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GREGG DOYEL

Doyel: 'Best player available' wrong move for Colts

Gregg Doyel
gregg.doyel@indystar.com
Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Phillip Dorsett (15) is upended on a play that caused his first half injury, New Orleans Saints at Indianapolis Colts, Indianapolis, Sunday, Oct. 25, 2015. New Orleans won 27-21 to drive Indianapolis' record to 3-4 on the year.

With their first pick in the 2016 NFL draft, the Indianapolis Colts take … the best player available. Regardless of his position. Regardless of whether the Colts need him this season. They have a draft board, and they spent countless hours ranking hundreds of prospects, and they will honor that process by taking the best player available in Round 1, Round 2, Round 3 and so on.

And it’s not the right thing to do. Not for this franchise. Not for this moment.

The Colts aren’t starting over, you know? They’re not rebuilding. They just need some work, like a car needing new struts, windshield wipers and brake lights to be ready for the road.

You don’t buy a new carburetor if it doesn’t need a carburetor. Even if it’s the best carburetor available, and you might need one some day. You don’t need a carburetor now!

With the 29th pick in the 2015 NFL draft, the Indianapolis Colts select … Phillip Dorsett, carburetor, University of Miami.

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Time will tell if the sensationally fast Dorsett was worthy of a first-round pick, but hindsight shows now – as many of us suspected then – that Dorsett was the wrong pick at the wrong time. With T.Y. Hilton and Donte Moncrief returning, tight ends Dwayne Allen and Coby Fleener back and $10 million in guarantees already invested in free agent Andre Johnson, the Colts needed more receivers like I need more bald.

But Dorsett was the best player available on the Colts’ draft board, and that’s how General Manager Ryan Grigson does things. Grigson explained his philosophy to the media last week, volunteering at one point, “We still want the most talented player that we can acquire at each pick.”

Later he was asked a pointed question about the Colts’ pick in the first round, No. 18 overall: Will you take the best player available on the board, or will you look at need?

Grigson gave a heartfelt and enlightening 181-word answer where he said the Colts will take the best player available in large part because scouts and coaches spend so much time analyzing prospects and ranking them.

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To ignore the draft board to fill a need, Grigson said, “is weak … and defies the whole process. I think it breaks the trust and the morale of your scouts and all the guys that spent all that time stacking your board with you, and all the coaches that went and worked the guys out and went through this exhaustive process.”

In other words, the Colts’ pick at No. 18 won’t necessarily meet a team need. But it will meet the scouting department’s need.

It’s backward, right? And before we go further, let me say this with a promise to expand on it in the future: Ryan Grigson is not the problem with the Colts. Not really sure the Colts have a problem, not given their 33-15 record from 2012-14 and even their 8-8 record in 2015 when they lost quarterback Andrew Luck and then his backup, Matt Hasselbeck, to injury. The narrative a year ago was brutal, and I was among those writing it, but hindsight helps. Time and distance can change your perspective. That column is coming.

But this column, this one cannot make sense of picking the best player available when the Colts are so clearly in need on the offensive line. And while the Colts will no doubt pick a lineman or two, what they shouldn’t do is kick that particular can into the middle or deeper rounds because the best offensive lineman available earlier isn’t the best prospect left on their board.

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Let’s use the car analogy again – let’s pretend the bald analogy never happened – and note: The Colts have one of the best drivers in the NFL in Andrew Luck, but they need airbags and a better seat belt to protect him.

So get airbags and a better seat belt. Don’t get a seat cover, even if it is the best seat cover available.

The Colts are close, OK? This is not the 2012 draft, when Grigson and Chuck Pagano were starting over from the rubble of 2-14, when taking the best player available made sense because the Colts were taking the long view.

Last season the Colts were 8-8 despite a catastrophic breakdown, twice, at quarterback. They were in the AFC title game the year before, and the core of that team remains. This is not a franchise in disarray, I’m saying.

This is a franchise with specific needs, and not just on the offensive line, where the Colts could use one or two new starters. They need work on defense: another pass rusher, more help on the line, another cornerback.

What Grigson did in 2012 worked. He took the best player available, even when that meant grabbing a tight end in the second round (Fleener) and then grabbing another tight end in the third round (Allen). It looked weird, but it worked. First impressions are indelible, and Grigson knows what he knows.

But here’s something else he knows: The draft, even his own draft board, is a crapshoot. Take last season: Just because the Colts had Mississippi State running back Josh Robinson and Georgia linebacker Amarlo Herrera ahead of Mars Hill tackle Denzelle Good, that didn’t mean their draft board was right. Robinson is no longer on the team. Herrera is, but he has been waived twice.

Denzelle Good? The Colts think he’s a future starter – perhaps this season – at guard or tackle.

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The Colts were right about Good – 31 teams passed on him for 6½ rounds – but they were wrong about the order in which they took him. Their draft board was fallible. Every team’s draft board is. Here’s what Grigson said about that:

“People don’t like to say it,” he said, “but there is some guessing going on in this thing – some hypothetical evaluation and imagination.”

That’s so honest. And it’s so true. When it’s time for the Colts to make their first pick on Thursday, their draft board might be right when it projects the best available player. But it might not. As Grigson said, there’s some guessing going on.

The Colts’ needs? No guessing needed.

Address them immediately.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at@GreggDoyelStar or atwww.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.

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