Colts wide receivers coach Reggie Wayne spoke to the media on Thursday for the first time since wide receiver Adonai Mitchell's fumble at the goal line in the Colts' Week 4 game against the Los Angeles Rams, voicing his support for the second-year player while also making it clear Mitchell must continue to work hard to earn his way back onto the field.

Immediately after the game, Mitchell took complete responsibility for the mistake and recognized he's got to be better for his team.

"Just lost focus," he said. "Made a play that can't happen."

In the days following, head coach Shane Steichen and Mitchell's teammates made it clear they still fully supported the young wide receiver. Steichen also made it clear, though, that Mitchell would have to earn his role going forward.

"He's got to through practice and earn it each and every day – the meetings, the preparation and how he prepares, how he practices throughout the week," Steichen said last week.

Mitchell played six offensive snaps in the Colts' Week 5 win over the Las Vegas Raiders, all in the fourth quarter when the Colts, up 40-6, brought in their backups – including quarterback Anthony Richardson Sr. With wide receiver Alec Pierce out with a concussion, Ashton Dulin started alongside Michael Pittman Jr. and Josh Downs and played 47 of the team's 66 total offensive snaps.

And as the Colts prepare for their Week 6 game against the Arizona Cardinals, Mitchell's position remains the same: he's got to keep working and earning his opportunities.

"He's grown," Wayne said Thursday. "He knows what 'earn it' means. He has to do the little things right and be consistent with it and earn his way back. And from my knowledge, he's doing everything to get back on the field. So I guess only time will tell.

"It's just something that he's got to get over. I can guarantee he'll never do it again, not just because he don't want to be in that situation again, (but because) he's learned from it. So it can be lack of focus, excitement, can be all that stuff. Hopefully he's put it behind him."

This isn't the first time Mitchell has faced adversity in his young career, and it isn't the first time Wayne has come to the defense of his receiver. In Mitchell's rookie season, he had 23 receptions for 312 yards but struggled with making consistent plays, finishing the season with a 45.1 percent catch rate. So, while unfortunate to be back in this position, Mitchell is no stranger to having to mentally rebound from errors.

"He made a mistake," Wayne said. "As you can see, it happens throughout the league. Is it a costly mistake? Yes. So is a regular fumble, so is throwing an interception, so is missing tackles. Those things happen. We just hope that these type of things that happen this way are to a complete minimum, right?

"When it happened, my advice to him was stay locked in. Don't let this thing spiral all the way down. You know what comes with it. And he understands. He understands his position right now."

Pierce, who has missed two games due to his concussion, seems to be tracking well to be active for Sunday's game. If he is able to play, he'll join Downs and Pittman as the three starting wide receivers. For what it's worth, Mitchell's snaps were fairly limited in the beginning of the season when all three starters were healthy anyway – he played 15 snaps in Week 1, seven in Week 2 and 24 in Week 3 – so what his role might be this weekend remains to be seen.

"You just got to go put work in, and AD is going to do that," offensive coordinator Jim Bob Cooter said Tuesday. "He's had a really good attitude about how he goes about work...he's in here. He's working. He's getting ready for the next opponent. He's getting ready for whatever we may have on the call sheet that week. He's practicing. He's getting extra catches. He's doing all the stuff that you want a young receiver to do. So, the goal for him is, let's learn from any mistake that we may have had, and then let's go attack getting better, right? It's early in the year. There's a lot of year left, which means there's a lot of getting better to be done for all of us, but especially for a young player in this league like AD."

Thursday's practice report: