As we do another edition of Draft Rewind, we don’t have to go back very far. The year was 2012. It was the first draft conducted after the new Collective Bargaining Agreement kicked in and the cost of signing rookies went way down.
That had a double-edged benefit for teams. For the first time in years, teams could trade up to get players and the cost wasn’t so prohibitive that a team stuck with the first or second pick in the draft when it wanted to make a trade out.
The Indianapolis Colts had no interest in doing that since they allowed Peyton Manning to leave so they could clear the way for Andrew Luck to be the No.