Zak Keefer | IndyStar

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Bill Polian saw it some 30 years ago, because Bill Polian has always seen things others don’t. Jim Kelly goes down in Week 17; most figure the Bills’ season is over. Seven days later they’re trailing Houston 35-3 in the playoff opener; everyone knows the Bills’ season is over.

“Except for us,” Polian says now. “We were the last people worried.”

Easy to say now. Easy to say then, Polian contends, because of who Jim Kelly’s backup was. Frank Reich was as well-prepared a player as Polian’s been around in a career that spans half a century.

“Well,” Polian, cautions, “except for Peyton, of course.”

The Hall of Fame executive, architect of the Bills’ run to four straight Super Bowls in the early 1990s, architect of the Colts’ gilded run in the 2000s, was the first to tell Frank Reich that coaching was his calling. Not long after Polian landed in Indianapolis in 1998, he called Reich, who’d retired after 14 seasons, most of them as Kelly’s backup in Buffalo. “I want you to come work with our young quarterback,” Polian told him. That quarterback’s name? Peyton Manning.

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But Reich wasn’t ready, not yet. Wasn’t ready for eight years. In 2006, he finally phoned Polian back and asked for a job. “You’re my first call,” Reich told Polian, “because you were the one who planted the seed in the first place.” He started as an intern, and he saw the offensive machine Manning orchestrated from up close. He watched. He learned. He absorbed. He worked.

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Twelve years later Reich has landed back where his humble coaching career commenced; he’s the backup quarterback who became a backup solution to the Indianapolis Colts’ mess of a coaching search. Frank Reich has already done the impossible: He pulled the Bills from 32 down in the third quarter of a playoff game in 1993. Polian was right: They shouldn’t have been worried. Buffalo won in overtime that day.

Now all Reich has to do is fix the bumbling Colts, who are scheduled to introduce him at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday at Lucas Oil Stadium. Indianapolis need not worry, says the Hall of Famer.

“The city should be thrilled,” Polian gushed Sunday night. “Outside of Jim Irsay and Chris Ballard, I’m his biggest fan. He’s unflappable. He’s quiet. He’s self-effacing. He’s humble. He has a confidence in his own ability to do the job. That rubbed off on his teammates that day in Buffalo, and that will rub off on the players in Indianapolis.”

Oh, and there’s one more thing Polian wants to point out: “Andrew is going to love working with him.”

That, really, is central to everything here. A return to form for franchise QB Andrew Luck – very much the hope and expectation within the Colts’ West 56th Street facility these days – offers Reich the opportunity to win, perhaps quickly. The Colts remain a deeply-flawed roster, with holes throughout. But there is ammunition at General Manager Chris Ballard’s disposal: more than $80 million in salary cap space, the second-biggest total of any team, and the third overall pick in April’s NFL Draft.

If Luck returns, everything changes. His prodigious talents, coupled with Reich’s expertise at the most important position on the field, could swing the Colts’ fortunes in the blink of an eye.

Reich has, in Polian’s words, “all the makings of a great coach.” Time will tell if he delivers. There is, certainly, plenty of work ahead, and the unknowns surrounding Luck’s shoulder linger over this franchise like an immovable cloud. Ballard remains adamant Luck will be Luck again. “I’m very confident, and he’s very confident, that he’s going to come back and prove a lot of people wrong,” Ballard said last week. It must be noted that when it comes to Luck’s perpetually-healing right shoulder, that’s a stronger proclamation than Ballard’s given at any other point over the last 12 months. That statement could prove very telling.

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Furthermore, the fact that the Colts, in the end, came to terms with both offensive coordinators from Super Bowl LII is not likely a coincidence. After the first coordinator, Josh McDaniels, ditched them at the 11th hour, Ballard moved swiftly through his second coaching search in two months. Four days after McDaniels backed out, Reich had a contract offer. His connection to the Colts, to Polian and Manning, was one thing. What his offensive acumen can do for Andrew Luck is another.

After a six-year assembly line at OC, Colts’ brass wanted to marry its star quarterback with an offensive mind. And they desperately want it to last.

In Reich they’ve found a quarterback whisperer.

He was Manning’s position coach for a pair of seasons in which Manning threw for a combined 9,200 yards – the fattest two-year stretch of his dazzling 13-year run with the Colts. Reich later mentored Philip Rivers in San Diego. As his QB coach, Reich watched Rivers set a career-best in completion percentage. As his offensive coordinator, Reich watched Rivers set a career-best in passing yards. The coach has earned considerable praise from both.

“Any time you’re being coached by a guy that spent 14 years playing the same position you played, that goes a long way,” Rivers told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2014. “Not just so you can get him to agree with you on certain things, of how you see things, but yet, he understands that, when I see this look, I worry about this or that, and he can go, ‘Yeah, I’ve had the same experience.’ He’s a very good teacher. I was told a long time ago: Don’t get bored with the little things. And that’s one thing I can say about Frank. He doesn’t get bored with the little things.”

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And when your work ethic can hang with Peyton Manning’s worth ethic – “a grinder,” Manning once called Reich – you’re equipped to handle the daily rigors a head-coaching gig in the NFL demands. Manning doesn’t say that about everybody.

After San Diego, Reich landed in Philadelphia, pushed the Eagles hard to draft a kid out of North Dakota State named Carson Wentz, then molded him into a legitimate MVP candidate by Year 2. Then he turned Nick Foles into a Super Bowl MVP in six games.

What can he do with a healthy Andrew Luck?

“Frank’s demeanor, his intelligence – with Andrew, it’s going to work,” Polian said.

While the scheme and staff Reich constructs in Indianapolis remain a work in progress, it’s likely he’ll want to utilize the up-tempo, no-huddle attack the Bills became famous for during his playing days. Considering Luck’s intellect and versatility, not to mention his leaky offensive line, it could do wonders for the QB. He’s excelled in that scheme before.

No, Reich didn’t call the plays for the Super Bowl champs. But he worked closely with head coach Doug Pederson, constructing the offensive game plans on a weekly basis, mentoring Wentz and Foles, both of whom have praised Reich’s tutelage. (It’s a similar scenario to what Pederson, then the Chiefs offensive coordinator, worked under in Kansas City with head coach Andy Reid. Initially, Pedersen’s hiring in Philadelphia was roundly criticized. The critics are silent now.)

There is also Reich’s character. Find a former teammate or coach or player of Reich’s with a bad word to say of him, and you’ll have found the first. He is, by all accounts, one of the true good guys in the NFL. That doesn’t necessarily win games, but it does go a long way in calming the storm the Colts found themselves in a week ago. Reich could be Indy’s great stabilizer.

“You’re getting one of the finest people this side of Tony Dungy,” Polian said.

And, possibly, getting the quarterback guru Andrew Luck needs to prove all those people wrong.

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