Let’s be clear: The Indianapolis Colts’ 21-18 loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC playoffs yesterday was not Peyton Manning’s fault. Manning was superb. After a slow start, he completed 22 of 38 passes for 290 yards – an average of 7.63 a pass – in the face of a fierce Steelers blitz that sacked him five times and knocked him down six more. Indianapolis’s pass blocking schemes were atrocious. At one point in the second quarter, Manning was flushed out of the pocket at his 5-yard line and forced into a bad throw by Steelers nose tackle Casey Hampton. A refreshingly outspoken Dan Dierdorf commented, “No one is pass blocking. Hampton’s not L.C. Greenwood or Mean Joe Green. He’s in there to stop the run. How does he get in there unblocked?”

Indeed. How were so many Steelers getting to Manning? With less than two minutes to go, on what should have been the deciding series of the game, the two-time NFL MVP was sacked twice inside his own 20. Only an inexcusably sloppy Pittsburgh fumble gave the Colts another chance, which they muffed when Mike Vanderjagt missed a field goal attempt that was farther to the right than Pat Robertson on amphetamines.

It was remarkable that the game should come down to that kick, as the Steelers were so much better prepared. Eschewing their traditional run-first, clock control persona, the Steelers struck early with quarterback Ben Roethlisberger throwing for 172 of his 197 yards in the first half, most coming on two possessions in the first quarter when the Steelers took a 14-0 lead. Three of the biggest passes were to tight end Heath Miller on plays in which he was sent long down the sidelines; in Miller’s two seasons I have not seen the Steelers use that play.

Having the early lead gave the Steelers the luxury of running the ball continuously, which made their rushing game seem much better than it really is. The Steelers’ backs gained just 115 yards on 37 carries, an average of 3.1 yards per try, while the Colts’ Edgerrin James ran for 56 yards on 13 tries, an average of 4.3. But Steelers coach Bill Cowher was calling Willie Parker’s and Jerome Bettis’s numbers, and Colts coach Tony Dungy wasn’t calling James’s.

Because of the personal tragedy that has surrounded Dungy and his family, no one wants to say it, but it might have been a good idea if he had not tried to coach this game. All afternoon, the Colts lacked intensity and focus on both offense and defense.

While Indianapolis’s coaches were as unresponsive as FEMA officials, Manning would line up under center and start waving frantically, shouting at his linemen and pointing at the Steelers they were supposed to be blocking. He looked like a camp counselor leading a bunch of kids in a game of touch football. On a play that nearly turned things around, Manning, with a little more than 10 minutes to play, simply overruled Dungy and called for a pass on fourth-and-2 instead of a punt. Dungy shrugged and stared as if to say, “Okay, you know better than me, go ahead and try.” The Colts got the first down, went on to score their first touchdown, and made a game of it. If Manning had been doing that the entire game, the outcome might have been different.

In fact, if Manning had done this near the end of the first half, the game might have had a different outcome. The Colts, down 14-0 with seven minutes remaining in the half, took over at their own 2-yard line and drove down to the Steelers’ 2, where James ran it in to make it 14-7 with less than a minute to play before the break. New ball game. But no. The touchdown was called back when a Colts lineman was flagged for a false start, the kind of irritating (and in this case devastating) penalty that’s not supposed to happen when you’re playing at home. Manning wanted to go for it; Dungy ordered a field goal. Manning, I’m convinced, was right. A field goal still left the Colts two touchdowns behind, so a miss would not have been so deflating, but a touchdown would have cut the deficit in half and given the Colts a head of steam coming out of the tunnel for the third quarter.

As it now stands, we may well have seen the last chance for the greatest passer in the game to make it to the Super Bowl.

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After 11 postseason games, Tom Brady finally threw a bad pass. With the New England Patriots lurking at the 5-yard line, trailing 10-6 in the third quarter of Saturday’s loss to the Denver Broncos, Brady, under pressure, off the wrong foot, at a bad angle, fired a pass to the corner of the end zone for wideout Troy Brown. It looked like the start of yet another postseason comeback for the champion Patriots. But Broncos cornerback Champ Bailey intercepted it in the end zone and ran 100 yards to the Patriots’ 1. Just like that, instead of 13-10 New England, it was 17-6 Denver.

The play did not decide the game, but it was most definitely the play of the game. If it doesn’t happen, the game is probably up for grabs in the final minutes. I would have liked to have seen what would have happened in that situation, because the Broncos, playing on their home field in their biggest postseason game in years, were surprisingly beatable.

On ESPN’s The Sports Reporters yesterday, Mike Lupica suggested, “This is what happens when Tom Brady has to play a better team in the playoffs.” The inference is, I assume, that Brady only won all those other playoff games because his team was better than the other team. (Not true, by the way; it’s easy to forget now that the Patriots’ victory over the St. Louis Rams in the 2001 Super Bowl is one of the biggest upsets in NFL history.)

The Broncos were the better team all season long, including a 28-20 victory over the Pats in Denver on October 16, but New England was the better team on Saturday. They outgained Denver by a whopping 420 yards to 286, stuffed the Denver run to just 3 yards a pop, sacked Jake Plummer twice against zero sacks on Brady, and, for good measure, had 187 yards in punt and kick returns to the Broncos’ 83.But that one interception by Bailey and three lost fumbles – the kind of flukes that happen when you’re not playing a key game on your home field – were the difference.

I don’t know how the Broncos could have been outplayed as much as they where when they have the biggest home advantage – perhaps the most unnatural home field advantage in all of sports, as they work out at that altitude regularly – and still played such indifferent football against an inferior team. In the end, playing at home might have been the only reason Denver won the game.

Denver coach Mike Shanahan has won two Super Bowls and has the best regular season record of any NFL coach since 1997; he is now 8-4 in the postseason. All of that is very impressive, but from 1998 to this season, his Broncos were 0-3 in the playoffs and missed the postseason three times. Shanahan is on the verge of winning back his reputation as a football genius, the legitimate heir to Bill Walsh’s throne, but grabbing the ring is going to require better planning and precision on the road than he and his team showed at home against the Patriots.

Mr. Barra is the author, most recently, of “The Last Coach: A Life of Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant.”