Doyel: Andrew Luck is back, but can we please not forget about Jacoby Brissett?

Gregg Doyel | IndyStar

WESTFIELD – He is no longer the most important player on his NFL team, as he was a year ago for the Indianapolis Colts. He is the parenthetical quarterback now, a placeholder who has been replaced by Andrew Luck (a job once held by Jacoby Brissett).

He is not gone, but he has been forgotten. Anyone talking about (Jacoby Brissett) around here? The media sure isn’t. Not that we necessarily should, seeing how Andrew Luck is back and all, but three days into 2018 NFL training camp, Colts coach Frank Reich had been asked exactly zero questions about what’s-his-name.

On Wednesday, when the Colts reported to Westfield, the first 10 questions for Reich were about Luck. On Thursday he was asked nine questions, the first seven about Luck. On Friday it was the first five. After that, I followed Reich away from the group and said these six words to the Colts coach: Oh by the way: Jacoby Brissett. Reich smiled. He was a career backup himself, you know, Jacoby Brissett before there even was a Jacoby Brissett.

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Make sure you understand this: Frank Reich wasn’t merely “a career backup,” as his playing career is most often described, including by me in the previous paragraph; he was one of the best backups in the NFL. Reich rarely played in Buffalo behind future Hall of Famer Jim Kelly, but when he did he was terrific, going 4-2 in six starts from 1989-93. In that span he threw 17 touchdowns and six interceptions, had a 92.5 quarterback rating and engineered the biggest comeback in NFL playoff history: turning a 35-3 third-quarter deficit against Houston into a 41-38 victory on Jan. 3, 1993.

Eleven months later, Jacoby Brissett was born.

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Weird how these things work out. Not only is Reich the perfect coach for the Colts' starting QB — at the end of his career, Reich underwent the same surgery Luck had last year — but he’s perfect for the backup as well. Earlier this week, knowing what would happen around here when camp began and Luck finally returned, Reich pulled aside Brissett to say, basically: I’ve been where you’re about to go.

“I told him: I backed up a Hall of Fame quarterback for a lot of years in Jim Kelly,” Reich says. “Every day I stepped on that field I wasn’t looking at (Kelly) like he’s a Hall of Famer; I was looking at him like we were competing. Everybody tried to talk about, ‘Hey, (you’re) a good role player’ — yeah, I was, I understood my position — but don’t get me wrong: I was out there competing. I expect the same from Jacoby. I told him I want him to go out there and say: 'I’m going to complete a higher percentage than you are,' know what I mean? Cause you (and Luck) are going to make each other better.”

Brissett will compete. We saw that last year. He was acquired from New England eight days before the 2017 season-opener and walked into a terrible situation: one top-quality receiver (T.Y. Hilton), one NFL-caliber tight end (Jack Doyle), no running game, no offensive line, terrible coaching staff. Brissett took a beating but put together a remarkable season: 3,098 passing yards, 13 touchdowns, seven interceptions and an 81.7 passer rating that ranked ahead of past Pro Bowlers Jay Cutler (80.8) and Cam Newton (80.7), Super Bowl winners Eli Manning (80.7) and Joe Flacco (80.4), AFC South colleague Marcus Mariota (79.3), even 2017 No. 2 overall draft pick Mitchell Trubisky (77.5).

Brissett added 260 rushing yards, 12th among NFL quarterbacks, and averaged 4.1 yards per carry — best among all Colts with at least two carries last season. Brissett was fourth in the league in interception percentage at 1.5 percent, a number that beats Andrew Luck’s career best (1.6 percent in 2013) and is tied for 53rd all-time, if you can believe that.

Brissett led the league in one statistic, sacks (52). Because, Colts.

After Brissett turned in that season on that team at that age (23), other general managers were calling Colts GM Chris Ballard, trying to pry him from Indianapolis. Nothing doing. Teams were offering a mid-round 2018 draft pick for Brissett, and though Ballard has been stockpiling picks because the Colts are in rebuilding mode, Brissett stayed put.

Here’s the reason why, and it’s something Reich was telling me Friday, relaying what he’d told Brissett a few days ago. You’re probably walking around with your phone right now, but you’re going to need to sit down for this.

“I think you’re a top-20 quarterback,” Reich told Brissett. “I think you’re a starter in this league.”

Just … not here. Not unless something goes terribly wrong with Luck, who was a top-10 quarterback in this league, more like top five, before he was injured early in the 2015 season.

“Hey,” Reich told Brissett before camp started, “you understand the situation.”

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Reich’s relaying those comments to me, and I’m asking him: How is Jacoby handling the situation?

“He’s handling it like a pro, but I think he’s a big-time competitor and he wants to play,” Reich said. “But because he’s a pro, he’s handling it the right way.”

Meanwhile, our obsession with Luck’s throwing shoulder dwarfs all else at Colts camp, including ancillary Luck material like the emergence of rookie receiver Deon Cain and the news that Luck invited several receivers to catch passes earlier this month in California, but apparently only Chester Rogers showed up. Seems like a big story to me, but we have our hands full tracking Luck’s pass attempts in practice — we’re talking about practice — even giving them the color-coded, time-stamped treatment in a front-page IndyStar chart.

Colts' Andrew Luck rusty in first practice of the season https://t.co/WWKZUI8BtF pic.twitter.com/kvdTi8R9cB — Nat Newell (@NatJNewell) July 26, 2018

Luck was 11-for-19 on Thursday, by the way. As for Brissett, well, does it matter anymore? He’s the other guy, the parenthetical quarterback, someone who better not play again around these parts (even if he did a hell of a job in 2017).

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter: @GreggDoyelStar or at facebook.com/gregg.doyel.