INDIANAPOLIS -- Andrew Luck's wristband, which serves as his play-calling cheat sheet, was gone, and the suspicion on the Indianapolis Colts sideline was that the Denver Broncos had it. How, no one knew for sure.

"I was in a panic," Colts offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton said.

"Either lost it," Luck said, "or forgot to put it on at halftime."

Given video evidence, the latter is more likely true.

As game tape shows, Luck played with the wristband throughout the first half of the Colts' divisional win over the Broncos on Sunday. When Luck took the field for the first offensive snap of the third quarter, he didn't have it. Several plays went by before backup quarterback Matt Hasselbeck hurled his wristband onto the field. Facing second-and-16 from the Broncos' 40-yard line, Luck jogged over to the numbers closest to the Colts' sideline, picked up the wristband, slid it over his left hand and jogged back to the huddle.

"You could have our playbook, and the coaches have equipped Andrew with enough tools and leeway and bullets in his gun, so to speak, that he still can be right," Hasselbeck said.

That is because the Colts' playbook belongs to Luck now. This season, Hamilton gave Luck the keys to the Porsche. It was a natural progression for the third-year quarterback. Year 1 was about getting Luck comfortable playing in the NFL. Year 2 was about pivoting to Hamilton, who replaced Bruce Arians as coordinator. Although Luck and tight end Coby Fleener played under Hamilton at Stanford, the rest of the team was unfamiliar with his offense. Year 3 was about giving Luck more pre-snap responsibility at the line of scrimmage and trusting that his mind, right arm and feet would turn potentially negative plays into positive ones.

In the huddle, Luck typically calls three plays. At the line, however, he has countless other options -- his "toolbox," as Hasselbeck called it -- from which to choose, depending on what the defense is showing. For the more complicated plays, Hamilton will tell Luck to call them from the wristband.

Luck has an enormous number of plays at his disposal -- substantially more than last season -- particularly for a quarterback who has started only 53 NFL games. But Luck isn't just any quarterback.

"The guy's a bright guy," Indianapolis head coach Chuck Pagano said. "He can handle a lot. We're lucky. We're very lucky, no pun intended."

Andrew Luck typically calls three plays in the huddle but has multiple pre-snap options. Alex Trautwig/Getty Images

The pre-snap read begins as soon as the quarterback breaks the huddle. What is the defensive front? Is it an over front? Is it an under? Is the defense showing blitz? Are they trying to stop the run? How much time is left on the 40-second play clock?

At the line, the options vary. Some quarterbacks have two plays from which to choose, a run and a pass, as Luck did for most of his first two seasons. Maybe it's a bubble screen. Maybe it's an inside handoff to avoid a safety.

"Typically you [install plays] systematically so [the quarterback has] got a few when he's very young, and as the year goes on a few more and a few more," longtime NFL offensive coordinator Marty Mornhinweg said. "Once the young man has a great understanding of the options and can put you in the very best play, pretty soon he could go all the way to Peyton Manning, doing that virtually every play.

"I think those kinds of quarterbacks are very unique. I would suspect there's a little bit more than a handful of guys doing it regularly and having success."

GROWTH OF A PRODIGY Statistical progression of Colts quarterback Andrew Luck during the first three seasons of his NFL career: Yr Cmp% Yds Y/Att TD Int '12 54.1 4,374 6.98 23 18 '13 60.2 3,822 6.71 23 9 '14 61.7 4,761 7.73 40 16

Manning. Tom Brady. Drew Brees. Aaron Rodgers. And Luck.

It's no accident that Luck has thrown for more yards in his first three seasons than any quarterback in NFL history. Only Dan Marino threw more touchdown passes than Luck in his first three seasons.

In just his third year, Luck broke Manning's franchise records for a single season with 4,761 passing yards and 10 games of at least 300 yards.

"He can manage ... having to go up and identify front and coverage, get the protection set, get a guy in motion, do this, do that and then remember the snap count," Pagano said. "I can't imagine what a daunting task that is, let alone go to the line with run, pass, run, run to run, this, that and the other.

"All the quarterbacks that are playing right now [in the playoffs] -- the one we just faced, Manning in Denver, obviously -- they're able to go and do what they do at the line of scrimmage. They can identify these kinds of things. They have recall. They manage bad plays and get you in the right play 95 percent of the time. So rather than just calling a play to call a play, they get you out when a certain look isn't going to work. They get you out of it, and they get you in the right play. It's a benefit."

That's the jump Luck took this season.

Luck doesn't have as much control over plays as predecessor Peyton Manning, but he's getting there. John Leyba/The Denver Post/Getty Images

Hamilton said Luck has more audibles and play options at the line of scrimmage this season. A lot of it has to do with protections, because the last thing the Colts want is for Luck to end up on the turf.

"And then in some cases it is a run to run, or run to pass," Hamilton said. "I think we have the full menu of run-pass checks and options to get us to the best play."

When asked how many more options Luck has this season, Hamilton laughed.

"I don't know if I can quantify that," he said. "I think it didn't have as much to do with Andrew as it did with everybody else being in their second year in the system being able to handle the different options and audibles that we would make at the line of scrimmage, you know?"

Said Luck: "I don't want to make it sound like I can pull from any play at any time. ... But I think, too, with a natural progression of a quarterback, the older you get, the more experienced you get, the easier it is to say, 'Oh, this is the look we can definitely run this play on. Let's do it. We got burned by it before, and now we're going to flip the script.'"

The benefits have been obvious. Luck threw an NFL-high 40 touchdown passes this season, 17 more than last season on just 46 more pass attempts. He completed a career-high 61.7 percent of his passes, and his yards-per-attempt average of 7.73 was a full yard more than in 2013.

That Luck threw 16 interceptions, as opposed to just nine in 2013, was not a function of his having more control at the line, both he and Pagano said. Luck, however, will have to protect the football Sunday in the AFC Championship Game against a New England team that has owned him in three previous meetings. The Patriots are 3-0 against the Luck-led Colts, winning by an average of 26 points per game. In those three games -- two regular-season matchups and one playoff game -- Luck threw six touchdowns and eight interceptions.

"That hasn't grinded on me, in a sense, on my mind this week," Luck said. "You do look back on the film and try and glean some information about scheme, glean some things like that. It's a new game and a new opportunity."

Colts offensive coordinator Pep Hamilton worked with Luck at Stanford prior to joining Indy in 2013. Joe Robbins/Getty Images

Luck grew up around sports. His father, Oliver, is a former NFL quarterback and worked as an executive for NFL Europe.