'It's all hands on deck:' How a struggling Colts pass rush is trying to save DeForest Buckner from himself

INDIANAPOLIS - DeForest Buckner saw yet another double team coming his way, so he slid down the Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive line in a search for a free lane.

Instead, he met an avalanche.

The Buccaneers' double team became a quadruple team, and soon, the Colts All-Pro defensive tackle was on the ground, his knee mangled beneath the poundage.

As Buckner lay on his back with a hyperex, his Colts teammates gathered with their helmets off.

Then they strapped them on and readied for the avalanche to come to them.

The Buccaneers ran Leonard Fournette up the truck-sized hole Buckner left behind, gaining 13 yards. On the next play, Tom Brady dropped back against a four-man pressure that might as well have been zero before he located Rob Gronkowski for a 26-yard gain.

In Sunday's 38-31 loss to Tampa Bay, the Colts learned what it was like to play an elite offense with a limited Buckner, the star they signed to a four-year, $84 million contract. At the moment he got hurt, they'd held the Buccaneers to just seven points on 26 plays. From the injury on, with Buckner out or hobbled, Tampa Bay racked up 31 points on the final 35 plays.

It's an experience they could have this week against the Houston Texans, as Buckner sat out Wednesday's practice in order to let the knee heal. He's only missed one game to injury in his six seasons in the NFL. With a late bye in the NFL's first-ever 17-game season, he's fighting to make it through.

“As an athlete, you have a lot of adrenaline rushing," Buckner said of Sunday's scare. "The initial blow really hurt. I started to feel the pain settle in a bit and it was still sore. It’s nothing I couldn’t really fight through.

"I'm doing everything I can to help my team win."

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A year after his All-Pro first season with the Colts earned him a four-year, $84 million contract, Buckner has spent more of this year keeping blockers off younger teammates. He's still generating pressure on 10.4% of plays, close to last year's 11.5%, but his rate of knocking down the quarterback has been cut nearly in half from 7.5% to 4.2%, per Sports Info Solutions.

When he isn't on the field, those double teams have to go somewhere else. It falls on another Colt to get hands in the face of a quarterback trying to pick apart zone coverage, and none of them have his 82-inch wingspan.

Buckner managed to play 78% of the snaps on Sunday. He had a couple of impact moments while hurt, including a sack of Brady in which he buried the left guard with his trademark swim move and then a pass deflection on 3rd-and-goal when he swatted the ball with one of his giant mitts.

A Buckner at less than his First-Team All-Pro self has forced Colts defensive coordinator Matt Eberflus to throw his hands in the air.

"It’s all hands on deck," Eberflus said. "We have the guys that we have and certainly we would take more. If you know where they are, let me know. We’ll put them on the roster and rush them this Sunday."

The Colts don't want to play Buckner close to 80% of the time because the rate at which he sees multiple blockers makes the physical toll feel like a game and a half.

He can handle the load at 27 years old, but it limits the disruptive plays he has for final drives like Sunday, when Tampa Bay drove 75 yards on eight plays for a game-winning touchdown.

The previous two weeks, the Colts cultivated a fresh Buckner by cutting his snaps to about 70% for the game. He was at his most disruptive in the fourth quarter as his defense sealed wins over the Jaguars and Bills.

The Colts want to manage him differently than Aaron Donald, who plays 86% of snaps for the Rams but is so quick he avoids much of the double-team action. They'd like to use Buckner more like the Chiefs do Chris Jones or the Eagles do Fletcher Cox, who receive similar star attention and play about 70% of snaps for their teams.

But shootouts like Sunday, with the pockets they were giving Brady without Buckner, place them in an impossible bind to do so:

The Colts got caught between some timelines this past offseason. After a wildcard defeat to the Bills in which Josh Allen scrambled around and diced up a team lacking edge pressure, they knew they had to find Buckner some help. But in trading for a reclamation project at quarterback in Carson Wentz, they were also choosing the long view as a franchise.

Their first two draft picks this spring tried to blend those desires. Both were defensive ends in Michigan's Kwity Paye and Vanderbilt's Dayo Odeyingbo. But both were developmental prospects, flashing excellent length but little pro readiness due to Paye's lack of pass-rush experience and Odeyingbo's health in coming off a torn Achilles.

They've flashed with inconsistency like rookies do. Paye went his first six games without a sack but now has one in three straight, often by marrying his rush with Buckner's. Odeyingbo had the strip-sack off a Buckner double team to seal a win over the Jaguars but has yet to play a third of the defensive snaps in any game.

They leave the Colts dreaming of what is to come.

"When Dayo gets going and Buckner gets going inside there like that, they’re going to be a force to be reckoned with," Eberflus said.

But the future returns won't heal Buckner's knee or lessen his need to play. So he'll brace with the rest of them and see if they can survive the next avalanche.

Contact Nate Atkins at natkins@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter @NateAtkins_.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts: How a struggling pass rush is trying to save DeForest Buckner