The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Luck Episode 2: The Decision

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

In Episode 2 of LUCK, host Zak Keefer explores the historic decision the Indianapolis Colts faced in the winter of 2012: whether to move on from the franchise’s greatest player, Peyton Manning, for the chance to draft another generational talent at quarterback — Stanford’s Andrew Luck.Keefer details the Colts’ internal struggles — including Manning’s covert plan to force his way back onto the field, and Jim Irsay’s guilt over having to release an all-time great. Voices in the episode include Irsay, Bill Polian, Chuck Pagano, Bruce Arians, Daniel Jeremiah, Peter King, Bob Kravitz and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Good afternoon, ladies gentlemen. My name's Dave Letterman. It's pleasure to be here. Thank you. It's the fall of 2017. David Letterman is back home in Indianapolis. He's sporting his bushy post-retirement beard. The iconic comedian is standing behind a podium with a blue and white number 18 on it.

Take a look around you at this city, ladies gentlemen. When I lived here, it was like a minimum security prison with a racetrack. Indianapolis's favorite son is in front of a crowd to honor Indianapolis's favorite adopted son, Peyton Manning, for Manning's statue dedication on the steps outside the northwest corner of Lucas Oyo Stadium. 41247, I was born in Indianapolis. Been on television for 30 years. Where the hell's my statue? Manning is sitting behind Letterman wearing a blue suit, laughing along with every joke. People say, said to me, Dave, we're planning a trip to.

Indianapolis, what should we do? And I said, well, here's what I would do if I was planning a trip to Indianapolis. This is years and years ago. I said, I'd go to Indianapolis, rent a car, and drive to Chicago. Any great joke has a strong setup, followed by a killer punchline. All of Letterman's jokes, plenty of which come at the expense of the city of Indianapolis, are the setup for this, how he describes Manning's impact. This man didn't do it alone, but by God,

He was at the center of it. Look around us. He changed the skyline. This used to be a small town. It was a wonderful small town. This man has changed the skyline of this city. Peyton Manning was, is, and will always be more than just a football player to Colts fans in Indianapolis. He was an economic engine.

He was a point of civic pride. He was the orchestrator of one of the greatest offenses in NFL history. Colt owner Jim Ursay, a man who never is at a loss for words, says he him He himself struggles to encapsulate what 18 means to Indianapolis. I just can't say enough for what he has meant to this franchise, to this city and state. You just simply run out of words thinking about how much number 18 means to us. And yet Ursae, who knows more intimately than anyone what Manning means to this franchise and to this city, would essentially kick him out the door in the spring of 2012.

paving the way for the Colts to draft a brainy quarterback out of Stanford. The Indianapolis Colts select Andrew Luck, quarterback Stanford. This is Luck, episode two, the decision. I always thought Peyton Manning was the most indispensable player in NFL history. For the Patriots fans who disagree, I'd offer you this. Tom Brady missed the entire 2008 season with a knee injury and the Patriots won 11 games. Manning missed the entire 2011 season with a neck injury. The Colts opened with 13 straight losses and finished 2 and 14.

No quarterbacks ever felt more interwoven to a franchise's identity, more central to its success. Manning was the Colts. Before he arrived in 1998, the Colts were an NFL afterthought, a perpetual loser, a second-rate team and a second-rate town. You go back and you look at the years from the time they got here, really until Peyton got here. Prior to Matt, they were terrible. Bob Cravitz is a senior writer at The Athletic and has been a columnist in Indianapolis since 2000.

Cravitt says back then, on the city's sports pecking order, the Colts raked somewhere behind the Pacers, the Indianapolis 500, and college basketball. They were just god awful. I mean, we're talking a lot of one in 15 seasons, two and 14. They were no good.

And, you know, it was a very quiet crowd. people would show up and knit. You know, they had better things to do. You know, so I mean, I think people were excited that we had an NFL franchise, but that excitement was tempered by the fact that it was a really crappy NFL franchise. It only took a few years for Peyton and the Colts to become the hottest ticket in town. Along with Marvin Harrison and Edgerman James, Manning flipped a 3 and 13 record his rookie year into a sizzling 13 and 3 record as second.

But Cravitz feels like the real breakthrough came in 2003. The Colts, after a few years of some heartbreaking playoff losses, went 12 and 4, and were staring down a wild card matchup against Mike Shanahan and the Denver Broncos. The Broncos came in here, and the Colts just trashed them. I mean, just beat them to death. It was the loudest I had ever heard that place. That seemed like kind of a moment, kind of an inflection point for the Colts in this city, that, you know, Peyton finally got his first playoff win. after a couple of fall starts. They beat a very good Denver team pretty badly, and that changed the whole dynamic.

Almost overnight, this became a Colts town. People started thinking, man, this team is really special. Beginning in 2003, Manning would end up winning four MVP's in the next seven seasons. The Colts would win at least 12 games a year for seven consecutive seasons. The team went to two Super Bowls, winning one after the 2006 season. And Manning was doing things as a quarterback that had never been seen before in the NFL. Maybe he was the greatest quarterback in the history of the league. Certainly people would have had him in their top five.

That's Mike Sando, a longtime NFL writer, formerly of ESPN and now at the athletic. The bulk of Sandoz's writing is focused on the quarterback position, including his yearly piece in which he breaks down each starter in the league into what he calls his QB tiers. And the only thing that would have kept him out of being the top or even one or two is just a single. the fact that he didn't have great defenses that he played with all those years, and so they didn't win as many championships. He didn't have the Tom Brady, Joe Montana defenses. Look at those defenses. They were top five in the league or they were top ten. Peyton Manning, certainly if he had that, would have had the championships to go with the undeniable, incredible production. Manning made the ridiculous routine. He was a constant and reliable source of production. By the time he retired,

He held NFL records for the most touchdowns in a season, the most yards in a season, the most touchdowns in a career, and the most passing yards in a career. But Sandoz says his impact on the game went beyond statistics. Manning changed how the quarterback position was played. I did a piece several years ago when I was at ESPN where I polled. People had been around the league a long time on the greatest quarterbacks. I think we did it since 1978 when they changed the rules to really make it a passing league. Mike Shanahan, who had coached John Elway and Steve Young, said, basically credited Peyton Manning for starting a new wave of football with the quarterback being the coach on the field.

And if you go way back, I mean, quarterbacks forever, you know, called their own place, that sort of thing. But what happened in Peyton's era was the defense has got a lot more complex. So it wasn't just being the sort of the field general out there. It was being a coach on the field, being able to really expertly diagnose every single thing that was going on on the field. And Peyton really did that at a level that hadn't been seen, and maybe hasn't been seen since. But with Peyton, it was more than just his play that connected him to Colts fans. It was also his personality. He loved light beer and a good steak at St. Elmo's.

Bob Cravitt says he was both football royalty, the privileged son of an NFL quarterback, but also someone who could relate to the common fan. Peyton was a de facto mayor of this city. And if he had run, he would have won 96% to about. But four. Peyton always had a common touch and Peyton understood that he was coming in not only to make a football team worth a damn, but to get the city behind an NFL franchise, he was around all the time, whether it was charity, you know, the stuff with the hospital, he was always out and about. He was always reaching out to people. I can't tell you the number of times people have

reached out to me and said, Peyton called me yesterday. I'm dealing with a cancer scale. I'm dealing with a cancer scare right now, and Peyton Manning out of the blue called me to see how I was doing. So Peyton took that responsibility for being the mayor of Indianapolis very, very seriously and was very proactive. While this might seem silly to say, Manning was so good at his job that he boosted the morale of Indianapolis. His impact on the city is still paying off today. We would not have Lucas Oil Stadium if it wasn't for Peyton Manning.

And the building of Lucasol Stadium, the reason they constructed it was to make room for an expanded convention center. And we, we Indianapolis, have become kind of the convention center of the United States. Peyton's impact on the financial outlook of this city has been significant. This city has for years, even prior to Peyton, been moving in a direction of using sports as a way of growing the city. Peyton kind of got everything going a thousand miles an hour. Rarely can one person, one athlete, change the entire trajectory of a city. But without Manning, landing an indie in 1998, Kravitt says the city likely would have lost the Colts. It was cool to go to games, but, you know, they really had to stretch it to sell out,

and they always had to deal with the blackout issues. And listen, if Payton doesn't come here, I'm not entirely sure that the Indianapolis Colts are still in Indian. I'm convinced that they are one of those teams like St. Louis Rams who end up in Los Angeles. But by 2011, the Colts Outlook completely changed. Perennial Super Bowl contenders with a healthy Manning, everything was put on pause without him. He was coming off three neck surgeries in 19 months. And there were reports that he couldn't even throw a football 10 yards, something you kind of have to do if you're an NFL quarterback. With Manning on ice, the season completely tanked. I would say probably about the time they went around 0 and 8, 0 and 9, I started thinking this team might be in position to get the first pick in the draft.

Kravitz, the lead columnist at the Indianapolis Star at the time, became an essential and unpopular voice in the developing saga. He had conversations with both Erse and Manning throughout, both on and off the record, while the owner weighed the most difficult decision of his career and the greatest player in franchise history waited to learn his fate. You know, I started reaching out to some people. I can't get into any specifics, obviously, but I knew that I was on the right track. Next thing, you know, it's 0 and 10, 0 and 11. I'm like, it's over for Peyton Manning. I wrote a column saying we've seen the last of Peyton Manning in that Colts uniform. That went over really well.

To no surprise, Kravitz instantly became public enemy number one. Saying the Colts were moving on from Peyton Manning, it was blasphemy. Well, back in those days, we had a... comment at the bottom of columns and stories. I mean, I just got annihilated. I was told by people I work with that I was going to end up with a lot of a lot of pie in my face when they kept Peyton. But I knew it was right. I had spoken to the right people. And it just made sense. And you just putting two and two together. You've got a quarterback whose arm may or may not be shot, you owe him $26 million or $28, whatever the number was. You've got this generational

quarterback who's going to become available and probably be your guy for the next 12 to 15 years. It just made sense to me. Everybody around me told me I was nuts. But what no one knew at the time was how furiously Manning was working behind closed doors to return late that season. It didn't matter that the Colts were 0.12 or 0.13 and had been eliminated from the playoffs for months. Manning was dead set on making it back and proving that this was still his team. Against the Colts wishes, the quarterback staged a closed-door throwing session late one night at the team facility. Manning's plan, Ursay told me years later, was unprecedented in modern football. He wanted to return for the last few games of the season as the team's red zone quarterback.

Dan Orlovsky, who by that point was the Colts' third different start of that season, would take most of the snaps. But when the Colts advanced inside the 20-yard line, that's when Manning would take over. When team president Bill Pullian found out, he was incensed, threatening to quit right there on the spot. Well, I think you have to have hope, you know, until, Rich, until the doctors, you know, rule you out. Manning himself spoke to reporters in October of that season and talked about how he was still trying to play that year, because team doctors still hadn't ruled him out. Like I said earlier, Bill and Chris, you know, they're in charge of the roster. They are having a lot of injuries and that if they, you know, come and say they have to make a move. then, you know, I can't fight them on that.

I won't fight them on that. They have to do what's best for the team. But until the doctors, you know, say differently, I mean, that's all I know is to do is to believe in what they say. Ursaid told the team doctors there was absolutely no way he was putting Peyton on the field with a compromise neck that hadn't even healed all the way. Ursaid implored the doctors to be honest with Peyton,

saying, and I quote, I know it's Peyton, but you have to tell him the truth. But by that point Ersay knew. Deep down he knew. Luck was the pick and the future. Kravitz, meanwhile, wasn't backing down. This was the decision the Colts had to make with their head, he wrote, and not their heart. One day in the locker room, late in the season, Manning made his feelings known on the matter.

Peyton was in the locker room and we all walked down the locker room. And I approached Peyton's locker and he goes, hey, it's Andrew Lutz agent. I'm like, what's 100% of zero, man? Because I ain't getting nothing. I'm just putting two and two together. it just makes too damn much sense. I will say this about Peyton Manning. You know, everybody talks about how he holds grudges, and he does.

He is a great grudge holder. He never held that against me. And I think it's because he knew I was, A, putting my ass on the line, and B, I was just being honest, you know, and I think he recognized that. He may not have appreciated it. When he called me Andrew Lux agent, there was certainly an edge in his voice. But I never felt that he was upset at me for writing. what I did, never held me responsible. He knew this score. This was a divorce that was in the

makings for a long time and they just needed, they needed to call it a day. They needed to file the papers. Instead, it went on and on and on and on when we all knew what it was eventually going to become, which is a parting of the ways. Kravitz witnessed and wrote about the bulk of Mannion's career. He understood how special an athlete like Manning can be for a city. But as a became clear that the Colts would be moving on from their franchise legend, Cravet says many fans simply couldn't cope for what life would be like without Peyton. I always get a lot of crap for what I write because it's part of the business, but the depth of anger at the very concept of moving on from Peyton Manning was eye-opening to me.

The impact he's had on this city is indescribable. And when they let him go, it was losing a member of the family. talking to a psychologist who talked about the different levels of grief. And this town was going through the Kubler-Ross levels of grief. As Peyton Manning walked out the door, it was unbelievable. It wrecked Ursaid privately, having to come to grips with what he was about to do. He had to release Manning, and he hated it. He told close friends at the time,

I just can't be the guy who cuts Peyton Manning. That's something they put on your tombstone. The owner had fired his longtime team president, Bill Polion, after the season and hired a first-time general manager in Ryan Grigsden. The Manning decision, without question, was Ursa's, and Ursay's alone. Privately, Manning was gutted. Manning initially pleaded with Ursay, suggesting that if the Colts were set on drafting luck, he, Peyton Manning, franchise legend, would stay and mentor him for a few years.

But Ersay knew he couldn't sit luck behind Manning, who no one at that point knew if he'd ever be the same player again. This is a generational quarterback who everybody, was saying is the most NFL ready quarterback since John Elway. Had the most skills, certainly, since John Elway. You don't sit a guy like down the bench. And especially if Peyton coming off a neck surgery, if he starts, I remember Jim Ursay saying this, I think he said it publicly, if Peyton starts to struggle, then what?

You know, do you really want Peyton getting booed in Indianapolis? We want luck. We want luck. It would have been a. disaster. And I think that Ursa, who make no mistake, made this decision, not Ryan, not anybody else. But he understood, he got the calculation. He knew it would have been, even if Peyton was ready to do the right thing, I think it would have been an ugly situation. And it wouldn't have worked that well for anybody in the long term. As highly thought of as Andrew Luck and

RG3 were at the time, letting go of Peyton Manning was still a historic decision in the NFL. There's simply aren't many franchises across any sport who successfully move on from their most iconic player. It's so difficult in the NFL to find off-ramps and pivot points when you've committed to a certain version of your franchise, when you've paid your quarterback, when you've tried to say, we're going to win at all costs. Robert Mays is the host of the athletic football show and previously covered the NFL for Grantland and the Ringer. And those Colts teams, they were Super Bowl contenders up through the late 2000s and into the early 2010s. They built their team that way. And to have this sliding door where you can just open it and walk into the next version of who you want to be, very rarely

does that opportunity present itself in professional sports and especially in the NFL. And it did for the Colts. They had that rare, rare chance. And that's why I completely understand wanting to take it, even if it meant walking away from the greatest player in franchise history, one of the greatest players in NFL history. On March 7th, after months and months of speculation, the Colts released Peyton Manning. I sure have love playing football for the Indianapolis Colts. A day later, the quarterback and the owner held an emotional tear-filled press conference. It was a scene most in the city never thought they'd see. For 14 wonderful years, the only professional football I've known has been Colts football. The move paved the way for the Colts to grab whomever they wanted at the top of the draft,

luck or RG3 and let that player start right away. It would be a new era in Indianapolis. And surreal as it all was, most around the league actually understood. It's amazing that the Colts could move on from Peyton Manning. And nobody really blinked. No one criticized the decision to move on from the greatest regular season quarterback, probably of all time, and one of the best five quarterbacks of all time. And to transition out of that period and to really do it without much scrutiny just because everyone understood. No one blamed them for the decision that they made. And that's impossible.

It's impossible to walk away from a legend and have no one second guess it because the player you're walking away for is unprecedented. In modern football, it's one of the best quarterback prospects that we've seen of all time. And especially in that last decade, I mean, probably since Peyton Manning. So if you're going to replace someone, you're going to replace Peyton Manning with anybody, it probably makes sense to replace him with the next Peyton Manning. Coming back after the break, the molding of Andrew Luck, the perfect prospect. He's a unique guy.

I don't know. There's ever been somebody with his mixture of talent and humility. I don't know that we've ever seen anything like that, nor will we ever see anything like that going forward. More after a word from our sponsors. Perfect. Perfect is an almost impossible level to attain. People drive themselves crazy trying to be perfect. But Andrew Luck was a perfect prospect.

There was just no imagination necessary. to understand what Andrew Luck would be as an NFL player or what he was as an NFL prospect. He was perfect. The way football junkies like Mays talk about luck, it's like he's some Greek god of football. People don't really understand how big he was. Not only was he a prototype size in terms of frames, all of 6'4. He was huge. I mean, his forearms were like Paul Bunyan-esque.

It was crazy how big and strong he was. And when you put that sort of brain in that sort of body, that's what you get. You get a prospect that looks, plays, and sounds like Andrew Luck. It was unlike anything I'd seen. We were not in luck range, but we still, you know, I was covering the West, so he was definitely somebody that I had to do a ton of homework on. Most football fans know Daniel Jeremiah as the lead draft analyst for NFL Network. But back in 2012, Jeremiah was a scout for the Philadelphia Eagles.

During our conversation, Jeremiah shared the actual scouting report of Andrew Luck that he wrote for the Eagles before the 2012 draft. Yeah, I had gobs and gobs of information on him. This is from the strength coach at Stanford. So he was 238 pounds. He vertical 37. He broad jump 10 to, squat 420, clean 319. Off the charts as a worker.

He's like a coach in the weight room and on the field. He said, on a scale of 1 to 10 as a worker, he's a 12. He eats and drinks football all day, every day. He ran a few of their installed meetings during two a days. he instituted a penalty system for off-sides during practices. He holds everyone on the team accountable. He's always at the facility. He's never asked for any special treatment.

Each source has to be stopped when talking about this player. They go on and on and on. Tough, dedicated, responsible. He will not accept praise. He goes out of his way to be one of the guys. Humble. He fits in with everybody on the team. He called out the entire team during half-time of the USC game last year.

stood up and said, we're not losing this bleeping game. He's been excellent in everything he does. He's exactly what you want. Often, a player is labeled a once-in-a-generation-type talent, and pretty much every time, it's hyperbole. But with luck, Jeremiah truly saw him as not just a once-in-a-generation quarterback. Luck was a once-in-a-generation football player. I don't think there's ever been a smaller gap between someone's floor and their ceiling than with him.

Like, it was just, there was so little miss with him. And a lot of times when you go safe, you kind of, you lose some of the upside. And I was like, dude, this guy's, I mean, it sounds crazy, but you're like, okay, high end, he's a Hall of Famer. Like, low end, he's a multi-year pro bowler. Like, I can't see that there's any way this guy doesn't succeed. Like, I can't remember many guys like that. Like, in terms of just grades, you know, I mean, look, like Miles Garrett had a huge grade. Like, some of those other ones have big grades like that.

But the only grade that I've given the tire than him is actually the one that I missed on, which was Reggie Bush. That was it. For Jeremiah, luck represented an unprecedented combination of skills. For body type, he was Dante Culpepper. In competitiveness and mobility, he was Steve McNair. And Luck's football mind was like that of Drew Brees. You go in and get information at these practices with these guys and did it for eight years,

you know, through the scouting process and you do it in the media roll calling everybody. I don't ever recall a player having that much control that he had there. I mean, they gave him three plays. You know, you had the play that was called. You had the opposite side where he could check it or a kill play. So they put all of that on his shoulders. And then on top of that, you hear, you know, stories about him literally being up at the board, like installing the offense during two days.

I'm like, okay, this is, all that stuff was foreign. Like, I had never heard that before. It was always going to be luck. But that's not to say the cold. didn't do their homework on RG3. A few days before he was fired, former team president Bill Polion was in a meeting with Jim Mersey.

The owner asked him point blank. If we get the top pick, who are we taking? Two days before or three days before we were let go, Jim had a meeting, and I was in the meeting, and he said to me, who do we take if we end up with the first pick? And I said, there is no question in the world about who we take. It's Andrew Luck. Simple as that. One and done.

And because he was as ready to play in the National Football League as any player I've ever seen, arm strength, accuracy, mental acumen, ability to extend plays and run, aggressiveness, desire to win, leadership, all of that was top shelf. It was Polion, who 14 years earlier had gone with Manning over Ryan Leaf at the top of the draft. The situations weren't identical. but the parallels were there. This decision would have consequences for a decade. Same as he saw in Manning all those years earlier,

Polian saw greatness and luck. You know, if you heard the people of Stanford talk about him, you could just replace his name with that of Peyton Manning would have met the same thing. He made the program what it was, come from behind victories. He's all the same guy, really. But Polian wasn't calling the shots anymore.

Ryan Grigsden was. My goal is to bring this team back to where it was and to even build off that and do great things. Why else would you want to be in this position if you weren't going to do great things? Grixon fired head coach Jim Caldwell and replaced him with Chuck Pagano. Pagano's first move as head coach was to lure Bruce Ariens out of retirement to become his new offensive coordinator. Ariens had worked with the Colts before. He was Peyton Mannion's QB coach during Peyton's first three seasons in the league. The Colts sent a contingent out to Stanford for Luck's Pro Day that spring.

Grigson, Pagano, Ariens, and quarterback's coach Clyde Cribson. The most memorable throw for me of Andrew Luck ever seeing Andrew Luck was at his pro day. Jeremiah was there too and says he still thinks about one throw that Andrew Luck made that day. You know, it was the last throw of the day into the wind and a rainy, windy day up there. And he threw one of the prettiest deep balls you'll ever see. I think it was dropped. But it was, I mean, it was a show-off throw, like in a pro-day world where we're all indoors and, you know, perfect conditions. This guy was outside in the wind, had his choice of how he wanted to do the workout, chose to throw into the wind.

And the last throw was this pretty of a deep ball and wet, rainy, windy weather. So that one stood out. One of the hardest things to try to find out is, does this guy love ball? Yeah, nobody loved ball more than Andrew Luck, point flag. Two months before that pro day, Pagana was hired as head coach of a franchise. that was moving on from Peyton Manning. Now he's in Palo Alto, sitting across from a 22-year-old whom Pagano would have to trust with his head coaching career.

I just remember sitting at the film room and watching tape and listening to Clyde and VA, you know, talk offense with this guy and have him talk about his stuff and put in some things on the board. And it was just fascinating. But again, a very humble, humble guy and fun-loving and, yeah, all those things. I mean, just, it was really cool. Now, Bruce Ayrins had heard that this kid from Stanford was smart, but Arian's wanted to test out the brain of his potential number one overall pick.

So he put luck through a little pop quiz on the board. And I put a bunch of stuff up there. Some of it was intricate, some not. We went out and we worked out for a couple, maybe two hours, came back, and I put something on the board, and I said something. He said, that's not what you said last time. So really? You said this.

And your exact friend, I was just trying to trick you. But he had like a photographic memory. So you never get anything. And that was like, oh, this guy's amazing. In luck, Arian saw the total package. Whipsmart, no ego, can in for an arm, tough as hell. This kid was going to be ready from the minute he arrived. Peyton was pretty pro-ready.

You know, Ben was pro-ready. I always say Carson Palmer, all the guys that I've had. Andrew's a combination of all of them. Tim Couch, I thought, he's just tough as shit. He just got all broke up his first couple years. You know, he was like a three-point shooter. Peyton was cerebral. Ben was tough as not.

Now, Andrew was all those things, and athletic. I mean, people don't realize his numbers at the combine were same as Cameroons. Even now, all these years later, Ariens calls him the best quarterback coming out of college he's ever seen. And this is a coach who's worked with some of the best to ever do it, Manning, Tom Brady, as well as some other highly decorated quarterbacks in Ben Rothesberger and Carson Palmer. If it's one to ten, he's a ten in every category. I mean, every category, athleticism, toughness, competitive spirit, I feel like ability, subribo.

I mean, he was Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Ben Ruther's Berger, Carson Palmer, it all wrapped up one. The chatter was growing louder and louder that Luck to Indy was going to happen. And most likely, Luck was hearing that chatter too. Flying into Indy for the Combine,

Daniel Jeremiah was actually on Luck's flight. Jeremiah could see Luck growing nervous, anticipating a Beatles-like reception the minute he arrived. Going to the Combine, I was on a Southwest flight to fly out to the combine, and I was on Andrew's flight. So he's sitting,

he's sitting in front of me on the plane. We get off the plane, and I think here he is, he's flying into Indianapolis, who has the first pick. Everybody knows he's going to go there, right? And this is the most hype prospect we've seen in forever. We get, we get off the plane. And as we come down through, like, going down the escalator down to baggage claim, he pulls his hat down really low and, like, starts to kind of, you know, I think he was anticipating there was going to be like a throng of media there to see him as he gets off his plane in Indianapolis where he's going to, where he's getting up playing. So we go down, I'm right behind him, we go to an escalator, he's kind of looking down. And there's not a soul there. It's like 10 o'clock at night. And so we're walking over the

baggage and I just come up behind him and I go, I go, Andrew, it's Indianapolis. There's nobody, there's nobody going to bother you here. He just started cracking up laughing. You know, in the last 10 or 12 years, two of the best quarterbacks to come out in the draft easily have been Andrew Luck and Joe Burrow. Peter King, who has covered the NFL for four decades and does now for NBC Sports, interviewed luck at the Combine in Indianapolis. They sat 30 stories up inside a room at the brand new JW Marriott Hotel overlooking the city. We were in the Marriott Hotel in downtown Indianapolis and outside his window, you could see Lucas Oil Stadium. And he was up on a high floor and I just kept thinking to myself, I'm sitting with the guy who's going to own that building.

That's all I could think of that night. When I walked out of his room, we maybe spent a half hour or 40 minutes together. I had never met him before. He was just one of these guys that I just remember thinking that night, if he was not going to be a great quarterback in the NFL, he could have been a thoracic surgeon. He could have been anything because he was just so smart. so quick. He was whipsmart, is how I thought of it that day. He also had this humility about him

that you could just tell that football absolutely was not the only thing in his life. As unanimous as the decision seems now, at the time, there was a real debate on whether it was luck or RG3 at number one. Early in the process, Kravitz says the Colts leadership would have been comfortable with either quarterback. Ursaid told me that if they had won that Jacksonville game, the final game of the season, if Maurice Jones Drew doesn't run for that third down, the third down conversion, they would have taken Robert Griffin and let Peyton go. That's how highly they thought of Robert Griffin.

Yeah, Ursey, I remember very specifically him saying, yeah, we would have taken Robert Griffin if we had the second pick and moved on from Peyton. There was this loud, anti-luck minority that tried to poke holes in the Stanford quarterback. Former NFL quarterback Phil Sims questioned Lux's arm, saying, and I quote, I just don't see him making big time throws. I don't care what everybody says. He never takes it and rips it in there. Skip Bayliss, at the time of ESPN, thought that because of Lux's dorky side,

he wouldn't be able to lead an NFL locker room. And when Tony Dungey, the winning his coach in Colts franchise history, was asked on NBC who'd he take at the top of the draft, he picked RG3. I remember commenting for NBC and saying that I would take RG3 because I just had never seen that dual threat guy and the guy who could just, you know, you couldn't play certain defenses because he could run 50 yards if you played man coverage. So I remember saying that and David Shaw is a good friend of mine. I coached with his dad and David called me and he said, you are absolutely wrong. He said, if you pass Andrew Luck, you would be crazy. You haven't watched enough tape.

He was right. And my dad coached with Tony Dungey. I had met with Tony a long time ago. I have so much respect for him. But I just said, coach, like, this is one that you have to see live. I haven't seen anybody like this since when I was a kid watching Dan Marino and John Elway. Like this guy, the combination of power and speed and accuracy and competitiveness, like everything that you're asking for on a scale of 10 is an 11. And he appreciated that. He appreciated me reaching out. Because I know Tony was doing a lot of pro in college. I said, you have to go back and watch and watch every game. And you're going to see what I saw.

Because I know Tony's eyes for talent is very, very impressive. And he went back and watched. And then he saw it that this was a different cat. Even though they did all their homework and gathered every bit of intel they could, the Colts never overthought this. We're going to say all the things we need to say. You know, we've got to do our due diligence and all that stuff. And certainly there's a bunch of guys, you know, in that draft that were really good players.

And, you know, once we got down, you know, got in place and started doing our stuff with the draft and evaluations and things and going out to, you know, California and spending time with him, him coming to our place. I mean, it was a it was a no-brainer. The Colts actually informed luck that he was the pick in the days leading up to the draft. The team's new general manager, Ryan Grigsson, told reporters ahead of time, too, trying to ease some of the pressure surrounding the situation. You know, in fairness to Andrew Luck, and in fairness to, you know, the whole process, the immediate gauntlet he's going to be enduring the next couple days. I thought it was the right thing to do to announce that we're going to take him. And, you know, didn't see the point in prolonging what the world already knows. The Indianapolis Colts Select Andrew Luck, quarterback Stanford.

Franchise legend Peyton Manning was out. Rookie Andrew Luck was in. Now all the kid had to do was win. On the next episode of Luck. I saw Ryan Grixon in the locker room after that game, and he just walked over to me, and he said, can you believe that freaking throw? Andrew Luck has shocked the Lions.

Andrew, we could keep her close. He was going to win it in the last two minutes because he was going to will his way to win. That's what Brady has. That's what Peyton had. That's what Ben had. But Andrew had it in a different way. It's like, hey, this guy here is a proven winner.

He was almost like, if you can equate, like the LeBron James of his era. He got so much hype. And I never thought at that time he was overhyped. I'm probably part of the mass here of people that thought he was going to win a Super Bowl in this first five years. Thank you for listening to Episode 2. All six episodes of Luck are available right now. Go to the Athletic Football Show on your favorite podcast player to find the rest of the series. Luck was written and narrated by Zach Key.

The executive producers are Mike Smeltz and Matt Havia. The Athletics Head of Audio is Andrew Wasserman.