These three Colts players will not be back when the 2021 season kicks off.
The Indianapolis Colts gave a playoff run their best efforts in 2020-21, but at the end of the day, they ran into two inscrutable opponents in Orchard Park: Josh Allen, and themselves.
Indy shot themselves in the foot with play calling, execution, quarterback play, and doinks, and when the dust settled, the Colts’ campaign had ended sooner than anybody wanted it to.
Heck, we didn’t want to be writing up this article today. But here we are, to let you all know that some Colts stalwarts saw their Indy careers come to an end Saturday when the final Philip Rivers Hail, um, Mary hit the turf.
Though Indianapolis has a metric ton of cap space to work with this offseason, that doesn’t help these players, who’ve become redundant, priced themselves out of town, or simply never grasped the starting reins that were thrust upon them.
With plenty of decisions to be made this offseason (Who starts at QB? Seriously, tell us.), these three players will likely be casualties of a much larger process.
3. Jacoby Brissett
The Colts’ backup QB will need to seek employment elsewhere.
After the 2019 season, it was largely accepted that Jacoby Brissett was going to earn a Teddy Bridgewater-like contract somewhere, but it wouldn’t be in Indianapolis, a city that maintained higher expectations for its QB play.
But after ’20, when Brissett was used mostly as a sneak attack specialist on fourth down, he’s probably still looking at backup money entering 2021.
Indianapolis has every intention of using Jacob Eason as their primary backup for, well, whoever ends up under center next season, and paying Brissett money just to make your potential quarterback of the future entirely redundant in Year 2 isn’t the best allocation of resources. It doesn’t much matter how much cash Brissett is slated for; it’s not a prudent use of funds, with necessary upgrades in the defensive backfield and wide receiving corps top of mind, not to mention the money that must be saved (maybe!) for a monster quarterback acquisition.
Whether it’s Philip Rivers (again), Dak Prescott, Carson Wentz, Matt Ryan or Trey Lance as next year’s QB1, it probably won’t be Brissett holding the notepad at Lucas Oil.