Updated Sep 15, 2015 at 3:51p ET
After rushing for just 31 yards on eight carries in his regular-season debut with the Indianapolis Colts, running back Frank Gore said the ground game needs to be a bigger part of the team's offensive attack moving forward.
“I feel like you have to run the ball. You have to do both. If the run is there, it’s there. If the pass is there, it’s there. We gotta do both to win in this league,” Gore said, per the team's official website. “We did have things going, but big penalties. We can’t do that.”
At one point in the first half of Sunday's 27-14 loss to the Buffalo Bills, the Colts passed the ball on the 18 consecutive plays. Indianapolis ran the ball just seven times in the first half.
“We have to get the run game going,” right guard Todd Herremans said. “There’s no other way around it. If we don’t get that going, then our pass game is going to suffer, because of it.”
Colts quarterback Andrew Luck said one big reason for the lopsided number of passing attempts was the Bills tendency to stack the box, which not only made it harder to run, but left the team's receivers in more favorable one-on-one coverage against the Buffalo defensive backs.
“It’s not fun trying to run the ball with nine guys in the box, eight guys in the box," Luck said. "That’s hard. That’s hard for any team. I think we’ll improve.”
Still, head coach Chuck Pagano said the team needed to give Gore more chances even against heavier defensive fronts, noting Gore has run against more eight-man fronts than any other running back the last three years.
“Run through them, run them over, run around them and make them miss," Pagano said. "He’s done that for a long, long time. So we’ve got to give him and the other runners that opportunity.”
(h/t Indianapolis Colts)
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