As it turns out, Andrew Luck is better at his position than Trent Richardson is at his.
Thus, the Colts are going into this season with more of an open mind offensively, with offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton saying the plan is a bit different than the previous run-first mentality.
“We’re going to be a score-first team,” Hamilton said, via Mike Wells of ESPN.com “We’re going to do whatever we need to do to score one more point than our opponent.”
Hamilton’s calls a power offense, going back to his days at Stanford. That only began to change when the ingredients for a good power offense clearly weren’t there, so they began to lean more and more on Luck in three-wide sets and going no-huddle.
But with healthy tight ends and an emphasis on getting some value out of Richardson, they’re still going to run, to try to balance the scales after an out-of-whack 582-409 pass-run ratio last year.
“Our mentality has not changed; we have to be physical at the point of attack. We have to try and knock people off the ball and wear them down physically,” Hamilton said. “We have to have a sense of balance and still have a physical mentality, make up going into games so we can wear our opponents down how we see fit.”
Even a quarterback as talented as Luck needs help, and if the Colts can stay healthy and run the ball with any degree of competence, it’s only going to make Luck’s job easier.