The Colts will probably have the first overall pick in next year’s NFL draft and will definitely pick in the top three, and Bill Polian says he doesn’t want to trade down.
Polian all but confirmed to Adam Schein and Rich Gannon on SiriusXM NFL Radio that he wants to stay put and draft Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck, rather than trade the pick to stockpile talent on a roster that has holes in several places. Polian doesn’t see any scenario where trading the first overall pick for veteran players would work, because a bunch of veteran players would be too costly under the salary cap. And Polian wants to get to work on building a winning team now, so trading the first overall pick this year for future first-round picks wouldn’t work, either.
“I can’t imagine that there are players that we could afford under the salary cap that would come in and help our team, veteran players that would be available in such a trade,” Polian said, via ESPN.com. “And if you traded it for picks, which you probably would be wise to do, those picks would be very high picks, the highest picks perhaps, in a lot of future years, which means that they wouldn’t be on the team in the short run. Somehow or other, that theory, people have asked me about that, but it doesn’t hold water with me. I don’t know what you get out of it. If you’re assuming that you trade one of the top three picks in the draft for a bunch of second- and third-rounders in that same draft, I don’t buy that one at all.”
As for another big question facing the Colts -- the future of head coach Jim Caldwell -- Polian said that’s up to owner Jim Irsay.
“He’s the owner and he hires and fires, and I wouldn’t presume to speak for him,” Polian said.
But unless Irsay fires Polian, it sounds like the Colts are ready to draft their quarterback of the future.