It takes a while for a team to cash in on a trade with a team that jumped up into the top three of the NFL Draft to get their quarterback of the future. The Jets may not have had to wait long, grabbing Sam Darnold with the third pick of the draft on Day 1 Thursday night, but the Colts and their followers needed a lot more patience.
That clearly was fine with them. Their theme for this draft was going to be patience whether or not they made that deal with the Jets last month. Besides moving back to sixth overall and taking two second-round picks from the Jets this year, the Colts maneuvered their way into another second-rounder on Day 2, giving them four overall and five picks in the top 64.
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And in all, four of their five picks in the first two rounds were offensive or defensive linemen.
“You win up front," general manager Chris Ballard, working his second draft, told reporters Friday night.
In 2017, the Colts lost up front — as devastating as it was, obviously, to lose Andrew Luck for the entire season, they were manhandled on both lines all season. It was an indictment of the exodus of talent since their days as a contender just a few years earlier, as well as of the poor drafting and signings by Ballard’s predecessor, Ryan Grigson.
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Stockpiling interior linemen never comes off as sexy, but neither does putting the quarterback’s and running backs’ lives in danger: Indy allowed more sacks than any team in the NFL and was fifth-worst in rushing yards per carry. The same went for being almost invisible up front on defense (seventh-most rushing yards on the third-most carries, and the second-fewest sacks).
Ballard, speaking as bluntly as he did when his first choice as head coach, Josh McDaniels, reneged earlier this offseason, admitted, “I had some frustrating moments last year when I thought we didn’t match up physically.’’
So, a day after taking the consensus best offensive lineman available in guard Quenton Nelson, they went with outside linebacker Darius Leonard and another guard, Braden Smith, with consecutive picks early Friday. Smith was taken with one of the Jets’ former picks.
They then traded down from 49th overall with the Eagles (giving the on-site crowd in the Cowboys’ home stadium the moment of the night with former Eagles kicker David Akers taunting the locals) and picked up an extra fifth-rounder. At 52nd they took a promising pass rusher, Kemoko Turay from Rutgers.
Then they moved into the last spot in the second round, up from the third pick in the third round, to get another defensive end, Tyquan Lewis from Ohio State.
Passing on franchise quarterbacks, even when you already have one, carries plenty of risk. The Browns are still trying to get fair value from the 2016 draft deal that packaged Carson Wentz to the Eagles at No. 2; Cleveland traded one of the picks it received to the Texans a year later, and that pick turned into Deshaun Watson.
The Titans' haul from the Rams for the No. 1 pick that became Jared Goff turned into, among others, Jack Conklin and Derrick Henry. The jury is still out on the Bears’ move up last year to get Mitchell Trubisky.
The Colts’ picks, therefore, will be judged in part by what Darnold does with the Jets, but the Colts needed so much help in so many places in the trenches, their end of the deal will be under scrutiny even earlier.
