DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Pure Football Forum Ranking NFL QBs

there were 8 teams that wanted him as their QB. Four of those teams had the ability and the desire to succumb to Houston's outrageous demands in terms of what they were willing to trade for him. Hell, they were all good w/overlooking the public outrage that would inevitably come w/signing Watson. Damn......that can't be ignored in the honest evaluation of how professional talent evaluators view Watson. The dude can ball.

Since honesty and clarity is what you seem to be looking for, eight teams inquired about watson. So they made a phone call. After looking into things and considering the consequences, only half of them actually pursued him. As far as him being a good QB he most certainly is. That stands on its own without trying to inflate how many teams actually pursued watson on a serious level.

From the Jason Lloyd article....

The Browns were one of 13 teams to express interest in Watson, who held a full no-trade clause. That left him in control of the proceedings. He reviewed the rosters of all 13 and submitted a list of five for which he was willing to waive his no-trade clause. The Texans eliminated one of his five teams because they were within the division. The four finalists were the Panthers, Saints, Falcons and Browns.

For anyone keeping track at home that's 41% of the teams in the NFL.

Serious question - Is there anyone that doesn't think DW is potentially a top 3 - top 5 QB in the NFL? Is there anyone denying that on Paper DW is an immense upgrade in consistency and ability over Baker?

I don't think Watson is top 5. I hope by the end of this next season he is.

He's an upgrade over the previous guy.

You answered your own question.

It's easy to "throw with confidence" when you have (2) legit #1 WRs (from your post) who get AND catch the ball...when your 3rd WR would be no worse than a #2 WR on most good teams...not to mention a great TE and RBs who get significant YAC.

Lots of average QBs get to the SB...some even win it. There are 52 other guys that play too.

Then how come Baker never got there then?

Dan Marino got there ONCE. Jim Kelly got there 100 times and never won. Trent Dilfer is a SB Champ. Football teams have 11 players on the field at a time. Burrow is ridiculously overrated. Give him DPJ, Schwartz and Hooper...he wouldn't have gone to the SB either. It's not difficult.

Dan Marino got there ONCE. Jim Kelly got there 100 times and never won. Trent Dilfer is a SB Champ. Football teams have 11 players on the field at a time. Burrow is ridiculously overrated. Give him DPJ, Schwartz and Hooper...he wouldn't have gone to the SB either. It's not difficult.

. Give him DPJ, Schwartz and Hooper...he wouldn't have gone to the SB either. It's not difficult.

This is undeniably true. Anyone who wants to say otherwise is not being honest.... I still love Burrows and would take him over Baker but they don't go to the play offs with our WR core.

This is undeniably true. Anyone who wants to say otherwise is not being honest.... I still love Burrows and would take him over Baker but they don't go to the play offs with our WR core.

But last year, the Browns were among the favorites (by the "expert" pundits with no clue as to how poor our receiving options actually were...that OBJ wanted out over the summer...and that Baker would destroy his shoulder in game 2) to reach the SB that was including DPJ, Schwartz and Hooper in the offensive conversation.

But Schwartz and DPJ werent even 1 and 2 on the depth chart. (DPJ was our best WR last year.)

So how do they factor in the argument.? (They aren't very good and would have not seen the gameday active roster if they were Bengals players rather than Browns.)

Landry was healthy in 2020...Higgins was not in his usual funk that last half of 2020...Hooper in 2020 could catch a ball without immediately falling down. The same humans filled the jerseys with the names of Landry, Higgins & Hooper on the backs...but after watching the games...it was quite obvious that they were not the same PLAYERS in 2021.

For Colts’ Jim Irsay, it was ‘very obvious’ Carson Wentz had to go
By Cindy Boren
March 30, 2022|Updated March 30, 2022 at 2:50 p.m. EDT

Carson Wentz leaves the field after the Colts beat the Cardinals in a late-season matchup. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
In words that were uncharacteristically blunt in the vocabularies of the men who run the NFL, Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay described the one-year tenure of Carson Wentz, the quarterback his team traded to the Washington Commanders this month, as a “mistake” the Colts had to rectify.

Colts Coach Frank Reich was diplomatic Monday in discussing how things didn’t work out with the quarterback he had coached as an assistant in Philadelphia, but Irsay was more focused Tuesday night, laying much of the blame for Indianapolis’s disappointing 2021 season at Wentz’s feet.

“The worst thing you can do is have a mistake and try to keep living with it going forward,” Irsay said of the decision to move forward without Wentz at the NFL meetings in Palm Beach, Fla. (via the Indianapolis Star). “For us, it was something we had to move away from as a franchise. It was very obvious.”


Wentz, who was brought to Indianapolis in February 2021 when the Colts traded first- and third-round draft picks to the Eagles, found his footing after an 0-3 start. He threw 23 of his 27 touchdown passes during a 9-3 run that preceded the Colts losing their last two games and finishing 9-8.

“For us, the fit just wasn’t right. I don’t know why,” Irsay said. “A lot of times you don’t know why, but you know it isn’t, and it was important for us to move in a different direction.”

Behind the scenes, the chemistry just wasn’t there, Irsay added.

“In having conversations with trusted veterans on the team, when you speak to them in confidence, oftentimes they share really what’s happening,” Irsay said. “What I found out was very concerning.

“You search for the right chemistry with any team. In football, it’s as important as any sport that there is. If that chemistry is off, if it isn’t there, it can be extremely detrimental and lower performance to a degree that is stunning and shocking.”



It was particularly galling to Irsay when unvaccinated players tested positive for the coronavirus, which happened to Wentz before the Colts’ Week 17 game against the Oakland Raiders. Because NFL protocols had been changed by that point, he played in the game but missed practice all week.


In the regular season finale, the Colts were 9-7 and still in the running for a playoff spot when they faced the woeful Jacksonville Jaguars. Their 26-11 loss was the last straw for Irsay, and Wentz’s season stats — 3,563 passing yards with only seven interceptions — couldn’t save him.

“No disrespect to Jacksonville, but I mean, they’re the worst team in the league. You play well and hard for the first quarter or so, and they’re looking to go to their locker room and clean it out. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life,” Irsay said. “You say, ‘My God, there’s something wrong here.’ It needs to be corrected. I think that we feel like we did.”

The shadow life of Jim Irsay

Carolyn Kaster/ AP IMAGES
Oct 15, 2014
Shaun Assael
ESPN Senior Writer
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Special reporting by Greg Amante, "Outside the Lines"

This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's Nov. 11 College Hoops Tip-Off. Subscribe today!


KIMBERLY WUNDRUM'S friends passed by the lilacs and lilies and other flowers that she loved, but it was the blue orchids by her open casket, arranged in the shape of a horseshoe, that stopped some cold. Jim Irsay, the 55-year-old owner of the Indianapolis Colts, had sent the flowers, which was typical of the kind of thing he did. The billionaire had a habit of donating generously to local charities and businesses. But he also reached out to individuals, most notably on Twitter, often directly helping those who are struggling.

But this wasn't just a chance for Irsay to extend a thoughtful gesture to a bereaved family -- a family of Colts fans. The blue orchids were his way of saying goodbye to the woman he'd lived with off and on for nearly a decade. Many of the mourners on that chilly March 7 afternoon had been guests of Kim's at Colts games, according to half a dozen people in attendance, some even at Super Bowls, to which they rode party buses with police escorts and then lounged in luxury suites. They had spent time with Jim and Kim in the suburban home they shared, and read the love notes he left for her. They knew that, when Kim didn't have her hands in the dirt of one of her gardens, she wore the diamond ring Jim had placed on her finger. She called it an engagement ring.

Yet Jim's relationship with Kim -- as seen through documents, social media feeds and interviews with more than a dozen friends and family members over the course of three months -- was far from normal. Jim, whose net worth of $1.7 billion comes in large part from his ownership of the Colts and the publicly financed, $720 million, Lucas Oil Stadium, bought Kim three separate residences over their roughly eight years together, each one a place she could call home. But he kept himself at arm's length. He wouldn't take Kim to a movie unless it was a matinee, or risk a restaurant unless they were out of town, and even then it had to be with a group. Jim would leave her at the luxurious home they shared to go to Colts charity events and pose with his wife, Meg, from whom he was legally separated.

On March 2, Kim was found alone dead of a drug overdose at the age of 42, in the condo Jim had bought for her. It had been a year since their romance had dissolved, since Jim had found another woman and had Kim moved out of the home they shared. At her viewing, Kim's friends sat wondering whether Jim would show up, but the blue orchids were the only sign of him.

Nine days after the viewing, on March 16, a police officer pulled Irsay over near the home he'd bought for his new girlfriend and found a laundry bag full of pills in the front seat of his SUV. After he was arrested and charged with four felony drug counts, a mug shot revealed a gaunt prisoner having trouble keeping his eyes open.

In reporting on his arrest, local media tied Irsay to Wundrum in only the most perfunctory way, noting that she lived in residences he'd bought through a trust but portraying her as little more than a friend. He never challenged that narrative, much less described the effect her death had on him.

Irsay declined several requests from ESPN The Magazine and "Outside the Lines" to address his relationship with Wundrum. In an email dated Oct. 13, Colts senior director of communications Avis Roper wrote, "Thanks for reaching out to me with the request for Mr. Irsay in advance of the story, however, at this time we respectfully decline."

But an in-depth look at their life together reveals the story that was completely overshadowed by the mug shot that went viral.

His Warning Signs

Jim Irsay's dealings with the Indianapolis police go back two decades, to an episode in 1995 when a detective named Irene Conder discovered his name in the files of a doctor who was under suspicion of running a pill mill.

Irsay, then the GM of the Colts, had been a walk-on at SMU and still enjoyed hitting the gym with his players. But now that he was in his mid-30s, all that lifting was taking its toll. Surgeries on his back, elbow and wrist left him needing prescription meds to relieve chronic pain.

Conder didn't think Irsay had broken any laws, but she did request a meeting at the Colts' practice facility, and there, an NFL security agent suggested that Irsay seek treatment for possible addiction. As later reported by The Indianapolis Star, Irsay waved off the idea, pointing out that his father, Robert, who had made the family's fortune in heating and air conditioning, was gravely ill after a recent stroke. Jim had assumed day-to-day operations of the team. "I can't just leave," the detective recalled Irsay saying, according to the Star.

Two years later, Robert Irsay was dead from heart failure, and Jim became, at 37, the youngest owner in the NFL. The transition is mythologized in Indianapolis: how he vowed to leave a loftier legacy than his hard-drinking dad, who had infamously moved the Colts from Baltimore under the cloak of night; and how Colts brass made the historic call to pick Peyton Manning over Ryan Leaf in the 1998 draft. Earlier that year, according to the Star, Irsay and the city of Indianapolis had renegotiated the lease for the RCA Dome, the team's home at the time, providing the Colts at least $8 million a year in dome-generated revenues and assuring the city that the franchise would stay at least 10 more years.

Irsay, who reportedly has a Colts logo tattooed on his right shoulder, has enjoyed the spoils of being an NFL owner. He has a collection of 175 historic guitars from the likes of John Lennon, Elvis Presley and Keith Richards, and has played on stage with Indiana native John Mellencamp. An eclectic reader, he spent $2.4 million to buy the original manuscript of Jack Kerouac's masterpiece, "On The Road," a manifesto of rootlessness that he keeps in his office at Lucas Oil Stadium in the heart of downtown Indy. He also counted himself among the friends of the late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, and allowed the Colts to publish a letter that Thompson had written to him in 1997 as the Colts were en route to a dismal 3-13 season: "Yr days will be spastic episodes full of great crooked cops & wrongful dishonor ... that is what I see in the future. ... Be careful, James -- yr greed crazed outbursts are beginning to rub off on people."

While Irsay's star was rising in NFL circles, his name again appeared in confidential police files. In 1998, not long after his father's death, Detective Conder, who continued investigating doctors who overprescribed pills, found Irsay's name again. As Conder told the Star, "I could not get [Irsay] identified as the guy who picked up the pills from the pharmacy, and prosecutors would not charge him without a positive identification."

This time Irsay got the message and sought help at an Indianapolis treatment center called Sober Life Alternatives. According to the ex-doctor who ran it, Thomas Hoshour, Irsay became a frequent face at local 12-step programs. "I'd say 90 percent of the people [in this city] who've been to programs have been in meetings with Jim," Hoshour says. Opening himself up to other addicts was another way Irsay became deeply, invisibly woven into the fabric of Indianapolis.

But four years later, in 2002, just as he was trying to rebuild the Colts in the new AFC South, The Indianapolis Star reported his third and most serious brush with the law. Federal drug agents who were bearing down on a prominent plastic surgeon discovered that Irsay had received a staggering 120 prescriptions over the course of a year. According to the Star, they ranged from scripts for painkillers Lorcet and Vicoprofen to Xanax and the anti-panic drug Klonopin. In one alarming 24-day binge, the paper reported, he was prescribed 400 tablets of the painkiller Oxycontin.

Not only was the investigation front-page news but the local television station WTHR also reported that Irsay had had at least three overdoses. Again, the criminal investigation failed to result in charges.

Buffeted by questions about his health at the time, the Colts owner released a terse statement: "This summer I sought professional help at a nationally recognized facility located outside Indiana. I have successfully dealt with my dependence and my chronic pain issues. I ask that my privacy and that of my family be respected on this health issue."


When she wasn't gardening, Kim wore a diamond ring from Irsay -- what she called an engagement ring. Facebook
Her Move South

Before Jim came to the attention of the Indianapolis police in the mid-1990s, Kimberly Wundrum was a 20-year-old law secretary who was looking to start a new chapter in her life. Friends recall that the petite blonde with a sunny personality didn't know exactly what she wanted to do, but it certainly wasn't answering phones in a law office. So she packed her things and moved from Indy to Flagler Beach, a honkytonk town on the east coast of Florida where a cousin lived. In her first weeks there, she came across a classified ad from a divorced father of four who needed help with his kids.

Craig Boda, who was 15 years older than Kim, was a prominent defense attorney in Flagler Beach, well known for his courtroom theatrics in which he often accused the police of misconduct. What was less known was that he was doing the types of drugs his clients sold and occasionally hiding their money.

"My dad was a crazy, manic lawyer," says his son Matt Boda, now an aspiring filmmaker in L.A. "Kim was this little nanny who got sucked into our world."

Kim became what Matt describes as the "authority figure" around the house, driving the kids to their appointments and helicoptering over their habits. "[Kim] was always so nice that you had to listen to her," says Matt's younger brother, Chad Boda, who is a research assistant at a university. "But if you didn't, my dad was ready to step in. And he could be scary when he wanted to be."

Although Kim's Indianapolis friends say she never did more than drink or smoke marijuana in high school, Matt Boda says, "Kim did heroin with my dad, like I did. The most bittersweet memory I have is when we were doing drugs together. He'd never been so loving, but it was never so destructive."

Eventually, the nanny's relationship with her employer turned romantic, and the two were married in 1994. Just a few years into the marriage, Boda pleaded guilty to helping a client hide drug profits from the IRS. By the time he was sentenced to 15 months behind bars in 1998, Kim was a 26-year-old who'd been left to raise four kids: Chad, 12; Matt and his twin brother, Josh, 14; and their sister, Megan, who was almost 17.

Craig's return from prison in 1999 eased the strain somewhat. But over the next three years, his ill-fated battle to keep his law license drained his spirits and the family's income. Matt recalls that his father became depressed, spending long days at home in dark rages, destructively throwing things around the house. The stress weighed on Kim, and the first cracks in her sunny exterior began to show.

In October 2002, on a trip through Lake County, Florida, a cop stopped her for speeding and saw that she had five suspensions on her license for racking up 18 points in as many months and failing to appear at court hearings. As the arresting officer would write in an incident report, she had a dozen Xanax and 105 Oxycodone pills in an unlabeled prescription bottle in the center console of her Toyota.

A trafficking charge was eventually dropped after Craig stepped in with prescriptions, and Kim was placed on two years' probation for driving on the suspended license. Later that same year, according to Matt, Kim called her mother in Indianapolis and acknowledged that she needed help.

Betty Wundrum drove right to the Bodas' door. It was time to bring Kimberly Lynn home.

Starting Over

In the summer of 2005, Irsay was reaching the pinnacle of his power in the NFL. After a pair of 12-4 seasons, the Manning-led Colts were now a Super Bowl favorite. And Irsay had moved onto a new phase in his private life after his wife, Meg -- who would go on to publish a collection of poetry titled, "Messages to Me: Words Collected on the Road to Silence" -- had filed for legal separation in 2002.

In the three years since she returned to Indianapolis, Kim -- who Matt says still couldn't bring herself to file for divorce from Craig Boda -- had been trying to rediscover the woman she was before. She worked at a gift shop in the Broad Ripple section of Indy, volunteered as a landscaper at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and, according to court filings, brought her debts under control by declaring bankruptcy. She also renewed old friendships. When she learned that a woman she once worked with at a law firm had suddenly lost her husband, she showed up to the funeral.

"I didn't know she was back," says the friend, Laura Cohen. "She came with a note that she'd prepared for me. It meant everything."

But in July 2005, just as Kim started to feel settled, Craig Boda was discovered unresponsive at his home in New Port Richey, Florida. He was taken to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead shortly after. The Pinellas County coroner identified the cause as "multi-drug toxicity" and called the death accidental. Matt Boda believes his father accidentally overdosed on pain pills after an operation after a car crash.

As the family gathered in Key West to spread Craig's ashes over the ocean, Kim held each of her stepkids close and promised she'd take care of them.

A Home Of Their Own

On visits to Indianapolis while she was still living in Florida with Craig, Kim had stayed with her sister, Rhonda, who was in business as a personal masseuse and had Jim Irsay as a longtime client. In a session with Rhonda in 2005, Jim mentioned that he needed a babysitter for friends who were visiting his lake house in Culver, Indiana, about two hours north of Indy; Rhonda suggested Kim, who accepted the job sometime after she returned from Craig Boda's funeral.

According to Cohen, once Kim and Jim had a chance to be alone, they discovered a shared world of 12-step promises and hopes. The more they spoke, the more they realized they wanted the same future.

Jim started calling Kim often, and he'd stop by when he knew Rhonda wasn't at the house. They soon began to meet up without the presence or pretense of Rhonda. Kim, who had a casual boyfriend, didn't entirely know how to react to the attention, especially when Jim began buying her gifts. "She was very hesitant to get into a relationship," says Cohen, who had become close friends with Kim. "I'm not sure she was ready."

In early 2006, Jim became even more invested in their relationship by buying Kim a condo on the outskirts of Indianapolis. According to public documents first discovered by The Indianapolis Star, this property would eventually become part of the "2009 Blue Trust," an entity controlled by Irsay, and would be transferred to her name at no cost. "He just bought this condo and said, Here you go," Cohen recalls. "That was really overwhelming for her. She was like, 'What does that mean?'"

Although Jim still had his estate in the affluent suburb of Carmel, he drove to Kim's townhouse nearly every night to be with her. Friends saw the love notes he left for "Baba," his pet name for Kim, and the stacks of cash he left, stuffed into empty fast-food bags. "Jim gave her rings and presents all the time," says a friend from Florida, Robyn Boback, who regularly flew to Indianapolis to visit. "[They] had a whole other life without the public."

After the Colts won Super Bowl XLI in February 2007, Cohen says Jim asked Kim for her mother's ring size so he could make a ring for her. (Cohen got one, too.) He even took joy in the little things he could do, like emptying a dishwasher or making morning coffee. "I'd hear voice mails from him," Cohen says. "He genuinely seemed to care for her."

He also cared for her stepkids, offering them the kind of help that changed their lives. "If it wasn't for Jim, I'd be dead," Matt Boda says flatly. "When my dad died, the scar was so deep that when Jim came, I was like, 'Oh my God, here's my new dad come to save the day. He took me out of my junkie life in Florida and gave me a new [life] in Los Angeles. He systematically just reset us all." Chad Boda says Kim suddenly had enough money to foot the bill for his doctoral degree in Europe, and Megan, the oldest, enjoyed all-expense-paid trips to Colts games with her friends. "Jim has been very, very generous with me and my brothers," she says.

As the years went on, however, and the couple took regular vacations across the U.S. and Europe, it became hard for Kim to ignore that Jim not only refused to make her a part of his public life but also distanced her from parts of his private life. "I don't think she had any delusions about getting married to Jim," Chad Boda says. "But I think she thought she'd gain more access to his personal life."

Even though Jim and Meg Irsay, who married in 1980, were legally separated for a decade, they didn't officially divorce until this January. Jim also never introduced his three girls to Kim, much less to the Boda children. "They didn't even know we existed," Matt Boda says.

Cohen recalls asking Kim why she didn't press Jim to get a divorce, to which Kim shrugged her shoulders and replied, "Why rock the boat?"

But it became harder for her to watch Jim sit in the owner's box as she sat in a separate luxury suite or in the stands. Although she shared the same drivers as Jim's family, they never rode together, leaving her to learn about the Irsay girls' lives through gossip and the drivers they shared. When Carlie Irsay got married in Nantucket in 2008, Jim paid for Kim to go on a jaunt to Chicago with friends, perhaps so she wouldn't feel left home alone.

"She was very hurt by the lack of him being open," says Cohen, who accompanied her on that getaway. Adds Matt Boda, "All Kim wanted to do was be assimilated into Jim's family and not be some little secret."

In 2010, Kim began sliding into some old habits. Cohen remembers a call with Jim in which he said, "I'm really worried about Kim" because she was abusing pills again. So he paid for Kim to go to a treatment center in Malibu, and she seemed healthier when she returned.

Ready for a fresh start, the two began shopping for a new home and decided on one in a luxury subdivision outside of Indianapolis among rolling hills, waterfalls and four-car garages. The 4,500-square-foot home on Mill Pond Lane was a huge step up from Kim's townhouse. It seemed like a place for her to finally put down roots.

The Unraveling

In early 2011, the year after Jim and Kim had begun to share their new home, @JimIrsay sent out one of his countless trivia questions to his hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. Among those who responded was Jami Martin, a married mother of three from Martinsville, Indiana, a town about 30 miles southwest of Indianapolis.

Jami's Twitter photo shows the former bathing suit calendar model in a black dress that highlights her long red hair and athletic frame. According to her then-husband, Greg Martin, she received a private message that led to a liaison with Irsay. (Jami Martin declined to comment through her attorney.)


Irsay is open about his relationship with Jami in ways that he never was with Kim. Matt Kryger / The Star
When Greg, a real estate appraiser, learned his wife was having an affair, he responded by posting a barrage of tweets from @martin_assoc that were remarkable for the fact that they seem to have gone entirely unnoticed.

In a series of tweets between Oct. 8 and Nov. 25, 2011, he wrote Irsay questioning his character. "Did you have a good time last night, hmwrcker." On Nov. 24, with the Colts on a 10-game losing streak, he wrote to @JimIrsay: "Don't feed your line of bulls---. Home Wrecker! Go ruin another family!" The next day, he tweeted to @JimIrsay: "Did you wreck their home too?" He hasn't tweeted since.

The months following the 2011 season were pivotal for Irsay. In a move that stunned his players and cemented his reputation as one of the shrewdest owners in the NFL, he axed his longtime president, Bill Polian; removed Polian's son Chris as GM; and dismissed his head coach, Jim Caldwell. In a sweeping reorganization, he hired youthful Ryan Grigson from the Eagles as GM and recruited Chuck Pagano, then the red-hot defensive coordinator of the Ravens, as his head coach. He also made what looks to be another historic draft-day call by taking Andrew Luck No. 1 over Robert Griffin III. In his book, "Sidelined," Pagano recalled his job interview: "Mr. Irsay was very passionate about his team and very direct about what he expected in the near future. [He] also talked a lot about his family members and asked questions about mine."

Several weeks after hiring Pagano, Irsay named his three daughters vice-chairs and co-owners of the Colts. Irsay was also keeping an eye out for the Boda kids while Martin's children were now spending time with him.

Kim's friends aren't certain whether she knew the extent of the relationship between Jim and Jami, although Cohen recalls Kim asking more than a year later, "Why was I the last to know?" By early 2012, she was using drugs again, and Jim paid for another tour through rehab.

Determined to maintain her own identity when she came back, Kim put all of her energy into the landscaping business she'd started in 2007 and had a high school friend, Kathy Griner, helping her run it. From there, it's hard to pin down the exact moment when Kim and Jim began their spirals.

The live news conference Irsay held in March 2012 to announce that he was cutting Peyton Manning showed the owner at his peak: earnest, articulate, engaged. But by December of that year, Griner says she would arrive to find the house a mess, with Kim or Jim or both passed out in their clothes.

Kim began taking pictures of Jim in his most inebriated states, lying face down in the furniture with burned-out cigarettes around him, in the hopes of showing him how much he needed help, too. "I saw those pictures," Griner says. "I didn't know what to say."


A gaunt Irsay watches Colts minicamp from the sideline in 2013. Brian Spurlock/USA TODAY Sports
A Clean Break

The moment that spelled the end for Jim and Kim came in the spring of 2013, when she left for yet another rehab retreat in Utah. While she was away, her possessions were moved out of the house on Mill Pond Lane and into a townhouse Jim bought for her nearby using the "2009 Blue Trust," which then put the property under Kim's name.

"Honestly, I was relieved [when I heard it happened]," Chad Boda says. "I thought it would be good for her to get back to a simpler life and not have all the noise and controversy that came with being around someone like Jim."

But Kim was shattered when she returned to find her belongings sitting in bubble wrap. Even though Jim arranged for her to have a $6,000-a-month allowance and occasionally left her stacks of cash in empty fast-food bags, according to several of her friends, her eviction underscored everything she'd felt about being a second-class citizen.

"As far as I know, Kim never got an explanation from Jim," Cohen says. "He never told her, 'I don't love you. It's time to move on.' All she got were a few incoherent phone calls."

A Tragic End

Kim sounds fragile and scratchy on the voice mail. "I can't believe I can even halfway laugh, because it's not going to be funny at all," she says.

Rob Griner, Kathy's husband, is standing in his driveway in Indianapolis when he plays the message on his phone. Like his wife, he went to high school with Kim, and he considers himself a big brother to her. So he didn't hesitate when she called him to bail her out of jail in January of this year.

In the early hours of Jan. 4, Kim had pulled onto I-65 South and started driving in the wrong direction for eight miles, narrowly missing cars and tractor-trailers along the way. Four cops eventually joined in a chase, with two speeding ahead of her to try to block her path. She nearly smashed into the cruisers before finally pulling onto the median. One of the officers described her as "unsteady on her feet" and having eyes that were "glassy looking and watery." With slurred speech, she insisted that she had no idea she was going the wrong way. It was her second impaired driving charge in four months, following an arrest while visiting a relative in Ohio in which the arresting officer had found 18 nonprescribed Vicodin and some crushed Adderall in her car.

On the voice mail, Kim thanks Rob for coming to her rescue. "I just want you to know I love you very much, and, um, and, um, I appreciate your friendship."

The Griners hated to see their friend of 30 years this broken, and they tried to lift her spirits. But there continued to be troubling moments, like when Rob took Kim to a Pacers game and noticed she was having trouble staying awake. In fact, the more he saw her, the more he became concerned about a new friend she'd started hanging around, a struggling 48-year-old waiter named Tony Marshall, who had been convicted of cocaine possession.

In an interview, Marshall says, "I had a drinking problem, and she had a pill problem. We were trying to help each other."

In early February, with the very real prospect of jail hanging over Kim's head in one or both of the impaired driving cases, she and her new companion headed out on a two-week trip to Florida. Marshall calls it a "sabbatical" from their troubles.

The two went to Flagler Beach to see Kim's old friends and surprise Megan Boda just before her 33rd birthday. "She looked healthy," Megan says. "She even made a joke about sobriety."

On Thursday, Feb. 27, as they were driving back to Indiana, Marshall says that Kim confided to him that she was using heroin for the first time since her days in Flagler Beach. He says he was stunned because Kim had been seeing a therapist and because he and she hadn't done more than drink together. "That's how I found out," he says. "That was the beginning of the end of the whole thing."

The next day, Kim seemed resolute when she saw Cohen, who helped her run errands because she no longer had a license. Cohen brought a small gift, a plaque embossed with the phrase: "One day at a time." On Saturday, Marshall says he made plans with Kim to drive her to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting the next day.

But on Sunday, Marshall overslept and missed his appointment. When Kim didn't respond to any of his texts, he drove to her townhouse, let himself in through the garage and looked around the living room. Not seeing any sign of her, he went to the second floor and into the bathroom, where he found her body sitting upright and fully clothed.

The coroner would conclude that she'd died of polysubstance overdose the prior day. The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department closed the case after the coroner's office labeled Wundrum's death an accident.

Cases Closed

Early on the afternoon of Friday, March 7, mourners began filtering into Conkle Funeral Home in Speedway, Indiana, to say goodbye to Kim. She was surrounded by lilacs and lilies and, of course, the blue orchids.

One of the mourners who came to say goodbye was a driver who worked for the Irsay family and had grown close to Kim on their countless trips over nearly a decade. He had to leave the service early, but promised to rejoin the group later at a hotel bar. That night, when someone asked him where he'd been, the driver explained that he'd been called away from the service to take Irsay out for the evening.

According to the source who asked the question, the driver said his boss wanted to go to a comedy club with his girlfriend.

Nine days later, at almost midnight, a police officer patrolling near Irsay's home in Carmel spotted his SUV stop and start, then stop and start again in the middle of the road. After the officer pulled him over for turning without signaling, Irsay had trouble finding his driver's license even though it was in plain sight in his open briefcase. The officer reported that the man standing before him was gaunt and his eyes were glassy. He fell backward when asked to touch the tip of a pen and couldn't stay balanced on one foot. "Numerous" bottles of pills were found in the front seat in a laundry bag, as well as $29,000 in the briefcase.

By the next day, Irsay's mug shot had gone viral, igniting questions about how one of the most prominent owners in the NFL could look like he'd just walked off the set of "Breaking Bad."

Initially, the cops charged Irsay with four felony counts of possessing controlled substances and a misdemeanor count of operating a vehicle while intoxicated. But prosecutors in Hamilton County dropped the possession counts after reporting that he provided proof of having the drugs legally. Andre Miksha, the county's chief prosecutor, declined to offer specifics on what kind of proof, saying only: "Mr. Irsay's possession of controlled substances did not violate the criminal code. I cannot provide more detail."

In the seven months since Kim Wundrum's death, Irsay hasn't publicly mentioned her name. His only extended comments about his own arrest came in a June interview in The Indianapolis Star with Bob Kravitz. "The disease aspect gets lost when you're talking about alcoholism and addiction," he said. "Even in 2014, there's still this stigma."

On Sept. 2, he pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count of impaired driving and got a suspended 60-day jail sentence. As he moved hurriedly down a courthouse stairwell, an "Outside the Lines" producer asked Irsay whether he cared to say anything about Kim Wundrum.

"I'm sorry," he said, shaking his head. When the producer asked again, Irsay's lawyer replied, "What about no don't you understand?"

One of his bodyguards later agreed to deliver a note asking for an interview. It went unreturned.

At least in part, that silence might have to do with her family's wishes. Rhonda Wundrum declined several requests for an interview. In an email on Oct. 15, she refused to discuss details, only to characterize information given to the Magazine from multiple sources as "inaccurate." In an email a day earlier, she had said: "Everything I know about Jim is good. He has extended generosities and helped countless people ... my sister included. I hope you choose to refrain from trying to hurt a truly good man and let my beautiful sister rest in peace."


But Irsay still might have to answer questions about Kim Wundrum and their drug use. An Indiana judge recently backed a request by Jami Martin's ex-husband, Greg, to have Irsay testify in a custody battle that begins on Jan. 27 about whether he's a negative influence on the Martins' children.

When he returned from his six-game NFL suspension on Oct. 10, Jim Irsay continued to entertain and entice Colts fans, sending out this nonsensical tweet as his first public statement:

"What can I say? I could say something, but nothing IS something; nothing isn't nothing, if I say it; it's something. No things are nothing things."

Irsay kept tweeting, but no explanation ever came.

What? The Watson civil complaints are part of pure football forum? I was trying to get the thread back on track after Pit, WSU, and 888 derailed it and I was hoping to bring the topic back to ranking QBs. Maybe I am misunderstanding your point? Are you okay w/those guys hijacking the thread and upset that I brought up the situation Wentz was in?

Baker still makes rookie mistakes. His ceiling has been reached.
File him under Heisman Winning QBs who failed at the next level

Anyone willing to help me out here and keep 888 at bay?

What? The Watson civil complaints are part of pure football forum? I was trying to get the thread back on track after Pit, WSU, and 888 derailed it and I was hoping to bring the topic back to ranking QBs. Maybe I am misunderstanding your point? Are you okay w/those guys hijacking the thread and upset that I brought up the situation Wentz was in?

Next guy I want to talk about is Jameis Winston. ---Btw....I am not doing there in order any longer.

Winston was the first overall pick by TB. I never cared for the guy. Thought he was weird as weird can be. I did recognize his talent. Great arm, good pocket presence, nice size, etc. I just hated the off the field stuff. The situation in FSU's cafeteria is just one example of why I thought he was weird.

The guy comes into the NFL and turns the ball over a ton. Arians becomes his HC and he throws for 30 or maybe more picks. He did throw for more TDs and over 5,000 yards, but dang, he was a pick six machine.

TB cuts ties and he goes to New Orleans. He is paired w/Drew Brees, who is arguably the most intelligent qb of all-time when it comes to pre and post-snap reads. Jameis learns. Brees retires. The dude started off this past year playing excellent football and then blew out his knee. He has the skill set. I still question the mind. His eyes look crazy. But, he played very well last year before his injury and I think spending time w/Brees and Sean Payton had to have helped a lot. As an aside, I told my son [who is a huge Steelers fan] that they should have went after Winston last year. He did not agree. But, thank God they didn't.

It probably won't work because those in charge allow three guys to dominate this