Michael Pittman Jr., Jonathan Taylor are still great. Do Colts have enough elsewhere?

HOUSTON – The Indianapolis Colts were down 17 points to the Texans in the fourth quarter, with nothing going right, another season opener disappearing down the drain.

A lifeless offense got the ball back at its own 15-yard line and knew right where to look for serenity:

Jonathan Taylor and Michael Pittman Jr.

"No matter what's going on, it seems like those guys are clicking," running back Nyheim Hines said. "It's great that each week, we always have somebody to bring us back to life."

The Colts tied the Texans 20-20 on Sunday in a game that ended an eight-year season-opener losing streak. They rose from the jaws of defeat to the brink of victory and landed somewhere in between.

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In the dizziness and competing emotions, one part made sense to everyone: It was the players who brought them back. It's in two players aged 23 and 24, combining for less than 3% of the salary cap, making every big play a team can ask of them and hoping that's enough.

Start with that drive in the fourth quarter, when the Colts were down 20-3 and out of alternatives. Matt Ryan hit Pittman Jr. on a 14-yard pass to start a drive that ended in a field goal.

On the next drive, the Colts took over at the Texans' 20 after a fumble recovery and let Taylor gash a tired Texans defense for an easy score.

And when they got the ball back again, down seven with 4:29 remaining, it was the Taylor show with runs of 9, 13, 13 and 14 before Ryan threw a hitch to Pittman Jr. and he barreled over a defender for a 15-yard score.

Pittman Jr. finished with nine catches for 121 yards and a touchdown, and Taylor took 31 carries for 161 yards and a touchdown. They scored 12 of the team's 20 points.

"They're incredible competitors," said Ryan, who got to play with Taylor and Pittman Jr. for the first time Sunday. "There's no flinch, no matter what the situation is. Those guys are going to keep competing and keep going.

"You've got to have leaders like that so that other players see their confidence and belief and it's infectious."

They need it to spread quickly, because though Pittman Jr. and Taylor played all 17 games last year, injuries can happen to anyone. And Sunday showed how two playmakers sometimes aren't enough.

The Colts did get an efficient six-target, six-catch day for 50 yards from Hines, who is an established complement with 216 catches as a 25-year-old. But on Sunday, he ran just three times for four yards. He's a chess piece more than an explosive one, and the Colts are left looking for that spark elsewhere.

Against the Texans, the wide receivers and tight ends not named Pittman Jr. combined for 23 targets, 13 catches, 83 yards, no touchdowns and two dropped touchdowns.

It's a group that includes Parris Campbell, Alec Pierce, Mo Alie-Cox, Ashton Dulin, Mike Strachan and Kylen Granson. None of them has ever topped 400 yards in a season. Most are young or have dealt with injuries, so they present upside, with loads of size and speed.

But upside alone doesn't convert a 3rd-and-5.

That reality reared its ugly head Sunday, when Pierce and Dulin dropped touchdowns in the red zone. So the Colts leaned more on the players they knew.

"It's why every time I take the field I'm playing my heart out," Taylor said. "I know they trust me, saying, 'Hey, we trust the guys up front, we trust the receivers to make the blocks they need or run off the guys that they need and we trust JT with the ball in his hands.' It makes you want to go out there and prove them right every single time."

Over time, their standard has become different than everyone else's.

"I need to get open more," Pittman Jr. said after his nine-catch day. "I let one slant get away from me. I have to have all of those."

This is who they have become in two seasons together. Taylor is a year removed from leading the NFL with 1,811 rushing yards. Pittman Jr. finished 18th with 1,082 receiving yards, and the Colts were the only team without a second player with at least 395 receiving yards.

As they've grown their games, they've also built reputations in the league. And that can be a problem.

At times Sunday, Taylor got the ball only to find a swarm of Texans defenders on a run blitz. Pittman Jr. ran routes in the end zone only to see multiple defenders clogging his path.

The Colts tried to play off that attention. On their second drive, faced with a 4th-and-Goal from the 2, they lined Hines up in the wildcat and had him fake a read-option handoff to Taylor, but the Texans read that, too, and he was thrown down for a loss.

Eventually, Taylor and Pittman Jr. just ran out of time to make any more plays. The Colts got the ball back at their own 6-yard line with 20 seconds left in overtime, and the game sputtered into a tie.

Again and again Sunday, the Colts made mistakes, and Taylor and Pittman Jr. brought them back to life.

Now, they have to find a way to let their two stars breathe.