Category Archives: Indianapolis Colts

Bill Polian, Denver Broncos, Indianapolis Colts, Jim Irsay, NFL, Peyton Manning

The Book on Manning

On Sunday night, Peyton Manning returns to Indianapolis to play professional football in a state-of-the-art football stadium he played a large role in getting built.
Perhaps you have heard of this little fact. If not, let me know once you’re out from underneath that rock and I’ll fill you in on government shutdowns, Miley Cyrus and this new thing called the iPhone.
In all seriousness, Peyton’s return to Indy as the quarterback of the Denver Broncos continues to grow in significance with each passing day. This is due largely to the fact that the Broncos are undefeated, that Peyton Manning is doing Peyton Manning like things, you know, generally embarrassing defenses with an offense so cutting and precise, it would make a slew of surgeons, architects and engineers jealous.
But Peyton has always done this, or at least it has felt like he has. Now there’s that undertone flowing into this Sunday’s game with the Colts, that imagine what he could do if he were still there and that the Colts might have given up on him.
So of course, the normally quiet and reserved owner of the Colts, Jim Irsay, spoke up about this after a litany of questions this week.
Actually, again, unless you living Patrick Starfish-style under a rock, you know that it was the exact opposite – Irsay talks constantly, about anything and everything under the sun, without prompting. His comments about wishing the Colts would have won more Super Bowls weren’t really controversial; it was the truth.
The media has latched on to the story this week, but that’s what the media does.
If you’ve seen the “Book of Manning” documentary, then you can get the background needed to write the book on Peyton Manning. He’s prepared, flawless, exceptional, born to play quarterback and thrives by knowing every possible situation and outcome – like a mathematical genius that sees every possible outcome before it happens.
But being built in such a way does not leave room for randomness, spontaneity, surprise. What happens when things go wrong and something does not go as planned. This is where, as we learned from that documentary, where Peyton’s father, Archie thrived.
And by watching old footage of Archie – even that crazy scrimmage game in the late 1980s at Ole Miss – you can see it: Archie just kind of made things up.
You know which one of Archie’s sons does that now? Eli – not Peyton. Just look at the New York Giants Super Bowl wins, the playoff runs, the regular season games where they look out of it. Eli scrambles, chucks and pulls rabbits out of his hat.
Peyton’s act is no magician; he’s a professional quarterback. As such, the book on Peyton has always been that he’s exceptional in the regular season, but come playoff time, he’s not very good. It happened at Tennessee and it definitely happened with the Colts.
Now, that’s not meant to place the blame of first-round exits and humiliating defeats in the playoffs at the hands of Peyton Manning. Football is more nuanced than that. But just look at the key interception of the Super Bowl loss to the Saints. Is Reggie Wayne to blame for that costly pick? Or, could it be that Peyton is such a tactician, he threw it to the pre-programmed spot on the field where Reggie was supposed to be? Who’s actually at fault, Wayne for not being there, for a variety of reasons – or Peyton for not adjusting his read and throwing it anyway?
This could obviously spiral off into a multi-layered conversation if we actually rehashed even just that one play.
The overall point: nothing Irsay said about Peyton was inaccurate, and frankly, not that controversial. How can you not have wished to have won more than one ring with perhaps the greatest quarterback of all-time taking you to the playoffs 11 years? The same has been said about the Atlanta Braves of the 1990s with their incredible pitching staff of Glavine, Smoltz and Maddux.
As I heard earlier this week, the real and hidden swipe might have been at Bill Polian, with Irsay essentially saying Polian could bring the horse to the water, but couldn’t make it drink. While slightly unfair – and kind of uncalled for, considering what Polian did, it also might be just inaccurate.
Polian had a tough task of building an entire franchise around Peyton, and accordingly, he put together a team that could play from ahead defensively, since that was the goal: Peyton gets you a lead, pin your ears back and go after the other team aggressively on the defensive front.
It did work. Polian cannot perform on the field, any more than any other sports executive. He assembled the team and accomplished a great deal during his tenure, the likes of which had not been seen either in the NFL or in Indianapolis from a consistency standpoint.
If it was indeed a swipe, it was unfair and needless.
But let the good fans in Indy not waste any time thinking about what could be currently. It was time to change direction, switch things up and try a new approach. And clearly, we didn’t know if Peyton would return to form like this. We still don’t know if it will last for more than a year or two.
The Broncos were simply a better fit last season. They looked a lot like Manning’s 2000s Colts. Still do, just more dangerous weapons and a better overall defense. We shall see if this translates to another 13-3 season and a bitter playoff failure, or, perhaps a Super Bowl.
For the Colts, Andrew Luck couldn’t be a better fit. It could not have worked out better.
Is it going to be awkward Sunday night? Of course. These things always are. Without Manning, the city may not even have a pro football team, let alone a new stadium. It certainly wouldn’t have the Super Bowl banner it has.
But every legend leaves with a little gas left in the tank. The Colts just didn’t want to be left holding the keys when it went empty. They saw a chance for another once-in-a-generation quarterback who fit their city and style perfectly and they took it.
Its sports. It is how these things work. Would the Colts be better off with Peyton right now? There’s no real way to know for sure. We’re not in an alternate world where he is with the Colts, we just have what we see.
And for all that he did accomplish, for basically saving football in Indiana, the fans will give him a standing ovation, Peyton will be humble, gracious and appreciative. The game will start and aside from the crowd not giving him the benefit of pin-drop quiet he’s used to in Lucas Oil Stadium, it will be fine.
While it will be easy to look back at the end of the season or in five years and point out what happened as evidence either way, just remember this: it seemed right and natural at the time. Because as crazy as Jim Irsay is, he was not necessarily incorrect (this time).
The book on this Manning may not be complete, but the preceding chapters to this one have told a story, and not every page was perfect.
We did want more.

Standard
Indianapolis Colts, New England Patriots, New York Giants, NFL, Peyton Manning, Super Bowl XLVI, Tom Brady

Isn’t It Ironic?

I wonder if Peyton Manning enjoys the musical styling of Alanis Morissette? Because if I had to fancy a guess as to what is playing on his iPod during his rehab workouts, this week especially, it has to be Morissette’s “Ironic.”
Because isn’t it ironic – a little too ironic – that the Indianapolis Colts host Super Bowl XLVI this Sunday, a game they never would have received without the shiny new Lucas Oil Stadium, a stadium that would never have been built without Manning transforming the Colts?
Yet when the game kicks off, it’s difficult to predict two things: 1) If Manning will ever play football again, and, 2) If he does get cleared to play football, will it be for the Colts?
It’s technically cosmic irony. It’s like rain on your wedding day, or a traffic jam when you’re already late.
And just to make sure Manning got this message, the football gods aligned the stars so that Peyton’s little brother, Eli, leads his team to the Super Bowl.
Against Peyton’s long-time arch-rivals, the New England Patriots.
Who are quarterbacked by the one man people debate could go down as better than Peyton: Tom Brady.
What are the odds of that?
Super Bowl XLVI also happens to be a rematch between the Patriots and the New York Giants, who four years ago, gave us a thrilling Super Bowl that saw the Giants come-from-behind in the final seconds to topple the then-unbeaten Patriots.
There’s hype and then there’s the Super Bowl. And then there’s a Super Bowl rematch of the Patriots and Giants. Of all the storylines this week, Peyton Manning and his neck are a mere footnote.
But Manning should be more than that to this city, especially now. This city should be kissing his Super Bowl ring. Instead of Tebow-ing, we should be, uh, Manning-ing.
He has transformed this city in ways only people from here can understand. None of this – and by this, I mean the event of the Super Bowl itself – would be possible without Peyton Manning. Cold weather cities do not get the Super Bowl without a new stadium. (For reasons why, see Detroit in 2006 and Dallas last year.) And teams like the Colts, pre-1998, don’t get new stadiums. You get new stadiums by winning – like a lot – because winning 10-plus games a year for a dozen years brings in a ton of fans.
Fans buy seats, food and merchandise. They create an atmosphere. They create a fan base that will sell out said new stadium, even in a year like 2011, when the team goes 2-14, fires it’s coaching staff and organizationally derails. They stay loyal when the owner acts out his life like a Saturday Night Live sketch on Twitter.
The success of the Manning-era Colts led to this moment. In turn, we’ve learned in the last six months that Manning is the Colts, literally, and frankly deserves all the credit for everything they did between 1998-2010.
Peyton Manning masked wild deficiencies of teammates and front office decision makers. He covered for mediocre coaching, less-than-mediocre defenses and a talent discrepancy that, looking back on it, was sometimes as wide as the Grand Canyon.
Think about this: since 2001, only four teams have represented the AFC in the Super Bowl: The Patriots (five times), the Pittsburgh Steelers (three times), the Colts (twice) and the Oakland Raiders (once, in 2002).
The Raiders, clearly, caught lightning in a bottle in 2002. They’ve been horrible ever since. But how on earth did the Colts hang in there with the Patriots and Steelers, perhaps the two most well-ran organizations in the NFL? How did they compete with those two franchises?
Simple: Peyton Manning.
Because it wasn’t the owner – Patriots owner Bob Kraft and the Rooney family that owns the Steelers, are vastly superior to Jim Irsay, his guitar and his tweets. It wasn’t the coaching – Bill Belicheck, Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin are all vastly superior coaches that Jim Mora, Tony Dungy and Jim Caldwell. And it certainly wasn’t the general managers and decision makers. The Steelers and Patriots draft really well, sign the right players and do all the little things right. Meanwhile, Bill Polian was asleep at the wheel in the player personnel department for at least five years.
Peyton Manning is so good, so vastly superior that he basically was a one man show. In hindsight, it’s become a chicken and egg question with his teammates. Was Marvin Harrison good, or did Peyton make him good? Is Dallas Clark a great tight end, or did Peyton simply make him great? You get better by association on the Colts when No. 18 is under center.
So was it a good business decision to pay him $28 million in 2011 for not playing a single down of football? Of course not. It was, as I said before, quite stupid. But did the Colts, on behalf of the organization and this city, owe it to him? Hell yes. Consider it payment for services rendered.
Certainly Manning has long been well compensated for his talents as the highest paid quarterback in football for a number of years. But what he did in Indianapolis transcends just the game.
Indianapolis was Naptown. We hosted a few NCAA Final Fours and claim “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing,” the Indianapolis 500 – as if anyone still really cares about open-wheel racing outside of the month of May – and the Indiana Pacers had a good run in the late 1990s, but that’s been about it.
Since Peyton arrived, the NCAA moved its headquarters to Indianapolis and we’ve hosted more Final Fours than any other city. Other events have come to town, thanks to the hard working folks at the Indiana Sports Corporation. The economic boost and impact will be felt for years. A new stadium was built. To give you the mindset pre-Peyton, we were the middle sized town in the middle of the middle West. This city built a new minor league baseball park before it built a new football stadium.  
To see the city this week, alive with a kind of energy and enthusiasm that is hard to even adequately describe, is frankly amazing. And none of this would be possible without Peyton Manning. And all this, coming from the most staunch Brady-backer.
Now that doesn’t make what is likely to happen in a few weeks any less difficult. The Colts have an incredibly difficult decision to make on Manning and the future of this franchise. And this has to be a business decision. They have a chance to start over with another franchise quarterback. Manning, despite his rosy outlook, might never play another down – and even if he does, he might never be what he once was.
But that conversation can happen after Sunday. After the city basks in the glow of the hosting the Super Bowl.
Thus far, Indy is nailing it. To the point I’m wondering if the NFL won’t come back again in five or six years for another Super Bowl. And in another turn of irony, the weather has been fantastic – leaving me to joke to a friend that people from out of town are going to go home thinking Indianapolis would be a great place to retire: warm winters, friendly people, tons of stuff to do…
Which makes me wonder if we can credit Peyton for the weather as well?
He’s pretty much responsible for everything else happening this week.
Standard
Andrew Luck, Bill Polian, Indianapolis Colts, Jim Caldwell, Jim Irsay, NFL, Peyton Manning

What Goes Around…

The Indianapolis Colts are 0-10. They have lost their last four games by a combined 110 points. Coincidentally, they lost their fans about four games ago, too, when they were beaten 62-7 on national television by the New Orleans Saints.
And last Monday, their head coach, Jim Caldwell, said this: “You can see that they [the players] are going to fight you until the end.”

Everyone smiled happily and nodded. Unicorns danced about the room and Colts owner Jim Irsay sang a song about Caldwell’s lucrative contract extension while playing his acoustic guitar.
Fine, I made those last two sentences up. In fact, it was the total opposite. I was waiting for the next question to be from someone called “Reality” who asked if Caldwell had ever visited him or if he just sent postcards from Fantasyland.
Caldwell says the Colts are just going to keep playing and playing extremely hard. Odd, as most of us are wondering if the Colts knew that the season started two months ago. Perhaps the lockout threw off their internal clocks and they think it’s still preseason, because I can’t come up with any rational explanation for why the Indianapolis Colts are 0-10 and by far and away the worst team in professional football.
As I wrote last month, someone’s got to get fired over this. But that’s not the issue to me anymore. You don’t get to 0-10 and it’s just the coach.
It’s pathetic to watch the effort, or in this case, the lack thereof, the Colts display on weekly basis. And I can’t help but wonder what sports karma has to do with all this? If, possibly, past sporting sins are catching up to the Colts.
The thought process is simple, if even by my own admission somewhat silly: what you do as an organization, what your players do, how your owner acts, how you win and lose plays into future results.
For example, I’ve long believed that Jerry Jones is the reason the Dallas Cowboys haven’t won a playoff game in 12 years. He’s a smothering figure over that franchise and their drama over the years is comeuppance for that.
Likewise, I think sports karma can work for and against you at the same time. The New England Patriots openly declared they were chasing perfection in 2008 and were rewarded with a perfect regular season. However, they ran up the score and illegally taped some opponents, so sports karma put velco on David Tyree’s helmet in the Super Bowl, leaving the Patriots with the moniker of greatest regular season team to not win a Super Bowl.
Perhaps what the Colts are experiencing now are ramifications from all the years where they didn’t go for it, when they didn’t rest their players. Everyone should be trying to win every game, because, in essence, that is the backbone of sports. You are giving your full effort against an opponent who’s giving his best effort. Someone wins, someone looses. But the common thread is the integrity with which the game was played.
Maybe karma decided it broke the integrity of the game by not playing all their games to the best of their ability and always setting their sights on the playoffs.
Why teams rest players, I’ll never fully understand. You play to win the game! (copyright, Herm Edwards). How many sports do you see rest your best players? How often does it work out well and the team that does the resting does the winning of a championship? More often than not, it’s the hot team that fought and kept working that wins the title (the Green Bay Packers last year, St. Louis Cardinals last month).
But wait, you say, what about teams that don’t fall behind and are good like the Colts were? Well, did you see the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls take their foot of the gas? How about the 1998 New York Yankees? It’s often fun to prove how much better you are – in both the regular season and the postseason.
The minute you start getting ahead of yourself and eyeballing the playoffs or setting your lineup or protecting your players, karma seems to get irritated.
And I’m only half-serious. I don’t widely suspect this is the case. I don’t really, deeply believe in karma. I’m Catholic for crying out loud. But I can’t say that I’m mildly curious and wondering if all this epic Colts sucktitude isn’t the hair of the dog that bit them.
All those years resting their stars when they were 13-0 or 13-1 or 14-0; all the seasons they took the last couple weeks off to be fresh for a first round drubbing at home at the hands of Bill Volek and the Chargers or Mark Sanchez and the Jets – that has to account for something.
At the time, we probably thought the loss in that year’s playoffs was to a byproduct of the resting players. But Dungy, Caldwell, Polian and the Colts just kept on doing it. Year after year after year. After. Year.
You know, they say insanity is defined as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result. Maybe sports karma got pissed off the Colts didn’t ever learn their lesson?
Forget the theories of how resting players prevents injuries. Athletes get hurt all the time, doing any number of things. That’s not the point. Why keep doing it if it never worked? I mean at some point, doesn’t someone suggest doing it the other way? Why did that light bulb never go off? Why didn’t someone say, “I think, I don’t know for sure…now call me crazy…but possibly…we should play our starters the entire game.”
(Cut to gasping sounds of disbelief and most likely a shattered coffee cup. I really see the whole thing in playing out in slow motion as Polian was the one who dropped the cup and screamed “Nnnnnnoooooo!”.)
For a team that never approached anything from the standpoint of being “in the moment”, the Colts, somewhat oddly, also seemed wildly unprepared. From the playoff loses to mediocre teams – again, Billy Volek? – to this whole YWP (Year Without Peyton), to their draft strategy, the Colts always seem frantic, confused and out of sorts.
You’ve been trying to build and sustain a franchise around a quarterback like Manning, that has 12-15 years to win a championship and you waste prime seasons on underwhelming talent in the draft the past five years? You proclaim to be a small market team that can’t spend money in free agency to bring in a big name or marquee talent, but then you don’t draft good talent? It seems, I don’t know, contradictory.
And Jim Sorgi is fine as a backup when a young, vibrant Peyton Manning is between the ages of 25-30. But at some point, around the time your franchise quarterback hits 32 and starts wearing down after 250 consecutive starts, you might want to spend a pick on a decent quarterback. Not even to be Manning’s replacement – just to have a decent backup quarterback.
But all of this seemed to shock the Colts, especially when it was revealed that Peyton wasn’t recovering quickly after having a second offseason neck procedure this summer. And even if the Colts believed that it would only be 4-6 weeks, they could have signed someone who was passable at the quarterback position to keep the team in the hunt.
Yet what did they do? They went and signed one of Polian’s old favorites from his days with Carolina, Kerry Collins. The same Kerry Collins who six weeks before he signed with the Colts, retired because he didn’t want to put in the work. No, really, he said that. Here’s his retirement statement:
“The past several months have brought on much introspection, and I have decided that while my desire to compete on Sundays is still and always will be there, my willingness to commit to the preparation necessary to play another season has waned to a level that I feel is no longer adequate to meet the demands of the position.” – Kerry Collins, July 7, 2011
And the Colts signed him anyway! How do you read that statement and think Collins is a guy who can lead the Colts offense in Peyton Manning’s place, coming off a lockout, with the season opener two and a half weeks away?
If this were a movie, it would be a comedy.
Except no one is laughing. And even worse, and somewhat indefensible, no one is questioning the logic and rationale of the Colts brain trust on how they arrived at this point.
Now, why is that? Why is no one questioning Polian, his son, Irsay or Caldwell? Is it because Andrew Luck is coming to town? All is saved, right? The Colts will just lose their way to the No. 1 pick next April, draft Luck and enter another 12-15 years of competing for championships? I mean, Peyton Manning gave Polian his blessing to look for a quarterback just the other day. Everyone wins!
I don’t know about you, but I have a hard time believing fate will allow that to happen.
For one thing, we have every right at this point to question the heart and integrity of this team and management for how they’ve played out this season. And on some level, I could totally see Luck not panning out. And I’ve got no other reason to say that than this: fate. If Luck went to Miami or some other team, I bet he’d have a fabulous career. But part of me wonders if because of how the Colts operate, how they’ve played (or not in some cases), if Luck wouldn’t get hurt or become Ryan Leaf 2.0 and set the Colts back five years.
And if that happens, they’d be $%# out of luck.
Standard
Bill Polian, Indianapolis Colts, Jim Caldwell, Peyton Manning

Breaking Bad

The Indianapolis Colts are going to fire Jim Caldwell at the end of the season, right?
They have to, don’t they?
Rhetorical questions aside, I’m not sure how they can’t fire him. Although as of right now, Colts team president Bill Polian doesn’t seem to think it’s Caldwell’s fault the Colts are 0-7.
“How you evaluate [Caldwell] is what you do with what he has,” Polian said. “You can’t hold him responsible for injuries. You can’t hold him responsible for an unforeseen surgery [to Peyton Manning] that no one anticipated would happen. The things that he can control, I think he’s done a terrific job of, given where we are from a standpoint of personnel.”
There are a million and one ways to rip that comment to shreds, but we’ll just start here: Caldwell’s done a terrific job? Is Polian watching the games? Coming off a 62-7 loss to the New Orleans Saints? That was a terrific job? If it is, how is bad game planning and a porous defense described? Stupendous?
These aren’t the Detroit Lions that went 0-16 a few years ago – the Colts are just two short seasons removed from a Super Bowl and have made the playoffs for a decade. They can’t be this bad without Manning, can they?
Peyton Manning is invaluable, to be sure. He’s worth many more wins than any replacement player, obviously. But the New England Patriots lost Tom Brady in 2008 for the season in the opening game and still went 11-5. Was his backup better than Manning’s? Turns out, Matt Cassel was better. But we didn’t know that at the time – Cassel had not started a game since high school.
Maybe all this does prove Manning is better than Brady and that even in a season where Manning missed the entire year, he’s still league MVP. We can argue about that at another time.
But maybe the Patriots “system” and head coach are vastly superior. Maybe the Colts problem isn’t injuries to front line, but the incompetence of the front office and coaching staff.
The Colts have the worst defense in the NFL. That’s not a statement or a claim – it’s a fact. They have allowed the most points in the NFL. Does Peyton Manning affect the defense? In some ways, perhaps he does – it was always a defense built upon the notion of playing ahead and rushing the passer. But even with that, did Manning affect the defensive side of the ball that much? Can the defense be this bad?
Call me crazy, but I think it’s perfectly acceptable hold the head coach responsible for the complete failure of the entire team to win a game against a schedule that’s included Cincinnati, Kansas City, Cleveland and an underachieving Tampa Bay team through the first seven weeks.
Some, including me, think that you can hold a coach responsible for lackluster effort and poor game planning. Some nut jobs out there think you can hold a coach responsible for mismanaging his timeouts (last year’s playoff game against the Jets, anyone?). What did Caldwell have on Tony Dungy and Polian anyway to secure the job a year before Dungy retired?
Much like his stoic demeanor and his blank expression in any situation – he’s very Art Shell-ish that way – Caldwell’s resume includes a head coaching stint at Wake Forest where he went 26-63 in eight seasons. The highlight of his tenure with the Deamon Deacons was a 7-5 record and a trip to the prestigious Aloha Bowl in 1999. It was also his only season with a winning record. And for those that may not know, the ACC was pretty weak in the 1990s. Those are the makings of an elite NFL head coach? That and a stint coaching the quarterbacks for Tampa Bay under Dungy?
One would imagine that after Manning’s injury, Polian and owner Jim Irsay would have talked to Caldwell about expectations.
“Look, Jim, we know it’s going to be awfully tough without Peyton this season. As you might expect, reasonable outcomes of the season have been altered. We’re not expecting a Super Bowl or even the playoffs. We’d be thrilled with a winning record, but it’s not like we’d fire you for a losing record. However, just to be clear, you know you have to win a couple games, right? I mean, we can’t rightfully face the fans and media come January and tell them we’re keeping you after a 2-14, 1-15 or 0-16 season, without or without Manning. I mean, Jim, we can’t keep you if don’t squeeze out a few wins.”
But apparently, that didn’t happen.
It’s obvious the Colts have been held together by Peyton’s abilities over the past decade and little else. Reggie Wayne isn’t elite. If he were, he wouldn’t have completely disappeared. Apparently, Austin Collie won’t even be in the league if it weren’t for Manning. Dallas Clark was once among the best tight ends in the league and some sort of hybrid slot receiver-slash-tight end. Now he has stone hand. Freeney and Mathis apparently are only good in a certain defensive scheme where they can pin their ears back and take some risks after Manning’s given them a 21-10 lead.
The other night, during the Sunday Night Football telecast, Dungy defended Caldwell. Of course he did. Caldwell is a Dungy man. But perhaps it was more than that. Perhaps Dungy realized what the rest of us are just coming to realize: that without Peyton Manning, the Colts would have been a dumpster fire the past 12 seasons.
So he has to protect Caldwell because doing so masks the fact that he also benefited from being the head coach of the team Manning played for. Without Manning, Dungy doesn’t win a Super Bowl and his faith and leadership abilities aren’t quite as lauded. His books aren’t best sellers without Peyton Manning.
Dungy is a good man, without question. I’m sure Jim Caldwell is a good man, too. But that’s not the point. The question is, were and are they good coaches without Peyton Manning under center and shredding defenses?
I’ve been highly critical of the Colts for not winning more Super Bowls with Manning. I’ve said they are akin to 1990s Atlanta Braves. But that’s not really accurate. Manning masked the fact that the Colts shouldn’t have been in position to win one title, let alone contend for a decade.
Look, someone has to be the fall guy if this continues and the Colts finish with less than four wins. It’s the way things work.
For example, if Apple sales drop to record lows not seen in over a decade and people revolt on the product, the company can’t just say it’s because they lost Steve Jobs. They can’t afford to just sit on their hands.
It’s the same with Indianapolis. The Colts can’t afford to do it. The fan base, as I predicted, is already cracking.
I’ve eavesdropped on many conversations – at my son’s football practices and games, at work, at the grocery store, at restaurants – and heard the same thing: fans are turning off games. And to my surprise, it’s not all because No. 18 isn’t on the field, it’s because of what else isn’t on the field – effort, desire, heart, and some semblance of football talent.
People are fed up. After seven weeks of the season, they’ve moved on from Manning’s injury for the time being and just want to support the team and see it compete. They too, have little expectations of a Super Bowl or a playoff run. But what they see is a team using Manning as an excuse, not in their words, but on the field. They see a team that embarrassed a city on national television and got beat 62-7 – giving up three touchdowns after the Saints pulled most of their star skill players and stopped throwing the ball.
Someone has to pay. Those are the rules.
And if it isn’t Jim Caldwell, then maybe it should be Bill Polian.
Because maybe you can’t anticipate injuries, but you kind of have to plan for them. It’s the NFL. Injuries happen to every team, every year. This one happened to be a big one, to the Franchise (large “F”). And Manning, clearly after all this, is the entire Franchise.
So perhaps the guy who put the franchise (small “f”) together for the last decade is the fall guy. Perhaps the guy who, by all accounts, has whiffed in the draft and free agent market for the past four years should take some responsibility. He’s been duct-taping the franchise around Manning for several years in an effort to save money, no doubt. Well, now the waiter has brought to check to the table.
And someone has to pay the price.
Because someone always has to take the blame for something this bad. 
Standard
Duane Bickett, Indianapolis Colts, Jim Irsay, NFL, Peyton Manning

What Goes Around…

Like any good football fan, around 1:00PM yesterday, I was all set: Fantasy football league StatTracker loaded on the computer, beer in hand and scrolling through NFL Sunday Ticket to see which game I wanted to watch, I settled on the Atlanta Falcons vs. Chicago Bears tilt.
Being a Bears fan, this was a natural selection for me. But living around Central Indiana all these years, as the Indianapolis Colts bandwagon grew, part of me reveled in checking in on the Colts trip to Houston to play the Texans. So I did, around 1:20PM.

The Colts were already down.

I had a hunch – just a sneaking suspicion really – that the Colts would sorely miss Peyton Manning, out for “awhile” (in the words of owner Jim Irsay) due to a second surgery on his neck.
And wouldn’t you know it, I was right.
After the Texans 34-7 throttling of the Colts, I couldn’t help but chuckle. Scrolling through my Facebook updates, I saw friends trashing the team, talking about how horrible they were, how it could have been 68-0.
Right on all accounts.
And then I saw this: “This is going to be such a long season…I won’t be able to watch!”
Bingo. 

The money line I’d been waiting for. You could almost hear Colts fans across the state hitting the sauce, opening their fourth beer of the day in the early second quarter.

See, a few years ago, I wrote about how the Colts fans were spoiled brats, the whole bandwagon lot of them. Nearly 10 straight playoff seasons, seven straight 12-win campaigns, nine straight 10-win seasons, fans didn’t know how good they had it – or had forgotten had bad it had been.
The last time the Colts were under .500 was 2001 and Manning was in his fourth season, just 25-years old. In fact, 2001 was the only other season other than Manning’s rookie year in 1998 that the Colts were below .500. The last time the Colts won 10 or more games in a season before 1999, when Manning led the Colts to a 13-3 mark? Try 1977, when they were in Baltimore.
Since arriving in Indianapolis in 1984, the Colts had 7 losing seasons in 13 years. They had a few fun years with Jim Harbaugh and Marshall Faulk, but they always felt like punchy underdogs in the playoffs.
But since Peyton Manning came to town, the Colts have been the heavyweight favorites in the regular season. I’ve often argued that most fans just want a team that always has a shot and contends. But the Colts are proving my theory wrong, really.
Perennial contenders, the Colts fan base forgot how bad it sucked to be Colts fans. And I can say this because I’m unattached, unemotionally watching it happen from the sidelines as a fan of another team who doesn’t rival the Colts like the New England Patriots or Pittsburgh Steelers.

The fan base has swollen to include people who can’t name anyone on the team before 1998. They don’t know who Ron Stark is, Billy Brooks or Duane Bickett. The majority of these fans didn’t watch the team in the 1980s and 1990s – I know because the games were often blacked out. They got excited when Eric Dickerson came to town, but when the Colts didn’t win games, they stopped coming.

If you were looking for something to do in downtown Naptown in the late 80s or early 90s, it would have been a Pacers game. Or, wait for Indiana and Kentucky to play college basketball in the RCA Dome (or, as most should remember it, “The Hoosier Dome”). 

I can’t remember a single friend from the age of 8-16 who told me, at any point, they were a Colts fan. No one wore their jersey to school, no one went to the games.

And then, in 1999, it happened – they went 13-3 and had a franchise quarterback. Over the last 12 years, the Colts have used their success with Manning to build a new stadium and host the upcoming Super Bowl, bringing in millions of revenue in one form or another. Yeah, he’s worth the money and the roster bonus he earned even if he doesn’t play a down in 2011.
But Manning has masked a flawed franchise for years. Poor draft selections (just see everything from 2007-2011), bad hires (is Jim Caldwell even alive?) and an owner who seems to be going slightly insane (check out his hilarious Twitter feed).

This is what ancient Rome must have been like just before the end. Romans just ticked off at the lackluster leadership and star power: “Well, he’s no Caesar!“

Maybe Manning never plays another game or maybe he plays five more highly productive years and wins another Super Bowl. Honestly, both options are on the table. But that’s not what is at play here.
It’s the city and its fans at stake. This isn’t just an abnormal season or set of six games in which the Colts won’t have Peyton Manning at quarterback. No, Indy, it’s the future.
Take a look around – poor special teams, lackluster and unimaginative offense with a bumbling, aging quarterback and an incompetent coach? 

Welcome to how the other half of the NFL lives every week.

The problem is the fan base is built upon guys who’ve started rooting for the Colts in the Manning era and subsequently convinced their wives and girlfriends to watch, to go to games, to tailgate and host Colts parties.  At least 30 percent of the fan base is women under 50 – and I have no real way to back that up other than the fact I live here and see it with my eyes.

As a friend told me today, “My girlfriend didn’t want to watch the entire game because it was getting out of hand and she said, ‘I think I’m just a Peyton Manning fan, not a Colts fan.’”

And there you have it – the bulk of the Colts fan base is centered around Peyton Manning and wearing cute No. 18 jerseys.
Take a look at fans in other cities and you’ll see Gale Sayers and Walter Payton throwbacks in Chicago, Dan Fouts in San Diego, Montana and Rice in San Francisco, Bart Starr in Green Bay, Randall Cunningham and Seth Joyner in Philadelphia. 

No one’s wearing Earl Morrall throwbacks in Indianapolis. It’s a young fan base that hasn’t aged through time.

Being a fan of a team means you support that team no matter what. Want to curse at their ineptitude? Fine. Hate the GM? By all means, question the draft strategy. Criticize the players for not caring like you do? Well, only if you can back that up. You still have to tune in. You have to take your lumps, otherwise, the big wins and the championships don’t mean as much.
Most (again, not all, but most) Colts fans would tell you the lean years were during Peyton’s career, losses to the Dolphins, Jets, Patriots and Chargers, when the team had a good regular season and blew an opportunity in the playoffs.
Wrong.
The hard times were 1-15 in 1991, 4-12 in 1993, 3-13 in 1997. Those were the bad times, the bumbling times you looked away in horror, wondering desperately if it would ever get better, if they would ever contend. But there weren’t enough fans of the team now to remember that kind of pain because they bought their first jersey or ticket in 1999, 2001 or 2002.
Once Peyton’s done, this franchise will move forward and find a new quarterback. It might take five or six rough years, but they will eventually find a new guy that will be a good player for a decade or so and put the team in position to contend. It happened in Dallas, Green Bay and Pittsburgh. It’s the circle of NFL life.
There was only one Roger Staubach, but there was also only one Troy Aikman. He had a couple bad years early on too. Dallas fans stuck around for the whole thing.
No team can remain that good forever. And there will never be another Peyton Manning.
But there will be Colts football.
Question is for the fair-weathered fans of Indy, will anyone care enough to be around for the truly hard times?
Standard