This article is part of our Asking Under Pressure series, which looks at how duos performed together in a highly competitive situation.
The first time Bruce Arians met Andrew Luck, he tried to test him.
Arians was the offensive coordinator of the Indianapolis Colts, the team that held the first pick in the 2012 NFL Draft. Luck was a quarterback from Stanford and the no-brainer No. 1 pick that year.
Arians flew up to Stanford to visit with Luck and work him out in both a meeting room and on the field. At one point, Arians asked Luck to draw up a play they had run: 62 Y Choice.
Luck diagrammed the play perfectly, but Arians tried to trip him up.
“That’s not what I said,” Arians told him.
Luck fired right back: “That’s exactly what you said.”
Arians loved it. “All right, damn it, you caught me.”
Right away, Arians knew: This guy’s got it. Not just the talent, which was obvious, but the mental ability needed to be an NFL quarterback.
The working partnership between head coach and quarterback is one of the most crucial partnerships in sports.
Arians and Luck spent just one year together in 2012, but it was one heck of a season. Colts head coach Chuck Pagano had to step away from the team after three games following a leukemia diagnosis. Arians took over as Indianapolis’ interim head coach, and he and Luck combined to go 10-3 and make the playoffs.
Arians went on to win a Super Bowl with Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Luck is now the general manager of Stanford football.
Arians and Luck’s one season together was challenging. How did they work together under such difficult circumstances? How did their collaboration become a football model for crisis management under pressure? Here’s a discussion with both.
BA, you told me once that you tried to put guys in a position to fail in practice to stress-test them and see how they would respond. When you had Andrew coming in, what did you want to do with him, putting him in those pressure situations early on?
Arians: Chuck did a great job of coming up with a lot of crazy scenarios to practice at the end of a half and the end of a game. We’d say in practice: “Hey, it’s third-and-25 from the 50-yard line, we’ve got 28 seconds left and one timeout. What are we going to do?” We’d have a plan.
It might have been in my first game as the interim coach after Chuck got sick. We watched Jacksonville and Minnesota on film. I think Minnesota scored with something like 28 seconds left, and Jacksonville needed a field goal and had one timeout. So we were like: “OK, in this situation, we’re going to get it probably on the 30. We’re going to go Trips Right Indigo X In Alert Down Timeout.”
Well, lo and behold, in our game against Minnesota, the other team scores, and we’ve got 30 seconds. I was looking for Andrew, and he was already running out on the field. He goes: “ I know. Trips Right 66 Indigo X In Alert Down Timeout.”
He already knew the play?
Arians: Yeah, because we had just walked through that scenario and practiced it, and then it popped up. He took us right down the field. Adam Vinatieri kicked a field goal and we won the game. There is no pressure when there’s preparation. One thing that Chuck emphasized and that I always emphasized was preparation. Don’t leave any stones unturned so that your guys can run out there confidently. That was always the case with Andrew. He was super prepared and so confident doing it. And he did it with a bunch of other rookies.. We had like six rookies on that offense. It’s amazing that we won 11 games that year.
Luck: BA, you’re bringing up a bunch of good memories. That Minnesota game was Week 2. You were still the offensive coordinator because I think your first game as interim was Week 5 against Green Bay. I’ll never forget that.
Arians: Yeah.
Luck: But I remember that drive exactly as you talked about it. One of the things that struck me early on was how intentional Chuck was, and then his coordinators were on situational football. It was like: You’re going to (practice) a whole bunch of weird situations.
I remember, BA, that you had examples for every situation. How are we going to win this situation? I remember just being intellectually fascinated by that. I remember sitting in training camp doing two-minute drives. I mean, how cool is it that your first NFL win and Chuck Pagano’s first NFL win as a head coach is an Adam Vinatieri walk-off field goal? Sounds about right.
And BA, you’re right! We had so many f—ing rookies!
Arians: Oh, man.
Luck: I think we broke an all-time rookie yardage record in the NFL that season. We’re proud of that. We’re really proud of that.
Arians: And we did it with an offensive line that had new people every week.
Luck: Yeah, it was crazy. And Reggie Wayne.
Arians: And then we had Reggie. Reggie was the guy who bought in. He did the same thing that Larry Fitzgerald did for me in Arizona. He went from a wide receiver to a slot. Reggie was always physical, but he hadn’t done it for a while.
I said, “Call up Hines Ward. I’m going to get you 100 balls.” He said, “All right, I’ll do it.” He got his 100. It was amazing that whole year. We won so many games at the end. I think it was seven in the last two minutes.
There were two interesting things you said there: You had a lot of young guys and won a lot of games late. Often, those two things don’t go together. What do you think was key for you two working together to win so many of those games late?
Luck: I’ve got a couple of thoughts. One, Reggie Wayne mattered. He was such a pro and he bought in. There was a really cool core of veterans: Reggie Wayne, Robert Matthis, Dwight Freeney and Adam Vinatieri, so it wasn’t just a bunch of rookies.
I think what Chuck installed and what BA brought his flavor to in a really difficult time with Chuck being sick and fighting for his life — we were playing with an “ignorance is bliss” attitude. We were just playing ball. I don’t know how else to say it: We were truly vibing with each other.
And BA, you coached us. You didn’t hold back. You coached us hard. Like, really hard.
Arians: Everything we did was “one, two, three, Chuck.” It brought something very, very special to those guys. We went through so many players. I remember Chuck finally snuck out of the hospital and came to practice one day. I think it was in November. We had 18 or 19 guys that had never met him — that’s how many new players we had by then.
I said to him, “Don’t you dare come out here. You’re going to catch a germ.” I know football saved his life. There’s no doubt it gave him something every single day to fight for. I’d go down there to the hospital, man, and he’d be down and out. We’d look at the depth chart and talk about the game plan, and he’d watch little parts of film when he could.
I’ll never forget the Kansas City game. If we win, we go to the playoffs. It was like: There’s no way in hell we’re beating these guys. I think Jamaal Charles had 200 yards rushing at halftime. I looked at (defensive coordinator) Greg Manusky and said, “Can we slow him down?” And he said, “No, look who’s out there.” It was like that guy showed up last week. That guy showed up two weeks ago. I don’t even know that other guy’s name. I remember Jamaal Westerman got a sack. I’ll never forget Jamaal’s name now, but I said, “Hey, what’s his name?!?”
Luck: (Laughs)
Arians: The Chiefs were going down the field; they had the game won but decided to throw it. Brady Quinn threw it right to us. Andrew takes us right down the field, and I think it was Reggie again …
Luck: Reggie! Reggie in the back of the end zone with about four minutes left.
Arians: That’s how we won games. We just kept it close.
Luck: It was special. A Robert Mathis strip stack would show up at the right time. There were so many fun moments.
Arians: Against Green Bay, we went in at halftime and I’m scared s—less anyway because I’ve got so many jobs all of the sudden. They were kicking the s— out of us; it was 21-3. What are you gonna say? So I said, “Hey, man. Why the f— are we not playing like we practiced? We had a great week of practice.”
Luck: (Laughing)
Arians: That’s about all I said. Reggie jumped up and Robert jumped up. I said, “We just need one f—ing good thing to happen. Somebody make a play, and it’s going to snowball.” Well, Jerraud Powers jumped an Aaron Rodgers pass for an interception, and that was the snowball that started it.
Luck: So much of playing quarterback, as I’m reflecting on it, it’s a difficult position. It’s why we’re treated so uniquely in this culture. But the quarterback has to feel like the building has their back, that people are in their corner. I certainly felt that deeply with BA. That mattered. Remember the Miami game?
We played Miami in the middle of the year at home. They were a difficult defense. I was stressed out, and part of what was fun playing for you, BA, is you’d MF us in public. You’d put your arm around us and love us up — the whole thing. And you knew when to call me into your office. That was one of those weeks. You called me in and basically told me, “Don’t stress out, brother. We’re good. We’ve got a plan. It will work. You can handle it. This isn’t too much for you.” You knew I was stressed out; you could feel it.
Arians: Oh yeah.
Luck: And it helped! I remember us hitting a hot (route) that game and being like, “Damn, BA was right.”
Arians: Right down the field for a touchdown.
Luck: It was a partnership. It very much felt like as much as a partnership can feel like between a rookie quarterback and a staff.
Tell me about your perspective on that Miami meeting, BA. I’m curious from a coaching standpoint what you saw and what you were trying to accomplish by bringing Andrew in for a meeting.
Arians: It was a thing where if we went empty, we were going to get two or three things from the defense. It was very complicated, but it was like, “We’re going to go empty to get those looks, and this is how we’re going to handle it. We’re not going to throw it to this hot because they’re going to trap it. But the guy going down the middle of the field is going to be wide open.”
Lo and behold, they set it up, Andrew sees it, they go to trap the hot and it was like a 40-yard touchdown. Like I said, preparation takes pressure away.
Luck: Well, I remember being stressed out like hell about it on Wednesday and then getting called in and being told, “It’s going to work. Here’s why. Let’s give it a chance. If it doesn’t work in practice, we’ll can it.”
I think about that meeting a lot now that I’m a GM. When’s the right time to call out a team, a group, a player with some stern words? And when’s the right time to do it behind closed doors in a private moment?
Arians: The one I remember the best is I think it was Andrew’s first practice. He’d just showed up. The DBs were all out there stretching, and I wore all black that day. Black shoes, black socks. They said, “Man, BA, why do you have all black on?” I said, “I’m going to a funeral, bro.” They said, “Oh, a funeral? Who died?” I said, “You all. Andrew killed all you mother f—ers yesterday. And we’re going to kill you again today.” We had some doozy two-minute drills, especially in training camp. I said, “I want to be in the hardest situation possible. Let’s test him.” Man, if we went even 50 percent, it was a hell of a week.
What was that like for you, Andrew?
Luck: You know what? It didn’t get too big in my head. I just loved playing quarterback.
Part of succeeding in that position in the NFL is to be able to compartmentalize and be where your feet are and be present and just learn. OK, cool, it might be a 90-yard two-minute drive, but you can break it down to one good play at a time. We were taught that way. It was taught to us by BA and the offensive staff that way.
And it was awesome to have an offensive coordinator who talks a lot of s— to the defense and doesn’t make me, the quarterback, feel like I have to talk a lot of s— if that’s not who I am. I think BA set a tone where it was: Bring your authentic self to your thing every single day. Don’t be too sensitive to take coaching — and hard coaching — but I think BA was a great coach because he brings all of himself to that job, and he expected us to bring all of ourselves to our job. As I remember you yelling at Coby Fleener one day, “Don’t be a f—ing robot, Coby!”
Arians: I tried to tell them in the first meetings when I met them: “Hey, you’re going to get called some ugly s—. I’m not talking about you personally. Don’t take it as criticism. It’s coaching.”
What does hard coaching like that prepare you mentally for in big moments?
Luck: One, it only works if you know the coach cares about you. Period. It can run out in about as quick as this conversation. Two, games are hard. Playing football is very hard. It’s not a contact sport; it’s a collision sport.
A requisite level of preparation is needed to give you a chance. And a requisite level of urgency in your preparation and almost a manufactured pressure in your preparation is key. Peyton Manning. From everything I know about being in that Colts building, he approached practice like it was the most important thing in the world. I tried to be that way as well. And BA was that way. I also really want to stress that BA’s colorful language works because it is authentic to him. And his ability to care for us and about us was always present in those moments.
Arians: The thing I learned: Coach ’em hard and hug ’em later.
Luck: I wasn’t immune to it either. I’ll tell one story real quick. I did something bad the previous play. I may have almost thrown an interception or a pick-six. BA called the next play very calmly: “Trips Right 66 Indigo.” But he forgot to turn the buzzer off on the headset and started yelling at the quarterback coach, Clyde Christensen: Clyde: “What’s that stupid motherf—er doing out there!?” And then it cut out (Laughing). I was like: “All right, here we go.”
Arians: Andrew, I don’t know if I ever told you; I almost didn’t take the job that year with the Colts. I knew Peyton. I had coached Peyton his first three years. It was going to be extremely hard for me knowing there was going to be a change, but I also was super excited to have another franchise quarterback to work with. And I’m so glad I did.
Luck: Same. So am I.
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