Yahoo News : How Kyle Orton almost cost the Colts Andrew Luck (Sh

There's no question that former Indianapolis Colts personnel maven Bill Polian is one of the most respected talent evaluators of this era, but a half-decade of bad drafts put the Colts in a bad place when Peyton Manning couldn't play at all in the 2011 season. Polian was asked to move along after that season, but as he told SI.com's Peter King for King's MMQB article today, he almost made a curious move after the Colts were left with Curtis Painter and Dan Orlovsky as the season progressed. Now that the trade deadline has been moved from Week 6 to Week 8, Polian remembered how Kyle Orton almost became a Colt. "We would have rekindled our interest in Orton," Polian said. "In Week 6, we knew our quarterback situation wasn't great, but after a couple more weeks, we realized the situation was bad. We probably would have called Denver, who'd gone to [Tim] Tebow by then, and said, 'Hey, we'll give you a three [a third-round draft choice] for Orton.' '' And with all due respect, that's why Polian had to go. In acquiring Orton for a couple of spackle wins down the stretch and blowing a third-round pick in the process, Polian would have been doing little more than attempting to hide the fact that his own personnel decisions led to the Colts' demise far more than Manning's injury did. The classic example is the 2008 New England Patriots without Tom Brady -- they went 11-5 after Brady was lost for the season to a knee injury in the first quarter of the opening game because Bill Belichick had built enough of a team to survive the loss of their future Hall of Fame signal-caller.

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