Manning and Luck. The Colts can only choose one.
Last Sunday the Colts got their very first win of the season and their first win without Manning in fourteen years. After last nights ‘dubious’ win, in which the refs appeared to do everything in their power to make sure the Colts are risking losing out on the number one pick. If you’re a Colts fan, this must be depressing. Thirteen straight loses and not even a number one pick to show for it.
All signs this season have pointed to the Colts picking one overall, drafting Luck, sitting him behind Manning for a few years until he is ready so that when Manning steps aside Luck can continue along the blazing path Manning has had the Colts on this last decade. This scenario (sorry Colts fans) is impossible.
On July 31st of this year Manning signed a five-year $90 million deal. Manning is due a $28 million roster bonus before the start of free agency. This, at the end of this season, leaves a small window (five days to be exact) in which the Colts could cut Peyton and pay him his 2011 salary of $26.4 and be done with him. Cutting Manning normally would be ridiculous statement but with a salary cap of $120 million (which will go up for the 2012 season) and Peyton’s deal eating about one sixth of the Colts cap space, for a player who is 35 and off his third neck surgery in nineteen months, may be seen a little too much. Some critics have gone so far a to describe keeping Peyton as “salary cap suicide”.
This news of an inability to co-exist Luck with Manning has been met with outrage in some quarters, the prevailing question being “why can’t we draft both and see how it goes?” Here’s why that wouldn’t work; so, the Colts bring Manning back for one, two, maybe three years to win him that last Super Bowl in Indy…this team just lost thirteen straight games, and it wasn’t like they “just got unlucky”, in most cases they got savagely beat down. Does anyone really think this team, right now, even with a healthy Peyton, can win the Super Bowl? To have a chance of this success they would need to resign the 2012 veteran free agents who include Reggie Wayne, Jeff Saturday and Robert Mathis. They had no space last year, so keeping Manning means one if not two of those would have to go. They’ll also be taking the cap hit for several high draft picks, and although there is now a rookie cap, it’s not going to help a team so financially in the red as the Colts.
Those are just problems facing Indianapolis for next season. Lets say they draft Luck and after the first year it is clear Manning isn’t healthy so they trade/cut him. The Colts would take a $28 million cap hit and, when you factor in Lucks contract, a total hit of $35 for two players. What about if they do what the Packers did and sat Luck until is third season then traded manning? They’d still have to pay him $19.2 million. You’d be looking at $27 million in just two quarterbacks. Even the Colts owner Irsay has had the sense to note, “Under the (new) system you cannot pay a player $25 million. It’s just not going to work. You’re not going to be able to compete”.
There is only one-way Luck and Manning can co-exist and that is if Manning restructures his mammoth contract. It could happen, you see these high profile QBs give up money all the time to help their team, but the ball is in Manning court. How far is he willing to cut himself back? $5 million a year less? Maybe $10 million a year less? And all so his team can sign his eventual replacement, ending his life as a Colt on someone else’s terms? I can’t see this scenario happening either.
The 49ers obtained Steve Young to be Joe Montana’s back up so that in 1987 they could trade Montana and not experience any slow down from their high level of play. When Favre retired Rogers was in the wings for the Packers. Three years after trading Favre the Packers had won the Super Bowl and just last weekend ended a streak of nineteen games, a staggering 364 days, unbeaten. The Colts have no back up, and there is no guarantee Luck steps in the produces like he did in college. Since Dan Marino retired from the Dolphins in 2000 they have had fifteen starting quarterbacks and only three playoff appearances. It seems the Colts are heading in that direction thanks to a lack of pre-planning from management, failing to address a backup quarterback.
Problem is that the team has no defense, can’t run the ball, stop the run or really do anything. Is QB even the position you draft first? If it’s not, do you trade down to a QB hungry team (which, oddly, their aren’t that many of right now) and use those picks on other players and keep Manning? Luck is a golden opportunity though and who says an opportunity like this will ever come again. The Colts are going to have to make some big, risky decisions.
Going forward messages out of Indy are mixed. Vice-chairman Bill Polian said ten days ago “Even if we were to draft a marquee guy in the first round, he’s not going to come in and contribute immediately unless he’s a rookie running back”. Recent word about Manning has had Colts management unable to guarantee Peyton’s return (something Jim Irsay had been doing on twitter earlier in the year). This is a major shame for a player that has given so much to Indianapolis. He is a Super Bowl winning, three time MVP and Jim Irsay would love for Manning to retire where he was drafted, as a Colt. However, this sport is a business and sometimes you have to make business moves, moves based on rationality and not emotion. It’s Manning or Luck, Luck or Manning. You can’t have both. You’re either building for now, or for the future. You can’t have your cake and eat it to. The Colts will soon be deciding whether to eat cake.
Follow Rhodri on Twitter @voyezlesprit
