Bedtime isn’t sleep time for Indianapolis Colts rookie wide receiver Austin Collie. When he turns in about 10 p.m., his wife, Brooke, is waiting, with the Colts playbook and a little tough love.

“She’ll take a script or she’ll take a couple of plays from the binder and she’ll call them out and I’ll tell her what I’ve got,” Collie said.

Or he won’t, in which case he gets a little coaching.

“She does get on me. She’s like, ‘You know that one; you just got this one the other day.’ She’ll put them back in the pile and make me go over them again.

“She knows the offense as well as I do now.”

When Anthony Gonzalez went down with sprained ligaments in his right knee during the Colts’ season opener, everyone took a deep breath. There was no contact on the play, but the hit was “huge,” to borrow quarterback Peyton Manning’s characterization. “Gonzo” was down and the team was crippled. Marvin Harrison and his 1,102 receptions and 128 touchdowns already were gone. Now the Colts were without their No. 2 receiver.

Their three-receiver package, should they risk deploying it, would consist of Reggie Wayne, an elite player and three times a Pro Bowl participant, Collie and second-year man Pierre Garcon. That callow pair had four NFL receptions for 23 yards between them.

Garcon recoiled on the sideline.

“He wasn’t getting up, and I was, ‘Oh, man. I’ve got to go in. Can’t let nobody down. Can’t let myself down. Can’t let the team down. This is what I’ve been waiting for. A real opportunity is here.’ "

Four weeks later, the Colts are an offense on fire. Manning will be gunning to join Steve Young (1998) and Kurt Warner (2000) as the only players to throw for more than 300 yards in the first five games of an NFL season when the Colts visit defending AFC South champion Tennessee on Sunday night.

The vast preponderance of the Colts’ offensive snaps against Arizona and Seattle the past two weeks have been in three-wide sets. Manning has thrown for 732 yards and six touchdowns in 31-10 and 34-17 victories. Garcon, a sixth-round draft choice from tiny Mount Union, and Collie, a fourth-round pick from Brigham Young, have accounted for 15 catches, 247 yards and two touchdowns over that stretch.

“Whenever their number is called, they’ve been able to step up and hit home runs,” Wayne said.

“The organization does a great job with their depth,” Tennessee coach Jeff Fisher offered. “When someone goes down, someone else comes in and plays, and they don’t miss a beat.”

That doesn’t make it easy.

Marching on

LP Field in Nashville will be headache loud Sunday night, a roiling, roaring cauldron. Communication in the Colts’ “check-with-me offense” will be reduced to hand signals. Every receiver must know every signal and every play for his position: route tree, front side, back side. And for every receiving position, they are interchangeable. Each has options, based on the defense.

Get the play. Determine the defensive set, the alignment; read the feet, the body language, the intention. Then, at the last second, the defense shifts. The adjustment. The snap. The break. The responsibility: Be exactly where you’re supposed to be exactly when you’re supposed to be there. Make the play.

“You can imagine being out there, flanked, and (Manning) goes to a play and within a nanosecond, you’d better know what to do,” Colts coach Jim Caldwell said.

It’s all enough to make your “head explode,” wide receiver Hank Baskett said. “As soon as you learn to run a play one way, there’s a variation to run it another. And at any time, Peyton can call motion or something like that, and that throws the whole thing into another spin.”

Baskett is a skilled four-year veteran, a free agent signed Sept. 17. His contributions have been confined to special teams. The Colts haven’t needed him at receiver. Garcon and Collie have studied, learned, executed. “Gym rats,” Caldwell called them.

Garcon has caught 10 passes for 207 yards. He has touchdown catches of 48 and 53 yards. His 20.7-yard average is third-best among the NFL’s top 50 in receiving yardage.

Collie has caught 12 passes for 131 yards, including a diving 21-yard touchdown against Seattle on a route changed by Manning at the line of scrimmage.

Of course, Garcon and Collie are not operating in a void. They are complementary components in a formidable machine.

Manning leads the NFL in passing yards (1,336), touchdowns (nine) and passer rating (114.5). He is second in completion percentage (70.8).

Wayne is tied for third in receptions (26) and second in receiving yards (399). Dallas Clark leads all tight ends with 26 catches and 364 yards. Wayne has three touchdowns, Clark two and running back Joseph Addai has caught 16 passes for 100 yards and a touchdown.

It takes 11, and the big boys up front have been on their blocks. The Colts have taken a league-low two sacks, a league-low one every 70 dropbacks.

Not home yet

The Colts are a long way, it would seem, from the mid-September day Gonzalez went down and Manning said, “For us to be the kind of team we want this year, we are going to need Anthony Gonzalez back.”

The Colts are 4-0, the kind of team they want to be, for now. Gonzalez is rehabilitating, and Caldwell said this week, “maybe a little bit ahead” of schedule, but it’s Garcon’s and Collie’s job to do with the Colts moving into division play against the teams that know them best and play them toughest.

Manning gives the kids full credit but cautions it isn’t time “we crown them.”

Said Manning: "There is never a moment in practice or a game where you can kind of relax or breathe easy and say, ‘Oh, he will know this.’ "

That’s why Garcon is taking home DVDs of opponents’ defenses and Collie is ignoring the “SportsCenter” highlights of his laid-out touchdown catch.

“I try not to pay attention to those types of things because that is one week,” said Collie, who caught six passes for 65 yards against Seattle.

“Brooke does watch the highlights. She enjoyed (last) weekend. She was very proud of me, as a wife should be.”

And that’s that. The season goes on. The learning proceeds.

At the end of the day, Collie knows, it’s back to bed, back to work. Brooke has the playbook, and Austin had better know it.

Air mobile

The Colts visit Tennessee on Sunday with the NFL’s No. 1 passing offense at 330.3 yards per game. A statistical look at its components:

RECEIVING

[chart]
|Pos.|Player|Rec.|Yds.|Avg.|Long|TD|
|WR|Reggie Wayne|26|399|15.3|39|3|
|TE|Dallas Clark|26|364|14.0|80|2|
|RB|Joseph Addai|16|100|6.3|17|1|
|WR|Austin Collie|12|131|10.9|27|1|
|WR|Pierre Garcon|10|207|20.7|53|2|
|RB|Donald Brown|5|125|25.0|72|0|
|TE|Jacob Tamme|1|6|6.0|6|0|
|TE|Gijon Robinson|1|4|4.0|4|0|
[end chart]

Just for starters

They’re young wide receivers, but rookie Austin Collie and second-year man Pierre Garcon have been fast starters. Their game-by-game numbers:

AUSTIN COLLIE

[chart]
|Opponent|Rec.|Yds.|Avg.|Long|TD|
|Jacksonville|2|15|7.5|10|0|
|at Miami|1|4|4.0|4|0|
|at Arizona|3|47|15.7|27|0|
|Seattle|6|65|10.8|21|1|
|Totals|12|131|10.9|27|1|
[end chart]

PIERRE GARCON

[chart]
|Opponent|Rec.|Yds.|Avg.|Long|TD|
|Jacksonville|3|24|8.0|11|0|
|at Miami|1|48|48.0|48|1|
|at Arizona|3|64|21.3|53|1|
|Seattle|3|71|23.7|35|0|
|Totals|10|207|20.7|53|2|
[end chart]

PASSING

[chart]
|Player|Cmp.|Att.|Pct.|Yds.|Yds./Att.|TD|Int.|Long|Sacked|Rating|
|Peyton Manning|97|137|70.8|1,336|9.75|9|3|80|2|114.5|
[end chart]