THE COLTS WILL soon get a more thorough look at Andrew Luck.
They won't have the same opportunity with Robert Griffin III.
General manager Ryan Grigson said Monday the Colts plan to bring Luck to Indianapolis for an individual workout during the next couple of weeks. Luck is widely expected to be the No. 1 pick in next month's draft. Griffin is expected to go second, but Grigson said the Colts wouldn't see the Heisman Trophy winner work out at the team complex.
"Circumstances didn't allow us to do anything private with him [Griffin] so we did the usual Pro Day," Grigson said during a conference call. "We did the best we could with that situation. We do have a private workout that we're scheduling with Andrew in the future."
Grigson was ill last week and could not attend Griffin's workout in Waco, Texas, or Luck's workout in Palo Alto, Calif., though there were Colts representatives in both places.
Team owner Jim Irsay has already said he plans to take Peyton Manning's successor with the No. 1 pick, but nobody within the organization is saying whether they'll take the consensus favorite, Luck, or the fast riser, Griffin.
Luck is considered the most polished quarterback to come out of college since Manning was taken No. 1 overall by the Colts in 1998.
But Grigson insisted Monday that the team has not decided who to take and would likely wait until after the first round is completed April 26 before negotiating a deal with the top pick.
"We're going to do it the old-fashioned way, and that's not something that's been discussed at this point about how we would go about that," Grigson said. "I think we'll do it like teams always have and keep it simple."
In other NFL news:
* St. Louis signed free-agent wide receiver Steve Smith, the former Giant who last season with the Eagles caught nine passes in 11 games before being sidelined by a knee injury.
* The Vikings stadium bill, stalled for nearly 2 weeks at the Capitol, got a new push when Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak said he'd lined up a city council majority in support of the plan to rebuild on the site of the Metrodome.
Opposition on the Minneapolis City Council had been a major stumbling block for stadium supporters, and Rybak's announcement threw the issue back into the lap of state legislators who have been reluctant to embrace it. A Senate committee tabled the bill earlier this month when it appeared on the verge of getting voted down, but a key House committee chairman said Monday that he hoped to give the bill its first House hearing before the week is out.
"I think it helps to have the city of Minneapolis on board," said Rep. Joe Hoppe, R-Chaska, chairman of the House Commerce Committee.
Time is growing short for stadium supporters in their bid to secure the Vikings in Minnesota for another 30 years, with the legislative session likely to be over in a month's time or less.
For weeks, Rybak and council president Barbara Johnson had worked to nail down a council majority and at times appeared to be falling short of the needed seven votes on the 13-member council. But at a Capitol news conference with Gov. Mark Dayton, they released signed letters from seven council members who say they'd vote in favor of the proposal and forgo a citywide referendum on the issue.
The bill under consideration proposes a $975 million stadium in downtown Minneapolis, and taps an existing city sales tax to the tune of $150 million to cover a local-cost share.
