Sam Ehlinger Gives The Colts A Chance At A Future

John Rich10/24/2022 11:00 PM

NEIGH!!!

First off Colts fans, I heard your feedback from my last Colts blog. Everyone loves the concept of shouting NEIGH every time the Colts do something good. I'm so glad everyone is on board.

Be on the lookout for NEIGH Shirts hitting the Barstool Store soon!

But in regards to our new quarterback, I'm not entirely sure how Colts fans feel about Sam Ehlinger. Billy Football clearly loves him. All I can tell you is that for someone like me, who loves the Colts from afar, this makes me more excited about the team than I was before.

I appreciated what the Colts were trying to do by grabbing these multiple-time Pro Bowl quarterbacks at the end of their career, to hopefully squeeze 1-2 more years out of them to make a legitimate Super Bowl run. For years now, the Colts have had a lot of good pieces on both sides of the ball. But truth be told, I don't think they ever quite had the talent to really win with a game manager like Philip Rivers, or with whatever the fuck they were trying to get out of Matt Ryan by having him throw the ball 50+ times per game.

I mean think about it, could you really picture Philip Rivers or Matt Ryan hoisting the Lombardi Trophy in a Colts uniform with Jim Irsay's big swollen red drunk face hovering over their shoulder? That was just never going to happen. Even with Philip Rivers when things were going well, that was just never where the season was going to end up. I can at least picture a world where Sam Ehlinger develops into something in a few years.

NOTE: I would prefer to not even address the Carson Wentz year. That was a dark time in Colts history that I will pretend never happened. I don't know what to make of it. I don't know why anyone thought I would want to watch Carson Wentz play quarterback for my team. I'm not even sure if I would have enjoyed watching the Colts win a Super Bowl with him. I just really don't like the guy, and I don't want him to have personal success. But I'm not going to hold it against the Colts for making me sit through that for an entire season. I'm just going to behave as if I was in a coma for the entirely of 2021, and I never had to know Carson Wentz as my team's starting quarterback.

Ok moving on...

I've been joking for weeks that the Colts this year are the same team they've always been. Obviously, that's a little tongue and cheek, but I do believe there is some truth to it. For several years now, the Colts have been a team with enough talent to compete with anyone on any given day. They've had a quarterback good enough to not lose us too many games, and it's resulted in 8-12 win seasons. Best case scenario, we win 1 playoff game then get worked by the Bills or the Chiefs.

But to me, Sam Ehlinger inspires hope. I don't know too much about the guy. The extent of my Sam Ehlinger knowledge is this.

- He played for an underwhelming Texas Longhorns team that never got over the hump, but he was still able to put up some pretty good numbers.

- He looked awesome in the pre-season this year, going 24-of-29 for 289 passing yards, 4 TD's, and no interceptions.

Those highlights are actually pretty convincing

- He has been through some very hard times. In 2013, his father died of a heart attack while competing in a triathlon in San Francisco. Soon after he was drafted, Sam Ehlinger's younger brother Jake (20), who was still playing football at the time, passed away suddenly. Both of those are unfathomable tragic losses that I can't even comprehend going through at such a young age. I don't have a point to make about that, but felt like I should mention it.

At least the Colts now are playing a quarterback who could potentially be a part of the future for more than a year or 2. Instead of just looking one season ahead with no clue what the next season will hold. So that's cool. This is going to seem like a terrible take now, but that's the reason I wanted the Colts to try and get someone like Baker Mayfield in the offseason. With a younger quarterback (as long as his name isn't Carson Wentz), I can at least talk myself into him being a long term solution. Which is exactly what I'm going to do with Sam Ehlinger. I think he deserves a shot as much as anyone. And if it doesn't workout, then that's fine. The Colts will probably just continue being an average football team, who at least gives me something to cheer for for the majority of each season.

NEIGH