'Can we get a straight run call?': Colts, Jonathan Taylor ready to get back to who they are

INDIANAPOLIS — In the heat of battle on Sunday, as the Colts threw pass after pass after pass and a lead over the defending champion Buccaneers was slipping away, Quenton Nelson approached Frank Reich with a plea.

"When the defense stops them here," the Colts' All-Pro left guard said, "Can we get a straight run call? JT (Jonathan Taylor) is hungry."

Reich, who spent 14 years as an NFL quarterback and enjoys when players have suggestions during games, nodded and said, "Yep. OK, got it."

Then Reich kept his word, calling eight runs in 10 plays as Taylor gashed the Buccaneers for 5, 15 and 10 yards in chunks for a game-tying touchdown.

"That's a way to back it up!" Reich shouted to Nelson after the score.

Nelson replied, "Way to (expletive) trust him."

But the Colts still lost the game, 38-31. They held a 10-point second-half lead and failed to finish, and one stat from the game has come to suffocate the rest: The Colts really did drop back to pass 26 plays in a row.

When a run play becomes a pass

It's fed a narrative some have that Taylor doesn't get the ball enough. Reich spent part of this week addressing that noise and laying out how such an unintended consequence can come to be. He talked through run-pass-option calls, where a run play becomes a pass because of the pursuit of one conflict defender, and how it happened again and again on Sunday.

RELATED: Colts coach Frank Reich: Few regrets over not running the ball vs. Bucs

In hindsight, Reich admitted he should have called another run or two. But it was never supposed to happen this way.

And yet it did.

The scene with Reich and Nelson that aired on HBO during this week's episode of "Hard Knocks" opened a window into how the Colts view themselves. Bit by bit, they felt the toll of those 26 plays pulling them away from who they think they are.

Nelson showed that by approaching Taylor on the bench during the game.

"I told Coach, we have the best back in the league and he's hungry," Nelson told him.

Taylor is proving that to be true with each passing week. On Wednesday, he won his second straight AFC Offensive Player of the Month Award, becoming the first player ever to do so for a Colts franchise that has produced Peyton Manning, Marvin Harrison, Reggie Wayne, Marshall Faulk, Edgerrin James and Andrew Luck.

Colts know what they have in Taylor

Taylor is the NFL's leading rusher with 1,205 yards, a whopping 268 ahead of second place. He's also leading the vote for the Pro Bowl.

His general manager, Chris Ballard, was caught on "Hard Knocks" calling Taylor a top-five offensive weapon in the NFL.

His most veteran teammate, T.Y. Hilton, said on Wednesday, "We've got the best back in the league."

And so Sunday's departure from Taylor and the downhill run game has left a mark.

"It's a certain edge the offensive line has," Taylor said. "That's what you want from an O-Line. You want an O-Line that's willing to get down and get dirty, which ours does day-in and day-out.

"It makes you want to run with that much more of an edge, with a chip on your shoulder. You know that your O-Line is super pumped up, and they're ready to go and ready to run the ball."

That's the life the Colts have lived for much of this season. Taylor has the third-most carries in the league. The week before, in a blowout win over the Bills, he hit a season-high 31 carries and turned them into a franchise-record five touchdowns.

That performance set the Buccaneers up with an aggressive plan: They would ask 347-pound nose tackle Vita Vea to command multiple blockers each snap and then run blitz the remaining lanes. If a Colt was going to win an award on them that week, it would not be Taylor.

"Nobody runs the ball on us," Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians said after the game. "I don't care who the hell you are."

Other teams focus on taking Taylor out of the game, but they don't have the same personnel as the defending champions. The past month has proven that true: As the Colts have leaned into Taylor, they have the NFL's No. 1 scoring offense since Nov. 1, averaging 33.1 points per game.

Colts aim to reclaim their identity

But they lost their identity for a stretch last week. As such, they lost a game.

This week is about rediscovering it. The Texans rank next-to-last in rushing yards allowed and 25th in efficiency, per Football Outsiders' DVOA metric. The last time Taylor faced them this season, he averaged a season-high 10.4 yards per carry.

Taylor is the cog of a much larger machine. And that's what Nelson was letting him know as they strapped up helmets and pounded fists on Sunday:

"Let's play some Colts football."

Contact Nate Atkins at natkins@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter @NateAtkins_.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts: Jonathan Taylor and offense are ready for return to identity