Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay would like to sign quarterback Andrew Luck to a contract extension before next season and thinks there’s a strong possibility that it could happen.
“Whether it’s going to be the highest and all those sort of thing we’ll see how that goes,” Irsay said Tuesday. ” … I see Andrew here, God willing, for a really long time and this won’t be his last contract. With him at 26 years old, it’s going to be ringing the bell in terms of nine figures and that sort of thing.”
Last spring, the Colts picked up Luck’s fifth-year option from his rookie contract for $16.1 million in 2016. A new contract, whenever it happens, will make Luck one of the highest-paid players in the NFL.
If the team is unable to strike a deal, it could use a franchise tag on Luck for 2017 and pay him an average of the top five quarterbacks in the league.
Luck, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2012 NFL Draft, missed much of the 2015 season with injuries. He played in only seven games and had 15 touchdown passes and 13 interceptions in his worst year in the league. Irsay said Luck is healed now and could have played in the Super Bowl if the Colts were in it.
“Obviously, being this early, there’s no reason to think that we would have had major negotiations yet, but that’s going to be happening as this month gets later and March comes in and all that sort of thing,” Irsay said. “I think there’s a good chance we’ll get something done.”
Irsay hopes to make Luck’s new deal salary-cap friendly in order to help the Colts put more talent around him.
“To me, it’s not a matter of what the number is going to be, but again, making sure that we have room to surround him with a championship football team and that it’s as cap friendly as it can be as we go through the end of this decade from 2016 to 2020,” Irsay said. “You want to make it cap friendly and you want to have the ability to possibly alter it as time goes on to help the cap in different things like that.”
