Posted by ESPN.com's Paul Kuharsky
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| | AP Photo/Michael Conroy |
| | Jim Sorgi will get lots of attention at Colts camp this year. |
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. -- Before Peyton Manning needed knee surgery, the Colts were already planning for Jim Sorgi to get more work in camp and the preseason with the first team.
Now, with Manning out at least until Aug. 11 -- that would be four weeks after surgery to remove an infected bursa sac in his left knee -- Sorgi has the controls of the offense. Practice starts Friday.
"I've always kind of felt badly for Jim, in the preseason he was playing with a lot of guys that weren't going to make the team and probably didn't block real well and never made a whole lot of plays for him," Manning said. "The opportunity for him now to get some repetitions with the first team and get some solid protection, it's more fair to him and it's a great opportunity for him and I think Jim will do fine."
Sorgi pulled up his black Ford 4x4 truck in front of the dormitory Thursday morning and laughed when he got out and saw the crowd of reporters eager to talk with him. He took his stuff inside first, then came back out to chat.
"Backing up Peyton, you don't get a lot of attention around here," he said. "It's good and it's bad. It's nice to get attention. It's bad it had to come from one of my friends getting hurt. But he's an ironman, he'll bounce back.
"I'm going to have a lot more responsibilities. It's my job to get the ones ready so when he gets back they're ready to go."
New additions Quinn Gray and Jared Lorenzen will need time to catch on to the system, so things are likely to be super-vanilla for them early on.
"I'm sure it will be scaled back a fairly decent amount if you're comparing it to what Peyton will do," veteran center Jeff Saturday said. "But they'll be fine. We can go into our offense, we can do call-it and run-its and run our offense the same way. We can be efficient a number of different ways and I fully expect those guys to be capable of running our offense."
Manning called Sorgi Wednesday night and offered some encouragement. Team president Bill Polian was very supportive, too.
It's the time of year when teams pump up just about everybody, so you come to expect it and comments need to be framed in that context.
Nevertheless, his thoughts on Sorgi running the first team are significant.
"One of the things fans are concerned about is they haven't seen Jim play with the first team," Polian said. "...He'll get a real good opportunity to play with the first group, develop cohesion with them and I am sure the fans are going to like what they see."
