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

INDIANAPOLIS – Maybe this is what Tarell Basham needed, the criticisms and the doubts and the benching, a half-season of NFL humility dished out so the rookie gets it through his 23-year-old head that nothing at this level is a given. Maybe this is what he has to go through to become the player they hope and need him to be.

He’s learning. It’s a slow, gradual grind. Progress comes in spurts. Like this one: the Indianapolis Colts’ third-round pick, and potential alpha dog pass rusher of the future, busting out of his rookie haze Sunday in Cincinnati, thrashing Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton to the turf for a 14-yard sack on a critical third down late in the fourth quarter. Would’ve been The Play of The Game until Cincinnati’s Carlos Dunlap made The Play of The Game.

It nonetheless was Basham’s first can’t-miss moment, a rookie roaring after seven weeks of silence.

“Long time coming,” he beamed of first career sack.

But, still — one sack in eight games. The Ohio product has schlepped through a slow start, not uncommon for a first-year player coming from the Mid-American Conference. Basham didn’t earn a third-down snap — the holy grail for pass-rushers — until Week 7, and that came a week after he was a healthy scratch, a clear indication from the coaching staff that he wasn’t earning his keep. The Colts only have 46 spots on the game-day roster. You’re gonna have to earn it, kid, no matter where you were drafted.

Basham’s NFL education has come on the practice field, the weekly toil that has become an eye-opening necessity for a college standout who admits he was skating by on his God-given gifts back then. Not now. Not ever again.

“The dedication that these guys have to their crafts, every day, that’s what has stood out the most,” Basham said, looking around the locker room, nodding towards his veteran teammates. “That’s something that wasn’t preached upon me coming up, something I probably haven’t been the best at, in college. In college I didn’t work on my craft every day. It was more just being a better athlete than the person in front of me.”

And he was. Most of the time. Basham was a four-year starter in Athens; after a coming-out-party in a game early in his freshman year, the athletic department hung a massive poster of him on campus. He became the Bobcats’ defensive star, and he played like it, too: By the time he graduated he was the program’s all-time leader in career sacks (29.5) and sacks in a season (11.5). He added 41.5 tackles for loss. He wrecked lines and he produced, week-after-week, season-after-season, because no offensive tackle could stop him.

Then he got to the NFL.

Then he realized how good everyone is.

Midway through his rookie campaign, Basham is playing behind Jabaal Sheard, a proven veteran the Colts shelled out a $25 million contract to in the offseason to set and hold the edge. And he’s learning from franchise sack king Robert Mathis, the Colts’ newly minted pass rush consultant who made his name for 14 years in this league outsmarting and outworking offensive linemen.

The coaches have been hard on Basham, pushing him, demanding more, instilling in him the daily drive and dedication this league requires.

“Earning the trust of the people in this locker room and the coaching staff has probably been the biggest deal for me,” Basham said. “Now that I’m getting more opportunities, and I’m able to make a play here or there, it’s an amazing feeling. I finally feel like I’m contributing.”

Because, for a good long while, it felt like he wasn’t. The general manager who drafted him only six months ago said so. The defensive coordinator said so.

“We need to see more out of Basham,” first-year GM Chris Ballard said on his radio show last month. “We have (seen) little flashes, but not enough right now ... we need him to grow up and continue to show us he can be the pass rusher we saw in college and, right now, he’s not there. He’s not what we need him to be.”

That, again, was before Basham’s breakout in Cincinnati, a performance Ballard later called “satisfying.”

Defensive coordinator Ted Monachino, never too shy to detail the areas in which his rookies need to develop in, was blunt when asked about Basham’s early play: “There’s still a lot of growth that needs to happen with him.”

Indeed. There always is with a rookie. But as Ballard noted, the Colts are willing to live with the mistakes. Early failure breeds progress down the line.

“Young players, they’ve got to play, they’ve got to fail, and then they’ve got to dig themselves out of it and become players,” Ballard said on his weekly radio show.

Again, it’s one game. One sack. One tackle. A flash the rookie must now replicate. Mathis, remember, totaled just 2.5 sacks as a little-known rookie in 2003, but made his mark on special teams with 17 tackles. He erupted in Year No. 2, piling up 10.5 sacks, cementing his starting job three spots down from fellow line-wrecker Dwight Freeney.

But Basham has a long way to go before a starting job is discussed, and before his career arc even begins to mirror that of Robert Mathis. He’s learning, growing, failing, all at once.

“The biggest thing I’ve learned?” Basham says one day in the locker room, weighing life since draft day. “In the NFL, you don’t win the game on Sunday. You win it during the week. If you wanna win the game, you gotta win Monday through Saturday.”

Say this much for Tarell Basham: Maybe the lessons are starting to stick.

Note: Starting left tackle Anthony Castonzo did not practice Wednesday due to a knee injury.

Call IndyStar reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134. Follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.

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