According to a report by ESPN.com, long-time Colts offensive coordinator Tom Moore is set to retire due to his dissatisfaction with the NFL’s revised pension plan for coaches. Indianapolis already lost its offensive line coach Howard Mudd to retirement over the same issue.

Mudd has coached 35 consecutive seasons in the NFL and Moore has been an assistant for 32 years. Both are considered among the finest assistant coaches in league history and their 12-year Indianapolis union as offensive coordinator and line coach has been considered a major factor to the success of the Colts and quarterback Peyton Manning.

NFL owners passed a resolution at the league meetings that allowed the 32 teams to opt out of a uniformed pension plan, which has been a generous incentive for coaches to remain at the pro level. Many teams have yet to decide on their specific plans for non-playing employees but Kennan painted a picture of betrayal.

“Howard was already researching the strategy of when to take a lump sum payment when the owners pulled this fast one,” said Kennan. “Let me tell you something: The owners did this at the league meetings and they never informed me of anything. They didn’t notify the [coaches] within their own organizations, with the exception of two classy organizations — the Atlanta Falcons and Baltimore Ravens — that there were changes coming. No advance warning and no information after the fact.

“So you take a guy like Howard Mudd, who is pretty diligent about everything, and he was already concerned about losing some money because the market index was going to change in July. Then you throw this at someone like that — and he finds out that several teams have not fully funded their pension plans at an 80 percent level, the mark they need to hit for any employee to take a full lump sum payment. …Well, Howard Mudd’s not waiting around to see what happens with all these signals. And he’s a guy that a lot of other coaches respect — especially Tom Moore — so they could follow his lead.”

I don’t know enough about the league’s pension plan for coaches to comment on that situation, but I do know that losing Moore and Mudd would be a bigger hit to the Colts than people would generally think.

One of the reasons Manning has been so successful over his career is because he has had the fortune to work with Moore year in and year out. Some quarterbacks have to work with three or sometimes even four coordinators throughout their careers and each time there’s an adjustment period. Yet Manning has the luxury of knowing Moore’s system as soon as he reports to camp every year and the two make a perfect pair on game days.

Then again if Moore does retire, the Colts probably already have already been grooming his replacement, ala Jim Caldwell when Tony Dungy stepped down.