Frank Reich says building confidence in quarterbacks about going back to basics

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Because a trade to acquire Carson Wentz won’t be official until the start of the new league year next month, Indianapolis Colts head coach Frank Reich can’t talk specifically about the team’s next starting quarterback.

But when Reich is asked about how to build up confidence in a quarterback, it’s pretty clear the subject at hand.

During his meeting with reporters on Thursday, Reich said the process of building confidence in quarterbacks, and players in general, is to start from the bottom.

“That’s a great question and a very relevant question, always; the confidence level at every position, certainly not just the quarterback position. I think one of the great misnomers is sometimes fans think that these are the greatest players in the world…I’ve seen some of the best players in the world, everybody loses confidence for a moment,” Reich said, via Kevin Bowen of 107.5 The Fan. “It may be brief, but it always goes back to the same way. One of the ways you build confidence back is you go back to the basics. You go back to the fundamentals technique. You go back to your basic schemes and you build it one play at a time. That’s true for any of us. That’s the way we’ll handle every position.”

Wentz is in Indianapolis because of a disastrous 2020 campaign in Philadelphia that saw him lose the starting job with the Eagles to rookie Jalen Hurts. Wentz had 15 interceptions, tied for the most in the league with Drew Lock, despite only starting 12 games last year. Wentz’s 57.4 percent completion percentage was a career-low and just a tenth better than Lock’s for worst in the league among qualified passers. While Wentz isn’t responsible for every aspect of those numbers — injuries to the offensive line and lack of explosiveness at receiver also played a part — he no longer looked like the player he did in 2017 before his knee injury.

If the Colts want to get Wentz back into that kind of form, it make take stripping it down to the bare bones and building him back up from there.