How Colts’ Reich will coach new QB Wentz
The Indianapolis Star
INDIANAPOLIS – The way Frank Reich will coach Carson Wentz in Indianapolis wasn’t born out of their first collaboration in Philadelphia.
Or out of the way Reich coached Philip Rivers in San Diego.
Or Peyton Manning in Indianapolis after Reich first broke into the NFL coaching quarterbacks.
The foundation for Reich’s reputation as a quarterback whisperer was laid in Buffalo.
“Playing in the type of offense where Jim Kelly and I were calling our own plays and having a lot of input into the game plans, I just think that’s prepared me to work with quarterbacks on a high level, and have a relationship with these guys where we know we’re working together,” Reich said last week in his first interview session since the end of the season.
Under NFL rules, Reich is not allowed to talk about his new starting quarterback yet. The trade for Wentz does not become official until the new league year begins on March 17.
But it is perfectly fine for Reich to talk about the way he has handled quarterbacks throughout his career. The results speak for themselves, from his time with Rivers in San Diego to the development of Wentz and Nick Foles in Philadelphia, through Andrew Luck, Jacoby Brissett and Rivers again in his first three seasons as a head coach in Indianapolis.
Reich’s built a deserved reputation in the NFL for developing and maximizing the play of his quarterbacks. Forced into the quarterback market by Luck’s sudden retirement two weeks before the start of the 2019 season, the Colts have leaned on their head coach’s ability to work with quarterbacks.
“I think Frank is outstanding,” Indianapolis general manOne ager Chris Ballard said. “I think he’s proven it.”
The Colts are counting on Reich to work his magic again. With Wentz.
Even if they can’t acknowledge it yet.
Wentz struggled mightily in 2020, leading the league in interceptions (15) and sacks (50). Under mounting pressure, Wentz looked less and less confident as the season progressed, and there were reports that he was pressing too hard to turn things around.
Reich’s job, in part, is to rebuild that confidence and get Wentz playing like himself again.
“I’ve seen some of the best players in the world,” Reich said. “Everybody loses confidence for a moment. It may be brief, but it always goes back the same way. formally of the ways to build confidence back is to go back to the basics. You go back to the fundamentals and technique, you go back to your basic schemes and then you build it one play at a time.”
A bad situation in Philadelphia never got back to the basics, and there have been reports that Wentz had issues with the Eagles’ offense, that he felt it wasn’t tailored to his strengths, that he struggled taking hard coaching and had a falling out with former Philadelphia head coach Doug Pederson.
Reich offered a window into the way he handles the quarterbacks under his care.
“The relationship, it has to be built right, because we’ve said this a lot of times: There’s a personal aspect to the coaching of a player,” Reich said.
Reich is an expert at building relationships.
And an expert at trusting his quarterbacks and the coaching staff around him. When Reich builds the game plan each week, he draws input from the entire staff and tailors it to his starting quarterback’s preparation.
“We see this as a collaborative effort,” Reich said. “When you get these special, elite QBs, it’s just, hey, let’s find that healthy tension. It is my job as coach, to (offensive coordinator) Marcus Brady, to (quarterbacks coach) Scott Milanovich, to have the hard coaching moments, but there’s also a lot of moments where this is us together. Ninety-eight percent of it is positive, collaborative, let’s do this. Two percent of it is, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ That’s kind of how it works out.”
Reich isn’t afraid to guide a player away from some of his worst instincts.
One of Luck’s worst impulses – like Wentz – was his tendency to play the quarterback position like a linebacker, taking unnecessary hits in an effort to turn everything into a big play, a style that ultimately ended up leading to the injuries that ended his career early.
Before the early injuries caught up with him, though, Luck was a different player in 2018 under Reich. Once known for holding on to the ball and taking too many shots, Luck finished ninth fastest in the NFL at getting the ball out of the pocket, took fewer sacks than any other quarterback in the league and started protecting himself on scrambles unless the situation warranted going for broke.
The same thing can be said of Rivers, whose penchant for taking chances hurt the Colts badly in early losses to Jacksonville and Cleveland last season. After the Browns game, Rivers threw just six interceptions in 11 games the rest of the way.
But Reich helped Luck and Rivers minimize some of their faults by encouraging them to be themselves in other parts of the game and by trusting them to take the offense into their own hands at the line of scrimmage, the way he and Kelly were taught in Buffalo.
Internally, the Colts believe Wentz can be the player who threw 81 touchdown passes and just 21 interceptions from 2017 to 2019, and if Wentz is that player, Reich is going to put a lot of trust in his new quarterback’s abilities.
“I think some of it is having the sense to stay out of their way,” Reich said. “When you get a horse that can go the distance and do something special, part of the key in coaching is don’t pull the reins back on him too much.”
Reich’s belief is the right horse will end up taking the Colts where they need to go.