Once again, Indianapolis Colts retool their offense to fit a new QB; this time, it’s Carson Wentz

The Colts' offense is designed to be adaptable.

Coach Frank Reich drew flexibility into the architecture of his scheme, a system drafted to transform to fit its personnel and attack defenses in a multitude of ways.

The versatility has been critical to Reich’s time in Indianapolis. Four offseasons into his tenure as Colts head coach, Reich is working with his fourth starting quarterback, tweaking and tailoring the scheme once again, this time to fit the skills of Carson Wentz.

“Their track record kind of speaks for itself, to really cater to what each guy does well,” Wentz said.

Every transition has had its own challenges.

From a schematic standpoint, the shift from Andrew Luck to Jacoby Brissett wasn’t too drastic — the two quarterbacks did some of the same things — but the shift had to happen on the fly as the Colts bore down on the regular season.

Colts QB Carson Wentz is going to have a full offseason and training camp to work with coach Frank Reich and the rest of the offensive staff. (Photo: Bill Streicher, USA TODAY Sports)

The shift from Brissett’s improvisational style to the rhythm passing of Philip Rivers from the pocket presented a bigger shift in styles, and even though Indianapolis had an entire offseason to make the transition, the COVID-19 pandemic took away some of the time the Colts needed to tinker.

Wentz is going to have a full offseason and training camp to work with Reich and the rest of the offensive staff.

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“This is the time of year where we’re trying to go, ‘This is our offense, this is what we run,’ and then he’ll bring in some ideas, what fits him, his skill set,” Colts offensive coordinator Marcus Brady said. “Frank and this offense, the way we built it is to be able to adapt to different quarterbacks. We’re doing that this offseason, seeing what meshes, what he’s going to be comfortable with.”

Reich obviously knows Wentz better than most quarterbacks, dating back to their time together with the Eagles.

But the scheme Reich is running in Indianapolis is different from the Doug Pederson-influenced system he ran to a Super Bowl in Philadelphia. Wentz is familiar with most of the offense’s concepts, but he acknowledged that the terminology is different, requiring the quarterback to learn a different language.

Not that the Colts could tell when Wentz took to the practice fields in Indianapolis for the first time in the middle of May.

“Carson came in with a good command of the offense,” Reich said.

Teaching a quarterback the terminology is the easy part. Wentz, Reich, Brady and the rest of the Colts offensive staff have spent the past couple of weeks and months working on the hard part. Tailoring the offense to fit Wentz’s skill set.

Unlike the 38-year-old Rivers, Wentz is remarkably mobile, carries a strong arm and can be devastating when he’s creating something out of nothing, and the Colts want to make sure there are still opportunities for the quarterback to create those highlight-reel plays in Indianapolis.

But that does not mean the Colts are deleting dozens of pages out of the playbook, drawing up new ones and changing the offense entirely. For example, the RPO (run-pass option) concepts the Eagles made famous with Wentz have always been a part of the Indianapolis playbook, even if Rivers didn't offer the same sort of running ability. 

A more accurate way to describe the process of tailoring the offense to fit Wentz is to say that the Colts are reordering their priorities.

“For the most part, it’s not like we’re installing a new offense just for him,” Brady said. “It’s schemes that we ran with the different quarterbacks that have been in this system, whether we ran it with Andrew prior, or Jacoby, moving around, getting out of the pocket, some of the drop-back stuff with Philip … It’s just what fits him, how we call the game.”

Under Reich, the Colts have always given the quarterback a lot of input, both into the way the offense is designed and the way the game plan is put together. Every quarterback has plays he likes more than others, concepts that make him feel comfortable.

Part of the tailoring process is finding out exactly what Wentz likes, and the work the quarterback put in learning the offense before the start of the team’s offseason program has been critical. Wentz and Reich work so well together in part because they see football the same way, and they’re good at communicating their preferences back and forth.

The rest of the Colts' coaching staff has already seen it.

“What I love about him is he’s very vocal in the meeting room, whether it’s his likes, his dislikes, he’s not one to be shy about what he doesn’t like, which I appreciate from a quarterback,” Brady said. “If he believes in it, he’s going to make it work.”

That doesn’t mean Wentz has the final word.

Part of the beauty of Reich’s offense is that there is room to tailor the system to every player on the Indianapolis offense, and despite all the change at quarterback, there are plays and concepts that have become part of the foundation for a Colts offense that has been successful in three seasons under Reich.

Those staples aren’t going away. The more the Colts work on tailoring the offense to fit Wentz, the more Wentz fits into the offense that’s already established in Indianapolis.

“That’s all we’re doing: Going up and down, (finding out) what fits him well in order to make our offense successful,” Brady said. “And not just what fits him well, there are some things that fit our offense well that we need for him to improve, that he needs to get better, get more reps at.”

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