AP

Colts owner Jim Irsay thinks he hit a home run when he hired Chris Ballard as the team’s new General Manager.

Irsay said today that he believes Ballard is the single best candidate for a G.M. job who has been hired by any NFL team this century.

“I was thinking about this and I think I can say it with some expertise and some wisdom is that I really feel, to me, Chris is the best candidate for General Manager that has come about so far in the 21st century,” Irsay said. “That’s how impressed we were with him. His energy, his experience, his vision.”

Irsay had better be right in his assessment of Ballard. After getting it wrong in 2012 when he hired Ryan Grigson for the top job in the Colts’ front office, Irsay has to have the right guy in place, or else he risks wasting the prime years of Andrew Luck with a franchise that can’t put a winning team around him.