Insider: What it's like to be Colts coach Frank Reich's right-hand man

Zak Keefer | IndyStar

Show Caption Hide Caption Colts on a roll, Titans up next Coming off their third win in a row, the Indianapolis Colts face another division rival Sunday versus the Titans.

Titans at Colts, 1 p.m. Sunday, CBS

INDIANAPOLIS — With no money and no bed and no apartment, he’d spend some nights sleeping in the front seat of his truck, the back serving as a makeshift closet, cluttered with clothes. This is what a dream looks like sometimes. Looks hopeless. Looks desperate.

And if it wasn’t the truck, he’d crash on a friend’s couch, or in one case, a couple’s nursery, painted in pink, their due date approaching. “As soon as the baby came,” he says with a laugh, “I got booted.”

OK, then, back to the truck, back to whatever he could find. Parks Frazier had no income, a computer science degree he didn’t want to use and an addiction to football he couldn’t quit. You wanna coach? How far are you willing to go? For a stretch there, Frazier was essentially homeless. He was willing to go pretty far.

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And that’s probably why he’s having the time of his life these days, sometimes stopping in the hallways of his new office, staring at photos of Peyton Manning. It’s why he’s working every waking hour. Frazier says he pulls into the parking lot each morning around 5:30 a.m. and doesn’t leave until after 10 at night. “He’s lying,” says his boss, Frank Reich. “He’s here later than that.”

So recently, Reich laid down a mandate: “I don’t want you here past midnight,” he told him. The reason? Reich showed up early one morning a few weeks back and gazed at the game plan that sat on his desk, which he has Frazier update a handful of times each week.

The timestamp read 2:04 a.m. Reich shook his head.

In four years, Frazier has climbed from backup quarterback at Murray State to low-level grunt at Samford University, then Middle Tennessee State, then Arkansas State, to, suddenly, Reich’s right-hand man with the Indianapolis Colts. His official title: assistant to the head coach. What that really means: Do anything and everything Reich asks.

And there’s a lot. Hence the hours.

At Reich’s discretion, Frazier, 26, prepares the practice plan every day and the offensive call sheets for every game; he types up Andrew Luck’s wristband every Sunday – “Nothing can be wrong, not one digit,” he stresses; he fires passes to the wideouts during warmups; then up in the coach’s box, over the headset, he shares with Reich and offensive coordinator Nick Sirianni the coverages and defensive tendencies he’s noticing in the opponent. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

From sleeping in his truck to the NFL in a little over three years. At least these days he has an apartment. And a salary.

“He’s a stud,” Sirianni says. “He’s gonna be a star.”

Where did it start? With a close friend who was living across the country.

In 2015, Frazier – along with Samford's head coach, Chris Hatcher – convinced a former teammate and close friend, Spencer Phillips, to come work with them on the staff. Frazier's pitch was sincere, if not overly convincing: “I’m not making any money, this living situation is awful, but it’s a freaking blast,” he told Phillips.

Phillips was a dreamer too, willing to put in the work just the same. He was coaching high school football, washing cars at a dealership on the side to pay the bills. He moved across the country and joined Frazier at Samford.

They didn’t get paid a dime.

“We were both technically homeless,” Frazier remembers.

Then the two of them climbed. They made friends in the coaching industry. They worked long hours. They waited. Frazier spent six months at Samford, six more at Middle Tennessee State, then moved to Jonesboro, Ark. where he worked as an offensive grad assistant at Arkansas State. Meanwhile, Phillips, still at Samford, landed a job on Doug Pederson's staff with the Philadelphia Eagles after ambitiously introducing himself to Pederson at that year's Senior Bowl. And that was only after he slept in his car for two nights, munching on granola bars, dreaming of making the most of his opportunity.

And it was in Philadelphia where Phillips met the new offensive coordinator, Frank Reich. Two seasons later, a Super Bowl triumph in tow, the first head-coaching opportunity of his career before him, Reich sought recommendations on a new assistant. Phillips called. “I’m gonna tell you this guy’s name,” he told Reich, “and there’s no one better. There’s not a better person, there’s no one who’s going to work harder. This is the smartest guy I know.”

It was his old friend, the one who he'd convinced to move across the country and come coach football for free.

A few weeks later, Frazier’s phone buzzed while he sat in a meeting at Arkansas State. It was a facetime call from Indianapolis. Frank Reich was on the other end.

He aced the interview.

Six months later, the two of them are spending 16, 18 hours a day together, and they’re rolling. The Colts’ offense is humming. The team’s on a three-game win streak. Frazier’s duties have expanded, from administrative to research to game-planning. He’s Reich’s liaison to the rest of the building, his sounding board any and every hour of the day.

What he isn’t: a yes man.

“You don’t want that,” Reich says. “You want someone with that knack, that conviction, to share what they really think. If he disagrees, he’s not gonna feel any less if I don’t change my mind. And he’s not gonna hesitate the next time he disagrees.”

Frazier was cautious at first. Remember: He was working at Arkansas State as recently as the spring; now he’s flinging footballs to T.Y. Hilton during warmups, and polishing Andrew Luck’s wristband on game day. Slowly, and gradually, he’s grown comfortable enough to speak up.

“Coming in, I really didn’t know how much I was going to be asked for input,” Frazier says. “But that’s one thing that makes this job so cool. Frank is open to input. He thrives on that ... the thing I respect about him the most is that his way isn’t always necessarily the way.”

If Reich wants research on a certain situation – say every third-and-2 the Colts have run all year – Frazier digs it up. If he wants the equipment guys to be ready for a certain drill during practice, Frazier lets them know. If he wants a particular defensive coverage charted for future use, he tells Parks.

If he’s got something on his mind, and just needs someone to bounce it off of?

“He’s the first person I go to,” Reich says. “No matter what it’s about. I just think that much of him.”

Frazier says perhaps the most stressful part of his gig is readying Luck’s wristbands for Sunday. The mandate is that it’s pristine. If not, Luck will notice. Reich too. “If coach says, ‘Let’s go Wristband No. 13,’ and he looks at the wristband, and somethings wrong? It can’t be wrong,” Parks says. “They’re both so smart they’d correct it on the spot. In the heat of the battle, the last thing you want is for Andrew to have to correct something.”

Which is why, Frazier admits, every time a call goes through, “my heart drops.”

Good news: He hasn’t flubbed one yet.

“He’s just a guy that, like, if he ever makes a mistake – and he rarely does – he’s never going to make it again,” Sirianni says. “He’s got a really good football mind. His work ethic, his attention to detail, his knowledge of defenses. He’s got it.”

All in all, it remains a largely thankless position. Parks Frazier isn’t getting credit for the Colts’ three-game win streak. He’s arriving at work before the sun comes up, leaving long after it sets. (Hopefully, before midnight.) He’s 26 years old, has no social life whatsoever, and is quenching that football addiction of his with 18-hour days at the feet of the head coach who’s turning a franchise around.

In other words: He’s living his dream.

Slightly better than sleeping in the back of his truck.

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