Insider: What new Carolina coach Frank Reich believes went wrong for him with Colts

The coach the Colts are in the middle of replacing is already on to his next job.

Former Colts head coach Frank Reich was introduced as the next head coach of the Panthers on Tuesday, formally taking over in Carolina just three months after he was fired in Indianapolis.

Reich spent a significant portion of that time jotting down notes on his time in Indianapolis, figuring out what the Colts did right under his watch and what went wrong at the end of a Colts tenure where he finished 40-33-1.

“We had four years of good success, and you go through one year where you struggle, and now you have a chance to reflect on that,” Reich said. “I feel like this provides me an opportunity to de-bug some things, make things better.”

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One of the obvious problems during his time in Indianapolis, Reich acknowledged, was the team’s lack of stability at starting quarterback. When Reich was hired, the Colts thought they still had a decade of Andrew Luck under center ahead of them, but Luck’s shocking retirement two weeks before the 2019 season destroyed that foundation.

Reich’s had five different starting quarterbacks in his five seasons in the NFL.

And lack of stability at quarterback is a problem the Panthers haven’t been able to shake since Cam Newton’s time in Carolina ended.

Reich knows the Panthers have to find an answer.

“You want to have stability at quarterback,” Reich said. “The good thing that I’ve learned in my experience of the past few years is that we’ve learned how to adapt to different styles of quarterbacks, but that’s not the ideal situation. (Panthers owner David) Tepper, Scott and myself have to commit to: ‘What’s our blueprint? How are we going to maintain stability at quarterback?' Make a plan, and then execute that plan.”

Nearly all of Reich’s comments about the quarterback position were focused on Carolina’s future.

But an inability to stick to the plan has played a role in the Colts’ inability to find an answer. Philip Rivers was supposed to be in Indianapolis for two seasons but only played one; the Carson Wentz trade was a two-year plan that blew up after one; Indianapolis tried to get back on track with its plan to use a veteran bridge to buy time to draft a young quarterback by landing Matt Ryan, and then Colts owner Jim Irsay pulled the plug on that plan after just seven games.

One of the ways Reich was able to overcome the quarterback instability in his first four seasons was by building one of the NFL’s best running games, something Carolina established near the end of the 2022 season.

When that went away this season — a combination of losing Jack Doyle, unsuitable replacements at left tackle and right guard, and Jonathan Taylor’s injury all played a role — the Colts didn’t have enough answers.

“It was established with that team that we were running the ball well, like we’re going to do here,” Reich said. “This year, as the year started out, the running game disappeared, and we didn’t get the ball vertically down the field, and because of that, we ended up having some breakdowns. Now, that’s my responsibility as a head coach. I’ve got to get that right.”

Reich hinted that he believed he’d have been able to get it right if given enough time this season.

“I feel like I’ve always had a good track record in the second half of the season as a head coach,” Reich said in Carolina. “Even if we go over a few bumps, I think we’re good at figuring things out. Injuries, other things you get past, putting players in the right position.”

One of Reich’s hallmarks in Indianapolis was righting the ship after slow starts, starts that were often hamstrung by the team’s constant changing of the guard at quarterback. Indianapolis was 3-3-1 when the team started abandoning its plan for the season in a way the Colts hadn’t in previous years, and instead of surging in the second half, the team fell apart.

The Colts went just 1-9 the rest of the way, eight of those games coming under the direction of interim coach Jeff Saturday.

Not that Reich pointed that out in Carolina on Tuesday.

The Panthers new head coach focused his comments on what he wants to do in Carolina, using his time in Indianapolis to frame that vision.

But the difference in approaches between the two teams were impossible to miss, even if Reich wasn’t explicitly pointing them out.

When Irsay fired Reich and installed Saturday as interim coach, the Colts owner signaled a lack of trust in analytics, saying that use of numbers had built too much “fear” into the NFL, that modern coaches get scared and “go to analytics.” Reich was always aware of the numbers, from in-game situations to breaking tendencies to the big-picture numbers that correlate to winning, and it sounds like the Panthers are open to Reich’s practice of using the numbers as a guide.

“That’s one of the reasons why I’m excited to work for Mr. Tepper,” Reich said. “If there’s anybody who knows analytics, it’s him and all of his businesses.”

Reich also repeatedly referenced Tepper’s commitment to building the best coaching staff available, acknowledging that as the Colts lost members of his original staff to other jobs there were issues with the makeup of the staff, if not the abilities of the individuals.

“We did our job the right way to start, but then you start losing those guys, you’ve got to replace them,” Reich said. “This goes back to Mr. Tepper’s point, we had good coaches in all places, but there’s still something about chemistry, and that’s my job as the head coach to make sure that’s right.”

Reich has his second chance now, in a place that’s always been close to his heart.

He plans to use the lessons he learned in Indianapolis to guide his time in Carolina.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: What Carolina coach Frank Reich believes went wrong for him with Colts