Indianapolis Colts WR Anthony Gonzalez: July workouts with QB Peyton Manning "intense"

ANDERSON, Ind. – Somehow, someway, Anthony Gonzalez wanted to make up the time.

Even if it wasn't possible.

So it was that when Gonzalez, a fourth-year wide receiver for the Colts who missed 15 games last season with a knee injury and most of organized team activities this past off-season with a hamstring, started feeling close to healthy in July, he approached quarterback Peyton Manning with a proposal.

He would go to Tennessee, where Manning was spending time in the off-season.

The idea – to get timing down, and become more familiar with the Colts' four-time Pro Bowl quarterback.

Gonzalez went, and so did second-year wide receiver Austin Collie. The trio, Gonzalez said, had a good time, but he said to make no mistake:

The trio also worked.

"One of the reasons why I went down to Tennessee this off-season was to kind of get my timing back,” Gonzalez said. “Having three days, just him and myself and Austin Collie – throwing routes on air and really working on that timing aspect of it – that helped a lot.”

Gonzalez, who opened last season starting opposite wide receiver Reggie Wayne, is part of what is expected to be a deep core of receivers, a group that includes not only Wayne, Collie and Gonzalez, but second-year veteran Pierre Garcon and tight end Dallas Clark.

Here's more of what Gonzalez had to say this week:

*On when he felt healthy this off-season: Honestly, I probably didn't feel all the way healthy until maybe about three or four weeks ago. I was able to work around it, so my conditioning didn't suffer or anything like that. But in terms of full-on, no-questions asked healthy, that's been three or four weeks.

*On regaining timing with Manning: It's not like it's my rookie year. We have two and a half years of experience to draw from. Obviously last year got cut very short for me, so we weren't starting at Square One by any means. The other thing is, I stayed involved. I stayed in Indy, even though I was hurt the whole year. I was in the meetings listening. I wasn't physically going through everything, but mentally, maybe I was. I think you can get around some of those issues if you stay mentally into it.

*On Garcon and Collie's big years in his absence last season: “Those guys obviously stepped up when we needed them to. It was nice for those guys, certainly. That's a big help for the offense, for sure.”

*On working out with Manning In Tennessee in July: “I still wasn't all the way healthy, but I wanted to do it because I had gotten hurt during the OTAs, so from that perspective, I was already kind of behind the eight-ball a little bit, coming back off of a year's worth of injury .To go from that, to getting hurt in the OTAs, I was putting a lot of pressure on myself from that standpoint. That was kind of the impetus behind that. I went up to him and I said, 'Hey, I know it's not the same, but can I come down there.' He was all for it. We actually had a great time. It was a lot of fun.

*On the difficulty of the July workouts: “We definitely worked. It was hotter than heck. It felt like it was 150 degrees. It was so hot. But we would work probably from 8-to-10 on the field, just myself, Austin and Peyton – just throwing, just repetitive, over and over and over again. It was by no means a vacation. It was pretty intense, as intense as you can make routes on air.”