Unable to increase his role, Colts trade Nyheim Hines to Bills for Zack Moss, 6th-rounder

INDIANAPOLIS — The Colts made a deal right before the deadline on Tuesday, trading running back Nyheim Hines to the Buffalo Bills for running back Zack Moss and a conditional 6th-round pick that could turn into a fifth, a league source told the IndyStar. The trade comes a little more than a year after signing Hines to a three-year extension worth $18.6 million.

Hines, 25, has long wanted a bigger role in the Indianapolis offense.

Indianapolis spent the offseason promising that Hines would play a focal point in the offense, but the role never materialized beyond the satellite back position he’s always played. Hines had been given 35.2 percent of the snaps in his six healthy games this season, catching 25 passes for 188 yards, carrying the ball 18 times for 36 yards and averaging 10.1 yards per return as the team’s primary punt return.

Doyel: Colts fire offensive coordinator Marcus Brady? They got wrong man

The Colts had promised to get Hines more involved this offseason, one year after his touches dropped into a tie for his smallest workload in Indianapolis with Carson Wentz at the helm. Hines, who had caught 63 passes with Andrew Luck in 2018 and reached that number again with Philip Rivers in 2020, caught just 40 passes in 2021, along with 56 carries in the ground game.

Colts head coach Frank Reich and general manager Chris Ballard spent the offseason saying Hines’ role would increase with Matt Ryan in the lineup, ascribing Hines’s lack of touches in 2021 to the offense becoming more run-centric.

Reich famously said during the summer that he’d draft Hines if he were a fantasy owner.

“It’s incumbent upon us to spread the ball around,” Reich said. “Would we like to have Nyheim be up there as far as, at the end of the season, when you tally up who has the catches, do we want Nyheim to kind of be one of those top three guys? Probably, yeah.”

Hines does rank third on the Colts in receptions with 25 despite missing almost all of two games due to a concussion suffered against Denver.

But his role hasn’t expanded much beyond what it’s been in the past, despite what the team said during the offseason.

“Nyheim, we need to use more. Frank knows that,” Ballard said at the owner’s meetings in March. “They’re going to play him more in the slot. … He needs to be a big part of the offense because he’s a valuable part of the organization, and he’s a weapon.”

The emergence of the Indianapolis wide receiving corps has probably played a role in the Hines plans not coming to fruition.

Rookie Alec Pierce has become the No. 2 the Colts haven’t had in years, and Parris Campbell’s emergence in the slot over the past month has reduced the need to play Hines as a receiver. In Sunday’s loss to Washington, Hines played his most varied role of the season — five carries for 20 yards and a touchdown, two catches for 29 yards — but it was a role he’s played his entire time in Indianapolis.

Hines has largely resisted the temptation to complain about his role publicly, but there was clearly some frustration behind the scenes, and the running back had expressed his frustration in the offense’s lack of momentum.

“Every year we have a new (quarterback), so each year we have growing pains while we sit here and watch Tennessee, which has had (Ryan) Tannehill what, my whole career?” Hines said earlier this fall. “And each year, we’re restarting, and we have to turn the page.”

Teams started calling about Hines in the days leading up to the trade deadline.

The Colts did not want to give away Hines — he will cost $3 million in dead money on the salary cap this year — but it is likely up to Moss to prove that Indianapolis actually got a significant return in the trade. The pick can become a fifth-rounder if certain conditions are met, but it’s a late pick.

Moss, a former third-rounder in 2020, has a year and a half left on his rookie contract.

Three years into his career, Moss has 225 carries for 917 yards and eight touchdowns, plus 44 catches for 319 yards and two scores, but he’d been phased out of Buffalo’s backfield by the Bills’ decision to draft James Cook this past offseason, and he has just 17 carries and seven catches this season.

Indianapolis is much more likely to fill Hines’s role by increasing the opportunities for second-year back Deon Jackson, who has rushed 30 times for 100 yards and caught 14 passes for 108 yards this season, including a 10-catch performance in the win over the Jaguars three weeks ago. But neither player is likely to replace Hines’ role in full, a role that never expanded to the level Hines wanted to see in Indianapolis.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Colts news: Nyheim Hines traded to Buffalo for Zack Moss, draft pick