Coming soon, I’ll have a more detailed – and perhaps nuanced – position-by-position overview of the 2010 Colts. Until then, you’ll just have to deal.
But suffice it to say, when you’re marooned in your office, it’s tough working on an NFL preview. Unless, of course, you’re an abject Colts homer (ducks).
In previous years, for example, I’ve mistakenly forecast the end of Indianapolis success – assuming the fatalist view that the window would shut sooner rather than later. But that was four years ago, and here we are today. Though pundits slobber all over the New York Jets and Baltimore Ravens, each is precisely the type of team the Colts are best equipped to defeat. I mean, it’s enough to make me gleeful. Almost gleeful, anyway.
So the end isn’t this year, I tell myself. I also believe it’s not going to happen. Not for a while. I’m even fairly confident. I might even be swaggering, if I knew what that was.
Success in business largely is attributable to luck, timing, and commitment. That means dedication to something, never mind what it really is. (Even if it’s a total lie. “Don’t be evil.”) But corporations succeed by-and-large because they adhere to whatever their bullshit mission is. The theme is largely irrelevant – the successful corporation’s commitment to it is not.
The same goes for the NFL: a massive corporate conglomerate masquerading as a sports meritocracy. Only a handful of teams embrace an identity and philosophy. Predictably, these few ride those respective trains to success above and beyond everyone else.
New England and Philadelphia mercilessly give up on their players too early as opposed to too late. Indianapolis sinks most of its capital into a few key pieces – relying on a simple system to bring younger, undrafted, hungry players up to speed (See below). Pittsburgh embraces “smash-mouth” defensive football. Baltimore attempts to mimic that. Tennessee and Miami run and run and run the ball.
And few others dot the list from time to time, the few teams who know what they’re gonna try and do. Though a down year may occur, at least they have a direction. At least they swing back up. And, of course, they succeed alongside a league filled with failures, teams reinventing the wheel with each new season. This sounds familiar to Chiefs fans.
That makes forecasting the Colts’ season easy. I’m thinking 12-4.
Witness: The Colts are fortunate because of their division, including two games each against bonehead coaches: Jack Del Rio and Gary Kubiak. That’s four wins.
You figure they split the Tennessee games. That’s five wins. You figure Peyton’s good for three wins by himself. That’s eight. And from talent level alone, you figure the remaining seven games are a split of four and three, a combination of execution and luck or circumstance plus another beat-down of our friends in New England. (Karma: it is a bitch.) I know, you simply cannot get this kind of analysis anywhere else. However, this is who the Colts are. We fans know what we’re going to get. We now expect it.
Again, our confidence underscores the benefit of following a team with an identity, a system, and a proven track record. The leadership is in place, the expectations as both unit and individual are in place, and success should follow. As a fan, it borders on cockiness. But it’s a good place to be nonetheless.
Consider the alternative. Kansas City is woefully starved for success. And with the current regime, it’s difficult to see the light at tunnel’s end.
On 810 Sports recently, Soren Petro and Kevin Harlan furrowed their brows over forgettable Matt Cassel and the Chiefs’ current underwhelming O-Line. Is Cassel doomed because of the Chiefs’ line, or vice versa?
Petro talked about the success of the Colts’ offensive line; replete with our unwanted and undrafted free-agents who have formed a cohesive, successful unit – the linchpin of Indianapolis, if you will. Petro argued differently – claiming that Manning made pedestrian linemen look great. I couldn’t disagree more.
Manning is a great player, but too often, in football, we fail to extricate individual success from the team concept as a whole. It’s tough. I would argue the Colts are great because of their success at developing offensive linemen: finding hungry, intelligent professionals deep on draft boards – short on pedigree but long on commitment.
After 10 years, this is hardly a fluke. Instead, it’s a trend. Mainstays Jeff Saturday (center, undrafted) and Ryan Diem (right tackle, 4th round) have been with the Colts through thick and thin. Right guard Kyle Devan is young and undrafted, and Charley Johnson and Jamey Richard arrived via the 6th and 7th round, respectively. Besides Saturday and Diem, those guys aren’t Pro Bowlers. Instead, they’re a nucleus of a professional, functional unit that knows exactly what it wants to do. Youth is promise, not inexperience. Age is expertise, not decline. In eight years, that hasn’t changed.
That’s not just to Manning’s credit – it’s to the Colts. They know how to develop and replace O-Linemen. They feast on hungry, hard-working, intelligent players to surround their core. This is true on the O-Line, but also up and down the roster. Think Antoine Bethea, Melvin Bullitt, Robert Mathis, Jacob Lacey, Jerraud Powers, Gary Brackett. None of those guys came into the league as a blue-chipper. But now, they’re much more. Besides the Big Four: Manning, Freeney, Sanders, and Wayne – the Colts simply reload with the “ next man in.” And rarely do they disappoint. In the cases of Saturday, Diem, Mathis and Bethea, they’ve wildly succeeded.
Maybe this is the year that allowing players like Ryan Lilja and Jake Scott to bolt for more cash sinks the Colts. But I doubt it. After all, every team, every year, has offensive line questions. The Colts’ rarity is that we have the confidence they’ll successfully address them. So fret over the “Super Bowl Curse” if you must (You know, the trend of one of two NFL finalists faceplanting during its next season. Think Pittsburgh last year, Tampa Bay in 2003, or Chicago in 2006.)
But I won’t. Instead, I consider that a cautionary note to America’s Gritty Saviors the Saints. Tomorrow: I preview them along with the rest of the league.
