After nine straight losses, including two to start this season, the Colts retired to their locker room after Sunday’s 19-17 victory over the Houston Texans and let loose. There were primal screams, unfettered joy, the music bouncing off the walls. It’s been a long time, too long, since this franchise actually found a way to win a close football game, and now, they’ve saved their season, at least for the time being.
They almost blew it, as they’ve been wont to do in recent times, Shane Steichen again turning oddly conservative – scared? -- in the final minute before he was bailed out by Spencer Shrader’s 53-yard game winner.
The Colts were up 16-7 with 12:43 left in the game, holding C.J. Stroud to just 54 yards passing to that point, only to give up two late scoring drives that put the Texans ahead 17-16 with 1:48 remaining and two timeouts.
But the Colts, who rarely “find a way,” having lost six straight one-possession games going back to last season, finally made a play – a couple of them, actually — specifically a 20-yard completion to Laquon Treadwell (who?) and a six-yard pass to the suddenly revitalized Keenan Allen with just 24 seconds left. That set up Shrader, who was listed as questionable with a tweaked groin in the minutes leading up to the game.
We should all have tweaked groins, is what I’m saying.
He blasted a 58-yarder earlier and the game-winner from 53. Four-for-four on the day. Not bad.
He didn’t kick off – that responsibility fell to punter Rigoberto Sanchez, who did a fine job – but he had plenty of leg when it counted.
Shrader said he felt a minor tweak in his groin during pre-game warmups, and wondered later if his knee injury, which sidelined him most of last season, impacted the groin. He was listed as questionable and the Colts chose to have Sanchez kick off in the hope it would save Shrader’s leg.
“That decision was made for me,” he said with a smile.
That’s when the medical staff went to work, including some dry needling work, and needles to the groin area sound like no fun at all.
