Colts Notebook: New Expectations, plus Must-Read Quotes From Pat McAfee
(AP / Michael Conroy)
For today’s offseason edition of the Notebook (Heavens no, not the romantic drama), we’ll discuss what Chuck Pagano said to his players, some must-read quotes from the refreshingly candid Pat McAfee, and Luck and Pagano jokingly plot to keep Bruce Arians from leaving.
The Cinderella story is over, and the 2013 Colts will carry the expectation of winning. They sound as though they’re up to the challenge. As usual, all quotes from today’s Notebook are courtesy of the Indianapolis Colts Public Relations Department.
Must Read: Pat McAfee
Pat McAfee started out as a good, serviceable punter early in his career but then came on strong after his public intoxication embarrassment in 2010 (The Broad Ripple Canal, folks, not the nice clean Downtown Canal, the muddy one with all the ducks). McAfee issued his own heartfelt apology via Twitter instead of releasing an official statement through his agent, which may have won some people over in Indianapolis (note: the incident is only mentioned here to avoid seeing anything about it in the comments). After serving a suspension and putting the incident behind him, he went on to set a Colts franchise record the following season of 46.6 yards per punt. In 2012, he followed up his breakout year by beating his own franchise record, raising the bar to 48.2 yards per punt.
Yesterday, McAfee talked with the local media and offered his perspective on a few things, one of which was the mixed feelings players feel after the end of such an incredible season. “There’s 31 teams that are going to be disappointed after this season,” he said. “The playoffs offer you another chance to either get to the Super Bowl or be another disappointed team. That’s the way it is. That’s the way it works. After the Super Bowl, we were disappointed. After the other playoff losses that I’ve had, I was disappointed. And this year obviously I’m just as disappointed.
“But this team is so young and so promising, the coaching staff is so amazing, front office can obviously evaluate talent better than anybody else. There’s so much promise and future that whenever we look back at this in the next couple months, we’re going to be pumped for future seasons.”
They asked McAfee if he wanted to be a part of the Colts’ future, and, despite Indianapolis being the location of one of his lowest moments, he was very candid about his desire to stay. “Yeah. I mean the politically correct thing to say is that you want to be with whatever team you’re with, but it’s really true for me,” he said. “Indianapolis has become a home for me. I’ve got everything I want here, let alone a dome, kickers are huge for dome. But I love this team, I love this city, I love the citizens of this community and I enjoy being a citizen of Indianapolis, so I hope I come back. There’s such a nasty business side of it that you hire agents to handle. I’m going out stay out of it but hopefully I’ll be an Indianapolis Colts for life.”
McAfee went on to say he’s not the guy who should be doing the negotiating, even alluding to a willingness to play for the league minimum, something many players would never say aloud. “I’m one of those guys where if I was a boss and I was going to fire somebody, they would end up leaving the meeting with me giving them a raise,” said McAfee. “I’m not very cut throat. That’s not the thing that I want to do. I’d be willing to play for minimum. That’s what the agents are hired for and that’s why they get probably overpaid to be honest with you. That’s their job. I’m just supposed to sit back and make a decision at the end of the day and hopefully that decision will be that I wear a horseshoe for a lot more years.”
From the sound of it, the only thing that might keep McAfee from coming back might be if a team offered him his dream NFL job, allowing him to be first player to punt, kick off, and kick field goals and PAT’s. “Yeah, I’ve made that very clear. I want to be the first guy to do all three,” he said. He went on to say, “I’ve had an amazing mentor in Adam Vinatieri who is the greatest of all time, going to be a Hall of Famer. I also got to learn from Matt Stover. I think the time has come for a guy to do all three and I hope that I’m that guy.”
It’s not often a team, a winning team no less, has a high priority on re-signing a punter, but the Colts will likely be working to lock in the talented, fun-loving Pat McAfee, the franchise leader punting average (and a touchback machine on kickoffs), for a long time to come.
(Photo Brent Smith / Reuters)
Pagano: Rest, Then Get Back to Work, See You in April
The Colts met yesterday to talk over the season, clean out lockers, and prepare for the offseason. Chuck Pagano addressed the team before lunch, and before getting down to business, he reflected on what they were able to accomplish this season. “The message, we met this morning at 11:00 with the team,” Pagano said. “We had everybody in there. It’s basically what I said after the ballgame yesterday. You know, I’m really, really proud of this football team, this coaching staff, this organization, everybody involved with what this team was able to accomplish this year.”
Pagano told the players to rest and spend time with their families, but there was a caveat. After an unexpected 11-5 season, winning is now expected of them. No more Cinderella story. The players and coaches have a standard to maintain, and hopefully upon which to improve.
“We’ve got to raise the bar and we’ve got to raise the expectations because we know now that they’re going to be obviously much higher because of the success we had this year,” Pagano said. “That’s fine, that’s why we got into this business. That’s why we coach and that’s why we play, is to put ourselves in these types of situations to give ourselves a chance to reach our ultimate goal which is to win a World Championship and to win multiple World Championships.”
After getting some rest, Pagano told his players to, “find two or three things that you can really hone in on in the offseason to get better at. We won’t start back until the league rules allow us to which will be mid-April sometime when we start phase one.”
The players will be working out and staying in shape, but they can’t work with the coaches until spring. “They can use the facility but there’s no coaching, there’s no teaching, no field work,” Pagano said. “We can’t instruct. They can use the facility. They can use the weight room but it’s all voluntary. Just access. It’s all voluntary. They can use the facility at their own leisure but again we are not allowed to have any hands off.”
Just a Few More Quotes
Robert Mathis on being the hunted instead of the hunter so to speak, a team expected to win in 2013: “Well the element of surprise is not there anymore. People know what we’ve got and they know when they play the Colts we’re coming fighting. We come to play the game and hopefully we don’t have those 1-15 predictions from outside sources, but really all that matters is that we believe in each other and we know what we’re capable of doing.”
Andrew Luck, on where he will go when he goes home: “I don’t know (laughs). Honestly, I haven’t given it an ounce of thought. I’ve really enjoyed living here through the season. It’ll be something I will have to figure out.”
Just a quick note: The fact that Luck hasn’t even considered whether he’s going “home” to Houston, Indianapolis, West Virginia (where his parents now live), or somewhere else altogether, shows just how singular of a focus this young man has on football. For the men who do it for a living, football truly is their life.
Pagano on hearing that Andrew Luck jokingly said he would say negative things about Bruce Arians if someone asked for a recommendation: “We talked about that, last time putting the (halt) on him, put the kibosh on him. We won’t get into those right now. We will just use social media. We will get on the Internet. Just like they do around draft time with all the players, all the baggage starts to come out. We won’t do it here. We will just wait until later this evening, the next couple of weeks and start putting all that stuff out if it get serious.”
In the NFL coaching carousel, Bruce Arians is currently the prettiest girl at the party, so to speak (maybe not the best metaphor). He’s bound to be a top candidate somewhere, but seeing Pagano and Luck making jokes about slandering him to keep him in Indy shows how badly they want BA to come back to work on West 56th Street, across from Eagle Creek Park this April. It also shows how close these players and coaches are after just one season together.
Lastly, Pat McAfee offers some very powerful perspective on what we’ve all witnessed from the 2012 Colts and their affable coach: “I think this year has taught us all a lot of valuable lessons as players and as humans. To watch a coach fight for his life, come back and beat it and come on the sideline was so inspirational for us all. Not only outside the building, everyone is talking about how inspirational it was for them, but inside the building as well. We were a young team that came together quickly as a family. We accomplished a lot of things that not a lot of people outside this room thought we could accomplish. We set quite a foundation for years in the future. It was an amazing ride to be a part of.”
This may be our last Colts Notebook for a while (though I may have enough to do another tomorrow). In the meantime, happy offseason to everyone. I have truly enjoyed all your comments and input this season.
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Clearly this is the best Colts site on the Internet. I sent an email to Sports Illustrated asking them to include you guys in their RSS feed for Colts stuff. No word back. :-(
Great, great job to all of the writers!
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Nice, thanks for the write up.
Honestly I think that we should have a good shot next year, I really do like Pat, and I really would not mind if he did all 4 aspects, I mean, we save money and even though Adam was not horrible this year he definitely was not wonderful.
I hope Reggie lets some of the younger guys workout with him this offseason, I think it could be good for the group.
@paulcareyjr it would be cool. I was talking to someone who watched him kick at camp (the open to the public practices), and he said McAfee just wasn't that accurate on FGs. He did get to kick one in the preseason. He said in Indy radio today that Pagano told the offense not to score a TD on one drive so McAfee could kick a field goal in a game situation.
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Thanks Marcus for all you've done this season.
Not only did I want the Colts to really win, but selfishly I wanted at least another week of Colts Authority. I was really looking forward to getting everyone at Colts Authority take on playing Peyton.
(I almost wish you guys would give the Colts Authority treatment to the Broncos for the rest of their season.)
I'd live to cover Peyton's playoff run, but I suspect we might not be allowed to (although I don't believe there IS a Broncos blog in our network). I wonder if we'd be allowed to do maybe one or two write ups in a special section kind of like @codrutc mentioned. I don't have any final say on anything - and I think a lot of the offseason stuff has been planned out, but you never know.
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@DougEngland I suggest they make a section on CA entitled Colts Alumni or similar in which people can discuss former Colts' achievements.
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I wonder if Arians "episode" before the Ravens game will effect his status with other teams. After all, he is in his sixties. (Has he ever been a head coach?) Not that I'm engaging in ageism or anything.
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@DougEngland You bought that it was a natural illness? Excellent.
I've said too much. The first rule of Operation BruceBlock is you don't talk about... well, you know.
@squirrel @DougEngland I wondered (in a half joking, half crazy conspiracy theorist way) if the hospital blew his issue out of proportion to keep him away from the game. But, that's just what Operation BruceBlock would want us to think...I've said to much...
