WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — When Indianapolis got past the emotion of the end of the season and evaluated the ugly start to the season, the missed opportunities against Tennessee and ultimately the ugly collapse in the final two games, the answer became very clear to Jim Irsay.
The Colts had to make a change at quarterback.
Carson Wentz was not the answer, no matter if he’d cost the Colts a first- and third-round pick, no matter that he’d only been in Indianapolis a single season.
“I think the worst thing you can do is have a mistake and try to keep living with it going forward,” Irsay said. “For us, it was something we had to move away from as a franchise. It was very obvious.”
Three weeks after Indianapolis traded Wentz to Washington and more than a week after trading for Falcons legend Matt Ryan, Irsay, general manager Chris Ballard and head coach Frank Reich have all been careful this week to say that Wentz is not the scapegoat for the team’s failures in 2021.
But Irsay also laid out a list of reasons that the Colts had to make another change at the game’s most important position, even if Wentz’s numbers on the surface — 27 touchdowns, seven interceptions, 94.7 rating — didn’t seem to warrant the drastic step of getting rid of Wentz without a clear plan in place to replace him.
The way the season ended, a season-worst 15-point loss to a coachless Jacksonville team headed for the No. 1 pick, still gnaws at Irsay, at Ballard, at Reich.
That night, Irsay called Ballard and Reich into his office for a long meeting, a meeting Ballard later called an “ass-chewing.”
“No disrespect to Jacksonville, but I mean, they’re the worst team in the league. You play well and hard for the first quarter or so, and they’re looking to go to their locker room and clean it out. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” Irsay said. “You say, ‘My God, there’s something wrong here.’ It needs to be corrected. I think that we feel like we did.”
The wheels had started to come off the week before.
Fresh off of big wins over New England and Arizona, the Colts coughed up a lead against the Raiders that would have sent them into the playoffs, but that loss didn’t put the nail in the Indianapolis coffin.
“Your guy’s gotta pick you up and carry you through Jacksonville,” Irsay said. “He has to do it. Not an option. Has to. No excuses, no explanations.”
The more Irsay thought about the loss, the more he saw the Jacksonville failure as the culmination of problems that he’d seen throughout the season, problems that came to light through talking to some of the most important members of the Colts’ roster.
“In having conversations with trusted veterans on the team, so to speak, when you speak to them in confidence, oftentimes they share really, what’s happening,” Irsay said. “What I found out was very concerning.”
There were leadership questions with Wentz.
Irsay, who has spent his entire life in and around the NFL, is a firm believer that the league is right to place enormous importance on the quarterback position.
“You can argue quarterbacks affect your franchise competitively somewhere between 35 to 45% as individuals, almost,” Irsay said. “They have a profound effect.”
From the conversations Irsay had with the team’s veterans and the way the season ended, the team’s owner concluded there was a disconnect with Wentz at the helm.
“You search for the right chemistry with any team,” Irsay said. “In football, it’s as important as any sport that there is. If that chemistry is off, if it isn’t there, it can be extremely detrimental and lower performance to a degree that is stunning and shocking.”
The way Wentz played also left cause for concern.
FOR SUBSCRIBERS: Road to Matt Ryan: How the Carson Wentz experience helped Colts revive franchise identity
Reunited with Reich, Wentz was able to cut down on the interceptions and sacks that had blown up his spot as the franchise quarterback in Philadelphia, but he often failed to play within the offense, preferring instead to buy time and search for the big play.
Reich’s offense is designed to scheme guys open and give them room to run.
Too often, Wentz missed open receivers, failed to operate within the timing of the offense and held onto the ball too long, trying to make the big play.
“You can’t always persuade people to do things differently if they don’t want to do them differently,” Irsay said. “You’re always trying to look at, in all areas of your team, where the coaches can come in and enhance and lift up a situation and make things better, but in the end, players are out there playing the game, and they’re going to play their game.”
Irsay concluded the Colts needed to make a change.
And although there might not have been total agreement right away, after discussing the move, the three men came to a consensus.
“That was a good debate, that went back and forth,” Ballard said. “Sometimes you hang on just because you made a move, and you don’t want the world to see you in a negative view. But at the end of the day, I’m a steward for the organization, that’s the way I look at it, and we’ve got to always do the right thing, no matter how it might make me look.”
The Colts made the decision to move on from Wentz without a clear replacement, a decision that underscores their commitment to the evaluation of the quarterback.
“You play that out, where we don’t want to have seller’s remorse,” Reich said. “I think we had already determined that wasn’t going to happen.”
The price Ballard was able to extract from the Commanders in exchange for Wentz ensured there was no remorse.
Indianapolis moved up five spots in the second round, picked up an extra third-round pick this April and a conditional third-rounder that can turn into a second-rounder next season if Wentz plays 70% of the snaps in Washington.
“I think it was really quite remarkable and a great tribute to Chris, to generate strong trade interest and get the deal done with Washington,” Irsay said. “I don’t lose the fact that it was a pretty big blessing from the football gods, where we were and where we could be if things don’t materialize to that level. You end up cutting Carson, and we’d get nothing.”
Irsay, Reich and Ballard refused to bury Wentz this week in West Palm Beach.
All three have said he might be able to reach the ceiling in Washington that he failed to reach in Indianapolis.
“For us, the fit just wasn’t right,” Irsay said. “I don’t know why. A lot of times you don’t know why, but you know it isn’t, and it was important for us to move in a different direction.”
Ultimately, the Colts decision to move on from Wentz paid off in the trade for Ryan, a proven commodity Reich praised this week for elite leadership, accuracy, remarkable consistency and a history of carrying teams in critical moments.
A lot of the traits Wentz wasn’t able to provide last season.
“Knowing you have that guy on Sunday, that no matter what, he’s going to have a chance to win, he’s gonna execute, that bleeds through to everybody,” Ballard said.
From the sounds of Irsay’s comments, the Colts ultimately decided Wentz wasn’t that kind of guy.
