Indianapolis is 0-0-1 after starting the season with a 20-20 tie with Houston.
That’s not the best way to begin the year, but it also doesn’t end things. In fact, the Colts have an appreciation for what a tie can mean at the end of the season based on what happened in 2021.
Pittsburgh’s midseason tie with Detroit helped put the Steelers in the postseason instead of the Colts with the league’s Week 18 results. That’s part of why running back Nyheim Hines said on Wednesday that the season-opening tie could be a positive or a negative in January.
"[L]ast year we didn’t make the playoffs with Pittsburgh and a tie,” Hines said, via transcripts distributed by the team. “So right now, a tie is a good thing or a bad thing depending how we use it, but I remember last year a tie was one of the reasons we didn’t make the playoffs. So for Pittsburgh last year it was a great thing. Hopefully, it doesn’t come to that, but with a tie, we are going to focus on the positives. We have negatives to get better on, but obviously we are going to focus on the things that we did well last week.”
The Colts play the Jaguars in Jacksonville this week. A tie would be an improvement from the last seven times the team has played at TIAA Bank Field, as Indianapolis hasn’t won at the stadium since 2014 — notoriously losing last year’s Week 18 contest there with a brutal performance.