Colts Clips
Colts head coach Shane Steichen said this week that the team will put wide receiver Alec Pierce on injured reserve and the team made the move official on Saturday.
Pierce will miss at least the next four games after aggravating the heel injury that caused him to have surgery this offseason.
The Colts filled Pierce’s spot on the roster by signing wide receiver Anthony Gould off of their practice squad. Gould was elevated for the Colts’ Week 2 loss to the Chiefs and he returned four kickoffs in that game.
The Colts also announced that they have elevated wide receiver Nick Westbrook-Ikhine from the practice squad on a temporary basis. He has 137 catches for 1,862 yards and 19 touchdowns in 93 career games.
Eight teams entered Week 3 at 0-2. One of them — the Falcons — avoided an 0-3 start. For the others, it becomes imperative to avoid starting the year with three straight losses.
In NFL history, only seven teams have made the playoffs after starting 0-3. The group includes the 2025 Texans, the 2018 Texans, the 1998 Bills, the 1995 Lions, the 1992 Chargers, the 1982 Buccaneers, and the 1981 Jets.
Only the ’92 Chargers made it to the postseason after starting 0-4.
It’s easier now than it once was, thanks to 17 regular-season games and seven playoff spots per conference. It’s still not easy.
For starters, plenty of teams that start 0-3 do so for a very good reason — they’re not very good. Those that are have a reduced margin for error over the final 14 games.
This year, one game features two 0-2 teams: the Texans at the Colts. The other winless teams are the Dolphins, the Titans, the Chargers, the Commanders, and the Buccaneers.
The Texans ruled out five players for Sunday’s game against the Colts.
Houston won’t have defensive end Jadeveon Clowney (knee), wide receiver Nico Collins (hamstring), linebacker Jake Hummel (groin), offensive guard Ed Ingram (groin) and safety M.J. Stewart (knee). Clowney, Collins, Hummel and Ingram did not practice this week. Stewart was a limited participant on Wednesday and Friday but missed Thursday’s work to rehab.
Offensive tackle Trent Brown (knee/wrist) returned to full participation on Friday, but the Texans still list him as questionable.
Collins, the team’s top wideout, injured his hamstring in practice last week and missed the Week 2 loss to the Bengals.
Clowney has a bone bruise that will keep him out a second consecutive week.
The Colts are listing one of their defensive starters as questionable, but it appears he’s trending in the right direction to play on Sunday against the Texans.
Cornerback Charvarius Ward is questionable for Week 3 with his groin injury.
Ward did not practice on Wednesday. He was limited on Thursday and a full participant on Friday.
“[Ward] had a good day of work today, and then we’ll see how he feels tomorrow,” head coach Shane Steichen said Friday, via transcript from the team. “But I think he’s in a good place right now.”
Additionally, the Colts are listing Ashton Dulin (ankle) as out. Alec Pierce (heel) is also out, but he’s set to be placed on injured reserve — the Colts just haven’t made that official quite yet.
Cornerback Sauce Gardner (rib), guard Matt Goncalves (foot), and receiver Laquon Treadwell (shoulder) are all off the injury report and are set to play.
Week 1 was bad. Week 2 was worse.
The ManningCast audience keeps shrinking. For the Broncos-Chiefs game to start the season, 705,000 of 23.2 million viewers watched the alternate broadcast on ESPN featuring Peyton and Eli Manning.
Via Andrew Marchand of The Athletic, the Giants-Rams Week 2 audience dipped to 661,000. The total broadcast generated 19.4 million.
The only good news is that the percentage of ManningCast viewership moved from three percent in Week 1 to 3.4 percent in Week 2.
No ManningCast is on the docket for the Eagles-Bears game in Week 3. The possibility of a Pat McAfee alternate broadcast has been mentioned, subject to league approval. There has been no further word on whether it will happen.
If it does, the bar has been set. If a McAfeeFest gets to seven figures (which the ManningCast once did, consistently), that will be a bad look for the Peyton and Eli show, which continues to experience a disconnect between the industry’s view of it and the audience’s response to it.
The Texans had three changes to Thursday’s practice report.
Offensive tackle Trent Brown (knee/wrist) returned to practice on a limited basis after sitting out Wednesday’s work. But safety M.J. Stewart went the other way, not practicing Thursday with his knee injury after limited work Wednesday.
Defensive end Logan Hall (knee) returned to full participation.
Defensive end Jadeveon Clowney (knee), wide receiver Nico Collins (hamstring), linebacker Jake Hummel (groin) and offensive guard Ed Ingram (groin) did not practice again.
Collins injured his hamstring in practice last week and missed the Week 2 loss to the Bengals, and he likely will miss another game.
Safety Reed Blankenship (thumb) remained a full participant.
49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk wasn’t the only player to get fined by the NFL after a beverage-related post-play celebration this week.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that Colts guard Matt Goncalves was also fined for an offensive demonstration. After Colts tight end Tyler Warren scored a touchdown in Sunday night’s loss to the Chiefs, he handed the ball to Goncalves who mimed popping the top off of a can to drink from it.
Goncalves was fined $8,847 for a celebration that the league deemed to be in “poor taste” because it simulated consuming a beer.
Juszczyk, who is appealing the fine, received a letter with the same language from the league, but was fined $14,926 for pretending to chug a beverage during a win over the Dolphins.
It’s looking like the Texans are going to be without wide receiver Nico Collins again this weekend.
Reporters at the open portion of the team’s practice on Thursday shared that Collins was not among the player participating in the workout. Collins missed Week 2 with a hamstring injury and he was also absent from practice on Wednesday. That makes five straight missed practices for the wideout.
Given the nature of hamstring injuries, a return to face the Colts this Sunday feels like a long shot but the Texans will not release any official injury designations until Friday afternoon.
Kayshon Boutte, Jaylin Noel, Xavier Hutchinson, and Jared Wayne are the other receivers on the 53-man roster in Houston.
The Colts have gotten off to a poor start on defense in 2026.
While the viral social media post claiming that the Colts have allowed the most yards through two games in league history is false, Indianapolis has not been much better than that.
The 2016 Raiders gave up 1,035 total yards in their first two games — ironically going 1-1 in that span.
The 2026, 0-2 Colts have surrendered 1,029 yards and 74 points, both of which rank dead last in the league after losses to the Ravens and Chiefs. Indianapolis has also surrendered a league-worst 7.2 yards per play.
Indianapolis brought in Lou Anarumo as defensive coordinator last year with the expectation that he’d raise the level of play from former coordinator Gus Bradley. But the unit was only marginally improved last year — going from No. 24 in points allowed and No. 29 in yards allowed in 2024 to No. 21 in points allowed and No. 23 in yards allowed in 2025.
Given the historically bad start, head coach Shane Steichen was asked in his Wednesday press conference if he has confidence in Anarumo to be able to turn the unit around.
“Yeah, absolutely. I have confidence in Lou, no doubt about it,” Steichen said, via transcript from the team. “He’s been doing it for a long time in this league. He’s had success in this league, and I have no doubt that this thing will get turned defensively.”
Steichen noted the defensive issues begin with poor tackling.
“I think we had a ton of missed tackles last week, last couple weeks, and those are leading to explosive plays, especially in the run game,” Steichen said. “And then we’ve got to be great on the backend in coverage. I mean, it’s all part of it. All ties in together. The rush and coverage work together, and we got to get that stuff cleaned up moving forward so we’re not giving up those big plays and those yards.
“Again, we want to be better than it was the first two games,” Steichen added. “There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. We have to be better there. But I do. I have a lot of confidence in [Anarumo] and what we’re doing moving forward. I think there’s the communication stuff. We’re getting that stuff cleaned up, and again, it goes back to tackling, and fundamentals, and we’ve got to do a great job of tackling moving forward.”
We’ll see if the Colts can show improvement when they play the Texans at home on Sunday.
Still looking for their first win of the season, the Texans will face the division-rival Colts in Indianapolis this weekend.
Defensively, they may have gotten a leg up on their preparation from last week’s opponent.
That’s at least the implication from defensive end Will Anderson, who discussed facing Daniel Jones a week after facing Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow in his Wednesday press conference.
“He’s tough. He’s really tough,” Anderson said of Jones, via transcript from the team. “He kind of reminds me of Joe Burrow in a sense. If you disrespect the pocket, he’ll take off on you. He wants to stand in the pocket, and he wants to show that he’s a quarterback. I think he’s been doing a really good job of that.
“We have a ton of respect for him. It’s going to be a great challenge for us. Him and Joe Burrow really remind me a lot of each other. It’s going to be good for us.”
While Houston lost to Cincinnati 20-6, the Texans held Burrow to 20-of-31 passing for 207 yards with two touchdowns. The defense also sacked Burrow five times.
