The Colts are Paying Jacoby Brissett and Brian Hoyer Almost as Much as Tom Brady and it's the Most Colts Thing Ever

Let’s be clear about a couple of things. I like Jacoby Brissett and Brian Hoyer. And I like it when people I like get rich from somebody else’s money. Life is not a zero sum game where every dollar you make is one less dollar available for me to make. That way of thinking is Bolshevik bullshit that made life miserable for half the world over the last century. Any time someone cashes in huge with money that isn’t mine, all of us should rejoice.

That said, these signings are the most Colts thing the Colts have done since they celebrated their own above averageness the world’s most famous Participation Banner.

Jacoby Brissett and Brian Hoyer are good, loyal soldiers who came to New England and did everything asked of them. Brissett will always have ownership of that 27-0 win over Houston when Tom Brady was in the Deflategate Time Out Chair and Jimmy Garoppolo was hurt. As well as his gutty performance the following week when Jimmy G couldn’t go and he was so hurt he needed surgery on his hand right after the game. Hoyer will always get credit for his work behind the scenes running the scout team prepping for Super Bowl LIII.

But even if you believe in the multiverse model of the cosmos, there is no reality in which Brissett and Hoyer are anything but marginal NFL quarterbacks. Servicable, but career back ups at best. The kind of guy you plug in there when your franchise QB gives his two weeks notice and you don’t have another plan so you tank so hard and get the best man standing among Tua Tagovailoa, Justin Herbert or Jake Fromm.

Unless you’re the Colts, apparently. If you’re Chris Ballard, you panic. Or you try to placate your pill-addled boss by convincing him Brissett and Hoyer are worth a combined $42 million with $29 million guaranteed. I’m not going to get into their cap hits and how their deals are structured because I can’t have it on my conscience when you swallow your tongue from boredom. So let’s just take the money and divide by the years and say that this year, the position is costing Indy $19 million in Irsaybucks. By way of comparison, Brady is making about $21.5 million. That is so utterly ridiculous as to defy explanation. It’s the kind of purchase government agencies make at the end of the fiscal year because if they have money left over, their budget gets cut. So they buy all new office furniture they don’t need and throw out the perfectly good stuff.

But let’s call this what it is: The Patriots Premium. It’s a downtrodden franchise not knowing how to build a winner so they pay whatever it takes to get somebody who’s won in New England. Whether or not they contributed much to those wins is irrelevant. They’ve just been around success and in a locker room that knows what it takes to be a champion and that, in an of itself, has a dollar value. A huge one. Even if, like in the cases of Brissett and Hoyer, the players have zero leverage. Hoyer made just over $900,000 last year to sit in meetings with Brady and watch him play on a Microsoft tablet on the sidelines. He’s getting 10 times that just in guaranteed money to do the same in Indy, like the scent of Brady’s GOAT smell in Hoyer’s skin will fill the air of Lucas Oil and magically turn the Colts into winners.

They couldn’t get Josh McDaniels, so these are their Plans B and C, I guess. So the real winners are Brissett and Hoyer. But also anyone who’s ever been his back up, stood in line behind him at Starbucks. golfed in the foursome behind him or rode behind him in the Best Buddies bike ride. Because a lucrative job in the NFL awaits you. And to Jarrett Stidham? Hang in there, fella. In a couple of years you are about to become a very rich man.