The Colts announced that they signed the embattled quarterback yesterday after he had tried out earlier in the month. But why did they sign him at all?
Quarterback is a position that is the most important on the field. If you have a bad quarterback, your team won’t go very far. Or if you do have a good quarterback and he gets hurt you there’s no depth behind him, you won’t go very far either.
Depth might be the only way to explain the signing of Chad Kelly by the Colts. The nephew of star Jim Kelly is now on his second NFL team. He had previously been with Denver after being taken with the last pick in the 2017 draft. But why did the Colts even waste their time with this?
Kelly has had numerous off the field problems. He was dismissed from Clemson in 2014 after arguing with coaches in the spring game. Later that year, he was arrested for fighting bouncers in a night club, although he entered a diversion program and the charges were dropped.
Kelly also tried to go out onto the field and fight people during his brother’s high school football game in 2016. What kind of person wants to jump on the field and fight high school kids? Is that really the kind of person the Colts want playing for them?
But his legal troubles didn’t stop there. He was also arrested for criminal trespassing in October of 2018 that led to him being cut by Denver. So why would the Colts even waste their time with this signing? They still have Jacoby Brissett as a fantastic backup to Andrew Luck if he ever got hurt again.
Maybe this signing is to boost the competitiveness of Philip Walker, who is the third string QB who has been on the practice squad for the last few years. I can’t think of any other reason why Kelly was picked up. His talent doesn’t outweigh his problems even a little bit.
It would be surprising to me if Kelly made it out of training camp with the team. He is most likely not a part of this team’s future.