Indianapolis Colts wide receiver T.Y. Hilton has had better starts to seasons than the one he is currently enduring in 2020, but his head coach isn’t hitting the panic button just yet.
Hilton has at least three dropped passes in the first two games of the season. Two in the first game came on the final drive and helped seal the loss for the Colts while the one on Sunday against the Vikings was a bad drop in the endzone.
Even with a valid argument that the sun played a role in the dropped pass on Sunday—the Colts had the roof open—head coach Frank Reich isn’t worried at all about Hilton.
“No, not at all. You guys probably saw, but on that long one yesterday – I didn’t ask T.Y. (Hilton), I don’t think I had to ask him. I believe the sun was a factor. I was talking about it before the game. I told our guys up in the booth, I said, ‘Let’s keep track of where the sun is, what time of the day it is,’ because it is a little bit of a factor,” Reich told reporters Monday. “I’m not worried about T.Y. He’s the last guy I worry about.”
Hilton’s start to the season hasn’t been what was expected. His drops seem to be coming in the category of concentration, which is equally frustrating given what type of production Hilton can bring to the offense.
But the sun absolutely could have played a factor in the end zone drop on Sunday. In fact, Reich said he was hoping to call that very play but when the Colts were driving in the opposite direction.
“Honestly, I was trying to call that pass when we were going the other way knowing that T.Y. would have to look back into it, but it just didn’t come up that way. You can try to plan for that, but it just came up that we felt like that was the perfect time to call it and we just had to take our chances,” said Reich. “99 percent of the time it’s not going to be a factor, but I just think it was that one percent that T.Y. looked up at the wrong time at the wrong way and caught the ball in the sun – at the last second he just kind of lost it.”
It’s certainly frustrating because we know what kind of player Hilton is. A bounce back in Week 3 against the Jets should be expected, and the Colts have no plans to limit Hilton’s touches despite his struggles in the first two weeks.