When negotiating quarterback Andrew Luck’s deal, the Colts surely said plenty of things. Here’s one thing they didn’t say: He stunk in 2015.
“We never even suggested it as leverage,” owner Jim Irsay said Wednesday, via Zak Keefer of the Indianapolis Star. “It wasn’t, ‘Well, what about the slow start? Or what happened against Buffalo [in Week One]?’ The injuries -- we didn’t go there. We went along the lines of, and I think both us realizing that we’re very blessed to have us and he’s very excited to be a Colt.”
Of course, the Colts didn’t need to tell Luck that he didn’t play well last year, even when he was healthy. Luck has freely admitted it.
Apart from that, it would have been idiotic for the Colts to quibble over past performance. Luck’s six-year, $139.125 million contract arose from the fact that Luck could have made more than $110 million over the next four years by opting to play one year at a time under the franchise tag -- and from the reality that if any other team ever had a chance to pilfer Luck for a pair of first-round picks under the non-exclusive tag, at least one other team surely would have tried to do it.
Telling Luck’s agent-uncle/uncle-agent that the team that once sucked for Luck has since decided that Luck sucks would have done nothing to help get a deal done. If anything, it could have inflamed the situation, prompting Luck to opt for a one-year-at-a-time approach until he forced his way to the open market.
Which would have required the Colts to find a new quarterback. To get the next Peyton Manning or Andrew Luck, the Colts would have had to once again bottom out in a year when a great quarterback was poised to emerge at the top of the draft.