Doyel: Best idea for Colts QB situation? Don't think about it

Show Caption Hide Caption Video | Colts treat Sunday's game vs. Texans as a playoff game Frank Gore, Zach Kerr, Erik Walden and Indianapolis Colts coach Chuck Pagano discuss the team's circumstances heading into Sunday's game against the Houston Texans.

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

Charlie Whitehurst is trying to remember the last time he started a game. Someone asked him on Wednesday, and Charlie’s trying to remember. His hair is pulled back into a ponytail, his 5 o’clock shadow is perfect, and he’s trying to remember.

Actually, the question was more challenging than that. It assumed he knew when he last started: What do you remember about your last start?

Charlie Whitehurst, the man who could be asked to save the Indianapolis Colts’ season on Sunday against the Houston Texans (1 p.m., CBS), gave a blank look.

“Uh,” he said. “When was that?”

Reporter: “Last year.”

Second reporter, giggling: “That was the last game of the season.”

Now Whitehurst remembers. He was playing for the Titans. And that game was against, um. Oh. Right.

“It was against the Colts, yeah,” Whitehurst says. “I didn’t play very good in that one.”

Well, no. He was 12-for-28 for 72 yards. He did throw a touchdown pass, but the Colts beat Whitehurst and the Titans 27-10 on Dec. 28, 2014.

Whitehurst is starting Sunday against the Texans, unless he isn’t. The Colts aren’t saying, not yet, though coach Chuck Pagano did cull the field of potential quarterbacks by one by announcing that injured starter Andrew Luck would not, absolutely not, return to the field Sunday. Luck hasn’t played in four games, not since suffering a lacerated kidney Nov. 8 against the Broncos. He won’t play against the Texans, leaving him just a two-game window to return this season.

Backup Matt Hasselbeck – the safe bet to start Sunday, given the Colts have just two healthy quarterbacks on roster – didn’t practice Wednesday or talk to reporters. But he was visible for the portion of practice open to the media and was spotted wearing a sling on his left arm, a sling the Colts say is protecting his back, not his arm. Naturally.

This silly Colts quarterback story remains an exercise in silliness, though it reached a nadir Monday when Luck was asked repeatedly if he would play this week.

“That’s a good question,” Luck said. “I know coach (Pagano) goes a little later than me, so I’ll let him address sort of the finer points of that.”

Pagano did in fact speak to the media a little later Monday. Here’s how he addressed those finer points:

“Really no update, no change there,” Pagano said. “He’s heading in the right direction, feeling better, all that stuff, but no update there.”

Ah.

On Wednesday Pagano removed Luck from the equation, but Hasselbeck’s inability to practice added Whitehurst to the formula. For Whitehurst, chaos is just part of the deal – and why he doesn’t sweat the small stuff, like when he last started or whether he’ll play Sunday. This is his 10th year in the NFL and his seventh offensive system, and he says some of the terminology here is similar to terminology he has used in other NFL systems, but don’t ask him which systems. He doesn’t remember.

“They all mesh together now,” he says. “I’ve been doing this thing for 10 years.”

Yes, he was told. But! But what about the unknown? Maybe you play Sunday. Maybe you don’t. How do you deal with the unknown?

Whitehurst is smiling, almost smirking. He knows he can ace this test, because the only correct answers are no answers.

“How I deal with it is, I do it. You just do it,” he says. “You don’t have a choice. You just go out and you do it, and if you play well and you win, hey, you were part of something pretty cool. That’s how I approach it. I don’t try to think about it too much.”

Yes, he was told. But! But what about 2010 in Seattle? Do you think about that? See, he started the last game of that season, too, and it was similar to the Colts’ game Sunday against the Texans: a "must-win" game for a sub-.500 team. The Seahawks beat the Rams on the final day of the 2010 season to win the NFC West at 7-9.

Lots of similarities to this week. That hasn’t crossed your mind, Charlie?

Another smile from Whitehurst. He’s got this.

“You know what?” he said. “The easiest way to do this whole football thing is simplify as much as you can. If what you do is turn yourself into a robot, go ahead and do that, but I don’t. … I don’t think about that stuff.”

Whitehurst could be onto something. Too much thinking can be dangerous, or depressing. The Colts have lost the past two games by 35 points each, suffered a 48-3 closing run Sunday by the lowly Jaguars, and need to beat the Texans this week with 40-year-old (and injured) Matt Hasselbeck or 33-year-old (and delightfully clueless) Charlie Whitehurst dodging Houston pass rusher J.J. Watt and Jadeveon Clowney.

Don’t think about that, Colts fans. Think about this:

The Colts’ emergency quarterback is receiver Griff Whalen, and don’t laugh. The situation in Jacksonville – Luck inactive, Hasselbeck injured, Whitehurst under fire – was so dire that Whalen was taking warm-up snaps on the sideline.

I asked him Wednesday: When did you last play quarterback?

“High school,” he says.

If you had to play now, how many plays can you run?

“They have a contingency package for me,” he was saying, “so it would be …”

Five?

“Um, probably more than that,” he says. “Just kind of a shrunken-down version of the offense. Couple runs, couple passes. Just a real simplified version, I guess.”

Sounds like five to me. Sounds like less. I find the guy who started this whole quarterback mess, Andrew Luck, and I ask him if he’s ever seen Griff throw the ball. Luck smiles. He went to Stanford with Whalen.

“Well, yeah,” he says. “I make fun of his motion.”

You what? Show me.

“No,” Luck says.

Please.

Here, Luck cups one hand in the air, like he’s about to catch water from a fountain. Then he flips his wrist.

What, I ask Andrew Luck, is that?

“It’s how he throws,” Luck says. “It’s like he doesn’t use his thumb.”

Luck walks down the hall, then turns back and assures me of one thing.

“Griff could get the job done,” he says. “If he had to.”

God help us all, Griff Whalen just might have to try.

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