Opinion: New Colts OL Eric Fisher was playing great before injury. Will he be healthy enough to protect Carson Wentz?
This is what new Indianapolis Colts left tackle Eric Fisher was wearing for his introduction Thursday morning with local media: gray T-shirt and ballcap. That right there tells you what we’re dealing with here, as if there were any doubt. He’s an offensive lineman, after all. He’ll bring the meat and potatoes. Someone else can handle the spice.
This is what the Colts’ new left tackle did when asked how well he was playing last season with the Kansas City Chiefs before suffering a torn Achilles’ tendon in the AFC Championship game: He paused. Didn’t want to go where the question was trying to lead him, because it was a loaded question seeking the obvious answer.
Eric Fisher was named to the Pro Bowl in 2020. Clearly he was playing great, compared even to the best left tackles in the league. Fisher wasn’t going to compare himself to them, though. Only to himself.
“I’m not going to critique myself,” he said after the pause, “but I thought I was playing at one of the highest levels I’ve played at. One of the things that drove me nuts about the injury was where I was at in my career. Injuries, you can’t control. They’re part of the game, something that happens. It was a pretty big bummer to be 1,000-plus snaps deep on the season, and for that to happen when we were so close to the (Lombardi) Trophy. It is what it is. It’s what happens. It’s life.”
This is what we came to discuss, clearly: His Achilles’ injury. His future – and with it, that of the Colts.
The Colts needed a left tackle after the retirement of Anthony Castonzo, and this is not the kind of position you open to competition. The starting left tackle is like the starting quarterback – there’s one guy, and that’s it – and he’s almost as important. Needing a left tackle, the Colts let the better part of free agency come and go without addressing it. They let the 2021 NFL draft, said to be the deepest draft in years at offensive line, come and go without addressing it. They even said their only two viable in-house candidates, left guard Quenton Nelson and right tackle Braden Smith, weren’t going to switch positions.
And then they said Sam Tevi might just be the guy at left tackle.
That was our clue, right there, that Colts general manager Chris Ballard had something up his sleeve. Sam Tevi may well be the answer to a lot of questions. Here’s one: Who’d better not play any in 2021? – but he wasn’t the answer to the Colts’ vacancy at left tackle. That was never going to happen.
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So we should have known Ballard had someone mind.
But this particular someone comes with baggage, and not the normal kind. There are no character issues with Eric Fisher. If you’d been on this Zoom video call with him Thursday, seeing him in that gray T-shirt and ballcap, watching him pause when he was given a free pass to brag about himself, you’d like the guy. A lot.
But can he play this season? Can he play well? The Colts are tying the health of their quarterback, the brutally brittle Carson Wentz, to a left tackle coming off a devastating Achilles’ tear in January. It is, as Eric Fisher says, what it is.
And it sounds crazy.
The second half of his career
But Fisher makes it sound sane. He doesn’t talk just about returning for the 2021 season. He talks about helping lead this team deep into the playoffs. And he doesn’t talk only about the 2021 season, which he’s playing on a one-year contract at age 30, as the end of something. He makes it sound like this is only the beginning.
“The second half of my career,” he kept saying, referring to his first eight seasons with the Chiefs followed by whatever comes next.
This is what he said when asked the question he enjoyed the most, about what it’s like to spend so many years in one place and then, essentially, to start over.
“The second half of my career, there’s a lot of questions, especially coming off injury. As soon as I got the call (from the Colts), it was an automatic reset. I feel like I have a lot of years left in me. I was just thinking about that this morning, driving home from rehab. It’s going to be an awesome reset for myself. Finish the second half of my career here. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Excited to have that reset.”
Finish the second half of my career here…
He makes it sound so plausible, so obvious, sitting there in his gray T-shirt and ballcap. He spent eight seasons in Kansas City, and he’ll spend close to that many here. Considering he has made the Pro Bowl twice in his career, and both selections came in the past three seasons – 2018 and ’20 – he’s getting better with age.
And the Achilles’? That’s a detail. A large detail, granted, and one he’s not going to discuss in much detail. But it’s a detail.
“I’m a big control-what-you-can-control kind of guy,” Fisher said to the first question, about his Achilles’ and when he expects to play this season. “Obviously I’d like to snap my fingers and have a perfect Achilles’. That’s not the case. It feels good where I’m at, and I feel good. Any other questions, I’ll leave up to Coach (Frank Reich).”
Everyone around here is champing at the bit to see him play. Maybe a bit nervous, too. Fisher’s on the wrong side of 30 and coming off a horrible injury less than two years after he missed half of the 2019 season with core muscle issues. He’s old and falling apart.
Or he’s just 30, and just getting started.
The second half of his career starts in Indianapolis. He’s already saying he plans to finish it here. This is what you wanted to see from Eric Fisher, on his first appearance locally. This is what you wanted to hear. Now we wait. It is what it is. It happens. It’s life.
Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel.