I had two reactions when word spread earlier this week that Indianapolis Colts President Bill Polian spent a good chunk of the Stanford season opener scouting quarterback Andrew Luck.

My first thought was good luck getting Luck. There are more than a half-dozen teams worse off than Indy is this year. Despite getting manhandled by Houston in the opener, the Peyton Manning-less Colts still have Reggie Wayne, Dallas Clark, Austin Collie, Pierre Garcon, Joseph Addai and enough other weapons to complement an aging-but-still-solid Kerry Collins that there is no way Indianapolis will fall off the map enough to be in position to draft Stanford’s signal caller.

My second thought was what took so long?I know Manning just signed a $90 million contract that tied him to the Colts for another five years. But he also turned 35 this year and, while he has been incredibly durable during his career, Manning has not been devoid of health issues even before this year’s neck issue arose.

This is the second year in a row Manning has had surgery to deal with neck issues, the first coming in the summer of 2010 to relieve a pinched nerve issue that had plagued him for years. So I would argue after the first set of neck issues came up, the team should have been far better prepared for dealing with potential health problems at the quarterback position than they were when they had to panic and grab Kerry Collins out of retirement to try and salvage this season.

Sports Illustrated ran a web story recently looking at the collection of quarterbacks that have ridden the pine behind Manning over the years. They range from the decent-but-over-the-hill types like Mark Rypien, who worked with Peyton during the future Hall of Famer’s developmental years to the we-probably-will-never-know-just-how-bad-they-were guys like Jim Sorgi and Cory Sauter, who collected paychecks and future pensions for holding clipboards and taking the occasional snap in practice while Manning jogged to the water station.

This year’s training camp mess was being headed up by Curtis Painter and Dan Orlovsky before Collins arrived.

I would argue the lack of depth at quarterback was short-sighted but understandable in Manning’s early days. Given his consecutive start streak you don’t need to invest a ton in backing up a guy who is virtually irreplaceable if he does go down anyway.

I would argue, however, that Polian’s scouting efforts on the top college-level quarterbacks now is coming at least a couple years too late. Look at how valuable Matt Cassel was to New England in 2008 when Tom Brady tore up his knee in the season opener. He was no superstar, but he threw for 3,693 yards and 21 touchdowns and he kept the Patriots relevant when nobody figured they could overcome the loss of their own future Hall of Famer.

The Cassel argument also brings me to another point where I think the Colts have lost an opportunity over the years. I’m a believer that teams should take at least one quarterback at some point in the NFL draft almost every year, if not every year.

That’s not to say they have to do it early. Obviously the Colts have been Super Bowl competitors for the bulk of the last decade and it is understandable that they would spend their top picks on filling needs at other positions.

But drafting and developing good, solid backup quarterbacks is a way to continually replenish your team via trades for draft picks and/or players. Let’s look back at that 2008 Patriots season. Cassel was a seventh round pick in 2005 after riding the pine at Southern California his entire college career. Prior to 2008 he got garbage time action in 14 games for the Patriots over three seasons. But when he was called on due to injury, he answered the bell and put up solid numbers. Then, when Brady recovered, New England was then able to trade him to Kansas City for a second round pick in 2009.

The beauty of this draft-them-late-and-see-what-happens strategy is there are multiple ways it can work out. The Brady injury allowed New England to showcase and trade Cassel. But the Patriots utilized this draft-and-trade equation the other way in 2002 when they realized what they had in Brady – whom they had taken out of Michigan with a sixth round pick in 2000.

When Drew Bledsoe was injured in 2001, they installed Brady as the starter. He played so well the Patriots decided to keep him and instead traded the aging Bledsoe to Buffalo for a first round pick — all because they took a late-round flyer on a guy who was only a part-time starter for the Wolverines in college.

Bill Belichick has done a masterful job in recent years of stockpiling draft picks and using them to keep reshuffling the decks in New England, adding a third round quarterback this year in Ryan Mallett that many draft experts say is the most NFL ready signal caller of this year’s rookie crop.

But Belichick is not alone. Countless teams have used the backup quarterback position to fortify their stock of draft picks in recent years. Atlanta turned the third round pick it used in 2004 to select Matt Schaub into two second round picks and a swap of first round selections when trading Michael Vick’s then-backup to Houston.

Philadelphia got a second round pick and Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie in return for the second round pick it spent on Kevin Kolb in 2007.

The Green Bay Packers were particularly good at this during the middle years of the Brett Favre era. They turned a sixth rounder in 1998 into Matt Hasselbeck, used him for four seasons, and then traded him to Seattle along with a seventh round pick for a third rounder and the right to move up seven spots in the first round in 2001.

Six years earlier the Packers had done the same thing with Mark Brunell, shipping him to Jacksonville for third and fifth round picks after drafting him in the fifth round in 1993. The defending Super Bowl champs are sitting on another guy right now in Matt Flynn – a seventh round pick in 2008 – who could be seen as a trading block chip in the near future.
Really good quarterbacks are a scarce commodity. They don’t have to be drafted early, but you can never have too many of them. But the Colts, year after year, have failed at developing anyone of note behind Manning.

That has left them devoid of that extra potential trading chip that could have helped land other players at positions where the team has needed improvement (perhaps a run stopping defensive tackle?). It also has put the Colts in the position they are in this year, with their $90 million franchise quarterback on the shelf and the team seemingly suddenly realizing it needs to start looking to find Manning’s future replacement.

Bill Polian’s tenure with the Colts has been far more successful than not and he did bring the team a Super Bowl championship, but this one shortcoming can arguably be blamed for keeping the team from being even more successful during the 13 previous seasons Manning has been on the roster.

And it sure put the team in a bind this season.