Of all the ways for Sunday’s Colts-Titans game to play out, one of the unlikeliest was for Colts wide receiver Michael Pittman Jr. to catch the game-winning touchdown pass in the fourth quarter.
Pittman missed two days of practice with a back injury and a report indicated he was likelier to land on injured reserve than play against Tennessee, but Pittman returned to work on Friday and wound up in the lineup for the divisional matchup. Pittman outfought cornerback L’Jarius Sneed for a touchdown halfway through the fourth quarter and then helped put the final nails in the Titans’ coffin with a 16-yard catch just before the two-minute warning.
Fellow wideout Alec Pierce called Pittman “super tough” and head coach Shane Steichen called him the “toughest guy I’ve ever been around” after the game. Pittman said the decision could have gone the other way, but a conversation with his father, a former NFL running back, helped push him into the lineup.
“He just said if I felt like I could be effective, that I should play,” Pittman said, via Stephen Holder of ESPN.com. “And we sat there and we talked for an hour because I had to talk to a lot of people before I kind of made that final plan. And he was one of the people that I talked to, the closest, obviously. Because he’s been there. He’s played through a lot of things. So, I just kind of took his advice.”
Pittman said that the future could bring different decisions if his back doesn’t improve, but he felt well enough to play on Sunday and the Colts were very happy to have him on the field.