was decent, should have been rolling up 13-3 records and home-field advantage. They could have been forcing Tom Brady and the New England Patriots to play in their stadium in front of their fans. Instead, Indianapolis has not made the playoffs in each of the past two seasons, and their wunderkind from Palo Alto is now bruised, battered and out of service.
This winter, general manager Ryan Grigson was finally fired after poor drafts and horrifying free-agent decisions, replaced by the widely-respected personnel man, Chris Ballard. Ballard has done a nice job to stock the roster with younger talent on the defensive side, but it’s nowhere near enough to keep this team afloat without Luck.
It’s been one mess after the next for the Colts over the past two seasons, and if Luck can’t play from the start, this campaign is dead on arrival.
