New Colts offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton brings a West Coast style offense, but he will try to carry-over some of the best elements of what Bruce Arians pulled off in Andrew Luck's first season.
Hamilton spoke with Indianapolis media Wednesday and the team shared a transcript.
“We’re not just a one-dimensional football team,” Hamilton said. “We want to create conflicts for our opponents. We want to have the ability to not only push the ball downfield and hit the big play in the passing game but we’ve got to be able to run the football and hammer the nail saw. We’re going to work hard to do that, work hard to establish balance in the offense. We want to control the clock. We want to be really good on third down and really good in the red zone. We have to play great situational football. On first and second down, there’s no can’t do’s. We’ll do a great job of mixing in some power runs, mixing in the downfield passing game, maybe even mixing in some wildcat plays, mix in some read-option, pistol-type schemes. Just really try and present once again a lot of conflicts for our opponents.”
I love opponents in conflict, of course.
I doubt the Colts would actually put Luck in the pistol or run a wildcat play that would take the ball out of his hand. But as a new coordinator, Hamilton has a chance to plant some seeds here. And defensive coordinators preparing for the Colts are listening.
And they just scribbled “pistol?” and “wildcat?” in their Colts folder.
Hamilton’s been putting in the hours since the Colts hired him to replace Arians, who’s now head coach of the Arizona Cardinals.
“I can honestly say that in the two-and-a-half, three weeks that I’ve been here at this facility, I’ve only seen sunlight maybe twice,” he said. “It’s not because it hasn’t been sunny here. Uncharacteristically, I’m hearing that you’ve had more sun than you typically have in the winter. But it’s just because I close the chute, went into the bunker. I’ve got to learn our personnel, start studying guys for the draft, which I’ve been doing and then as well spend some time with our coaches to make sure that we all have a great understanding of what we want to do moving forward.
“But the one great built-in advantage that I’ve had since I’ve been here and a member of the Colts coaching staff, is the fact that if we had to play a game today, the quarterback would know what to do. That gives you kind of a piece of mind and ease, knowing that hey, we’ll get there and we’ll get caught up, but he’s not going to have to re-learn or start at square one as far as his ability to go out and execute the offense.”