1. Indianapolis Colts
Schematically, this makes the most sense of all. In 2018, first-year head coach Frank Reich helped Andrew Luck to a Comeback Player of the Year season with a quick passing game in which Luck led the league in touchdown passes thrown with 2.5 seconds or less in the pocket with 26. Luck’s 2019 retirement left the Colts in the lurch, and Reich had to do the most he could with Jacoby Brissett, who once backed up Brady in New England. Brady has excelled in a quick passing game for years, so no worries there. Reich is absolutely brilliant when it’s time to scheme up route concepts with multiple tight ends; Luck had 15 passing touchdowns with two or more tight ends on the field in 2018, and Brissett had eight in 2019. Brady’s obviously familiar with that idea from the Gronkowski/Hernandez days.
There’s an underrated receiver corps in T.Y. Hilton, Parris Campbell, and Marcus Johnson, and backs in Marlon Mack and Nyheim Hines who can catch the ball. Add in a tremendous offensive line, and an interesting defense led by rising star Matt Eberflus, and the idea of Brady with the Colts starts to resonate in fascinating ways.
Raiders | Bears | Buccaneers | Chargers | Colts
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”