What Shane Steichen's trying to find in next Colts QB

[JAFF]

INDIANAPOLIS — Philip Rivers used to poke his head into Shane Steichen’s Chargers office late at night, in the middle of the offseason, long after most of the players had gone home.

When Rivers left, and the Chargers were looking for his replacement, Justin Herbert blew Steichen away with his work ethic in the predraft process. It wasn't just the information Los Angeles gave the rookie to study, but with the way Herbert described his weekly work leading up to each game.

The past two seasons in Philadelphia, Steichen watched Jalen Hurts walk into the team facility every day at 6 a.m., then work every day until 9:30 p.m. before heading home to get the right amount of rest.


All three quarterbacks had the quality Steichen’s going to spend the next two months trying to identify in the Colts’ next quarterback.

Obsession.

“A lot of these guys are going to be talented, a lot of these guys are going to be able to run and make plays,” Steichen said. “What’s that edge that separates them?”


For Steichen, it’s always been the dedication, the quarterbacks who might as well be wearing blinders to everything else around them, who obsess about the game in a way Colts fans will always associate with Peyton Manning.

Not that it’s the only thing he’s trying to find.

From a football standpoint, Steichen has been consistent about the three on-field qualities he’s trying to find in a quarterback since he arrived in Indianapolis. These are qualities they’re evaluating in a celebrated quarterback class that includes Alabama’s Bryce Young, Ohio State’s C.J. Stroud, Kentucky’s Will Levis and Florida’s Anthony

Accuracy, decision-making and the ability to create. A list that dovetails nicely with Colts general manager Chris Ballard’s requirements for the position: accuracy, the athleticism to create and a fast mind, a brain with the ability to make the right decisions faster than anybody else.


An NFL team can see all of those abilities on a quarterback’s college tape. As much coverage as the quarterbacks will get in the on-field throwing drills at Lucas Oil Stadium this weekend, along with their Pro Days and private workouts, Ballard acknowledged Wednesday that those performances have to be taken with a few grains of salt.


For Ballard and the Colts, the tape is what matters on the football ability.

The goal for the next two months is finding a quarterback with the obsession Steichen wants and the makeup Ballard covets.

“You’ve got to do a really good job of managing it and studying it, giving them stuff to study, making them look at different materials, vetting the heck out of these guys,” Steichen said. “Finding out as much information as you possibly can.”

The interviews the Colts will conduct with the quarterbacks at the Combine this week will be part of it, along with the face-to-face conversations they have with each player later in the process, either at a pro day or a private workout, whether that happens in Indianapolis or on the player’s home turf.

How the quarterbacks handle those interviews matter.

How they come across in the conversations Steichen has with the people around each quarterback might matter even more.


“You’ve got to ask every single person that knows this guy, that’s been around this guy: ‘What’s he like? What makes him tick? What’s his office hours? How does he study tape?’l Steichen said. “All of those little details.”

Ballard’s looking for his own set of intangibles the next couple of weeks.

The Colts general manager has always understood the pressure that comes with being a quarterback picked at the top of the draft. An ability to handle that pressure, Ballard believes, might be what separates the quarterbacks who succeed from the ones who bust, ultimately crippling a franchise for at least half a decade in the process.

“Automatically, he gets deemed the face of the franchise, right or wrong,” Ballard said. “That’s what happens, and they’ve got to be able to handle that, and then, when they have success, it’s not just the moment of when they’re drafted. Once they even have success, they’ve still got to be able to handle it. They can’t become above the team.”


For that reason, Ballard will be watching everything Young, Stroud, Levis, Richardson and the rest of the quarterbacks do off the field this week more closely than anything they do on the field Saturday night.

The quarterback position is different.

The team has to believe in that player. Not only the player, but the person, and that’s not an easy respect to earn, especially for a rookie.

“The team believing in who you’ve got behind center matters,” Ballard said. “Who they are, what they stand for, how they work.”

What Steichen learned from Rivers is that a quarterback earns that respect one way.

By never wavering from the goal.

“You’ve got to love it, you’ve got to be obsessed with it,” Steichen said. “You want to play in this league for a long time and be successful? You’ve got to have that mindset, every single day, that I’m going to give it everything I’ve got and give it everything I can.”


That’s what Steichen learned in late-night conversations with Rivers in the Chargers offices, in the months leading up to the draft with Herbert, in day after day of work with Hurts in Philadelphia.

Ultimately, what he wants in his franchise quarterback.

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