Colts' Quincy Wilson: 'Mike Mitchell saved my season'

Zak Keefer | IndyStar

INDIANAPOLIS — A year and a half into his career and Quincy Wilson was running in circles, going nowhere fast.

His play had yet to befit his prodigious talent, let alone warrant his lofty draft status. He was all but out of answers.

“Good play here, then a concussion the next week, then nothing for a while...” Wilson says, shaking his head as he looks back on a forgettable start to the 2018 season.

All of this, of course, after a rocky rookie campaign. The Indianapolis Colts’ second-round pick from 2017 showed up to his first NFL training camp overweight and out of shape, he’d later admit. He loafed on the practice field and found himself in the coaches’ doghouse all season. He was a healthy scratch eight times.

What didn’t help: Boasting in the spring about plans to lock down the No. 1 corner position, then failing to deliver come training camp.

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Wilson’s future in Indy, even eighteen months into his career, looked murky at best.

Then he found something, something he says that salvaged his season, and maybe more. The answer he’d been seeking arrived Oct. 9 in the form of a 31-year-old free agent who was weighing retirement from the sand of South Beach as recently as September.

Mike Mitchell signed with the Colts, showed up and balled out. He was the AFC’s Defensive Player of the Week 12 days after his first practice with the team. Wilson noticed. A week later he sought Mitchell out. He probed him for his secret. He begged.

“Bro, I need you,” Wilson told him. “I see that you do it different. You come off the street and make plays right away? Show me how.”

“Come with me,” Mitchell told him.

A month later, Quincy Wilson is sounding different and playing different, his game infused with a confidence he credits to Mitchell’s daily instruction. There is a self-assurance in the way Wilson talks that wasn’t there earlier in the season, and there is production on Sundays that certainly wasn’t there earlier in the season.

He’s comfortable. Confident. To hear him tell it, he’s figured something out: the game before the game. He knows why.

“To be honest,” Wilson says, “Mike Mitchell came in here and saved my season.”

It starts in the film room. Mitchell forced Wilson to spend an entire game week by his side. “Whatever he’s doing, I’m doing it too,” Wilson says. “I’m in his back pocket.” Mitchell showed him his Tuesday film routine, his Wednesday film routine, his Thursday, his Friday, his Saturday, all the way up to kick-off on Sunday. They were at the team facility until 9 p.m. some nights, Mitchell offering Wilson – as well as other members of the secondary – an intimate look at what’s helped him last a decade in the league.

They watched first- and second-down film the day before they practiced it. They watched red zone tape the day before they practiced it. They honed in on the when and why of offensive schemes and play calls, and dug into the details of quarterbacking tendencies.

“He taught me how to break down offenses in a way I just had no clue about,” Wilson says. “This is what I needed. I was looking for an example. I wanted to know how it was done. I tried it my way. That wasn’t working.”

The tape helped Wilson practice better; practicing better helped him play better. The coaches noticed.

"He's been working, really working every single day and really hustling in practice, and we're starting to see the fruits of that labor," said defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus.

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Wilson started Sunday for the first time since Week 1, and finished the game with his best outing as a pro: three tackles and an interception as part of a dominant day for the Colts’ defense.

That first-quarter pick of Titans QB Marcus Mariota, by the way, was the byproduct of Wilson’s film work with Mitchell. The sideline route Tennessee ran that Wilson easily sniffed out? Same one the Bills had run a month prior against the Colts, a pass that bounced off Wilson’s hands and into the mitts of Colts safety Corey Moore.

This time he wasn’t letting it out of his grasp.

“I’m picking that (if they run the play),” he told Mitchell in the week prior.

He was right. Wilson’s second career interception helped set the tone for a stunningly-revived defensive unit.

“And the best part of it?” Mitchell beams two days later. “As soon as he picks it, the first person he runs to is me.”

During the signing process, the 10-year league veteran had gotten the sense from Colts GM Chris Ballard that there was a vacuum of leadership in the back end, and the young Colts could use a veteran presence. Mitchell walked in the oldest safety on the roster by six years, the oldest defensive back by five.

He'd be more than a substitute starter. He'd have to be a leader.

So when they came to him for help, Mitchell took them under his wing. He has no problem paying it forward. He remembers the early days.

“My second and third year, I really didn’t know how to watch film,” he admits. “And it says a lot about these guys that they would be humble enough (to ask for help), because this is a very egotistical game with a bunch of alpha males beating up other alpha males. For them to ask tells me a lot about them. If you ask, that makes me want to help you.”

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Wilson sits at the top of the list. He made certain to mention to Mitchell early on the similarities between the two – each second-round picks, taken one spot and eight years apart in the draft. Now that he's seeing the film work pay off, he's bugging Mitchell on a daily basis.

“Can we watch film?” he’ll ask in the mornings. Then, Mitchell will be sitting at home later that night and his phone will buzz. “Did you see what the quarterback did on this play?”

Quincy. Again.

“What it comes down to in this league: Are you willing to put in the work?” Mitchell says. “And he is super willing.”

Wilson knows, too, that a few good plays and a few good weeks won't matter if it's something he can't sustain. Trail off and he'll be running in circles again, chasing another answer. He seems to know this.

"I think I’ve figured a few things out now," he said. "The goal now is consistency."

He's right.

Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134 and follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.