INDIANAPOLIS – Jim Irsay calls the number "shocking."
It's a figure that will inevitably turn heads around the NFL once the ink dries.
Andrew Luck's pending contract is on the horizon and Irsay knows many NFL-ers will be analyzing it.
"Andrew is going to be here," Irsay told WISH-TV last week. "I don't know when that might be, but it's just a matter of time before we talk about this new contract and agreed to.
"It's going to be a big number. It's going to be a shocking number, nine figures and probably a 20 (million) starting point per year, but again we will find the right number to get to."
Talks with the Colts and Luck's representatives will likely start to build in the coming months.
Currently, Luck is playing on the final year of his rookie contract. The Colts picked up the fifth-year option for Luck's rookie deal last offseason.
With 2016 free agency beginning a month from today, the Colts are in full preparation for handling Luck's growing cap number
"The question again remains how can you build that roster around him," Irsay says.
"You see franchise quarterbacks through the years, be unselfish and make sure they realize if I eat up 'X' amount of this cap, how are we going to put together a championship football team?"
Luck is the clear-cut first step to building such a team.
When Irsay talked in early January, the Colts Owner felt Luck could have played in the postseason, had the Colts made the playoffs.
That belief still holds true.
"(Luck's) health is really good," Irsay now says.
"The results and testing that we've done in terms of the injury to his kidney and that sort of thing has healed completely. That's great news."
Over the next few months, Luck's representation (his uncle Will Wilson) and the Colts will begin talks to keep the franchise quarterback in Indy for years to come.
For Luck, it will be about being prepared to take the field when the offseason program kicks off later this spring, with the business side of things taking shape behind closed doors.
"To me, it's not a matter of what the number is going to be, but again, making sure that we have room to surround him with a championship football team and that it's as cap friendly as it can be, as we go through the end of this decade from 2016 to 2020," Irsay told CBS-4.
"You want to make it cap friendly and you want to have the ability to possibly alter it as time goes on to help the cap in different things like that."
Highlights from Luck's 2015 season!
