INDIANAPOLIS – The life of a pass rusher, in three acts:

I. The rookie

Give Tarell Basham credit. He hasn’t learned the clichés just yet. He tells it as it is.

Basham is the Indianapolis Colts’ third-round pick, their rookie pass rusher, their QB-seeker of the future. He’s seven days into his first NFL training camp, a bit overwhelmed and plenty humbled. After a recent practice, he dished an honest assessment of where he sits a week into his career.

“I’m probably, (expletive), if I had to guess, I’m probably not where they need me to be right now, as far as where they expected me to be at this point,” Basham said. “I can just feel it. I can feel the expectations from others — from the coaches and players. I can feel the expectations. Sometimes I feel like I meet them and sometimes I feel like I don’t. It’s all about developing consistency right now.”



Exactly. Basham is chasing it. He’s been running with the second and third teams thus far, making his fair share of mistakes, rarely flashing, learning what all rookies in this league learn: every single player at this level is legit.

More Colts coverage

• Turbin plays through personal pain

• One Colts fan gets a special experience

• Download the IndyStar Sports app

Physically, Basham looks every bit the part. He’s 6-2. Weighs 262. He can move. He likes contact. Coach Chuck Pagano, so delighted with the pick back in April, even joked that the Colts needed a "BashCam" on game days at Lucas Oil Stadium.

At this point, that seems a long, long way off.

What’s holding him back?

“It’s the technique more than anything else,” Basham said. “In college, you can outhustle guys. You can get away with a whole lot in college. You can’t get away with it here. Everybody’s good. You gotta develop fundamentals.”

“He’s young, he’s making some mistakes, which is to be expected,” Pagano said. "Getting the playbook down is one thing, and then coming out and pounding on your craft is another."

Basham is a bright and engaging kid. He knows this will take time. It took time for the franchise legend he’s heeding advice from on the sidelines. Robert Mathis’ story proves it. Little more than a special-teams standout early in his career, Mathis lasted 14 seasons in Indianapolis, retiring in January as the team’s all-time leader in sacks.

So when Mathis talks, Basham listens.

“You can get as much from him than any pass rusher in this league,” Basham said of Mathis, who’s volunteered as a pass-rushing guru for the Colts this spring and summer. “And he did it with a disadvantage. He was one of the smaller outside ‘backers and defensive linemen in the game.”

II. The veteran

Jabaal Sheard remembers entering the league, popping in the film and watching the best in the game. He watched Dwight Freeney. He watched Robert Mathis.

“(Those two were) lighting it up on the edge,” Sheard said.

Sheard’s a seventh-year pro and a first-year Colt, one of new General Manager Chris Ballard’s most expensive free-agent prizes. He’s a former New England Patriot — and he sounds like it — lured to Indy to bolster one of the league’s weakest pass rushes from a year ago. Unlike Basham, the Colts can’t wait for Sheard to come around. He must produce immediately.

“Quiet guy, doesn’t say a whole lot, (but) he demands in his own way of himself and his teammates,” Pagano said. “I wouldn’t be surprised to see him have double-digit sacks for us this year.”

That certainly would solve a lot of problems for this defense. Just one Colt over the course of the past three seasons has sniffed double-digit sacks, and that was Erik Walden last fall. Not since Mathis’ prime — see his ridiculous 2013 campaign in which he led the league with 19.5 sacks — have the Colts featured a true alpha dog on the edge.

When it comes to pass-rushers, Sheard called Mathis a “GOAT” — greatest of all-time.

"Any time you get a chance to work with him one-on-one, you want to," Sheard said.

Mathis has been a daily fixture on the Colts’ sideline, mentoring the outside linebackers, such as Sheard, Basham and John Simon, visibly enjoying his new role. The way he sees it, Mathis is paying it forward.

Want to learn how to get to the quarterback, even when you’re not the biggest or the strongest or the fastest? Let me teach you. I didn’t finish with 123 sacks by accident.

For starters, Sheard wants the secret to Mathis’ famed spin move, the one AFC South quarterbacks saw in their nightmares for more than a decade.

“That spin, it’s going to take a lot to learn it,” Sheard said.

III. The retiree

Above all else, Mathis is on the sideline because he can’t quit the game. Football was what lifted him from the outskirts of Atlanta to NFL fame and fortune.

“From where I am, stuff like this, the NFL? That’s TV,” Mathis said late in his career. “That’s a pipe dream. That’s not reality.”

It became his. And Indianapolis became home. He learned from Colts’ longtime defensive line coach John Teerlinck, and from Freeney, his teammate, his motivator, now his close friend. He went from unheralded fifth-round pick to special-teams stud to pass-rushing menace to defensive cornerstone. It’s only a matter of time before his name goes up in the Ring of Honor.

Early in his career, Mathis would’ve laughed at the thought of being a coach. As he neared his end, he saw it differently. Mathis views pass-rushing as an art form; now he wants to pass the craft on to the next generation.

“For a young guy, (they’re asking Mathis) ‘How do you do it?’” Pagano said. “’How’d you stay in the league 14 years? How was it your first year? What can I do, what should I do to help myself and my chances?’”

Better believe Basham’s asking him those questions.

“I’ve been watching him since — I don’t want to say the age because he told me I made him feel old — but I’ve been watching him for a long time,” Basham said in the spring. “He’s a legend, and to be able to sit and learn from him every day is a blessing.”

Call it Pass Rushing 101. The rookie's got a long way to go — just ask him.

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