There are any number of ways to identifying and acquiring that most essential of NFL assets, the FRANCHISE QUARTERBACK. We use all-caps because it is impossible to undersell just how important a FRANCHISE QUARTERBACK is to the process of building a winning NFL team.
You can luck into your FRANCHISE QUARTERBACK, the way the Patriots did with Tom Brady, the way the Rams did with Kurt Warner back in the day (and, who knows, perhaps the way in which we will someday remember Mike White becoming the FRANCHISE QUARTERBACK of the Jets).
You can trade for your FRANCHISE QUARTERBACK. You can sign him, after he’s established, as a free agent. Tampa Bay did that with Brady, and wound up with a Lombardi Trophy as a result. The Saints did that with Drew Brees, and it delivered the most glorious era in that franchise’s history. The Jets tried that once with Brett Favre, and it didn’t go so well.
Then, of course, there is the draft. The draft is either the golden calf or the fool’s gold of the pursuit of the FRANCHISE QUARTERBACK. For every story about Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson or either Manning brother, there are plenty of Ryan Leafs and JaMarcus Russells and Tim Couches to spoil the buzz. The Jets have been in that game plenty, most recently with Zach Wilson. It hasn’t often gone well.
Then you take a look at the Colts, who the Jets, fresh off their feel-good upset of the Bengals, faced Thursday night at Lucas Oil Stadium, and you realize: The draft route, especially for the alleged sure things that we generally consider at the 1-1 top of the draft, can be the biggest lottery of all.
Three times since 1990, the Colts have taken a quarterback with the top pick in the draft. In 1990 it was Jeff George, who was the home office for enigmatic. George had all the tools you dream about: a cannon arm, strength, height (6-foot-4). You draw a quarterback on a blueprint, it’s hard to do better than Jeff George.
But George started 49 games as a Colt and lost 35 of them. He threw for 41 touchdowns and completed 57 percent of his passes, but also had 46 interceptions. He won exactly one playoff game, but that was in the 11th hour of his career, with Minnesota in 1999.
In 1998, the Colts picked Peyton Manning and, well, that worked out about as well as any selection in the history of any draft. We could double the size of this column by listing Peyton’s achievements, so let’s just say: He was one of the five best quarterbacks who ever lived, and the Colts won a fourth NFL championship because of him.
And in 2012, it was Andrew Luck.
For the longest time, that seemed like the most appropriate pick in NFL history. An aging Manning had gotten hurt, the 2011 Colts bottomed out at 2-14, and, as luck would have it, the reward was Luck, out of Stanford, who checked so many boxes for what makes a quality NFL quarterback scouts would run out of ink. He was perfect, in every way.
He was terrific, too. He was smart, strong, savvy. He went 33-15 his first three years in the league, hitting the ground running, making the first of four Pro Bowls as a rookie, leading the Colts to the AFC Championship in his third year at age 25, actually winning the Comeback Player of the Year in 2018 at age 29. The Colts, who were set up for years at the most elusive position in the game, handed Luck a six-year, $140 million contract with $87 million guaranteed. He was everything you dream about.
And then he retired.
That was it. He valued his body too much. He walked away in the summer of 2019 and he has never looked back — and the Colts have been scrambling ever since. They squeezed the last few ounces out of Philip Rivers’ career. They’ve hoped, to decidedly mixed reviews, that reuniting Carson Wentz and Frank Reich would spark some magic. They are looking, still, for their next FRANCHISE QUARTERBACK.
And they have to be thinking, every day:
Our FRANCHISE QUARTERBACK is still just 32 years old.
He just doesn’t play football anymore.