Recent NFL history shows that you’re not going to win a Super Bowl unless you have an elite – like top 2 or 3 best in the league – quarterback. But that might not be the case soon.
The top 10 quarterbacks in the NFL this season based on QB rating include names like Alex Smith, Jared Goff, Kirk Cousins, Case Keenum, Derek Carr, Matthew Stafford and Tyrod Taylor. On the outside looking in are names like Ben Roethlisberger, Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson and Eli Manning.
In other words, you might not have to have a Peyton Manning in 2006, a Tom Brady in 2014, a Roethlisberger in 2008 or a Rodgers in 2010 to reach the promised land anymore. “Good” may be “good enough” to win it all in the NFL moving forward.
Greg Doyel in the Indianapolis Star had an interesting column this week titled: “Is Jacoby Brissett too valuable to be Andrew Luck’s backup quarterback?”
Doyel warned right off the bat that there is absolutely no QB controversy brewing in Indy, but he did note that Brissett has all the tools to eventually reach the status Jameis Winston is currently at … and Winston is considered good enough right now to get the Bucs into the Super Bowl.
“Brissett is good, is my point,” Doyel wrote. “Too good to be the long-term backup here for Luck? That’s where this seems to be headed. It has to get there, of course – Brissett has to continue to play like he has played through two games – but Brissett might be playing his way right off this roster.”
So if a trade involving a Colts QB happens in the next nine months, it will more than likely be Brissett.
That said, if Luck continues to be injury prone over the course of this season (say he comes back against Jacksonville on Oct. 22 but is back on the shelf by mid-November?) the Colts have got to start to wonder if it’s worth it to be paying all that money to a guy who can’t even get on the field.
Even if the above scenario happens, the good money says that the Colts would want to run it back one more time with Luck in 2018. Unlike Brissett, Luck’s ceiling as a healthy QB is one in which he is one of the top three or four QBs in the NFL.
If something whacky like a Drew Bledsoe – Tom Brady situation occurs in Indy over the course of the next year or so, who are the teams right now that would be interested in Luck’s services? Obviously, timing goes a long way into this – but here are the teams that would be on Chris Ballard’s phone line in an instant if Luck was put on the NFL trade block.
Buffalo Bills – The Democrat and Chronicle went into the Andrew Luck trade rumors last week. Short answer? It ain’t happening. The Bills’ next “franchise” quarterback will likely come from the 2018 NFL Draft, where the team has a pair of first, second and third round picks.
New York Jets – I relay you to this 2015 article in which Luck was told by a Jets fan at a bar in New York, “I wish you were the quarterback of the Jets.” Luck is said to have leaned in and whispered to the fan, “[Expletive] that, man.”
It’s been “deny, deny, deny” from Luck’s camp since ESPN’s Mike Greenberg floated these Luck NFL trade rumors earlier this month. In the rare case that the rumors are actually true, obviously Luck’s agent isn’t going to say, “Oh ya, yup. Andrew wants out! You caught us!”
The biggest reason why it’s 99 percent certain that the Colts will not trade Luck anytime soon is the unreal cap hit that they would receive if a trade went down.
