He Got (No) Game

It is no secret that I have been hard on the Colts this season, even when they were doing well. I was quick to praise them early in the season when things were going well, and I even hung in there and wrote about what happened when things were not going well. I have had my theories, which I have talked about over and over again - which mostly center around the ideas that this Colts team will never win a Super Bowl, because Tony Dungy doesn’t have the heart to get it done and because Bill Polian refuses to spend money on building the defense the way he has built the offense (apart from Dwight Freeney, but Dwight Freeney alone does not a defense make) - and I have given credit where credit is due, and doled out blame where I thought the blame was due.

As the Colts went 3-4 in their last seven games, I gradually stopped referring to them as the best team in the league - because, clearly, they no longer were. The Chargers had stepped up to take that mantle away from the Colts, behind the incredible play of LaDanian Tomlinson and the emergence of starting quarterback Philip Rivers.

Last week, I even started to write about a Bob Kravitz column, which can be found here, in which our local columnist mentioned that he heard, while leaving the Colts-Chiefs game, Colts President Bill Polian say, “(Bleep) defense, huh?” to another reporter (not to Kravitz), as Polian walked away.

Well...okay, they did have a good game against the Chiefs, but I’m not sure that one good game makes up for a season in which the run defense gave up 173 yards per game. I did not put that post into the Blog-O-Rama, though, because I decided that it was not fair to thrash the Colts after they had done so well in their first playoff game.

But I still did not believe that they were going to go to the Super Bowl, much less win it. I have gotten my hopes up way too much over the last couple of years, only to see those hopes dashed up against the cliffs of reality, to get that excited about the Colts WITHOUT some proof that they had the game to back it up.

Now they have gone and beaten the Ravens, though - and they did it on the road, against a Ravens team that was much better in almost every respect than the Chiefs team that the Colts dismantled last week. The Colts, who gave up 173 rushing yards per game in the regular season have given up a TOTAL of 127 rushing yards in the playoffs, against two different 1000-yard backs.

And last night I wrote a blog post about how the Colts were going to beat the Patriots in the AFC Championship game in the Hoosier Dome next weekend, even though, at the time I wrote the blog, the Patriots had not yet beaten the Chargers to earn the right to play the Colts nex weekend for a spot in the Super Bowl. I wrote that blog because I really believed that the Patriots were going to beat the Chargers, and because I really believed that the Colts would then beat the Patriots - behind four Manning touchdown passes, all of which could come in the first half.

Because I’ve got that feeling again about this team. They have played football that has made me feel good and has been fun to listen to and to watch. I don’t think you necessarily have to have Manning throwing for 400 yards and 4 touchdowns every game - just like I don’t think the rush defense needs to hold the opponent under 100 yards each game. But they need to do something equivalent in every game, because this is a team that is capable of dominating most teams in this league.

And that’s what they have done in the playoffs so far this year - they have dominated their opponents. Kansas City was never in the game last week, and Baltimore was never really in the game last night, although it’s hard to say while the game is being played that either team is really out of it as long as only field goals are being scored.

The Colts have played football that is worthy of respect and admiration and extraordinarily verbose blog postings. They have played the kind of football of which they have been capable all year, and they are going into an AFC title game - on their home field - with a full head of steam, to take on a team they have already beaten once this year.

I told Amy a couple of weeks ago that three things needed to happen in order for the Colts to win the Super Bowl. The first was that they had to beat Kansas City; the second was that they had to beat Baltimore; and the third was that San Diego had to lose before the Colts got to them. All three of those things have happened. I see no obstacle to the Colts winning next week against the Patriots, and I see no way at all that either the Saints or the Bears can compete against EITHER the Colts or the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

And then I read ridiculous comments on Shane’s blog about how getting to the Super Bowl doesn’t mean that you belong there. Getting to the championship game of any sports league that has a legitimate playoff system OF COURSE means you belong there, because it means you have won enough games in the regular season to make the playoffs, and then won the games you were asked to play in the playoffs. You have survived the postseason system.

The person making the comments mentioned the Falcons, Giants, and Raiders, teams that have, in recent years, not performed well in Super Bowls. Well...let’s take a look at those then, hmm? The Raiders played Tampa Bay in the 2003 Super Bowl - that would be the year Jon Gruden was hired to replace the fired Tony Dungy, who was fired because he could not manage to get his lauded Tampa Bay team to the big game. Gruden did it in one year, largely by bringing fire to the locker room and inspiring the same players Dungy had to play better football. And let’s see...about the Raiders. Oh yeah, that’s right - that was the year that Rich Gannon won the MVP award. They usually give that to guys who play on crappy teams that don’t belong in the Super Bowl.

The Falcons lost in the 1999 Super Bowl to the Denver Broncos. The Broncos in 1998 and 1999 were, quite simply, a team of destiny. John Elway was in the last years of his career, Rod Smith was in the prime of his career at wideout, and Terrell Davis - who won the MVP award for the year in which the Broncos beat the Falcons in the Super Bowl - was an unstoppable force at runningback. No team from the NFC was going to beat the Broncos that year.

The New York Football Giants lost the 2001 Super Bowl to the Baltimore Ravens in what was probably the classic example of the old adage that “defense wins championships.” That was a Baltimore defense that was very similar to the Baltimore defense of this year - which was tops in the league - and featured a younger version of Ray Lewis (the Super Bowl MVP), along with a linebacker called Peter Boulware. The Giants didn’t choke - they were annihilated. You can’t say a team chokes when the other team comes out and flattens them like Baltimore did that year, or like the Chicago Bears did in the 1986 Super Bowl against the Patriots.

In all three cases (although somewhat less so for the Raiders), the losing team was up against a team that was much, much better. But all of those losing teams deserved to be there, because they won playoff games. And you can’t just win playoff games in the NFL without playing good football. You hear it said that it’s a whole new season once the playoffs start - and this is true in the NFL more than in any other sport, because it’s single elimination. And in this way, the NFL playoffs are much like the NCAA Tournament in college basketball. The regular season is there so that deserving teams can demonstrate that they deserve to be in the playoffs. And once those playoff teams are determined, all bets are off, and it’s a whole new ball game, so to speak. Just ask the George Mason team from last year’s NCAA Tournament.

His last statement reads: “Proving you belong in the Super Bowl doesn't have anything to do with getting in. It has to do with how you play when you get there.”

Incorrect. How you play when you get there proves whether or not you deserve to WIN the Super Bowl, not play in it. Winning the playoff games actually DOES prove that you belong in the Super Bowl.

I’m all for going round and round talking about the Colts specifically and the NFL in general - but really, if you’re going to make an argument about the Colts, you’ve got to come with much, much better game than this guy did.