Colts Should Act Now to Make Andrew Luck NFL's Highest-Paid Player, Despite 2015

Andrew Luck ranked 92nd among active players on the NFL Network program The Top 100 Players of 2016 that started airing last week. 

According to Bleacher Report's Jason Cole, the Colts are about to make Luck the highest-paid player in the NFL.

The 92nd-best player in the NFL, according to a poll of his peers, is about to be made the highest-paid player? I smell a controversy. A silly, ridiculous controversy...but that's the best kind you can hope for this time of year.

For the Colts, signing Luck to a long-term contract that makes him the NFL's highest-paid player isn't just inevitable—it's the best move they can make. It's the only easy decision they have had in an offseason full of tricky decisions, some of which they may have already botched.

The Real Andrew Luck

Let's get Luck's 92nd ranking in a prefabricated television-content generator off the table right away. The NFL Network sends ballots to NFL players in November, asking them to rank the NFL's top 20 players so they can combine the lists into a television countdown. Players scribble down the names of obvious superstars, current teammates, former teammates, college teammates and maybe someone who gave them a handful in last week's big game. To judge from this Pro Football Talk report in 2013, about a fourth of players actually turn in their scribbles to be tabulated. It's like Pro Bowl balloting without the obligation to select a guard.

Where was Luck when the halfhearted balloting began? Dealing with a lacerated kidney. Out of sight, out of mind.

Fair enough. The NFL Network rankings exist so the NFL Network can argue about the rankings on NFL Network. But Pro Football Focus ranked Luck 35th among quarterbacks last year, behind Matt Cassel, Blaine Gabbert and (gulp) Johnny Manziel. Football Outsiders ranked Luck 33rd in its DYAR stat, again with Gabbert and Manziel ahead of him. Colts backup Matt Hasselbeck topped him according to both sets of metrics.

Luck threw multiple-interception games against the Jets, Bills, Panthers, Titans and Saints in just seven total starts last season. Did you watch the Saints defense last year? You practically had to walk up to a defender, wipe the football with a warm towel and hand it to him for the Saints to record a takeaway. Luck's interception rate of 4.1 percent would have led the league if Peyton Manning hadn't turned into the grandpa from a fiber supplement commercial last year.

There were extenuating circumstances. Luck battled shoulder and rib injuries all year before the lacerated kidney took him out of the lineup. The Colts' pass protection was awful, and game plans (particularly before offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton gave way to Rob Chudzinski) were inscrutable. The Colts' blitz-pickup plan appeared to be to put their thumbs in their ears and pretend the blitz wasn't happening. Luck played through a pummeling until his internal organs were literally torn up. Then Hasselbeck was treated like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant.

AJ Mast/Associated Press/Associated Press

Six of Luck's 12 interceptions occurred when the Colts trailed by 10 or more points. At least three were the result of Luck getting hit as he threw. One was tipped in the air by a Colts receiver. One occurred on 4th-and-10 in the fourth quarter, when Luck had no choice but to force a pass. There were some ugly throws and dopey decisions, too. But you get the idea: injured quarterback, minimal support, desperate situations, predictable results.

No one I have talked to around the NFL in the last year has overreacted to Luck's 2015 performance, in part because great games against the Broncos and Patriots—564 yards, five touchdowns and no interceptions against the two best teams in the conference—were scattered among the bad ones, but mostly because Luck had a 54-game body of regular-season and postseason starts before last year's slump.

Luck is one of five quarterbacks in NFL history to throw 100 touchdown passes in his first four seasons. (Since you asked: Dan Marino, Peyton Manning, Carson Palmer and Russell Wilson are the others.) Only four quarterbacks have thrown for more yards in their first four seasons than Luck. Only seven quarterbacks have won more games, if quarterback win totals are your thing.

Making long-term evaluations of Luck based on 2015 is no better than dropping him to the bottom of your top 100 because he's been injured for a few weeks. It would be making a decision based on last week's highlight reel, not the big picture.

The Friendly Market

OK, you get it: Luck is good. And the highest-paid quarterback isn't usually the best quarterback—just the one who signed the most recent contract.

That's another reason the Colts should eagerly lock up Luck right away. The contract market, particularly for quarterbacks, has flattened out in the last year or so. The Colts can give Luck a trendsetting contract and still get a relative bargain.

Michael Conroy/Associated Press

Russell Wilson and Cam Newton had a chance to blast quarterback salaries into the stratosphere last year. It didn't happen. The deal Newton signed in the 2015 offseason is worth $103.8 million over five years on paper, with $31 million guaranteed. Imagine what he might have netted on this year's free-agent market. Wilson's contract was downright modest: $87.6 million over four years.

According to the analysis of Jason Fitzgerald at Over The Cap, the Newton and Wilson deals fall neatly in line with extensions Matt Ryan and Aaron Rodgers signed in previous years. That's a flat market. Meanwhile, the salary cap grows, meaning franchise quarterbacks take up a smaller percentage of the cap, meaning they become increasingly affordable.

The market for Luck's contract was not set by peers Newton and Wilson, but by a defensive tackle and some gargantuan deals from several years ago. The highest total guaranteed salary in the NFL belongs to Ndamukong Suh, at just below $60 million. The highest per-year salary belongs to Joe Flacco, at $22.1 million. The highest total-value contract is Jay Cutler's seven-year, $126.7 million monstrosity from 2013, but no one A) takes the total value of that white elephant seriously, or B) even pursues seven-year contracts anymore.

A four-year extension valued at about $111 million, with $60 million in guarantees (two full-season guarantees, plus bells and whistles), would make Luck the NFL's highest-paid player by any reasonable standard. Converting Luck's $16 million base salary into a bonus this year would create some cap wiggle room. The five-year deal (this year, plus extension) would minimize phony-baloney money and get Luck back on the market before his 32nd birthday—just in time for another payday.

Extend Luck in the next three months, and the Colts get next year's franchise quarterback at a little over last year's prices. But if they wait too long, the Colts:

• A) Risk a Flacco situation: Luck has a career year, his contract expires and the Colts enter a potential bidding war with teams that would crash the stock market to get a franchise quarterback in his prime.
• B) Risk possible disturbances in the current market if Drew Brees or Kirk Cousins sign jaw-dropping extensions. You don't want Dan Snyder deciding how much you must pay your quarterback.

Colts owner Jim Irsay has suggested July 4 as a soft deadline for the Luck extension, according to Stephen Holder of the Indianapolis Star, giving us a juicy contract situation to speculate about through June and ruining yet another holiday for NFL insiders. There's no good reason for negotiations to take two months. And there's absolutely no "controversy" about putting Luck atop the pay scale, unless we are just beating the controversy drum to make a little noise.

One year removed from being considered among the AFC's top contenders, the Colts look like a team moving sideways. The decision to retain general manager Ryan Grigson and head coach Chuck Pagano after last year's foibles and squabbles was...puzzling. Free agency was quiet; not a bad thing for a team whose big splashes of recent years have all backfired, but a little harrowing when the division-winning Texans were building a whole new offense. The draft brought a heavy investment in the offensive line but no immediate difference-makers. It was the offseason of an 11-5 division winner, not an 8-8 team that nearly tore itself and its quarterbacks apart.

The Colts are doing business as if 2015 never happened. That may be a questionable approach when it comes to Pagano and Grigson, but it's the only logical one for Luck. Coaches and general managers who squabble and whiff on big decisions can be easily replaced. Quarterbacks who crack the Top 100, even in slump-and-injury-ruined seasons? They are irreplaceable. Especially when they come at (reasonably) affordable prices.

Mike Tanier covers the NFL for Bleacher Report.

All salary and cap numbers via Over The Cap.