EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – Jason Pinnock hasn’t been directly informed about the contents of the Indianapolis Colts’ game plan, but he is comfortably certain what they will do on offense when they face the Giants Sunday in MetLife Stadium.
Hint: the Colts rushed for a franchise record 335 yards and threw only 11 passes in their victory last week against the Tennessee Titans.
“You don’t fix what’s not broken,” Pinnock said this week. “So, I assume they’re gonna come and run the ball.”
Several indicators make that likely. The Colts can hand the ball to Jonathan Taylor, who was selected AFC Offensive Player of the Week after running for 218 yards and three touchdowns, including 65 and 70-yarders, against Tennessee. Second-year quarterback Anthony Richardson didn’t practice this week with back and foot injuries. He has completed only 47.7% of his passes. Should he not play, veteran Joe Flacco, who turns 40 next month, will make his fifth start of the season. Rain is forecast for Sunday. The Giants have allowed 142.6 rushing yards a game, the NFL’s second-highest figure.
The Colts will likely come out of the locker room running and keep doing it unless game circumstances force them to abandon that strategy.
“Looking at the weather conditions, J.T. is a good back, so I assume they’re gonna try and use him,” Pinnock said.
“If you go through the history of football toward the end of the year, it’s always turned into a run heavy game,” defensive lineman Rakeem Nunez-Roches said. “I think they would do that regardless of what the result was last week, but that will give them the courage to do it this week.”
The Colts were the first NFL team to rush for at least 335 yards and throw 11 or fewer passes since Nov. 20, 1977, when the Chicago Bears ran for 343 yards and put the ball in the air just seven times in a 10-7 victory against Minnesota. Hall of Famer Walter Payton ran for 275 yards on 40 carries.
The last team with 11 or fewer pass attempts in a game was Tennessee, which threw 10 passes on Oct. 30, 2022, in a victory against Houston.
The Giants have confronted an excellent running back every week recently. On Nov. 24, they faced Tampa Bay’s Bucky Irving, the league’s top rookie rusher with 920 yards. Four days later, Dallas’ Rico Dowdle ran for 122 yards against them. In their last three games, the Giants’ defense has faced New Orleans’ Alvin Kamara, Baltimore’s Derrick Henry, and Atlanta’s Bijan…
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