Colts Get Outplayed, but Peyton Manning Finds a Way

Vince Lombardi once observed that the only real flaw in football was that it overemphasized the importance of one position: quarterback. Lombardi should have seen the Colts defeat the Vikings 18-15 in Minneapolis yesterday.So should you, if you have any doubts as to who is the best quarterback in the NFL. Minnesota whipped Indianapolis at 21 of 22 positions — 22 out of 23 if you want to count placekicker, but don’t get me started on special teams. They outrushed the Colts by the mind-boggling total of 180 yards to 25, led in time of possession by more than five minutes, had 40 fewer penalty yards, and one turnover to the Colts’ two. The Vikings led Indianapolis 9-0 at the half, 15-0 midway through the third, and were on the Colts’ half of the field on their first eight possessions. Most game summations like this would end with: “… and they still found a way to lose.” That would not be true for this game. What is true is that Peyton Manning, once again, found a way to win. He found a way to be better than the rest of his team.It all began with the best play from the day’s highlights. Late in the third quarter, Anthony Gonzalez broke open for what went in the books as 58-yard completion. But the Colts gained considerably more when Gonzalez, seemingly wrapped up around the Vikings’ 15-yard line, turned and lateraled the ball to Reggie Wayne, who carried it all the way down to the one. Joseph Addai eventually got the touchdown on third and goal (and we’ll come back to that one in a moment). On the game’s final drive, it was all Manning, picking himself up after being knocked down by the Vikings’ pass rushers, he finally hit Wayne on a 20-yarder — on a third-and-nine play, which, if the Colts had failed to convert, would have probably sent the game into overtime — setting up a 47-yard game-winning field goal with three seconds left on the clock. Adam Vinatieri’s kick was dramatic and would have been wholly unnecessary had he not missed a 30-yard chip shot in the third quarter. For that matter, Manning’s heroics would probably have been unnecessary had defensive tackle Darrell Reid, playing on special teams, not committed a dumb personal foul on a Colts’ punt return which took the ball from the Minnesota 35 back to midfield.It was the second horrendous performance by Indianapolis in the first two weeks of the new season, only this time the rest of the team didn’t get Manning into so big a hole that he couldn’t pull them out. Last year they were probably the best team in the NFL — the Patriots’ offense notwithstanding — on the rare occasions when they could field their entire team. I doubt very much if New England could have survived after losing their best receiver (which the Colts did when they lost Marvin Harrison) or their best pass rusher (which happened to Indianapolis when Dwight Freeney was injured). But this season the Colts have both those two back, and though tight end/wideout Dallas Clark sat out the game, Indianapolis has no injury excuses. The path to the Super Bowl is wide open if they can stop playing like the blue team in “M*A*S*H.”***Leave it to the NFL to mess up a concept so simple as instant replay. Following the Colts’ spectacular Manning-to-Gonzalez-to-Wayne play, Addai was given credit for a touchdown when it was clear that the nose of the football he was carrying did not — repeat, did not, and check this out yourself on the Internet — get across the goal line. Addai was awarded this touchdown not because the replay disclosed anything new, but because it did not, in the view of the officials, show enough to “reverse” the official’s call — or some kind of convoluted double talk that the NFL uses to explain such things.Look, the ball either got across the goal line or it didn’t. Isn’t that all the matters? Please, officials, just tell me whether the ball broke the plane, and if you’re not going to do that, don’t show me the replay in the first place.***The wreck of the New Orleans Saints’ hopes — and you can’t call it anything else when you give up 455 yards to the Washington Redskins — wasn’t mitigated in the least by Reggie Bush’s 55-yard punt return in the third quarter of Sunday’s 29-24 loss. Though the play gave New Orleans a nine-point lead that disintegrated in the final quarter, Bush had virtually no other impact on the game. He carried 10 times for 28 yards — giving him a two-game total of only 79, and it took him 24 carries to get those yards.There’s been a lot of talk, for and against, about turning Bush into a full-time receiver; without going into any of the arguments, I’d say the point is academics: The only real contribution Bush has made to his team’s offense so far this season has been as a receiver, where he’s caught 15 passes for 175 yards, nearly 100 more than he’s gained rushing with the ball. At this rate, Bush is going to waste away his prime years on a wretched Saints team until, in a couple of years, he’s just another guy off the bench that you bring into the game on third and five. You wonder when the New Orleans management is going to wise up and deal him for a good draft choice. My guess is that will come in a season or so, and it will be a team like New England or Indianapolis who will get him, and then he’ll make everyone forget Marshall Faulk.***I’m going to keep harping on this until everyone knows it: Arizona’s Kurt Warner is the most underrated passer in NFL history. In the Cardinals’ 31-10 victory over the Dolphins yesterday, Warner threw for 361 yards and three touchdowns. For the season he has gained 558 yards on 54 passes for 10.3 yards a throw. If you’re keeping score, that’s 2.9 yards higher than the quarterback who replaced him with the Giants, Eli Manning, and 2.5 higher than the man he’ll be facing at the Meadowlands in two weeks, Brett Favre.***I don’t know if any other NFL coach since the inception of sudden death has chosen to go for the two-point conversion and victory instead of the tying kick as Denver coach Mike Shanahan did against San Diego yesterday. But Shanahan, playing at home, decided his chances of getting three yards on one play (which turned out to be a Jay Cutler pass to Eddie Royal) were a better bet than overtime. After all, you can lose in overtime without your offense even getting a crack at the ball. Shanahan trusted his quarterback, which you ought to do when he’s just put up 37 points, and won 39-38.The reason why most coaches go with the tie and overtime is not because it increases your chances of winning, but because it’s the perceived wisdom. Shanahan didn’t go against the odds, he went against perception.Mr. Barra is the author of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”

Colts Get Outplayed, but Peyton Manning Finds a Way

Colts Get Outplayed, but Peyton Manning Finds a Way

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