The mood was somber, a lot like the day after a devastating playoff loss or a season-ending injury. Colts quarterback Andrew Luck took the news as hard as anyone.
Tuesday afternoon, Colts coach Chuck Pagano fired offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton days after the team fell short in overtime on a comeback effort against Carolina. The message: this isn’t good enough.
Hamilton was Luck’s guy. He was his offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Stanford for two seasons before joining Luck in Indianapolis during his second season.
“It was jarring, tough, and not fun,” Luck said about Hamilton’s firing.
The pain in the Colts franchise quarterback’s voice was apparent. He had a special relationship with Hamilton. Luck attributed much of his progression as a player to him.
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In his rookie year, Luck completed 54.1 percent of his passes and threw 23 touchdown passes and 18 interceptions. When Hamilton arrived in 2013, Luck’s completion rate increased to 60.2 percent, he threw the same amount of touchdown passes and reduced his interceptions to nine. Last season, Luck threw 40 touchdown passes.
The timing isn’t great, which Pagano and Luck both admitted. The Colts host a Broncos’ defense that just held Packers’ quarterback Aaron Rodgers to 77 yards passing. Its a defensive unit that Pagano compared to the 2000 Baltimore Ravens.
It’ll be a dramatic shift. Luck said the offensive coordinator handles most of the offense’s preparation and that it would be “fairly different without Pep in the room.” Associate head coach Rob Chudzinski was named interim offensive coordinator.
“We needed a change,” Pagano said. “We can’t continue to go down that same road. We haven’t seen the type of points that need to go on the board early in the game.”
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Indianapolis has been shut out in the first half of three games this season.
Indianapolis has regressed. It is 3-5, matching its regular-season loss total in each of the past three seasons midway through the season.
Luck is worst in the NFL with 12 interceptions. The Colts defense gives up an average of 404.9 yards per game, fourth most in the NFL and 143 yards more than the Broncos give up.
Then, there’s the matter of Luck’s health. He missed two games with a shoulder injury and reports have come out recently that he’s also battling a rib injury.
“I do feel healthy with no limitations,” Luck said. “I’m not going to get into the past, really anything in the past about health.”
Luck was listed as limited on the Colts injury report Wednesday with an ankle injury. He isn’t the only one banged up. Star receiver T.Y. Hilton missed practice with a foot injury suffered against Carolina Sunday that Pagano said is still being evaluated.
Simply put, the Colts are a team with a lot of problems heading into Sunday’s matchup with Denver.
Unfortunately for Indy, the Broncos’ defense won’t have any sympathy.
Or as Broncos cornerback Chris Harris put it “you don’t want to face us being banged up and hurt. We’re going to send the dogs to you and play man.”
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Cameron Wolfe: 303-954-1891, cwolfe@denverpost.com or @CameronWolfe
