New Colts coordinator Rob Chudzinski believes in 'attacking'

The Indianapolis Colts declined requests from several teams, including the San Francisco 49ers, to interview Rob Chudzinski for open offensive coordinator posts after last season.

Under contract with the Colts, the associate head coach could not explore outside opportunities without the approval of his current franchise.

So, Chudzinski remained in Indianapolis and now, months later, he's an offensive coordinator after all. After the firing of Pep Hamilton on Tuesday evening, the Colts installed Chudzinski in that role.

So, now would be a good time to look at what made Chudzinski attractive to those other teams in the first place and, perhaps, find out what might be in store for the Colts offense with him calling the plays.

One overarching sentiment about Chudzinski was offered by Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam when Chudzinski was introduced as the team's coach in 2013: "He is tremendously innovative. We are very bottom-line people. You look at results. The last two years, Rob was coordinator at Carolina and they scored 88 touchdowns. We scored 48."

Chudzinski had a lot of success integrating Carolina quarterback Cam Newton into the NFL when coaching him during his first two seasons. Newton had some of his best moments during those two seasons, throwing for a career-high 4,051 yards as a rookie and 3,869 yards in Year 2. Those remain the highest passing totals for the fifth-year quarterback.

Another statistical observation of Newton under Chudzinski: The quarterback had per-attempt averages of 8 yards and 7.8 yards in 2011 and 2012, respectively. That underscores the fact that Chudzinski pushed the ball down the field (it helped that the Panthers had receiver Steve Smith back then). Compare those numbers to struggling Colts quarterback Andrew Luck's current average per attempt – 6.3 yards, 31st among the 32 quarterbacks with at least four starts – and there's a stark difference.

Interestingly, there's been much clamoring among Colts fans to adjust to a shorter, quicker passing game, something that might help Luck compensate for his apparent injury and help reduce some of his inaccuracy issues. It will be interesting to see how the move to Chudzinski impacts this.

As for his offensive philosophy, Chudzinski described it as "an attacking style" when he was introduced in Cleveland. A story in the local media there compared Chudzinski's scheme with that of Norv Turner's when he was the Dallas Cowboys' offensive coordinator in the 1990s and, later, the San Diego Chargers' coach. Those were systems built on power running and aggressive, downfield passing.

To be clear, Chudzinski won't be installing his offense here in Indianapolis. That can't be done on the fly. But getting a sense of how he's operated offenses in the past does tell us what his instincts and principles are. And it's very likely, we'll see those come through in some form or fashion now that he's got the Colts' play-call sheet.