INDIANAPOLIS — The Colts might need Zach Pascal to come up big again Sunday.

The team may be without T.Y. Hilton, whose status is somewhat in doubt after missing all three practices this week due to an ankle injury.

Colts coach Frank Reich said there’s still a chance the team’s lead playmaker will be able to go against the Cowboys.

“We’re going to have to hold off on that decision, see how he responds in the next 24 hours and make that decision,” Reich said.

Right guard Mark Glowinski, who suffered an ankle injury against Houston, will miss the Dallas game, along with safety Mike Mitchell and linebacker Skai Moore, although center Ryan Kelly will be back after missing three games with a sprained MCL.

Losing Hilton would be a monumental blow. For the better part of the past month, Hilton has been one of the best receivers in football. After last week’s nine-catch, 199-yard explosion against the Texans, Hilton has 33 catches for 556 yards in his past four games, most in the NFL. (Dallas' Amari Cooper is No. 2 at 509 yards.)

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Hilton, of course, always wants to play through injury when the stakes are high. He missed the Wednesday and Thursday practices before the Texans game last week, then walked out there and ripped through Houston, despite hurting the ankle in the second quarter.

“Big game,” Hilton said in the post-game locker room last week. “You count on 13, always, in big games.”

But the ankle injury he played with against Houston is giving him a lot of trouble this week.

“Generally speaking, not practicing Friday would not be good, but it is later in the year,” Reich said. “It’s still touch and go. We’ve just got to see how he responds in the next 24 hours. We’re just hoping for the best.”

The Colts might need Pascal to make a big play whether or not Hilton is available. Indianapolis is expected to get veteran Dontrelle Inman back, and Chester Rogers and Ryan Grant are capable of making plays, but Pascal is coming off of his best performance of the season.

The little-known receiver out of Old Dominion, a player who was signed in the middle of the summer and ended up making the team as a surprise out of training camp, made a couple of huge plays against the Texans last week.

Forced into a bigger role with Inman out, Pascal caught five passes for 68 yards, including a 28-yard grab over the middle to set up Indianapolis’ second touchdown and a 12-yard touchdown of his own, a short-end pump route that Reich praised as just about perfect.

“I mean, that route will forever go in our clinic reel tape of how to run what we call a ‘shin-pump’ right there,” Reich said. “It was as absolutely pure as it could be, as far as the detail and the technique and the fundamentals of running the route. It couldn’t have been any better.”

Pascal, a powerfully-built player at 6-1, 219 pounds, made the team because of his physicality on special teams and as a blocker. Reich told Pascal, flat-out, at the beginning of the year that his primary role was to take some snaps off of Hilton in the running game, and Pascal had no problem with that task.

“I’ve been doing that since high school,” Pascal said. “It helped me play in college. That’s a way to get on the field, and then now you start to get passes, now you start to get special plays for you because of your blocking ability.”

Plays in the passing game have come in fits and starts.

There were six catches and a touchdown in the first game against the Texans, five more catches against the Jets, but his lack of experience made it hard to make those highlights into consistent production.

“It’s my first year actually playing,” Pascal said. “Once I actually got accustomed to playing the game at full speed, now I can play the game to the best of my ability. Early in the season, I had a couple of miscues, a couple of wrong assignments, but now that I’ve studied, now that I’ve continued to play more, the game’s slowed down to me.”

Pascal also had to learn to deal with mistakes.

The week after his breakout performance against the Texans, Pascal dropped a key throw for a first down against New England.

“I was so upset, instead of going to play the next play, it had a domino effect to the rest of that game,” Pascal said. “Now, I have that mental toughness.”

Sunday’s game showed how far he’s come.

A drop by Pascal over the middle led to Andrew Luck’s only interception early in the game. The old Pascal would have gone into a shell.

“I didn’t even think twice about that,” Pascal said. “I was all, ‘OK, I got you next time,’ and once Andrew came up to me saying, ‘I’m coming back to you,’ I knew we were good. ... That’s a play I’ve got to make, but I just came out and kept playing ball.”

The Colts might need him to come up big against Dallas on Sunday.