New Indianapolis head coach Frank Reich has to walk the fine line of keeping Andrew Luck healthy, and letting him rip. Good thing he has just the plan to make that happen.
hA longtime NFL scout once said of Andrew Luck that if he weren’t playing football, he’d be crushing it on Wall Street somewhere. And like many financial wizards, the competitor in Luck leads him to take risks, hanging in the pocket and throwing, even if it means taking a shot from a defender.
But the thoughtful quarterback, the same Stanford grad who started a book club, wasn’t supposed to be a swashbuckler who once said that taking a hit early in a game can help him lock in.
“I remember watching Andrew coming out, his first couple years,” says new Colts head coach Frank Reich. “I marveled at how aggressive and tough he was and how fearless he was. If he ever threw an interception, he’d go try to go take the defender’s head off. When he was running for a first down, he was not afraid to put his shoulder down. But you live and you learn and you have to adapt.”
A slow recovery from a torn labrum Luck had repaired in January 2017 cost him the entire season, and had him wondering if he’d ever play again. Now back on the field, his new coaches have set out to put him in a position to succeed — one he can hopefully stay in for the next decade by remaining healthy.
But there’s a fine line between trying to protect Luck, often from himself, and letting him do what makes him so dangerous.
Reich coached Carson Wentz last season as the offensive coordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles and another gunslinging quarterback, Philip Rivers, in his time with the Chargers. He knows what it’s like to straddle the line between letting a special quarterback utilize his skills while making sure he doesn’t go over the edge, trying to win the game by himself or put his body at risk.
“I had to deal with it the last two years in Philadelphia,” Reich says. “Carson Wentz has very similar mindset and similar athletic set. The difference is Andrew has been in the league longer. He’s now had to overcome a serious injury.
“We don’t want to bridle his aggressiveness too much. It’s what makes him a great player, but obviously you have to find a way to control it.”
Matt Hasselbeck played against Luck early in his career, before joining the Colts to be Luck’s backup. He saw some of the same things in the former No. 1 overall pick he witnessed firsthand with Brett Favre.
“A lot of guys, the more you hit him — you hear coaches say, ‘hit ‘em, hit ‘em, hit ‘em, we’re gonna put a bunch of hits on him’ — by the end of the game, he won’t be the same guy that started the game. I think usually the opposite happens with Andrew … the more people hit him, the more into the game he got.”
That reckless abandon led to incredible comeback wins, but also exposed Luck to unnecessary hits and YOLO interceptions. Wanting to make every play, to go all out at all times, adds risk to a quarterback’s body and his team.
“We see it all over,” says Hasselbeck, now an analyst at ESPN. “We see it with Carson Wentz in Philly. [Coach] Doug Pederson’s exact quote (to me) was, ‘I wish he would let the offense do the work,’ which is the same quote I would hear from Mike Holmgren about Brett Favre … you don’t have to do it yourself.”
Hasselbeck suggests there is a kind of curse that comes with supreme talent. He points to a play at Stanford where Luck didn’t make the simple read on a basic play, trying instead to hit a home run. Instead, it ended in a turnover.
“I know you’re Andrew Luck and I know you can handle the freedom to do that, but if you had just done what the QB at my high school did that day on Spider 2 Y-banana … the fullback scores. Let the offense work for you. There’s plenty of time where you need to be a hero, but let the offense work for you.”
“Letting the offense work for the quarterback” could have been the title of a book about the 2017 NFL season. Rams coach Sean McVay architected an historic turnaround centered around an offense tailored to Jared Goff. Andy Reid and Matt Nagy pulled the most out of Alex Smith and a cadre of ultra-talented Chiefs playmakers with innovative play design and aggressive play-calling. And of course, the Eagles won a Super Bowl with a backup quarterback due in large part to an outstanding scheme and Pederson’s ability to pick the perfect play at the perfect time.
Don’t expect the 2018 Colts to look like the 2017 Eagles, though. Reich’s contribution to the Philly offense came from adding elements from his time with Rivers in San Diego. What Luck runs in the regular season will look much more traditional than what we saw in Philadelphia, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. They’re not turning to the run-pass option (RPO) to turn this offense around.
Modern RPOs simplify things for the quarterback. That eases the burden on young quarterbacks overloaded with information and struggling to sort through the reads quickly early in their careers.
Choosing not to run concepts that produced incredible seasons from young quarterbacks like Wentz, Goff, and Deshaun Watson doesn’t mean the offense has less upside. Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, and Drew Brees have built OK careers without having to integrate the zone read or RPOs into their offenses. The reasons for that are myriad, but an essential part of it centers around the ability to process information, to identify what’s happening and make decisions quickly.
The phrase “game manager” generally denotes a pejorative concept, but no one manages the game better than guys like Rodgers, Brady, and Brees. They think their way around the game as well as any quarterback in the modern era, trusting what they see, and not having to make risky throws or expose their bodies.
What makes Luck so special is the ability to draw outside the lines rather than simply paint by numbers. In essence, the Colts won’t prioritize RPOs because they don’t have to. Quarterbacks like Luck already possess the mental version of quick-twitch muscles when it comes to seeing the field and making decisions. That allows him to play fast while playing under control, without having to rely on the scheme to do it for him.
“That equals getting the ball out a little faster,” says Colts offensive coordinator Nick Sirianni of playing in that kind of quick rhythm. “When the quarterback can play with accelerated vision based off what he’s seeing all week, he knows when he gets this coverage against this play, Here’s where I’m going.”
Sirianni explains a somewhat obvious, but underrated premise: the two ways to get the ball out of the hands of the quarterback quickly. The first is shorter routes. The second is how quickly the quarterback can make the correct decisions.
This is where the intellect comes in. If Luck can get the team into the right play pre-snap, see how the defense is playing him post-snap, and make quick, decisive reads, the ball comes out before the defense has a chance to threaten him. Keeping him upright and healthy physically results directly from how effective he calls the game mentally. Considering Luck has a pretty big brain, he should be able to make the kind of decisions that not only result in effective football, but keep him out of harm’s way.
One of the ways the Colts will mirror Reich’s Eagles teams will be with pace. They’re going to play up-tempo and keep teams off balance the same way Philly did by changing personnel and formation to keep the defense guessing what might be coming next. That extra split second it takes for defenses to identify what you’re in can be the difference between a 6-yard pass and 60-yard one. Philadelphia last season mastered this mix, right down to the Super Bowl when they outsmarted Bill Belichick, arguably the smartest coach ever, even with an extra week to prepare.
In the preseason, Luck’s mandate has been obvious: hit your back foot on the drop, know where to go, and let it rip. But Reich bristles at the notion the Colts will be some kind of three-step drop exclusive team in order to keep Luck healthy.
“The analogy we always use is a boxing analogy. Those quick rhythm passes are like jabs a boxer would use. You gotta throw a lot of jabs to set up the big right hook. Make no mistake about it, we’re aiming to knock people out with our offense. But you need to set those punches up with keeping your opponent off balance, make him keep his distance by throwing a lot of jabs.”
In 2016, the last time we saw Luck healthy enough to play, only four quarterbacks held the ball longer on average, according to Pro Football Focus. In fact, just 36.3 percent of his drops saw the ball come out in under 2.5 seconds, the second-fewest of any quarterback with at least 200 attempts. More than half the league got the ball out that quickly at least 50 percent of the time.
Because so much of the offense has been predicated on vertical shots and pushing the ball down the field, Luck had to wait for these deep routes to develop, leaving him more vulnerable to defensive linemen bearing down on him. This season, expect the ball to be coming out sooner and for the shot plays to come off play action where he can heave it to T.Y. Hilton, one of the best deep threats in the game.
Being able to effectively uses play action can serve some of the same masters that make the RPO so effective. If the quarterback decides to hold the ball rather than give it to the back, it serves as a de facto play-action fake, one of the reasons the concept works so well.
“With any play-action pass, when you fake a with play action, the defense has to play the run too,” Sirianni explains. “It’s not only getting the linebackers and safeties to suck up, but also maybe slows the guy who is playing two gaps. Instead of rushing the passer, he’s waiting to play his gap.”
That means in the run game and the play-action game, the defensive ends are in a bind. They’re also, importantly, staying off the quarterback.
“You get these defensive coordinators that are like, ‘I don’t know what to tell my pass rushing defensive end now. I used to tell him to just pin his ears back and go get the quarterback. Now I’ve got him thinking, and I don’t like that,’” Hasselbeck says.
If the run game can keep the pass rushers off balance and the passing game doesn’t give those guys time to get to Luck, then the play-action game really takes the bite out of a defensive attack.
In order for play action to be effective, teams have to care at least a little about the run game — another likely overlap with the kinds of schemes Reich ran in Philly. Sirianni says the first thing Reich told his offensive coaches when they sat down to go over the offense was the importance of running the ball.
For all the accolades Wentz rightfully received last year, the Eagles were still 15th in rush offense Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA). Being an average run team functions more than sufficiently when play-action passes are still the most effective call in the game. When Reich was with the Chargers, they invested a first-round pick on Melvin Gordon to bring them balance.
In Indy, the Colts drafted guard Quenton Nelson to solidify the running game while buoying the pass protection for Luck. Returning running back Marlon Mack may be ideally suited to the run game if the Colts decide to employ a scheme that requires the ability to make people miss at the line. According to Pro Football Focus, Mack had the seventh-best average after contact last season among backs with at least 50 attempts. Expect the Colts to lean on the run game with creative formational advantages to help set up those knockout punches Reich wants to see.
Still, Luck’s decision making, reading his progressions, and finding the right time to take risks with his legs and his body, will decide how far this Colts offense can go.
And protecting Luck, putting him in the best position to succeed in Indianapolis won’t mean recreating the Eagles offense, or relying on RPOs, or forcing him to stay in the pocket and fire off three-step drops every play. Scheme won’t fix what has ailed the Colts in the past.
Andrew Luck’s brain will.
