Indianapolis Colts fullback Tyler Varga (right) celebrates after scoring on a 1-yard run during the fourth quarter of an NFL preseason game against the St. Louis Rams on August 29 in St. Louis.

By Brad Biggs/Chicago Tribune

When 25-year-old Andrew Luck is the face of your franchise, the time to win a Super Bowl is now. And next season. And every season after that. Probably last season too.
That is the position the Colts find themselves in with the best under-30 quarterback in the NFL. Indianapolis has made incremental steps in Luck’s three seasons, losing in the wild-card round when he was a rookie, winning one playoff game in Year 2 and reaching the AFC championship game last season.
Coach Chuck Pagano, who has won 11 regular-season games each of the last three years, recently said the current roster is the best he has had to work with. The next day general manager Ryan Grigson reclined in the back row of the team meeting room at the Colts facility and considered the coach’s assessment.
“We’re getting better,” said the 43-year-old Grigson, who grew up in Highland, Ind.
“Some of the young guys are hitting walls and we hope they power through them. The second group has to produce and we’ve got to have some guys from those threes emerge. If you want to have a championship-caliber team, you’ve got to have quality depth.”
The gap the Colts must close proved wide in the AFC championship game when they were pummeled 45-7 by the Patriots. That’s where the Deflategate controversy kicked off. The 6-foot-6 Grigson, a former offensive tackle at Purdue, sprung out of his seat in the press box at Gillette Stadium early in the second quarter after linebacker D’Qwell Jackson intercepted Tom Brady and took the ball, supplied by the Patriots, to the Colts sideline.
“Where’s the NFL observer?” Grigson yelled. From there, the spotlight was on deflated balls. There have been reports the Colts were tipped off beforehand.We haven’t had anything to say about it since,” Grigson said. “We gave it to the league. We’re an open book. Let the league and courts figure it out.”
Grigson, meanwhile, constantly is figuring out what to do with roster spots Nos 2 through No 53. That largely will determine whether the Colts are ready to make their move.
Grigson began as a scout in the CFL and Arena League before a 13-year run with the Rams and Eagles. And the scout in him is probably more interested in discussing the bottom of the roster than the top.
FXFL, IFL, CFL. Pick any acronym for a small football league and Grigson has scouted it and probably signed a player from it.
“We’ve hit on our 90th man,” he said. “We’ve made trades for our 90th man. We’ve gotten picks for our 90th man. We’ve gone outside the box a little bit and brought in guys from unique playing backgrounds and some leagues people have never heard of.”
Grigson recounts a story from when he was the Eagles’ college scouting director. He saw that a linebacker from Division III Wheaton College had 17 { sacks in 2006.“I was in a full panic,” Grigson said. “I was searching the Web and saw this kid at Wheaton College and I was like, ‘Why did we have no one in there?’ Even if the guy ran 5.5 in the 40 and was 5-foot-10, if we didn’t have anything on a guy with 17 { sacks, I would have been mad.”
Grigson called his area scout and learned Andy Studebaker was a junior. The Eagles wound up drafting him the next year and he spent parts of the last two seasons with the Colts.
“I don’t discriminate against real small-school guys,” said Grigson, whose first job when his brief pro playing career ended was at McPherson College, an NAIA school in Kansas. “I still get this NAIA annual that comes out. I tell the young scouts, if you were out of the league (and) this still wasn’t your hobby, this probably isn’t your passion.”
The Colts were aggressive in free agency this year, signing running back Frank Gore and wide receiver Andre Johnson, proven weapons for Luck. On defense, linebacker Trent Cole and defensive end Kendall Langford were brought in.
Grigson is going for it just like he did in Week 3 of the 2013 season when he traded a 2014 first-round pick to the Browns for running back Trent Richardson after Vick Ballard was lost to injury. Richardson proved to be a colossal bust.
“Any day of the week with how I am wired and how I want to win, I do that deal,” Grigson said. “We lose our runner and we’re 1-1 going into San Fran. I am still all-in to go to the Super Bowl. Here is a guy that was two picks after Andrew in the same draft.
“It is a great lesson and I am going to learn from it. I feel like any businessman or successful person, you are going to swing and miss sometimes and I am not letting it get me down. I am still swinging right now with things people don’t know about.”
The Colts had to press fast forward with their timetable when Luck, a three-time Pro Bowler, played at such a high level from the start. They haven’t slowed down.“We wanted to be respectable and build,” Grigson said. “When you have a player like Andrew, you’ve got to build on the fly.”