“There’s a saying in football that everybody knows and everybody lives by: It’s next man up. Although this circumstance is unique, that’s a universal principle in this game, and no one is exempt.”
That’s what Colts head coach Frank Reich said in the press conference following Andrew Luck’s bombshell retirement Saturday. And yes, the Colts are in a unique position. No NFL team in recent memory has had to deal with the retirement of its franchise quarterback as the preseason is about to end. Fortunately for the Colts, they had acquired Jacoby Brissett, a 2016 third-round quarterback out of North Carolina State, by trading receiver Phillip Dorsett to the New England Patriots in September 2017. They did so based on the certainty that Luck would miss the entire 2017 season due to a shoulder injury, and with Luck now two more years down a path of pain that took his love for the game away, that trade is now an ace in the hole for Reich and general manager Chris Ballard.
Brissett started 15 games for the Colts in 2017, completing 58.8 percent of his passes for 3,098 yards, 13 touchdowns and seven interceptions. He did so for a franchise that was at the nadir of the Ryan Grigson era from a developmental perspective—2017 was Ballard’s first year as Grigson’s replacement, and he couldn’t fill all the holes left by Grigson’s malfeasance over the previous half-decade. Brissett, who started two games for the Patriots in his rookie season while Tom Brady was suspended for the DeflateGate fiasco and Jimmy Garoppolo was injured, was used to coming into emergency situations and excelling unexpectedly.
But in 2017, Brissett worked behind an offensive line that “helped” him see pressure on 40.1 percent of his dropbacks. Per Pro Football Focus, only Russell Wilson was pressured at a higher rate among quarterbacks who took at least 50 percent of their team’s snaps, and 2017 was also the nadir of Seattle’s offensive line experiments with Tom Cable in charge. Outside of breakout tight end Jack Doyle and established speed receiver T.Y. Hilton, Brissett didn’t have much in the way of targets.
Indianapolis’ defense ranked 27th overall in Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted metrics, and dead last against the pass. The team that Brissett now leads is far stronger in every category because Ballard has done a marvelous job of team-building. So, when Ballard expresses confidence in the post-Luck era with Brissett as the main man, he isn’t just blowing smoke.
“We’re young, good on both fronts, [we have] some good young skill players and a good young quarterback in Jacoby Brissett,” Ballard said Saturday evening. “We’re not gonna ask Jacoby Brissett to be Andrew Luck. Andrew Luck was a unique, unique player, but Jacoby Brissett is a winning football player in this league. Jacoby Brissett is a rare, rare leader. He is. He’s a rare human being, man. That locker room loves Jacoby Brissett. They love him.”
Ballard’s confidence likely comes from Brissett’s ability to navigate those issues in 2017. Despite the lack of protection, Luck’s backup was relatively efficient with the deep pass, completing 15 of 41 passes of 20 air yards or more for 543 yards, four touchdowns, and one interception. And when he was under pressure, he completed 45 percent of his passes for 817 yards, two touchdowns, and two interceptions. Under circumstances that would have caused a lot of inexperienced quarterbacks to fold, Brissett held steady and developed his skill set to the point where he looks like a different quarterback in 2019.
But even back then, Brissett unleashed a few throws that brought his potential to the surface.
This 45-yard touchdown pass to Hilton in Week 9 of the 2017 season is a throw any professional quarterback would be happy to have made. Here, Hilton is at the bottom right of your screen, extending outside position against cornerback Johnathan Joseph before turning inside on a vertical route. Joseph has the time and the rare speed to catch up with Hilton, which means that Brissett has to make a bang-on throw in two areas–he has to time the pass to hit where Hilton is going, and he has to get it past where the defender can disrupt it.
Brissett succeeds on both counts, and he does so despite the fact that he has to make an off-platform throw due to front-side pressure from defensive tackle Brandon Dunn.
Fast-forward to the 2019 preseason, and Week 2 against the Browns, when Brissett completed eight of 10 passes for 100 yards and a touchdown. Had this play counted, Brissett’s stats would have been even more impressive–but the dynamite throw was negated by two Colts mistakes.
First, watch Brissett’s ability to navigate the pocket around pressure. This is an attribute all coaches want in their quarterbacks, and it doesn’t always happen. On multiple plays this preseason, Brissett has shown the kind of pocket movement you don’t see in some quarterbacks making tens of millions of dollars per year. As Tom Brady is the best in-the-pocket mover in NFL history, one wonders if Brissett picked a few things up during his Foxboro tenure.
Once Brissett works adeptly through the blitz, he hits receiver Chester Rogers for 23 on a backside dart outside the numbers. But Rogers fumbles, and the play doesn’t count even after Rogers recovers the fumble, because center Josh Andrews gets busted for holding.
But the pocket movement and the back-door throw? You can build a lot off that.
However, on this 12-yard touchdown pass to tight end Eric Ebron, Brissett shows the ability to hit a target who’s cloaked in tight coverage with timing and anticipation. Safety Sheldrick Redwine takes Ebron through his route, but Brissett places the ball where only his guy can get it.
Brissett also has the ability to scramble for additional yardage, as he did on this 11-yard scamper, and that brings up an interesting point.
If we go back to Brissett’s first NFL start, in the third week of the 2016 season, we find the Patriots with a cumbersome problem. Tom Brady is suspended, Jimmy Garoppolo is hurt, and Brissett–who had thrown just nine passes in Week 2 against the Dolphins as Garoppolo’s replacement–had to stand as the starter against a defense that finished ninth overall in Football Outsiders’ opponent-adjusted efficiency metrics.
So, as is their wont, the Patriots put a completely different set of schemes on the field. Brissett completed 11 of 19 passes for 103 yards, primarily on short, easy completions where his receivers were to gain yards after the catch.
That was Part 1 of the equation. Part 2, and this really gunked Houston’s defense up, was to use Brissett as an option quarterback–something Bill Belichick and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels hadn’t ever done with any of their quarterbacks to date.
On this 13-yard run, cornerback Kareem Jackson follows receiver Julian Edelman into the backfield, which tells Brissett that Jackson is committed to Edelman’s placement. This allows Brissett to take Jackson out of the play with fake pitch left to Edelman.
The blocking is another part of this. Right tackle Marcus Cannon crashes in on J.J. Watt. Nose tackle Vince Wilfork gets caught up in traffic. Guards Shaq Mason and Joe Thuney pull to the right, center David Andrews is there to catch Watt and Brissett gets a nice gap on the cutback.
Texans linebackers Benardrick McKinney and Max Bullough cooperate by overpursue to the pulling guards and the other fake pitch to running back Brandon Bolden, and all Brissett has to do is read the linebackers.
This 27-yard touchdown was was simpler in that the fake pitch to running back LeGarrette Blount had the entire Houston front headed that way, leaving Brissett with enormous leeway to get downfield unobstructed.
Reich is certainly smart enough to have watched Brissett do these things back in 2016, and it will be interesting to see if the Colts generate option concepts with their new quarterback. Certainly, Brissett’s skill set seems ripe for the RPOs the Eagles took to their victory over the Patriots in Super Bowl LII with Reich as their offensive coordinator.
Regardless of the ways in which Reich and his staff put Brissett in positions to succeed, the Colts’ expressed confidence in him isn’t just the usual coach-talk. They traded for Brissett a long time ago to try and get out of one Andrew Luck emergency, and the extend to which both quarterback and team have improved in the interim leaves one believing that the combination of the two just might have the right answers to a series of historically difficult questions.
