No, that’s not the only way to look at it. If you put blinders on and force yourself to look down that tunnel then that’s all on you but there’s plenty of reasons to make that deal with him.

Having your now-starting QB going into his last year of his deal is a super bad situation for a team. You absolutely don’t want that happening. If Ballard was going to sign him to any kind of contract, that’s the kind of money you’re going to have to dole out for a starting QB, even unproven. He was given $20M guaranteed/$30M total over two years. Marcus Mariota is getting nearly $25M next year so I feel really good about Brissett getting $15M.

On top of that, this is Ballard’s way of showing Brissett that he trusts him and sees him as a valuable member of the organization. This is basically an investment into him. If Brissett balls out this year and he’s our franchise QB, then it’s possible he signs a long term deal that’s team friendly and doesn’t even test the open market because he knows Ballard trusted him when he didn’t have to and put his money where his mouth is. If he fails and it’s not going to work out, then he’s traded or cut and we eat that money. Thankfully we have a ton of cap space and the next step is grabbing a rookie QB in the draft which will only be like $4M cap hit per year for the contract.

You can’t think of Ballard and Irsay spending money in the traditional sense of how you spend your money. Football has caps and minimum spending requirements. The Colts are very close to the minimum requirements right now and Luck bailing out might’ve pushed them beyond that limit (not 100% sure on that one but we know it’s close).