Insider: Can the Colts afford to pass on Saquon Barkley?

INDIANAPOLIS – His uncle was a boxer, a champ in three weight classes. Dad fought, too, until he threw the wrong punch and wrecked his shoulder and realized he didn’t have the money he needed to fix it. The kid? He tried boxing, liked boxing, but even as a toddler, Saquon Barkley had his mind all made up.

He’d sit in front of the TV, eyes aglow, hooked by the game of football long before he ever strapped on a helmet. “I’m gonna play in the NFL one day,” he promised his dad.

He soon will.

Some 20 years later, Barkley is one of this draft’s most salivating talents, a sure-fire top-five choice even in this Era of the Quarterback, so fast, so smooth, so stunningly shifty that his game’s been compared to one of his favorite rushers ever: Barry Sanders. Barry Sanders! Believe it: The Penn State All-American is good enough to make life very difficult – or perhaps very easy – for the Indianapolis Colts, owners of the third overall pick in April’s draft, should he even fall that far.

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Simply put: You don’t get a chance to grab a playmaker like this very often. For the Colts, hardly ever.

There is even rising chatter that Barkley could become the first running back since 1995 to go first overall, though early indications are that the woeful Cleveland Browns are thinking quarterback, again, because two decades later they’ve still yet to find a stable starter. The New York Giants, owners of the second overall pick, figure to be very much in play for Barkley as well.

The Colts?

“Good player,” was about all General Manager Chris Ballard would reveal this week when asked directly about Barkley. “I mean, we’re all watching the same TV. The guy is a good player.”

Asked of his interest in Indianapolis, and lining up behind Andrew Luck in the backfield, Barkley had no reservations. Same with Cleveland. Same with New York.

“Another good fit,” he said of potentially landing with the Colts. “Any team that drafts me, I feel like I can adapt and fit. Andrew Luck is a great quarterback, obviously ... the success speaks for itself. Any team that wants to draft me, I want to be there.”

Believe it: Plenty of teams want to draft him.

“A once-in-a-lifetime talent,” gushed ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper, Jr. “Teams that pass on this young man will be sorry.”

“An every-down back,” added NFL.com draft guru Lance Zierlein, “with the ability to alter the course of an offense and become a face of the franchise-type player.”

“Transformational,” NFL Network draft expert Mike Mayock called him. “I talk about the last three or four running backs that went in the Top 10, which were (Leonard) Fournette, (Ezekiel) Elliott at four, (Todd) Gurley went at 10, (Christian) McCaffrey went at 8 ... they’ve all helped their teams become better. I could make the case that this kid Barkley is the best of those guys, the best of all five of them.”

With this Mayock makes a strong point: A back like Barkley can change the fortunes of a fledgling franchise in a hurry. While NFL teams have increasingly shied away from grabbing a running back in the Top 5 – it’s happened just 13 times in the last 20 years – when they do roll the dice, it virtually always pays off. Teams who have done so over that span have averaged four more wins the following season.

Just weigh the last two. Dallas grabbed Elliott fourth overall in 2016 and won nine more games the following season. Jacksonville took Fourtnette in the same spot last spring and won seven more last fall. Both teams went from sitting at home in January to hosting games in the playoffs. There are other factors at play, sure, but the arrival of a franchise running back was central to both teams' sudden revivals.

Indianapolis knows. Consider what a rookie rusher named Edgerrin James did back in 1999: Led the league with 1,533 rushing yards and helped the Colts flip a 3-13 record into a sizzling 13-3 campaign. That also happens to be the last time the Colts grabbed a running back in the Top 5.

The game has changed dramatically since. Offenses are airing it out like never before. Passing records are falling. And so is the value of a bellcow back. They're becoming rarer, and rarer and rarer.

Which is maybe what makes Barkley so enticing. In so many ways, he's part of a dying breed.

Probed this week if he feels third overall is too high to take a running back, Ballard quickly shook his head.

“I learned early that if you think a guy’s got a chance to be a difference-maker at any position, it doesn’t matter, you take him,” Ballard said, before repeating himself for added emphasis. “You take him.”

Such is the quandary the Colts will have to wrestle with over the coming months: How will they weigh Barkley’s enormous appeal with the glaring needs that are scattered across this roster?

Can they justify taking a running back that high, and pass on the sort of dominant sack-artist – see: Chubb, Bradley – their defense sorely craves?

Can they live with themselves in two, three years if they don’t take Barkley?

In reality, it’s a good position to be in. The Colts have options.

For 14 minutes Thursday afternoon, before the gaze of some-40 reporters, Barkley mixed moxie with modesty. He was confident but not quite cocky, well-spoken and well-prepared, at ease under the glare of the NFL microscope. That’s good. Because it’ll only intensify if he’s drafted as high as everyone expects he’ll be drafted.

He’ll be expected to produce from Day 1.

“Whether the ball’s on the 99-yard line or the 1-yard line, I can find a way to get into the end zone,” Barkley said. (Don’t believe him? Watch the film.) “I can do it all. I can go over the top of you, I can beat you with speed, I can beat you with some wiggle, I can run through you.”

Think the Colts don’t need some of that? Their running back room remains largely unsettled. Frank Gore, Hall of Fame presence, is on his way out, seeking one last run with a championship contender. There’s no definitive starter. Robert Turbin, Marlon Mack, Matt Jones and Josh Ferguson have all filled complimentary roles in their careers.

Do the Colts feel Mack – who flashed in limited action as a rookie last season – is ready to become The Guy? Or do the Colts feel comfortable enough adding a veteran back in free agency, or drafting one in the later rounds? The following months will reveal their answer.

If the Colts do indeed roll the dice on Barkley, it’s not something they do often. Just four times across their 33 years in Indianapolis have the Colts taken a rusher in the first round. They nailed three of them: Marshall Faulk (second overall in 1994), Edgerrin James (fourth overall in 1999) and Joseph Addai (30th overall in 2006).

Donald Brown (27th overall in 2009) was by no means a bust, but his five-year run in Indy failed to merit a first-round selection.

Their otherwise recent draft record when it comes to running backs is spotty at best. Josh Robinson (fifth round, 2015) lasted one season. Same for Kerwynn Williams (seventh round, 2013). Vick Ballard looked like a fifth-round steal in 2012 before a slew of injuries robbed him of his once-promising career. And, no, the Colts didn’t draft Trent Richardson, but they sent a first-round pick to Cleveland for him, then watched him flame out in a year and a half. The payoff never came.

Which is, in part, why the Colts find themselves in the position they’re in. Bad drafts led to bad rosters led to bad seasons. Guys like Saquon Barkley? They can change all that. And they can change all of that quickly.

“I don’t care if I’m drafted one, five, 72 or the last pick,” Barkley said. “I’m going to come in with my head low, ready to work, and that’s not going to change me. Every team that drafts me, you’re going to get the same person.”

Saquon Barkley, the toddler who predicted this some-20 years ago, doesn’t have to worry about falling that far. Talents like this don’t come around very often. And talents like this don't stay on the board for very long.

Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134 and follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.