Colts Behind Enemy Lines: Texans RB Dameon Pierce

The Indianapolis Colts will need to be careful not to allow Houston Texans running back Dameon Pierce to get rolling on Sunday.

The Indianapolis Colts are coming off a tough loss against the Jacksonville Jaguars last Sunday, 31-21. The Colts were underdogs against a Jaguars team that is expected to win the AFC South, but this week the Colts find themselves as the favorites in their matchup.

Indy is currently a 1-point favorite on the road against new head coach DeMeco Ryans and the Houston Texans. While all eyes will be on the showdown between the two young, promising rookie quarterbacks in Anthony Richardson and C.J. Stroud, I’m going to focus on someone a bit more under the radar in Texans running back Dameon Pierce.

Pierce is coming off of a great rookie season in which he had 939 yards and 4 touchdowns in only 13 games. In his only game against the Colts, which was oddly enough the first game of his career, he only managed to get 33 yards. The Colts bottled him up pretty well, but since then, the Texans have entirely overhauled their coaching staff and don’t even run the same system they previously did.

The Texans’ new offensive coordinator, Bobby Slowik, is from the Kyle Shanahan tree. He spent the last six years with the San Francisco 49ers learning a very diverse run game heavily featuring inside and outside zone.

Last week against the Baltimore Ravens, the Texans tried to run inside a lot with Pierce but had no success. Baltimore had a solid game plan, clogging up the middle and forcing Pierce to try and bounce everything to the outside. Pierce finished with 38 yards on only 11 carries. He is predominantly a first and second-down back, so when the Texans fall behind early, you can really limit how effective Pierce is, which is exactly what the Ravens did.

For the Colts to win this game against the Texans, they must take away Pierce and force Stroud to beat them. That may include playing with heavier boxes so that Pierce doesn’t get downhill because that’s where he’s truly dangerous.

Pierce is one of those backs that gets stronger as the game goes on, and we all know that isn’t a strong point of the Colts’ defense. Too often in the past, we see them play great for three quarters and wear down in the fourth.

I expect the Colts to win this game on Sunday, and step one in that plan starts with stopping Pierce.

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