Shane Steichen thought the Colts needed a spark.
That was the impetus behind the trick play call that went disastrously wrong on Sunday in Denver, when Adonai Mitchell’s pass back to Anthony Richardson turned into a 50-yard Nik Bonitto touchdown and members of the Colts sideline collapsed, knowing their playoff hopes would soon rest in the hands of other teams.
In the days that have followed the Colts’ 31-13 loss to the Broncos, coaches and players have had to come to terms with how that gamble changed the trajectory of their season to this point:
What were they trying to do?
What could it have turned into?
And was this the gamble to take on a turbulent season with the postseason right in front of them?
A bold call for a bold moment
The Colts were feeling desperate.
In the previous quarter alone, Jonathan Taylor had fumbled away a touchdown without anyone touching him and Michael Pittman Jr. had fumbled in his own territory. What they believed was about to be a 13-point lead was now a 4-point deficit, and the darkness was creeping in at Empower Field and a Broncos fan base roared as it grew within reach of its first postseason trip since 2015.
"I was trying to get a spark going for our guys," Steichen said.
But the Colts were also closer than they realized in the moment: It was only a 4-point game, and they were at the Broncos 40-yard line. Taylor’s should-have-been touchdown was a 40-yard untouched burst up the right side. Anthony Richardson had scored on a 23-yard nearly untouched run in the first quarter.
Their defense was getting stops when they weren’t turning Denver over. And if they could get a lead on Bo Nix, a rookie feeling the weight of his own franchise’s playoff droughts might just throw his fourth interception.
But that’s not how it felt to Steichen as he peered at his play sheet for a 2nd-and-7 call.
He’s faced the “players vs. plays” debate since last season’s 4th-and-1 miss against the Texans, when Gardner Minshew couldn’t hit Tyler Goodson in the flat on a play where Taylor was off the field.
But in this game, Steichen had tried to ride his best players and seen it turn into two back-breaking fumbles. The Broncos kept doubling Josh Downs, and Alec Pierce was in the locker room being evaluated for a brain injury.
So, one of the boldest coaches in the game went to a call he’d been sitting on all game.
He’d talked through this with Mitchell beforehand, trying his best to limit the risk of a play that everyone knew was inherently risky. He was hoping that if Richardson could at least make the initial lateral pass and Mitchell could catch it, the worst that would happen is he’d throw it away.
That’s why he motioned Trey Sermon out of the backfield to form a four-receiver set along the right side. The other three would stay in to block.
This was supposed to come down to Mitchell assessing the risk, and ultimately, it did.
"If you kind of look from my perspective, it was there, pretty much," Mitchell said.
But as soon as Mitchell began to drift backward and spin the ball in his hands, each ticking second felt like an hour. And the picture that formed made it clear that a play coached to avoid risk was going to lay everything on the line.
'I knew something was weird'
Perhaps every option on offense felt low-percentage to Steichen in this moment, but the math becomes difficult to comprehend.
His quarterback entered the game completing 47% of his passes on the season, and it wasn’t getting better on the road and in altitude against a crowd as hungry as this. Richardson was 10 for 25 when he took the snap from shotgun.
Mitchell came into the game catching 44% of his targets in his rookie season. After catching none of his four in this game – with the double pass counting as a run play in the stat book – he now ranks 188th out of 191 qualifying players in catch rate.
Because it was a double pass, a drop from Mitchell would have resulted in a fumble. And the same would be true when he went to throw it back to Richardson, who has caught one pass so far in the NFL, that being his own that was batted back into his arms earlier in this game.
But perhaps the biggest issue was the route design itself.
Sermon motioned out to join Pittman, Downs and Mitchell along the right side. When Mitchell caught the backward pass and drifted back to show he was throwing, all three of those skill players held in to block, as if it were a screen.
But the best player on the Broncos knew it wasn’t.
“It was kind of a slow developing play, so I knew something was weird,” Bonitto said. “The receiver usually doesn't go catch screens like that. Once I saw Richardson drifting back a little bit, I decided to go try and break on it and ended up getting it.”
The design was for Mitchell to throw back to Richardson, who would then have the option to either run behind five offensive linemen who stayed in to block or to throw down the field. But the only receiver who released into a route was Kylen Granson, who is tied for eighth on the team in receptions.
"Obviously, (Mitchell has) thrown a double pass before that he’s had success with," Steichen said.
Mitchell did run one of these successfully in Week 5 against the Jaguars, when he threw back to Tyler Goodson for a 24-yard gain. But it wasn’t the same defense, the game wasn’t of the same magnitude and the design wasn’t nearly as in his favor this time around.
Against Jacksonville, Pierce was the wide receiver who went deep on the pattern, and Mitchell kept his eyes on him before throwing back to Goodson.
Granson doesn’t invite the same defensive structure or nearly the same fear. So Bonitto hung back and kept eyes on Richardson, whom he noticed was facing Mitchell as if ready for the ball, or in a different stance than he was on every other throw in that game. Rather than immediately cover him, Bonitto hovered at a distance where he could catch up to a pass, so long as it wasn’t a rifle from Point A to Point B.
He bet that a 205-pound rookie wide receiver didn’t have a rifle of an arm.
So, although the lane was technically clear when Mitchell spun the laces and went to throw, the physicality of the skill sets made for a different story.
“We repped that play all week, and it was great,” Steichen said. “It looked great all week. We had it up. It was good in practice."
But the Colts scout team doesn't have a Bonitto, who is in the Defensive Player of the Year conversation with 11.5 sacks and also scored in the game before this against the Browns.
They also didn’t have experienced defenders playing with their season on the line, who have scouted every rep of the opposing players in advance of a play like this.
Bonitto exploded out of his stance across the face of Bernhard Raimann, who was hanging in to set up a wall for Richardson along the right side.
"(No.) 15 turned into Ed Reed," Mitchell said, "and came through out of nowhere."
Based on how the rest of the Broncos defended the play, a touchdown was quite possible for Richardson if Bonitto had missed the ball. But that would have required a quicker release and a rifle from Mitchell, which he said wasn’t physically possible.
"I executed the play call," Mitchell said. "He made a good play."
It really came down to how Bonitto and the defensive line decided to read the play. Had he raced laterally toward Mitchell, a lane for a touchdown was possible, assuming the relays from Richardson to Mitchell and back to Richardson were clean.
That was the read Mitchell was asked to make in the end, in a critical moment, for a rookie who has been itching all season long to make a big play.
"Receivers, we're not really used to looking for traffic," Pittman said. “(Mitchell) did the play exactly how it was scripted, and unfortunately, that's a side effect of those trick plays."
A gamble to define a season
Perhaps this was always going to end in a gamble.
After all, the previous game against the Patriots did, when Steichen went for the 2-point conversion and the win, and Richardson powered it in to pull out a 1-point win. But that was also a base play, using a top-tier skill set, following a 19-play drive.
But the Colts were the road underdog against a Broncos defense that could outman them once they had a lead and the crowd on their side. Steichen is an aggressive coach. Perhaps this was their way of going down swinging.
Or perhaps it was a learning moment about when to take a swing for the fences when singles can also win the game.
They’re they questions the Colts are asking and trying to move on from – in the long- and short-term.
“I’m going to push back: I don't think that will be the defining play of his year," offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter said of Mitchell. "AD is a bright, up and coming young player. ... The future is bright for AD."
Now, it's up to the Colts, with some help from the NFL, to make sure this isn't the defining play of their season, too.
