AFC Notes: Colts, Jaguars, Steelers

Colts

Colts veteran K Adam Vinatieri says he has no plans to walk away from the NFL anytime soon.

“I love it as much today as I had when I started 23 years ago,” Vinatieri said, via Colts.com. “I’m not looking to hang them up anytime soon, unless something happens that needs to be that way. I guess I’ll take these one year at a time and see where it ends up. I would anticipate if I can stay healthy and be productive, I can anticipate catching up to Morten [Andersen] midseason or thereabout, and I guess at the end of the year I’d be 46. I’m not putting anything out of reach. I’m not looking and saying, ‘No way,’ or ‘For sure.’ But again, like I said, I just want to help our team be as productive as possible this year, and if everything works out well, hopefully we’ll be having this conversation again next year.”

Jaguars

Jaguars HC Doug Marrone tells Mike Garafolo of NFL Media that one of his messages to the team this offseason has been to avoid the “trap of people taking you to where we were at the end of last year.”

“Your first year, it’s kind of easier. You have a chip on your shoulder, you haven’t won any games, no one is really giving you anything, no one’s talking to you, not a lot of media around, just your local people,” Marrone explained. “And then, all of a sudden, you start winning and guys start playing well, it starts to pick up. There’s a little bit more. You’re getting more phone calls for tickets. More people want to be around you. Then, it comes to you have to learn from the past. There are certain lessons we can carry over from last year to this year, but it’s not the end result of what happened.

“Last year, you can easily say we might’ve caught a team [by surprise]. But I don’t think we’re going to catch anybody [this year]. Now, everyone’s gonna know they have to play a good football game and they’ll be ready for us.”

Steelers

This offseason, the Steelers made the decision to promote QBs coach Randy Fichtner to offensive coordinator, but didn’t hire a replacement for his prior position.

However, it doesn’t appear as though the Steelers are concerned about not having a designated QBs coach this year.

“It’s a fine line because he wants to coach and be involved with the young guys, but he has to be ready to give me the next play in practice or whoever it is,” Steelers QB Ben Roethlisberger said, via Mark Kaboly of The Athletic. “It is something that we may just keep an eye on. I understand that he doesn’t want to break up that room and how it works and all that.”

Fichtner explained that it’s possible they could bring someone in at a later point in time.

“Maybe that will be something you explore down the road,” Fichtner said. “When you are not working with a veteran quarterback and I will throw Landry Jones into that because we’ve been together for six years. There is some natural communication that already takes place. It might be eye contact. Something might not even be said. It’s a look sometimes. You know how you give your kid a look when they made a mistake and they knew? . . .

“I think there might be value about that in the end. Right now the value in that is direct communication in that room of the expectations of what we are trying to do as a whole.”