What we learned: Colts vs. Jets

The Indianapolis Colts took care of business Thursday night after a convincing 45 to 30 victory over the New York Jets.

Here are three things learned after Indianapolis’ win on Thursday.

• Carson Wentz has bounce back performance

Carson Wentz had another dominating performance on Thursday, going 22-of-30 for 272 yards and tossing 3 touchdowns as well. The Colts’ quarterback now has six games where he’s thrown at least two touchdowns and zero interceptions this season. In total, Wentz now has 17 touchdowns to only 3 interceptions through nine games.

A heavy, balanced run approach helped aid Wentz in his success through the air Thursday, but let’s not take away from his overall performance. Wentz made some really impressive throws, including the touchdown pass to Michael Pittman Jr., which helped give the Colts a 28-10 lead going into halftime.

Overall, Wentz deserves some praise for being able to bounce back after a rough finish against Tennessee the week prior.

• Jonathan Taylor has season-best rushing performance

Jonathan Taylor is perhaps the best running back in the NFL currently, and he only further solidified that notion with a season-best, 172-yard rushing performance on Thursday. To go along with his season-best performance on the ground, Taylor also averaged 9.1 yards per carry (second-highest of his career) and had two rushing touchdowns.

Additionally, Taylor has the two longest runs of any running back this season (83 and 78 yards) and is only getting better as the season progresses. Around the league, reporters, writers and fans alike are calling Taylor the Colts’ best running back since Hall of Famer Edgerrin James, and he’s proving them right thus far.

What might be the craziest stat of the season, though, is that all of the Colts’ running backs averaged 7.0 yards before contact, which is the highest recording of any rushing duo since 2009, according to ESPN.

• Colts’ pass defense still shows cause for concern

This game was never as close as the score would indicate, as the Colts led 42-10 at one point late into the 3rd quarter. However, Josh Johnson, the Jets’ 3rd-string quarterback, did manage to have quite the amount of success against Indy’s pass defense.

After starting quarterback Mike White went down, Johnson came in and threw for 317 yards and tossed 3 touchdowns. While the game itself was never truly in reach for the Jets, it is concerning that Indy’s pass defense, which is currently ranked 23rd in the league, allowed a career backup in Johnson to carve up their defense with such ease.

Not having Julian Blackmon or Khari Willis available has really hurt the Colts throughout the last couple of weeks, and their secondary issues were once again on full display against a mediocre Jets’ offense and backup quarterback on Thursday.

Sure, it helps being No. 1 in turnovers forced, but that’ll only take a defense so far, and the Colts’ secondary issues have been a reoccurring theme all season long. With games against Josh Allen and Tom Brady in the near future, Indy will have to quickly clean up the consistent errors within the pass defense.