Insider: Lack of Colts run game is handing Gardner Minshew more weight than he can handle
CINCINNATI — By almost any measure, the Colts offense should have had the upper hand against the Bengals on Sunday.
Even with a backup quarterback at the helm. Even with a backup running back trying to fill the shoes of a superstar.
Beaten and bruised as much as the Indianapolis offense has been this season, the Colts offense has still been much more successful than a Bengals defense that entered the game ranked dead last in the NFL in yards allowed, and right at the bottom of the league in every category other than turnover production.
But the Colts failed to capitalize on Cincinnati’s vulnerability in any meaningful way, allowing the Bengals offense to run away with a 34-14 win that simultaneously announced Cincinnati’s re-entry into the playoff race and dealt a blow to playoff hopes that had been rising in Indianapolis.
Michael Pittman Jr. put it succinctly.
“We got our butts whupped,” he said.
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Facing a Cincinnati defense that has been one of the league’s worst this season, the Colts offense put together just one scoring drive, sputtering and stumbling and shrinking even though the Bengals defense didn’t force a turnover, the one thing it does well, until the game had long been decided.
Indianapolis collapsed so completely on both sides of the ball that it was hard for the Colts to point to any one thing that went wrong.
“I wish I had a great answer for you, I really do,” Indianapolis head coach Shane Steichen said. “It was just one of those days.”
The Colts coach, who has generally done a good job manufacturing points this season, is right that a lot of things went wrong Sunday.
For starters, Indianapolis hasn’t been prone to penalties and second-year left tackle Bernhard Raimann has spent most of the season playing much better than he showed against Cincinnati star Trey Hendrickson, who sacked Minshew twice, forced an interception and drew two penalties against Raimann.
“He got the best of me today,” Raimann said. “You learn from the film, and you get better. That’s what we always do.”
But there is a troubling trend developing for the Indianapolis offense, something that might be bigger than just a one-week aberration.
The Colts couldn’t run the ball.
At all.
Zack Moss picked up just 28 yards on 13 carries, and Indianapolis picked up just 46 rushing yards overall, its second-worst mark of the season, trailing only a similarly disastrous performance in Jacksonville.
In that game, Jacksonville established the blueprint for slowing down the Indianapolis running game.
The same blueprint Cincinnati used today.
“The (Bengals) were more of a nickel team; they came out and played more base,” tight end Mo Alie-Cox said. “Against those base packages is where we’ve had a little bit more trouble than the other stuff. We’ve just got to find ways to make plays against those.”
Indianapolis rushed for 126 yards or more six times in its first eight games.
The Colts have now failed to crack the 100-yard mark in four of their last five, a development that has been masked by a four-game winning streak and a 155-yard outburst against a Buccaneers defense known for stopping the run.
The loss of Taylor has hurt. Indianapolis was more effective before Taylor’s thumb injury forced him back to the bench; Moss has been capable this season, but he lacks Taylor’s ability to create something out of nothing.
What’s more concerning is that the timeline for Taylor’s recovery is murky, and Indianapolis still hasn’t found any answers against teams that shift to a base-heavy approach, meaning they play with four defensive backs and get plenty of defensive linemen and linebackers on the field.
“I don’t know if it’s a trend,” Steichen said. “Sometimes you have two weeks where it doesn’t happen. The next week, you might pop for 200.”
The Indianapolis offense desperately needs to find a fix for the running game.
"Any time you get one-dimensional, it gives the other team an advantage," quarterback Gardner Minshew said.
When the Colts can’t run the ball, it puts the entire offense on the shoulders of Minshew, and he isn’t the type of player who can win games by himself.
Minshew completed 26 of 39 passes for 240 yards, a touchdown and an interception Sunday, and unlike Tennessee, the Bengals didn’t give speedster Alec Pierce many chances to get behind the secondary.
When that happens, Minshew focuses on short, high-percentage throws, and his downfield misses become magnified, leaving the offense spinning its wheels. He’s averaging just 6.7 yards per attempt this season, far below the threshold the passing game needs to hit to carry the offense.
NFL defenses typically do not play a lot of base defense because the opposing quarterback will tear them apart, given those advantages on the outside.
Minshew hasn’t been able to carve up those schemes, allowing defenses to keep sending big bodies to the line of scrimmage, stuffing the run and putting the Colts offense into a terrible cycle, forced to rely on a passing game that rarely produces enough explosives.
Indianapolis has been flirting with a game like this one for weeks. Kenny Moore’s pick-sixes hid a terrible offensive performance against a bad Carolina defense; an awful Patriots offense allowed the Colts to leave Germany with a win despite scoring just 10 points.
The big ground game against Tampa Bay, followed by big passing plays against Tennessee, offered hope that the Colts offense was turning a corner.
The way the Colts sputtered in Cincinnati should get the offense’s attention.
“I feel like we got humbled today,” Pittman said. “And it could be good for us in the long run. Maybe this will help us.”
If it forces the Colts to find some answers in the running game, it just might be a spark.
Or it could end up derailing a surprising season.
Because defenses aren’t going to stop using that blueprint any time soon.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts vs. Bengals: Struggling run game asking too much of Gardner Minshew
