USA TODAY International Edition
Colts get monumental win over Texans
HOUSTON – One week after seeing their streak come to a disappointing end in a clunker against Jacksonville, the Indianapolis Colts rebounded on Sunday by going into Houston and ending the streak of the hottest team in the NFL.
Behind brilliant days from Andrew Luck, T.Y. Hilton and a defense that is playing with momentum, the Colts beat the Texans 24-21 for a huge win that ended Houston’s nine-game winning streak and kept Indianapolis firmly in the thick of a tight race for the No. 6 seed in the AFC playoff race.
Fivethirtyeight.com gives the Colts a 26 percent chance to make the playoffs. A loss would have dropped Indianapolis to 3 percent.
1. T.Y. Hilton is on fire
Everybody knows Hilton loves playing the Texans.
Entering Sunday’s game, Hilton had 67 catches for 1,246 yards and nine touchdowns, and he didn’t disappoint in this trip to Houston, ripping off another nine catches for 199 yards.
This time the Colts needed Hilton to get the offense out of a funk that carried over from last Sunday’s clunker in Jacksonville. After five straight possessions without points, Andrew Luck passed up a first-down completion to Ryan Grant and launched a 60-yard bomb to set up the Colts’ first touchdown and get Indianapolis moving.
But it’s not just the Texans. Hilton has been playing like an allpro for a month now. After eight catches in three games after returning from the hamstring injury that bothered him early this season, Hilton has been unbelievable in his last four, catching 33 passes for 556 yards. When the Colts have needed him most this season, he’s played some of the best football of his career.
2. The Colts’ defense has turned the corner
The first time these two teams met, the Texans rolled up 466 yards of total offense, the most Indianapolis has given up all season and a game that seemed to put the Colts in a funk for a five-game stretch, a streak that lasted into the first two games of the team’s five-game winning streak.
The Indianapolis defense is on a streak of its own now.
After getting reasonably healthy, the Colts entered Sunday’s rematch with the Texans on a run, giving up just 262.7 yards, 4.8 yards per play and 13.3 points per game over their past three games. Houston seemed like a tougher test. But the Colts dismantled Deshaun Watson, shut down DeAndre Hopkins and kept things going against Houston behind another brilliant performance from Denico Autry and impressive showings from Darius Leonard, Anthony Walker and the rest of the front seven.
Indianapolis held an explosive Houston offense to just 315 yards, 4.6 yards per play and 21 points, and held on in the early going despite two questionable flags for hitting a defenseless receiver that helped the Texans score their first touchdown.
The Colts hemmed Watson in for most of the day, sacked him five times and kept the big plays in check, save for a 47-yard pass to tight end Ryan Griffin near the end of the fourth quarter that set up a Hopkins touchdown that made the game tight.
Hopkins, a Colts killer for most of his career, was held mostly in check, catching four passes for 36 yards and that late score.
3. The Colts’ offense is going to be just fine
A high-flying Colts offense was brought crashing down to earth in Jacksonville, putting up no points in a game Indianapolis needed last week.
And for a little while, it looked like the AFC South had found a way to shut down the Colts offense when Indianapolis failed to score on its first five drives, looking sloppy and out-of-sorts.
The big throw from Luck to Hilton put those fears to rest.
Brilliant in the pocket all day long, Luck put up 223 passing yards in the second quarter alone on his way to a 399-yard day, and the Colts kept it going in the second half when they needed it.
After racking up 434 yards of total offense against Houston on Sunday, the Colts now have the two most productive offensive days of any NFL team against the Texans this season, and the offense is fully back on track.