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.
Popularity: 1% [?]

Before the recent 



