With the game, the season and the playoffs on the line, Jonathan Taylor was nowhere to be found

On the biggest play of the year, Shane Steichen put his team's fate in the hands of Gardner Minshew and Tyler Goodson. It didn't work. Season over.

Nobody can question the job Shane Steichen did this season in leading an overachieving Colts team to the cusp – we’re talking the Texans’ 15-yard line – of the playoffs. He has been a brilliant tactician, taking a crew of backups and undrafted free agents and molding them into a team that finished the season an unexpected 9-8.

But that play call on fourth-and-1 at the 15-yard line, the decision to take red-hot Jonathan Taylor out of the lineup and leave the fate of the season in the unsteady hands of wayward Gardner Minshew and late-season practice-squad addition Tyler Goodson, that’s one that’s going to inspire several sleepless nights.

Please explain:

“Yeah, we could have had him (Taylor) in there for something; we could have done something,” Steichen said. “Obviously, if it doesn’t work, you’re going to second guess it. I understand that. That’s part of the business.

“…It was fourth-and-one and we saw the front they were in and we liked the look for that play in that situation.”

Or they could have pounded Taylor off tackle.