ASHBURN, Va. — The Washington Redskins have an embarrassment of riches at the skill positions, but they have rarely utilized all three to maximum advantage in the same game.

Oft-injured Washington tight end Jordan Reed returned from a hamstring injury Sunday to catch a career-high nine balls for 123 yards at Indianapolis.

Big-play receiver DeSean Jackson added five grabs for 84 yards, including a 42-yard touchdown. But Pierre Garcon, who led the NFL with a franchise-record 113 catches in 2013, caught just three of the nine passes that Colt McCoy threw his way in the 42-27 loss to the Colts.

In just 16 games, the oft-injured Reed has 78 catches for 851 yards. He missed the final six games of his rookie year with a concussion after sitting out one with a bruised quadriceps. The 2013 third-round draft pick from Florida missed the 49ers’ game last month as well as Weeks 2-5 with a hamstring injury suffered in the opener at Houston.

“Jordan’s a tremendous athlete,” McCoy said. “He’s got great hands and good ball skills. With him on the field, we can see coverages a little better, looking to see who’s guarding Jordan. Is it a safety? A linebacker? Are they keeping a corner on him? He’s a great player to have, a good asset. I like throwing to him, for sure.”

Reed has caught 33 of the 40 passes thrown his way this season. That’s a much better completion percentage than Garcon (49 of 77) and Jackson (47 of 77) have.

“He (Garcon) had a couple tough looks,” coach Jay Gruden said. “He had a couple fade balls — one was underthrown, one was overthrown just a hair. Then we threw a fade to him in the red zone and … Colt misread the coverage. … He had a slant route that went through his hands, they called (pass interference), but then they picked up the flag for some reason. Just not a lot of great looks for him.

“He’s a big part of our offense moving forward. We’ve got four games left and we have to try to get him the ball out in space where he can run because his whole dynamic is running with the ball in his hands after the catch. We tried to get some shallow crosses to him, and we just didn’t get them thrown to him. We’re trying the best we can to get him more involved in the offense, but for whatever reason we’re not getting that done.”

McCoy’s first pass as a Redskin back in Week 7 was a short out route to Garcon, who turned it into a 70-yard touchdown.

“We need to get the ball to Pierre as much as we can,” McCoy said. “I believe in Pierre. I think he’s a great receiver.”

While Garcon has two more catches than Jackson, the latter has nearly twice as many yards (942-507) and a league-leading 10 receptions of at least 40 yards. Garcon’s big play against the Titans is his only catch that long.

“It’s easy for defenses to game-plan one way or the other who they’re going to take away,” McCoy said. “We just have to be more aware of where Pierre is, how we can be creative in getting him the football.”

As for Jackson, Washington’s quarterbacks basically just have to throw the football up and let him go get it.

“The guy gets downfield and can adjust to the ball like nobody else,” Gruden said.

SERIES HISTORY: Redskins lead Rams 22-10-1. The most memorable game since the Rams moved to St. Louis in 1995 was in 2000 when Jeff George played his best game for Washington in quarterbacking the Redskins past the defending Super Bowl champions 33-20 in St. Louis.

NOTES: WR DeSean Jackson (bruised leg), S Brandon Meriweather (sprained toe), DE Jason Hatcher (knee), DE Kedric Golston (sprained back) and CB Chase Minnifield (concussion) didn’t practice Wednesday. … CB E.J. Biggers returned to limited practice after being inactive against Indianapolis because of the concussion he suffered at San Francisco.