Zak Keefer

zak.keefer@indystar.com

Bears at Colts, 1 p.m. Sunday, Fox

Every Thursday he sports the sort of ratty old T-shirt you’d expect to find at the bottom of a teenager’s laundry pile, tattered and wrinkled and faded. It matches his days-old stubble and dreary eyes. This man looks like he’s been sleeping on his office couch for a week.

Still, Rob Chudzinski seems to enjoy his weekly news conference. He’s a former head coach, so he gets it. He never gets flustered, never acts surprised. His responses are measured, his words carefully chosen. Win or lose, whether his unit has lit up the scoreboard or been blanked, he oozes confidence. He spins specifics into generalities and never criticizes any of his players. For the most part, he smiles.

Chudzinski is four games into his first full season as the Indianapolis Colts offensive coordinator. Returns are inconclusive. The Colts are 16th in total offense, 13th in the passing game, 23rd on the ground, seventh in scoring. But statistics don't tell the whole story. Most of those points have come during furious fourth-quarter rallies that came up short.

Chudzinski's offense is somewhere beneath explosive, somewhere above inept. A week ago he was answering questions about the fourth-down call he’d dialed up that saved the Colts from 0-3. This week, he’s answering questions about the fourth-down call that sunk the Colts to 1-3.

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That's life in the NFL. Any second thoughts on that one?

“No, not at all,” Chudzinski said Thursday. “I liked the play a lot that I called and obviously it didn’t come out the way you wanted it to. Putting the ball in Andrew (Luck’s) hands in that situation, with the number of options he had, I felt like that was the best thing for us to do. I really liked the call and the options that he had."

Sunday’s game in London hung in the balance when the Colts lined up for a fourth-and-1 from the Jaguars’ 49-yard line with 1:42 left. The formation was shotgun, with rookie running back Josh Ferguson to Andrew Luck’s left, and not Frank Gore, who is by any measure a better runner, receiver and blocker. Luck slid up in the pocket before lofting the football to his tight end, Dwayne Allen. Jaguars cornerback Josh Johnson leaped and broke up the pass.

Ballgame.

“Split-second decisions that guys have to make on the field,” Chudzinski said of Luck's call to throw instead of run for the first down. “What you try to do is train them through repetition. You try to train them to develop their thought process and so forth … I think he saw Dwayne flash, and Dwayne was open, and he decided to make that throw.”

The Colts, of course, never would’ve found themselves in such a predicament had they not found themselves down 23-6 to start the fourth quarter. But the slow starts that have dogged this team for years have leaked into this season. Through four games, the Colts haven’t led at halftime once.

It’s on Chudzinski and his players to fix that.

“We have to make plays and execute early in the game,” he said. “It’s not a big mystery. It’s not solving a puzzle. It’s about making plays. It’s about executing early in the game.”



Translation: Stop dropping the freaking football.

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Beyond the slow starts, the only constant thus far has been the effectiveness of the offense when it hurries into the no-huddle. Suddenly, the unit comes alive, the defense looks lost and the Colts claw their way back into the game. On 14 no-huddle passes this season, Luck has 11 completions for 170 yards (an average of 15.4 yards per play) and a touchdown.

Simply put, it has been their saving grace. The players? They're all in favor.

“It gives us a lot of advantages,” wide receiver T.Y. Hilton said. “It gets the defense tired, takes the pressure off the O-line. I like it.”

“The defense can’t really sub out,” added Ferguson. “Teams don’t blitz as much, because they’re trying to keep guys as fresh as possible.”

But it’s not that simple. Defenses facing the no-huddle are designed to yield yards, but not necessarily points.

“They are going to let you move the ball,” Chudzinski said. “They’re going to try and keep you from scoring and play you differently. We have a great quarterback and he’s been able to do a good job in those situations.”

That quarterback, Andrew Luck, agrees.

“A lot of those up-tempos have been down big and maybe the defense is a little softer in a sense and going to give up some plays,” he said. “The game certainly dictates what happens. The no-huddle, it’s successful in the end of the second half or the first half (but) maybe it isn’t applicable to the start of the game.”

Even so, it couldn’t hurt to experiment. An offense that is built around Luck, Hilton and Allen hasn’t scored more than 13 points in the first half all season.

Coach Chuck Pagano acknowledged that his staff will consider using the no-huddle earlier in games this week. Chudzinski said Thursday that ultimately it's up to Pagano to decide when and if the Colts use the no-huddle offense.

Ideally, a football team shouldn’t have to rely on a hurry-up offense week in and week out. A halftime lead, once in a while, wouldn’t kill them. Problem is, the line isn’t blocking well enough and the receivers aren’t playing well enough for that to happen.

“As far as the receivers go, we gotta win our matchups and we gotta catch the ball,” Phillip Dorsett said. “We have to be better, simple as that.”

Sounds simple. If it was, this team wouldn't be 1-3.

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

Bears at Colts, 1 p.m. Sunday, Fox