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'Doing what I've always done': Colts RB Zack Moss returns and brings running game with him

INDIANAPOLIS — A running back doesn’t always have to be flashy to be effective.

Flash helps. A back who can turn any carry into a touchdown is a nightmare for defenses, the kind of problem who can change a game with a single cut.

In the absence of flash, though, an offense still needs somebody who can move the chains, do the dirty work that has often been left unfinished in Indianapolis this fall.

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Indianapolis Colts running back Zack Moss (21) runs in a touchdown Sunday, Sept. 17, 2023, during a game against the Houston Texans at NRG Stadium in Houston
The kind of work a guy like Zack Moss is more than willing to do.

“Even if you have a great quarterback, right?” Moss said. “You have to have some type of running game. It puts the defense in such a stressful position.”

The Colts didn’t have any type of running game outside of rookie quarterback Anthony Richardson in their loss to Jacksonville last week.


Forced to open the season without the services of disgruntled superstar Jonathan Taylor or an injured Moss, Indianapolis running backs produced just 25 yards on 16 carries, leaving the Colts offense stuck behind the chains in its season-opening loss, either by trapping Indianapolis in third-and-long situations or by failing to reach the chains in short-yardage situations.

Moss stepped into the gap Sunday.




And his presence transformed the offense, even if it took him a little while to get going. Moss picked up 88 yards on 18 carries, important yards for an offense that lost the game-breaking ability of Richardson to a concussion in just the second quarter.

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Once Richardson left the game, Moss was the Colts running attack in its entirety, the only player entrusted to carry the ball. The veteran back played 98% of the team’s snaps, an enormous workload few NFL running backs are asked to carry in the modern era.

The Colts badly needed Moss to hold up under the weight.




The team clearly did not trust its other two options, Deon Jackson and Jake Funk, to help shoulder the load, because of ineffectiveness in Jackson’s case and inexperience in the case of Funk, who has mostly been a special teamer in his short NFL career.

“Kind of struggled running the ball last week. I think that the offensive line took that personal,” backup quarterback Gardner Minshew said. “They had a great game. Zero sacks, ran the ball well and then Zack going in there and running as hard as he does, it certainly helps.”

Moss does not have Taylor’s breakaway speed, the suddenness it takes to break off a handful of explosive runs. The veteran’s longest carry against a Texans defense playing without its top three safeties was an 11-yard touchdown.

He can pick up the yards that are blocked, though. Creates a few extra on his own.

Yards a lot of NFL coaches and evaluators take for granted, at least until they go through a dud like the one the Colts running backs produced against Jacksonville.



“It was great to get Zack back out there running hard,” Colts head coach Shane Steichen said. “He was physical, saw the holes well, made some tight, tough runs inside to get a few extra yards.”

Moss wasn’t available for the opener.

He tried.

Handed a chance to be the starting running back right away by Taylor’s balky ankle and bitter standoff with the Colts front office, Moss broke his arm on the first day of full pads in training camp. He’d suffered the injury before, back in college; when the injury happened, Moss’s anger and frustration was evident.

The prognosis was six weeks, a timetable that gave him a shot at the season opener.

But Moss knew it’s a little more complicated than that. Rehabilitating a broken arm knocked him off the practice field for more than a month, robbed him of hundreds of snaps essential to the conditioning it takes to play NFL football.



“I didn’t want to rush anything,” Moss said. “The biggest thing was getting to a point where I’m not going to limit the team for any selfish reasons. Because I could’ve wanted to play and pushed it the first week, but it doesn’t make any sense to be selfish and limit the team if I don’t feel confident in my abilities and my play style.”

Moss still isn’t quite all the way back.

“It’s an ongoing thing, you’ve got to keep working on it, keep getting it strong,” Moss said. “Technically. You break a bone. I think it takes four or five weeks to heal, but then, in our game, you’re one shot away from reinjuring it at any time.”

He was healthy enough Sunday to give the Colts running game the professionalism it needed.

Acquired from the Bills last fall in the trade that sent Nyheim Hines to Buffalo, Moss has now proven he can be a team’s workhorse, first with 341 yards in the final four games in place of Taylor last season, then with Sunday’s performance against Houston.



Moss didn’t get those chances in Buffalo. For the time being, there is an opportunity in Indianapolis, and Moss is making the most of it.

“I think it’s always about where you go and opportunities, right? For me, in Buffalo, it was different, because our quarterback was already established, and that offense was totally different,” Moss said. “This offense is a run-first team. Coming out of college, I was at a run-first team, not a super pass-happy offense, so being here, it just feels like I’m back doing what I’ve always done.”

Maybe it’s not flashy.

But it was exactly what the Colts offense needed.