'Savagery': Kwity Paye, Colts' first-rounder last year, intent on taking game to next

[JAFF]

phttps://www.indystar.com/story/sport...le/7386008001/

. INDIANAPOLIS — Kwity Paye’s rookie season had just ended in disappointment and disgrace, part of a team that choked away its playoff chances in Jacksonville, and as the team boarded the bus for the airport, most of the Colts were still trying to make sense of what happened.

Paye’s mind had already moved forward.

To how he was going to get better.

“I was thinking about everything I was going to do this offseason, all the work I’m to put in,” Paye said. “I was eager. … I can fix my angles, my technique.”


Paye, the first pass rusher the franchise had taken in the first round since Bjorn Werner in 2012, had been through a ringer of a rookie season. Intent on maximizing his remarkable athletic gifts, Indianapolis overhauled Paye’s entire playing style from stance to attack, then put him in the starting lineup after an impressive training camp.

The rookie opened his career with a crash course from two of the most experienced left tackles in the NFL, suffered a hamstring injury that cost him three games and halted his momentum, found his feet halfway through the year and finished with four sacks and 10 quarterback hits, all while playing 58.6 percent of the snaps in the midst of a playoff chase.

There was precious little time to reset.

“People don’t realize, but it’s long,” Paye said. “You’re coming off the college season, and then straight off of there, you’re into Combine prep, and then straight after that, it’s rookie minicamp, and then OTAs, and then you’ve got to stay prepared because in a couple of weeks you go into camp. There’s not really any offseason for a rookie."


Paye opened his offseason by going through the film, taking stock of everything he’d done as a rookie.

New Colts QB:How Matt Ryan's style and input could inform what the Colts do at wide receiver

And the rookie with the work ethic the Colts loved came to a surprising conclusion.

“I felt like the mental part of the game was something I lacked,” Paye said. “I feel like I’ve always been a good technical player, but when it comes down to straining and diving every play, being relentless every play.”


NFL practice rules, and the reality of limited rosters, make NFL preparation a different challenge than Paye faced in Jim Harbaugh’s relentless, damn-the-torpedoes approach at Michigan.

The NFL’s 17-week war of attrition forces teams to focus on preserving their best players, spending the entire week building up to a peak of intensity on Sundays.

“I felt like being locked in mentally for that long is what got me in the end,” Paye said.


NFL practice rules, and the reality of limited rosters, make NFL preparation a different challenge than Paye faced in Jim Harbaugh’s relentless, damn-the-torpedoes approach at Michigan.

The NFL’s 17-week war of attrition forces teams to focus on preserving their best players, spending the entire week building up to a peak of intensity on Sundays.

“I felt like being locked in mentally for that long is what got me in the end,” Paye
Intent on improving his mental focus, Paye took two books with him into the offseason: “Chop Wood Carry Water: How to Fall In Love With the Process of Becoming Great” by Joshua Medcalf and “Chase the Lion: If Your Dream Doesn’t Scare You, It’s Too Small,” by Mark Batterson.

Both books tell stories of warriors on the hunt.


“Savagery,” Paye said. “That’s what I really wanted to focus on this offseason.”

Paye dove into his goals this offseason, then returned to a Colts defense that has undergone significant reconstruction, changes that should help the former first-round pick unleash his immense potential as a pass rusher.

For starters, Indianapolis has a new defensive coordinator, and Gus Bradley plans to ask his defensive ends to focus on just one thing.

Savagery.

Under former coordinator Matt Eberflus, the Colts defensive ends had to prioritize both run and pass, lining up tight to the formation at times and setting a physical edge on running plays, an emphasis that helped Paye earn so much playing time as a rookie. At times he was asked to make a read and then react, the way he played at Michigan.


Bradley’s going to ask Paye to focus on taking down the quarterback. Indianapolis hired its new defensive line coach, Nate Ollie, away from the New York Jets to teach the Colts defensive line the attack front, a system that never asks its players to make a read and lines up the ends in an alignment built for maximum pass-rush damage.


“For this defense, we’ll play more 9. Both ends will be in a 9-technique,” Paye said.

The end on the other side of the line is the other big change, who will likely help Paye’s development.

Frustrated by its lack of pass rush, the Colts traded for pure edge rusher Yannick Ngakoue in March, inadvertently giving Paye a chance to learn from a player he’s always admired.

“If you were to go back and look at my interviews in the past when I was coming out of college, and people asked me who I was watching, I would say Yannick,” Paye said. “I love the cross-chop, I tried to do it in college. The open season, when everything was shut down and we had to work out on our own, that’s what I was doing. I was practicing his moves, watching his film.”

Ngakoue, a six-year veteran with 55.5 career sacks, is a willing tutor.

Brought in to instantly upgrade the Colts edge rush, Ngakoue believes his role is not only to get to the quarterback himself, but to lift up the other rushers on the defensive line.

If Paye wants to learn the cross chop, he hat a chance to talk to the master.

“Everything that I’ve learned, not just on the field, outside the field as well,” Ngakoue said. “It’s my duty to give it back to the younger guys, so they don’t make the same mistakes that I made.”

The Colts have made a lot of moves to upgrade their defense this offseason.


Bradley. Ngakoue. Stephon Gilmore, Brandon Facyson and Rodney McLeod in the secondary.

But Indianapolis is also well aware that if some of its young starters take the next step, the Colts defense might get a big boost from within.

“Kwity’s going to be really good. We think he’s going to develop and he’s going to be really good,” Ballard said. “I feel good about the pick.”

Paye remains focused on proving the Colts right.