Status of Frank Gore? He's 'beat to crap'

• Colts at Steelers, 8:25 p.m. Sunday, NBC

The problem starts here: With 19 carries for 24 yards on Sunday — his lowest output with at least 15 carries over the course of his 145-game career.

With his 3.6 yards-per-carry average this year — the lowest of his 11 NFL seasons.

With his projected total of 955 rushing yards — which would be the lowest output over a season’s worth of work since his rookie year in 2005.

Then there’s this: “He’s like everybody else. He took some shots yesterday. He’s beat to crap.”

That’s Colts coach Chuck Pagano talking about his backfield workhorse, Frank Gore, a day after the team’s 25-12 victory against Tampa Bay. It was the Colts’ worst rushing day in what’s become another bad rushing season. Sunday felt like a low point. Gore was erased from the game, rendered irrelevant. There were no yards to be found.

Now, according to his coach, he’s “beat to crap."

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Pagano wasn’t knocking Gore. It was pure praise. Deserved praise. The team’s top offseason signing has been a dream of dependability this season, the team’s rushing leader in each of their 11 games, not to mention a capable blocker in the pass game. He’s fought through the bumps and bruises that come with the job. He’ll be out there, in the starting lineup as always, when the Colts (6-5) face the Pittsburgh Steelers (6-5) at Heinz Field on Sunday night.

“A warrior,” Pagano called him. “A tough son of a gun.”

Gore isn’t the problem — the production is. And now, maybe the depth is. The Colts learned Monday that backup Ahmad Bradshaw would require surgery on his left wrist; they placed him on injured reserve soon after, ending his season. Boom Herron, signed last week, will step back into Bradshaw’s role. Zurlon Tipton, signed Monday, will step back into the third-string spot.

Hampering Gore, and the Colts’ recent dearth of production in the run game, is a leaky offensive line that’s had to play musical chairs more than once this season. They blew up the lineup in Week 3. The unit hummed along for most of the year, allowing Gore to nearly crest the 100-yard barrier no Colts running back has hit in three seasons.

The dominoes began to fall last week when the line’s steadiest blocker, left tackle Anthony Castonzo, suffered a right knee sprain. That shuffled Joe Reitz from right tackle to left and Denzelle Good from little-known draft pick out of Division II Mars Hill into the starting lineup. Plug and play. It was their only option.

The run game suffered.

“Right when you start to make progress in the run game, then you lose AC, (then) you gotta take the right tackle and move him to left tackle (and) take a guy from Mars (Hill) and fill him in,” Pagano said. “I’ll keep working at it.”

They’ll have to. It’s now been a span of 51 games since the team had a running back rush for triple digits in a game, the longest such streak in the NFL. As a team, the Colts rank 28th in the league in yards per attempt and 26th in yards per game.

NCAA president 'very pleased' with revisions to Indiana religious freedom law

The cobbled-together line was enough Sunday — the Colts won by 13. But the problems with the run game aren’t new, and they aren’t going away. The Colts haven’t had a 1,000-yard rusher since Joseph Addai in 2007. Gore was supposed to be the solution.

It’s hard to be the solution where there are no holes to run through.

In Sunday’s game, the Buccaneers loaded the box, down after down, series after series, and dared the Colts to beat them with the pass. So Matt Hasselbeck did. The run game disappeared.

“They were hell-bent on not allowing us to run the football,” Pagano said after Sunday's game.

But when the Colts did try and run it, Gore had nowhere to go. That’s not a good sign, not as this team inches towards December and the season’s final stretch. Pagano knows the significance of being able to run the football. He’s been preaching it for four seasons.

The question remains: When they need to, will they be able to?

“We’re on the road, hostile environment, loud, weather, all those things come into play,” Pagano said. “When it becomes more difficult to throw the football because of that, you better be able to run it.”

They know the importance. Whether they can deliver when it counts remains to be seen.

NCAA president 'very pleased' with revisions to Indiana religious freedom law

Bradshaw ends 3rd straight season on IR

Bradshaw's third season in Indianapolis will end the same way as the previous two: Incomplete.

He was signed midseason when the Colts' depth at running back grew thin; pretty soon, he picked up where he left off, hauling in three touchdown receptions in just six games (the same as free agent wideout Andre Johnson has caught in 11 games). Bradshaw finishes his third season with the Colts with 85 yards and 31 carries and 10 receptions for 64 yards.

Effective? Sure. But he couldn't stay healthy. It was a neck injury that sidelined him after just three games in his first season in Indianapolis. A broken leg ended last year after 10 games. And, now this year, that banged-up wrist after six games.

This exit could very well spell the end of Bradshaw's NFL career. He's played 16 games in a season just four times in his nine-year career, most of which was spent with the New York Giants.

Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134 and follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.

Colts at Steelers, 8:25 p.m. Sunday, NBC​