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The Indianapolis Colts surprised the football world with the announcement that Sam Ehlinger will start in place of Matt Ryan in Week 8. Yes, Ryan is dealing with a shoulder injury and can’t play anyway, but Colts head coach Frank Reich made it clear that the team’s quarterback change would be happening regardless of Ryan’s injury.
Taking a step back, though, to look at the whole picture of what’s become a mess behind center for the Colts, benching Ryan isn’t all that surprising. It actually makes a lot of sense to a certain degree to several scouts and NFL insiders, including Heavy senior NFL reporter Matt Lombardo.
“Attempting to fast-track some sort of rebuild around Ryan, with a roster with limited playmakers on offense was always fool-hearted,” Lombardo wrote in a column arguing for an Indianapolis quarterback change before the switch was announced. “Continuing to play Ryan rather than evaluate Ehlinger feels like a franchise compounding its mistake, rather than keeping a trained eye on its future.”
There are plenty of other insiders who agree.
Matt Ryan is Done?
A very strong argument can be made that the biggest problems for the Colts offense is not at quarterback. But that doesn’t change the fact scouts still haven’t liked what they’ve seen from Ryan this season.
“I can say, after asking around, that there are scouts who think Matt Ryan’s arm is shot,” Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer wrote. “And it definitely looks like he has to work harder to get the ball where he wants it to go.
“That said, the Colts’ quarterback is fighting his tail off.”
That fight in Ryan won over the Colts locker room. It will be interesting to see how the players react to second-year signal caller Sam Ehlinger behind center in Week 8, but by all early accounts, the team has reacted positively to the change.
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport has reacted positively too.
“I have no unearthly idea of what Sam Ehlinger is,” Rapoport said on The Pat McAfee Show on October 24. “But there are a lot of really smart people who have been intrigued by him for a couple years.”
Rapoport added that “from a football standpoint,” the quarterback change makes sense.
Colts QB Change Not Entirely On-the-Field Related?
Indianapolis’ switch behind center is a lot more complicated than simply Ryan failing to live up to preseason expectations.
The Athletic’s Bob Kravitz and Zak Keefer support the quarterback change but only lukewarmly because of all the other issues for the Colts offense.
“It’s the right move, the only alternative in a long list of bad ones, but it makes Ballard and Reich look lost and even emasculated by the owner, who is pulling the quarterback strings for the most part,” wrote Kravitz.
Keefer argued while appearing on The Rich Eisen Show on October 25 that the Colts need a star quarterback to overcome the offensive problems the team is experiencing. Like Ryan has become, Ehlinger isn’t a star.
“They’re on their fifth different combination on the offensive line and we’re seven games in, which tells me, they don’t know what the heck they’re doing,” Keefer said. “They don’t have the answers, and the fact that they don’t have a star quarterback, and they don’t have a guy who is going to overcome that … it just spells disaster.”
This change also goes beyond what is going on between the sidelines.
Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio argued that Ryan’s benching is happening because of his contract.
“Put simply, once the team decided (and it was clear from coach Frank Reich’s comments that owner Jim Irsay made the decision) that Ryan won’t be the quarterback in 2023, it was time to pull the plug on 2022,” wrote Florio.
“Ryan’s contract already pays him $12 million in base salary next year, fully guaranteed. But millions more would become fully guaranteed if Ryan suffers an injury that keeps him from passing a physical by the third day of the 2023 league year in March, when the payments that are currently guaranteed for injury become fully guaranteed.”
In other words, the Colts — or as Kravitz and Florio stated, owner Jim Irsay — have already set their eyes on 2023.
Maybe all these insiders are right, and it’ll be a good thing the Colts don’t compound their mistake of trading for Ryan as Lombardo argued they shouldn’t do. But what Florio is implying is that the Colts are giving up on the 2022 season before Halloween despite having a .500 record.
Regardless of how one sees it, the Ehlinger era will officially begin on October 30 against the Washington Commanders.
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