First things first – who [expletive deleted] dat!  My wife has informed me that we no longer have to move.  The fact that Manning was (or at least should be) one of the biggest goats is just that much sweeter.  Oh, don’t worry, there is plenty of blame to go around.  Don’t forget to give the Saints all the credit in the world, but the Colts sure wilted under the bright lights, huh?

I guess we SHOULD start off on a positive note.  Drew Brees was ON.  And the Colts decided to get in the prevent defense at the start of the 2nd quarter (more on that later), so he just picked them apart all night after that.  And don’t get me started on Sean Payton.  He reminded everyone what Jim Caldwell is – a rookie coach.  And how about that onside kick?  Balls of steel, coach.  Balls of steel.  The one common characteristic of just about every coach in the Parcells tree…and the one thing usually in short supply for coaches from the Marty Schottenheimer coaching tree (like Tony Dungy and Jim Caldwell, for instance).

OK – enough of that rubbish – let’s get NEGATIVE!  There is so much blame to go around the Indy side of this game, I don’t even know where to start.  I could easily start at the top and talk about a family that took a team away from a city, or talk about a team president that has made an entire career out of building teams that were just good enough to come in 2nd place (except for the one time his team got to play Rex Grossman in the Super Bowl), or talk about a decade’s worth of coaching staffs that seemed to have their teams less prepared the bigger the game (except for the one time they got to coach against Lovie Smith in the Super Bowl)…but that is kind of the low-hanging fruit of this argument.  I’ll just start with the current coaching staff and work my way down.

So, how should we slice up the blame for this loss?

Jim Caldwell – 40%.  Man – there is just so much he did wrong; where the heck should I start?  How about the fact that Jim Caldwell’s onions, or lack thereof, quite possibly cost his team the Super Bowl.  When I talk about the lack of onions, I am basically talking about 2 things Jim Caldwell did, in an ACTIVE fashion, to sabotage his team’s efforts in the most important game of his coaching career.  First of all, with a defense that had just been on the field for a grueling 8-minute drive (culminated by a HUGE, momentum-shifting stop on 4th and Goal), decided to run the ball 3 times, risk not getting a first down, and gave the ball back to Drew Brees, who predictably led a FG drive to end the half, with Screech Hartley absolutely crushing yet another big kick.  The next time where I thought Caldwell should not have been too proud of his testicular fortitude was when he decided to do his Rex Ryan imitation and abandon a running game that was being very effective at getting big chunks of yards, prolonging drives, saving the legs of the Colts defense and putting pressure on the Saints defense to boot.  Yeah, sounds like a great time to hit the panic button.

If those were the ONLY 2 things Jim Caldwell messed up, that would have to go down as one of the worst coaching jobs in Super Bowl history, right?  Well, we are not even close to done with Caldwell.  His special teams were atrocious.  The fact that every single Colts player was not waiting an extra tic on every kickoff with a known gambler on the other sideline is absolutely inexcusable.  The fact that either a) Jim Caldwell did not personally talk to every member of his kick-off team’s front line of defense at least once per day to make sure that they knew to look for the fake and just concentrate on the fundamentals if it comes your way – stay calm, look the ball in and get it up against your body as soon as possible or b) he DID do that and his players had so little respect for him that they were totally unprepared when the situation came up in the biggest game of the year.

Another thing I have a huge problem with in this game from Caldwell is that he did not recognize that Manning was off.  He didn’t notice that there was a little extra flutter to his throws.  He didn’t notice that there was a little bit of extra chop in Peyton Manning’s feet in the pocket – not quite the “happy feet” we used to see, but enough to be a cause for concern.  He didn’t notice that his throws themselves seemed to be a little bit less accurate than normal.  He just plain did not know enough about what he was seeing, or did not have enough gumption to make a change and start to shade the mix of plays toward more runs and less passes.  Why the hell would you want to do that?  It was only intuitively obvious to even a casual observer that the Saints were completely unprepared for the Colts’ running game in the first half.  But hey, the head coach and his entire staff missed it.  Yeah – that sounds like a Super Bowl caliber performance, huh? 

I am strongly considering if 40% is really enough blame for Caldwell and his staff.

Peyton Manning and Reggie Wayne (30%).  It was an absolute disgrace that these 2 perennial Pro-Bowlers both took the same play off.  No look off from Manning – just staring down Reggie the whole time.  No crisp route by Reggie – just going through the motions. 

If you have the game on DVR, go ahead and watch that drive again.  When you get to the play that happened 2 plays before the TAINT, watch what Tracy Porter does just before the snap.  By that point in the game, he had already started to recognize when that play was coming, and had already started to open up his hips to the inside of the field and take MULTIPLE steps toward the inside of the field just before the snap to put himself in the best position possible.  Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but aren’t there people in the Colts’ organization that are paid to notice that kind of stuff?  Aren’t 2 of those people named Peyton Manning and Reggie Wayne?

I would say that you can probably pile about 2/3 of the 30% blame right on Manning’s shoulders.  As discussed several times on this blog and countless hundreds of times with Colts fans all over Indianapolis, Peyton Manning is the first ever “all-time great” that would rather throw the ball away than take a hit to make a play.  No matter if it is a meaningless Week 6 game or the Super Bowl.  I used to really fault Manning for not being able to toughen up during big games, but after years and years of watching QBs, I am starting to think that you are either wired one way or the other.  Manning cannot play tough when the situation dictates any more than Brett Favre can play it safe when the situation dictates. 

That’s why, if I need to win 115 regular season games in a decade, Manning is my guy, but if I need to win one game, an all-important game, then I want someone else.  Sure, I do not think any of these names will stand next to the name “Peyton Manning” decades from now, but if I had to win one game right now, there are a few QBs that I would take over Manning in a heartbeat – they are, in no particular order: Tom Brady, Chad Pennington, Mark Sanchez (that’s 3 and we aren’t out of the AFC East yet), Ben Roethlisberger, Phillip Rivers, Eli Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Matt Ryan, and Drew Brees.  So, that’s nine.  Out of respect for the Manning family, I will not put Warner or Favre on the list.

Make no mistake, Peyton Manning is one of the best QBs ever…it’s just that people need to start qualifying that statement, with a “regular season” or “during months that end in B-E-R”.

One more bit of heartache I have with this play.  If anyone other than Manning made that throw, no one would even be mentioning the fact that Reggie Wayne gave up on the play.  It would just be “can you believe that QB blew the Super Bowl for his team?”  Could you imagine if Tony Romo had made that throw?  We might never hear from him again.  Instead, everyone is trying to find someone other than Manning to blame.  Here is what I say to those folks – you gave that dude credit for all 14 regular season wins, at least 10 of which were flat-out chokes by the other team…so you have to give him the blame for this one.  You can’t have it both ways.

So, Peyton Manning choked away the Super Bowl for his team.  He had the opportunity to solidify his place in history or be just another dude with a .500 playoff record, and his skills, composure and decision making in the big moment limited him to the latter. 

Hank Baskett – 15%. Just like someone from your coaching staff told you at least once every single day between Conference Championship weekend and Super Bowl Sunday – “look out for the fake – Sean Payton loves to mix it up and call for bold plays; if it happens, just stay calm and remember what we have been talking about for 2 weeks – stay loose, watch the ball into your hands, and get it tucked up against your body as soon as possible.”  Oh, no one ever told you that?  Are you sure?  C’mon – every high school kid that watches the NFL on Sunday knows that Sean Payton is from the Bill Parcells coaching tree and loves to sack up and call onside kicks and fake punts and double reverses and everything else right?

Make no mistake, the fact that Baskett was leaning back, and even taking a step back away from the play BEFORE the kick, and the fact that he was surprised at all by the play, is a lack of leadership on the Colts sideline.  The fact that he completely blew it and shrunk during the biggest chance he had to make an impact on the game – well, that’s on him.  Maybe he was thinking about that classy wife of his.

Colts Defense – 15%.  I have gone back and forth on the responsibility of the Colts defense in all of this.  At first, I thought that they should take a lot of the blame.  I am fairly certain that this was because Clint Session was the only Colts player to take any personal responsibility for the loss at all on Sunday night.  I mean, no one else in the entire organization took any responsibility…none…not one little bit.  Anyway, some time after that, I started to think about how the Colts defense actually held the Saints offense to 24 points, which is not too bad.

Then, I remembered that the Colts decided to start playing the prevent defense in the 2nd quarter and didn’t stop until the game was over.  During the game, I came up with a name for the Colts defense they were playing on Sunday – instead of their usual “Cover 2”, they were in a “Cover Zero”.  That’s how many Saints receivers they were covering on every pass play – ZERO.  Combine multiple open receivers on every play with a guy (Drew Brees) that was putting just about every single pass within 6 inches of the perfect spot, and you have a recipe for disaster.

There is a good reason why the Colts defense is last on this list.  They did a pretty decent job.  There is also a good reason why there are on the list at all.  They looked pretty solid all year, but they played one of the easiest schedules in the entire league from a defensive standpoint.  Supposedly, Jim Caldwell made huge changes in the defense, and all anyone in Indy wanted to talk about was the team speed they had on defense this year, but they did not have in the past.  But as it turns out, if you take a very soft defense, make it smaller and quicker, you end end up with a soft defense that has speed.  The problem with that approach is that it can be very effective against the AFC South but tends to get exposed by playoff-caliber teams – kind of like the Jets did before Rex Ryan hit the panic button and the Saints did for 3 quarters of the Super Bowl.

I also have a huge problem with the Colts actually playing the prevent defense for 3 quarters of the Super Bowl.  That is basically a conscious decision by everyone involved that they do not have the personnel and/or toughness to make a game of it playing a stand-up defense.  Instead of trying to stop the Saints and make some plays, they decided that they would rather invest their time trying to slow the Saints down.  You know what – it worked.  They slowed down the Saints offense and held them to 24 points.  Too bad that their coach and QB let them down.

Anyway, there is the analysis.  It was kind of a meandering semi-rant, but I think the numbers are about correct.  The loss was most directly a reflection of which head coach was ready to do what it took to win the game and which head coach was just trying not to lose the game. 

When you take that atrocious coaching display, throw in a typical big game performance from Manning, add in one play that Reggie Wayne decided to take off, mix in the fact that they had to rely on Hank Baskett to make a simple play, and a soft defense trying to slow down a big, physical offense.  It’s a recipe for disaster.

And I didn’t even mention the fact that the Colts organization decided to commit one of the most heinous examples of a team thumbing their nose at the process for qualifying for the NFL playoffs in Week 16 of the regular season.  So the new stats are the same as the old stats – no team has ever pulled some crap like that and won a Super Bowl, and after my interview with karma last week, I doubt it will ever happen.

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Everyone is destroying Bill Belichick for going for the win on Sunday night.  No one, and I mean NO ONE has even mentioned that the ref who came up with the spot kind of blew the call.  I am not one for conspiracy theories, but watch the play one more time and tell me if all of these things do not happen: 1) Faulk starts to make the catch very clearly past the yardage marker and gets hit immediately by Melvin Bullitt 2) Faulk slightly bobbles the ball 3) that bobble happens with Faulk’s ENTIRE body between the ball and the guy who came in with the spot.  Like I said, I am not here to spout conspiracy theories…I’m just saying that I might have noticed 1 or two anomalies on that particular play and the officiating of it – oh, and it was the first time I have ever, in over 35 years of watching the NFL, seen a single official actively favor the defense on a 4th down play.  Ever.  Kind of weird, no?

Now, about the call itself, I aim to prove (or disprove – it really could go either way, and here in paragraph  2, your guess is as good as mine) that it was the correct call according to the information that Belichick had available to him at the time.  Wait – I guess I should clarify…I am talking about the call to go for it on 4th down.  NOT the play call.  The play call was historically bad, no matter what the numbers in the following paragraphs say.

Here is my beef with Belichick – assume that the statistics dictate that you absolutely have to go for it on 4th down in that situation.  You are playing against a franchise that has ALWAYS been soft against the run.  The defense has 2 ends that love to get up the field and wreak havoc on passing plays.  Your go-to 3rd and 4th down back is averaging 6.6 yards per carry on the game.  What play do you call?  Every person reading this that has watched more than 50 NFL games just said either “draw” or “screen”.  Kind of a no-brainer, huh?  Should be able to pick up 2 yards on one of those plays pretty easily in that situation, right?

Don’t get me wrong – I love to see Belichick fail…but the only 2 people in the league that I love to see fail even more are Donovan McNabb and Peyton Manning (Jay Cutler is quickly moving up this list)…plus, I live in Indy and am surrounded by Colts fans on a daily basis.  It’s kind of rough for 11 months of the year, but except for one bizarre season, I have always had January to do all my talking…and I will have January once again in 2010…take that to the bank.  Plus, I am from New England and always had a soft spot for the Patriots until they got good and their fans turned into the the biggest a-hole NFL fans in the world outside of the state of Pennsylvania.  Anyway, I have some definite mixed emotions about this game and this play.

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Before the recent SI.com article, Alex Rodriguez was widely seen as baseball’s best hope to finally put the steroids mess in the rearview mirror once and for all.  The day that he broke Barry Bond’s tainted home run record was supposed to be a special day.

Well, I’m here to tell you that A-Rod is still baseball’s best hope, but there are several things that have just jumped out at me (some obvious, some not) over the past several days, and to me, those things, and how they are handled, will make all the difference.

• You Can’t Have it Both Ways, Alex.  After watching the Gammons interview, the first thing I noticed was the glaring contradiction whereby A-Rod starts by implying that it was a conscious effort on his part to take an active role in using performance enhancing drugs to “earn” his big fat new contract and cement his legacy as one of the greatest players of all time.  Then, later in the interview, he mentions that the “loosey-goosey” culture around baseball at the time was such that he just went with the flow, tried a few things, and could not even begin to tell you what he was on.  Well, which one is it?  I believe the scientific facts point to choice A, the one where he is a little less innocent.  He had the specific steroids and testosterone in his system, “stacked” in the specific proportions that would lead me to believe he was a habitual user, and knew exactly what he put into his system and when.  The sooner he admits this, the better off he will be…especially once the Feds come calling.  Bonds and Clemens and Tejada are going to jail.  A-Rod does not want to explore those kind of pinstripes.
• A-Rod’s Arrogance is the Most Damning Thing of All.  The first example of his arrogance here was during the Katie Couric interview.  I have included it below for easy reference.  After he says that he never used steroids and was never even tempted to do so, he goes on to say that it was because he has never felt overmatched on the baseball field and he is basically better than anyone else, not only because of how he plays, but because he did not take steroids.  I think perhaps a less egotistical answer may have served him well there.  Then, during the Gammons interview this week, he is trying to tell us that he thinks that the interview with Gammons is all that is required of him and he is ready to move on, so we should all move on as well.  In my opinion, he deserves everything that happens to him as a result of this…not because he used steroids when everyone else was using steroids, but because he was such an arrogant prick about it every step of the way.

• The New York Headline Question.  All in all, I think A-Rod did an excellent job during the Gammons interview.  Before piling on me for that last sentence, let’s remember that this is a guy that has seemed slick and coached during just about every interview I have ever seen…probably because he has 2 or 3 people on staff that coach him in those situations.  But not this time.  At least, it did not look that way.  It looked like he was genuinely not expecting any of the questions specifically, and he made an honest effort to be truthful without giving away the farm.  Let’s also remember that this dude is a ballplayer, not a Rhodes scholar.  I think he did well…except for the question about what he would like to be the headline in New York the following day.  I am trying to find it on YouTube and will change this text slightly once I do…but he basically dropped the ball and implied that the New York media was less than friendly.  The first time I saw it, as soon as the question was asked, I blurted out “A-Rod Apologizes to Fans”…think anyone might be thinking a little better of him if he had said that?
• Barack Obama is The Man.  I don’t care if you are the biggest racist redneck in the country, if you are a baseball fan, you have to know that we, as sports fans, finally have our President.  Sure, you could say it’s window dressing and he is just a brilliant orator, but take a quick look and listen below and let me know if you can think of another President since Lincoln that would have presented not only his feelings, but the feelings of an entire nation of baseball fans in such a nearly perfect manner.

• Tom Hicks Should Go Away.  For some reason, this rich guy that should have known better is on my TV talking about how he felt betrayed that A-Rod juiced up when he was with the Rangers.  Tom Hicks is way too smart to not know that at least half of his team, and every other team, was on the juice during that time.  I just wish he would go away…he has no dog in this fight, when you really look at it.  In fact, I think that A-Rod himself, or at least all Rangers fans, have been the ones that have been betrayed by Hicks.  So, let me get this straight…you had enough balls to give A-Rod the biggest deal in sports history, but not enough balls to extend yourself a little bit further and get him some teammates that didn’t suck?  How can some of these guys be so damn smart in their pre-baseball endeavors and so damn stupid once they own a team?
• Where the Eff is the Commissioner Hiding?  Speaking of stupid baseball owners, how come we have yet to hear from the Commissioner himself?  He is the single person in all of this that bears more responsibility for every inflated stat, wasted taxpayer dollar and dead-too-early-of-a-heart-attack former major leaguer that has happened and will happen in the future.  The blood is on his hands, and it always has been.  And how has he handled it?  Ignoring Barry Bonds during his run at Hank Aaron’s record.  Way to go, Mr. Commissioner.  What are you going to do now that your Ace in the Hole is dirty, too?  So far, to the surprise of no one, you have been absent from the public eye.  Every day that you have been commissioner has been an indictment against the entire league, but you are somehow getting worse at the time your game needs you to get better.  I am begging you as a baseball fan…can you please just have enough integrity and respect for the game you have destroyed to buy the Brewers back from your daughter and just run one franchise into the ground instead of the entire league?
• Conspiracy Theorists, The Line Forms Here. OK…I have no evidence of any of this whatsoever, but what if the “source” that leaked A-Rod’s name to Sports Illustrated was someone from the A-Rod camp?  Bear with me here, but A-Rod will forever be known as the first guy to come clean (Pettitte does not count) and has the potential to be known as the guy who brought baseball out of the steroid era…instead of Jose Canseco.  In fact, would you put it outside the realm of possibilities that this is all a creation of the Commissioner’s office, who would rather have A-Rod be known as the face of the steroid era and not Bonds and definitely not Ozzie’s brother…OK, probably a bad example when you have a commissioner that would have extreme difficulty pouring piss out of a boot, even if the instructions were written on the heel.  But, at this point, nothing would surprise me.  Let’s also not forget that A-Rod’s agent is the devil incarnate…anything is possible.
• Let’s Get ‘Em All.  The Feds have been talking about some crazy stuff lately, like not only dealing with the 104 positive tests, but also re-testing the 500+ negative samples they seized back in 2003, to determine if they were using, but were just further ahead of the testing technology of the day than A-Rod and the other 103 guys with hot samples.  I’m all in favor of it, but only because I think that the only way to actually quantify the Steroids Era is to get as much information about as many players as possible, and what they were using and what they were not.  There is a very easy way to accomplish this…an amnesty period, monitored by MLB.  Any player can come clean between now and March 31.  After that, if we or the Feds have to come to you, then you will be subject to a one-year suspension without pay.
• Statistical Relevance – Welcome to MLB Geeks.com.  I have purchased a domain name, started to gather my fellow geeks that love baseball, and hope to be launching an actual company soon that is dedicated to using cutting-edge technology to provide net positive value to our national pastime.  Watch our blog for more on this one later.

So, in conclusion, the only thing this blog entry has taught us is that I have had something to say regarding A-Rod and the steroids mess, and I have done so with my usual focus on conjecture and a total lack of sound journalistic research.  I hope you enjoyed my take on it and found something here that not every other idiot is saying about it.

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First, let me start off by saying that Tony Dungy is a great man.  I have only the most ancillary contact with him and what he does, but I lived in Tampa when he was the coach of the Bucs and I live in Indy now, so I have heard probably 25 first-hand stories of cool things he has done in the community.  He would walk barefoot over 10 miles of broken glass to visit one kid with cancer.  His book is an inspiration to many, and a shining example of how to do things the right way, whatever your profession.

Granted, he is a bit church-y for my tastes, but I have never been so weak minded that I needed the construct of organized religion to have a relationship with a higher power or believe there is something out there bigger than myself…and I don’t mean Andy Reid!

Anyway, let’s not beat a dead horse here.  Tony Dungy is a great man and he spreads all kinds of joy away from the Colts complex.  Can we just say that is his legacy and leave it at that?

I think any Colts fan that looks at his resume would probably prefer it that way, too.  When you look at the stats, he looks like a great regular season coach, and that’s it.  Here are a list of his coaching “accomplishments” in the postseason:

1. He has a losing record in the post-season.  Don’t tell any Colts fans this, but so does The Chokin’ Gomer, a.k.a. Peyton Manning (props to RavensDale for the Chokin’ Gomer reference).
2. Aside from “The Rex Grossman Super Bowl”, the bigger the game, the worse his teams perform.  He has a .500 record in Wild-Card games, a .429 record in Divisional games, and a .333 record in Conference Championships.
3. He has been the head coach of the hands-down best team in the NFL at least 4 times and has only one Super Bowl ring (not one of those 4 NFL-best teams, by the way)…and that Super Bowl run was aided by the Patriots being forced to field their third-string defense in the second half of the 2007 AFC Championship game…not to mention Rex Grossman being Indy’s best player in the Super Bowl.
4. As defensive coordinator in Minnesota, his top-ranked defense was 0-3 in the playoffs.
5. His teams are notorious for losing playoff games to inferior competition.  Aside from a couple of losses to the Patriots, you could seriously say that almost all of Dungy’s 10 playoff losses as a head coach have come at the hands of teams that were worse than his team.
6. His teams are always unprepared in some way for a playoff game.  How do you allow an opening kick-off return for touchdown in the Super Bowl by the only player on the other team that has any chance of hurting you?

So, sorry to have to be the only one not singing Dungy’s praises this week, but I have to tell the truth.  The dude is an awesome regular season coach and nothing more…as a coach.  As a man, he is truly one in a million and I envy the strength with which he perseveres every day after the death of his son.  Every time I think about how he has been able to do that, and start thinking about my son and how I would handle it…well, let’s just say that it gets a little dusty in the Mack house.

I am sure that Colts fans are going to riot when they read this.  They will yell and scream and use language consistent with their breeding and intellect…and not one of them will be able to offer anything other than rage, which sadly does not trump facts.  But as for Dungy himself, I think that some d-bag blogger pointing out that he is not a big-game coach is something about which he could not care less.

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MackOnSports.com was recently honored to be selected for inclusion on the Web’s latest and greatest news site, Alltop.com.

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