'He just knows ball': Rookie Colts WR Josh Downs is playing beyond his years

INDIANAPOLIS — The most NFL-ready rookie the Colts drafted this spring touched off another milestone Sunday.

The circumstances were forgettable, the play unremarkable in its simplicity. A quick out pattern at the goal line for a hope-sustaining touchdown in a game in which Indianapolis trailed by four scores.

The play meant an awful lot to Josh Downs all the same.

The rookie took a couple of slow, dummy steps off the line, selling a run play, before pushing a hard jab step into the ground with his right foot and breaking for the corner, creating two steps of separation to make the throw easy for Gardner Minshew.

“I just need to make sure I caught it,” Downs said. “A dream come true in that moment.”

Another milestone checked off early in a career that is off to an impressive start.

Downs caught another five passes for 21 yards in Sunday’s 37-20 loss to the Jaguars, pushing his totals for the season to 28 catches for 276 yards. Drafted in the third round out of North Carolina, Downs has the third-most catches of any rookie receiver, trailing the Rams' receiver' Puka Nacua and Baltimore’s Zay Flowers; and his 28 catches tie him for 15th in the AFC so far, 27th in the NFL overall.

The touchdown was one of the last “firsts” left in a career that is still only six games old.

“I would say it’s a blessing, first off, but also a sigh of relief, just getting the first one out the way,” Downs said. “I’m going to try to get many more.”

The touchdown clearly meant a lot to Downs.

But the way he’s reacted to everything else about the start of his NFL career has been muted, almost like he expected to open his career as a key member of the Colts’ passing attack. To be clear, that’s not necessarily normal — first-round picks at wide receiver struggle to make an immediate impact every year.

“Oh yeah, you can see it,” Indianapolis head coach Shane Steichen said. “It’s not cockiness, it’s confidence.”

A confidence the Colts coaching staff could sense in the scouting process.

When Downs was drafted, he opened his career in Indianapolis by relaying the story that legendary Colts receiver Reggie Wayne, now the team’s position coach, had told the North Carolina product that he was the best receiver at the NFL scouting combine.

What he didn’t say, and might not have known, is that Wayne was already on his trail.

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Indianapolis already had a powerful, do-everything target in veteran receiver Michael Pittman Jr. and a prototypical deep threat in second-year wideout Alec Pierce. The Colts needed somebody to work in the middle of the field.

“For us, that was something we were missing, especially once Parris Campbell departed,” Wayne said. “We needed that slot guy that understood zones.”

The 5-9, 171-pound Downs fit the body type of a slot receiver.

More importantly, Downs had the brain for the job. Playing out of the slot requires a receiver with the savvy to find holes in zones, settling into gaps to give the quarterback a chain-moving outlet in a league increasingly obsessed with taking away the big play downfield.

Downs was already there.

“He just knows ball,” Pittman said. “Some rookies come in, and they don’t really know coverages. He’s just locked in. He knows looks, leverage, everything.”

Downs’ advanced knowledge allows the Colts to deploy him on a bevy of option routes, they type where the receiver has to make the right call in a split-second based on the coverage, matching the same decision the quarterback is making in the pocket.

A lot of Downs’ catches have come on option routes, pass plays that are called because the receiver has a chance to make the defense wrong no matter what coverage they’re playing.

Then Downs hit the big one, a 38-yard deep ball against Tennessee.

“If you give him a few options on a pass route, he can sort of make that right decision, and the more you make that right decision, the more the quarterback tends to lean your way,” offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter said. “What was really nice to see was, a lot of times, maybe the guy that runs those shorter, underneath routes only runs those shorter, underneath routes. All of a sudden, shoot, third-and-16, Josh Downs is getting over the top.”

Expanding that role is going to be more difficult with quarterback Anthony Richardson on the sideline. Minshew does not have the rookie’s arm strength, and he’s much more likely to target Downs on the shorter, underneath routes assigned to slot receivers.

The Colts are still going to try to find ways to get explosive plays out of the rookie.

He’s already proven he can handle the high-volume, chains-moving role required of every receiver who operates out of the slot.

But Wayne, the rookie’s biggest believer from the start, thinks there’s more to that 5-9, 171-pound body than meets the eye.

“We’ve got to try our best ways to get him to stretch the field,” Wayne said. “We need to see all of that, and not necessarily just running options and things like that. You can see it; Josh can run routes. If he wasn’t so tiny, he’d be ideal to put outside. … We’re trying to do a little bit of everything with him now.”

The rookie has proven he can handle the obvious.

Now, the Colts want to see if they can expand their expectations.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts rookie WR Josh Downs is playing beyond his years