Another Win May Cost Colts No. 1 Pick in Draft and a Shot at Testaverde

Such is life with the Indianapolis Colts. After 13 straight defeats this season, with last place seemingly corralled and with it the No. 1 pick in the 1987 National Football League draft--the chance to select Heisman Trophy winner Vinny Testaverde--the Colts won a game and put themselves in position to lose last place--and Testaverde.

But if the Colts do end up with the No. 1 pick, their choice will be Testaverde, according to General Manager Jimmy Irsay. “I just can’t imagine anyone having the first pick and not taking Testaverde,” Irsay said in an interview at the Colts’ offices. “It would defy logic. So I guess that answers your question.”

Emphatically, Irsay said the Colts simply will not entertain offers for the No. 1 pick if they get it. “No way,” he said. “I just don’t think you trade great football players. History probably shows it’s better to try to sign them.

“He would be great for this town and great for the team. Offensively, we’ve been struggling and certainly he’d be one of the best ingredients to help us get back on track.”

During a season of injuries and frustration and seemingly no end to defeat, Testaverde has loomed prominently on the Colts’ horizon. Now, the Colts are on such an emotional high after beating Atlanta Sunday on a blocked punt that they think they can beat Buffalo at home this week. A Colts’ victory and Tampa Bay loss would leave those two teams with 2-13 records. If they end the season tied, the team whose opponents had the poorest record would draft first. After 14 games, Tampa Bay’s opponents are 98-95-3 for .508. Colts’ opponents are 105-89-2 for .536.

Ironically, the man who can lead the Colts out of the Testaverde sweepstakes and secure his own future at the same time is Gary Hogeboom, who returned to quarterback last week after missing 11 games with a separated shoulder. He delivered a strong second half, in which he threw two touchdown passes. “He’s a natural leader,” said Colts’ linebacker Duane Bickett. “Offensively, I think he can spark these guys.”

Ron Meyer, veteran of one week as coach of the Colts, agrees, after watching Hogeboom against Atlanta. But it would be hard believing that Meyer, Robert Irsay’s 10th head coach in his 14 1/2 years as Colts’ owner, still wouldn’t want Testaverde. For now, it might be said that Meyer is behind Hogeboom 100%.

“Gary was just fantastic,” Meyer said. “This is going to be fun, working with him. I really mean it. You haven’t seen anything yet. Just wait ‘til he gets cranked up and going. He has such a command and such a presence . . . . He’s a pro.

“He’s going to be so much better this week than he was last week. And I was elated with his play. He’s just going to get better.”

So what about Testaverde, Meyer was asked?

After a long pause he ran a coach’s end run.

“Vinny Testaverde is a great, great football player,” Meyer said. “From what I’ve seen, Vinny Testaverde can play. There’s no question about that. How quickly, time will tell. I know one thing, I’ve got a commitment to this team here, and I like the three quarterbacks (Hogeboom, Jack Trudeau and Blair Kiel) and what I’ve seen of them so far.

“I’m saying, let’s go out and win the three games, now down to two, and if that enables us to take another player other than Vinny Testaverde then that solves itself.”

Perhaps like a shot in the foot.

But if you have to win, you have to win. As Jimmy Irsay said later, “You have to win everything you can in this business. If it’s a scrimmage, or whatever you’re competing with in this business, you have to win it. I don’t think you can dwell too much on that draft pick because obviously you want to win every game.”

Irsay indicated that the Colts will sign Testaverde if they get the chance, unlike 1983 when Jimmy’s father Robert Irsay traded the No. 1 pick in the draft, John Elway, when Elway said he wouldn’t play for the team. (For an additional swirl of Colts’ controversy, Robert Irsay this week is the subject of a sometimes unflattering Sports Illustrated profile in which Irsay’s 84-year-old mother calls him “a devil on earth.”)

“I think every situation’s different,” Jimmy Irsay said. “I think it’s a great opportunity for any player to come to Indianapolis. The fans are outstanding. The (Hoosier) Dome is probably one of the best stadiums in the country. We have one of the best (practice) facilities in the country. So I think it’s a positive place to come, and it’s a different situation than it was when we were in Baltimore.”

The constant is defeat. But one victory has lightened the Colts’ mood. “It was just getting a weight off our backs,” Bickett said. “We’ve got that 0-16 monkey off our backs. We just kept sinking, just kept getting lower and lower with each loss.

“Now we can just go out and play instead of wondering: ‘Are we going to be the worst team in the history of the NFL?’ ”

More than Bickett, fellow linebacker Barry Krauss, out with a serious knee injury, has seen even more troubled times with the Colts. Krauss is one of the last Colts to have played in Baltimore, but too young to have been on any of their glory teams. This is the eighth losing season he’s been through--five in Baltimore, three here. “This is my sixth coach,” he said of Meyer. “If he fires the staff, it’ll be my sixth defensive system.”

Krauss bought a house in Baltimore one month before the infamous moving vans left Colts’ headquarters bound for Indianapolis in the dead of night.

Yet all Krauss wants to do is get his leg rehabilitated so he can play again.

“I just want to win,” he said, in the locker room of the huge, modern facility on the outskirts of the city. “God, I’ve been through the hard times with this team. I want to be part of it when we win. The crying, the sweating. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel. I see a light.”

It could be Testaverde. Or, considering the Colts’ fortunes of recent years, it could be no light at all.