INDIANAPOLIS -- There's winning and then there's whatever the Indianapolis Colts are doing.
No Colts team since the Mayflower moving vans arrived from Baltimore in 1984 has won this convincingly through five weeks of a season. Indianapolis has been crushing opponents during its 4-1 start, with a league-high margin of 14.8 points per game.
They enter Sunday's game against the Arizona Cardinals (1 p.m. ET, Fox) coming off a 40-6 win over the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 5, the Colts' biggest margin of victory in a single game in 12 seasons. The Colts punted on their first and last possessions of the game, but were otherwise perfect in reaching the end zone.
"Six drives, six touchdowns" coach Shane Steichen marveled afterward.
But here's the thing: Playing with big leads is actually harder than you might think.
It requires unwavering focus to prevent complacency, coaches and players said, and it tests a team's ability to prepare in the same fashion from week to week to guard against regression.
Then there are difficult in-game decisions, like when and how much to pull back on your offensive aggressiveness. There's also this: How soon is too soon to pull key players from a game?
These are some of the best problems a team can face, but that doesn't make them any less difficult to navigate.
"I've had long conversations with Tony Dungy about those type of things, and when to take certain guys out," Steichen said of his chats with the Colts' Super Bowl-winning former coach. "Those conversations have been really good. Obviously, you seek advice from guys that have done it at a high level for a long time when those situations occur. Just [have] a lot of respect for Tony on how he sees it. So, those thoughts are going through my head during the game, too, thinking about him and what he would do in that situation."
Last Sunday's game was among the more lopsided you'll see, with the Colts opening a 37-point lead when league rushing leader Jonathan Taylor (480 yards) scored on a 6-yard touchdown with 2:30 remaining in the third quarter.
It would be Taylor's final carry of the day. And when the offense returned to the field early in the fourth quarter, starting quarterback Daniel Jones was on the sideline wearing a ballcap, replaced by backup Anthony Richardson Sr. The Colts attempted just two more passes for the remainder of the game.
On defense, there also are some luxuries.
Defensive tackle DeForest Buckner, who last season was seventh among defensive tackles in snaps played, saw 15 fewer snaps in Week 5 than he did in a tough Week 4 loss to the Los Angeles Rams. In the season opener against the Miami Dolphins -- which the Colts won handily, 33-8 -- Buckner played only 33 snaps. That was his fewest in a game in which he was not injured in two years.
Among the other issues to navigate in these lopsided games is when to pull back on some of the strategy that had been intended for a specific game.
Why, for instance, would you show a creative blitz you've been waiting for the right time to use when a game is already in hand?
"It really allows us to maybe hold back on some things that we were going to use, that we don't have to use," defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo said. "And maybe we can use it the following week and get two weeks of practice on something as opposed to just one."
But the biggest challenge might be remaining focused even when the temptation to let your guard down is palpable. The Colts showed their ability to handle this scenario when they built a 17-point halftime lead against Las Vegas, then followed it with 20 unanswered points in the third quarter.
"To be honest with you, whether we have one touchdown or 40 points, we're all playing hard," linebacker Zaire Franklin said. "I was in a huddle starting the fourth quarter talking about our execution. It literally had nothing to do with the scoreboard."
Franklin's insistence -- and that of his coaches -- on not allowing comfort to creep in comes as a result of hard-learned lessons. The Colts have experienced too many past disappointments to take anything for granted.
"We've had teams like that," Franklin said of previous years. "I don't think this team's like that."