Still if the recent history of the Colts were a High School romance Peyton Manning would be Phoebe Cates and the Colts' fans Judge Reinhold walking around with balls bluer than a Smurf in the Polar Bear Club. In 11 of Manning's 13 seasons Indy has reached the playoffs yet only once have they taken home the hardware for a Susan Lucci meets Alydar-like record of close, but no cigar. Of course this is a record of success any Pittsburgh Pirate fan could/will only dream of, but it does point out the difficulty of "putting it all together" in the NFL where one superstar does not a Lombardi Trophy make.
Whether the Colts have enough to grab another brass ring in their current state or the window of opportunity is closing faster than that on the career of a post "I Will Survive" Gloria Gaynor (ironic, really) is unknown. This weekend versus Rex Ryan and Gang Green could go a long toward seeing if we have a changing of the AFC guard on the horizon.
OFFENSE: Even with Peyton the Great at the helm this offense struggled to find any kind of consistency in 2010 which is what happens when you sport a ground unit reminiscent of the Iraqi Republican Guard (which by the way differed from the late Ted Kennedy in that Kennedy had actually killed an American) and a receiver corps that looks like Little Roundtop after Pickett's Charge. Joseph Addai appears worn and slow, Donald Brown has underachieved, Dallas Clark is done for the year and Austin Collie's suffered more head trauma this season than Billy Mays and Natasha Richardson combined. In exactly half their games this year the Colts rushed for under 80 yards total and only 1 of those affairs (vs. SD) was a blowout. They just simply had more trouble opening holes than Muhammad Ali's House of Piercings going 3-5 in those games. Manning is now 34 and has never been mobile, Pierre Garcon is inconsistent, Collie/Clark won't be back and at 32 Reggie Wayne can't do it all by himself. The emergence of Jacob Tamme helps, but this group needs to run the ball to take the pressure off Peyton and an increasingly middling defense. Unfortunately in a 6 team tourney featuring the run stuffing Jets, Ravens and Steelers it seems hard to imagine a repeat of 2006.
DEFENSE: As I mentioned Indy's defense is an average bunch that finished #22 overall and is susceptible to the run giving up over 2000 yards and 14 TDs via the ground. Instead let's take a second to address the Cover-2, a defense associated with Tony Dungy and thus by proxy with the Colts. In the mid to late 90s when Dungy was employing this style to great effect in Tampa Bay it was looked at as some sort of miracle scheme that allowed safeties to roll coverage toward dangerous WRs effectively bracketing and neutralizing them. You still hear this type of talk in Fantasy circles where analysts fear superstars who get little help from teammates will get some sort of undue attention from opposing defenses. And yet year after year wideouts like Roddy White, Andre Johnson and Calvin Johnson put up monster numbers despite have the cast of the Big Bang Theory manning receiving spots alongside them. Problem is the Cover-2 is predicated on clogging the short zones with cornerbacks and linebackers and getting enough of a pass rush to force a throw before receivers can flood the deep areas. If the QB has enough time offenses are smart enough to simply run multiple receivers at the safeties (the advent of athletic TEs and slot receivers being an effective weapon here), wait for them to commit and throw the other way. With teams like Tampa in the 90's where a talented D-Line was stuffing the run and harrassing the QB this worked to perfection, in Indy the results have been more sketchy. Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis are still causing more backfield havoc than Elton John on a drunken rampage, but a shaky run D has undermined the overall effect and the Colts finished in the lower third of the league in sacks in 2010. Can they hold down Tomlinson/Greene enough to force Sanchez into 3rd and longs and then get enough pressure to force hurried decisions? That's the question that should be critical to potentially the best matchup of Wild Card weekend.
You can add your own bad seaman/semen pun here:
