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Colts 27-Patriots 20

Everything I ever knew about football is wrong. OK, two things, but they're big things.

Since its invention, football has had one unvarying prime directive. A team that cannot stop the run cannot win. Pop Warner to the NFL, the defense that's run on is being pushed around, and victory always goes to the pushers, not the pushees.

Or anyway, it always used to. The Indianapolis Colts cannot stop the run. They get manhandled up front, and many of their defensive players are atrocious individual tacklers. Halfway through the NFL season, the Colts are allowing 5 yards per rush attempt. Boiling that down, EVERYONE who carries the ball against Indianapolis turns into Jim Brown.

The Colts are 8-0. They are currently the best team in pro football, and not even the most diehard Pats' fan would deny that, not after Indy won at Denver and Gillette in back to back weeks. I'm baffled. So's Vince Lombardi.

My other certainty to fly out the window last night was a belief the Patriots, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady especially, would never let the opposition impose their wills on them. Win or lose, the Pats would not take counsel of their anxieties. They'd play with a faith in each other's ability to define a game.

Not last night, they didn't. Even on television, the Pats' decisions portrayed an insecure outfit nagged by one psychic reality. They were reacting to Peyton Manning, not acting as the game's driving force.. From start to finish, the Pats acted as if they couldn't stop the Colts' quarterback when it counted. As a result, they didn't.

Running is body punching. It pays off in the late rounds. When it became obvious early on the game would be an offensive one, the Pats began to press, slowly at first, then more and more with each possession. Runs were called less and less. Passes, and gimmick passes at that, called more and more. Fourth downs (not that either team had many) became near-automatic go for it situations.

In short, the Pats acted as if they had to score on every possession. And once a quarterback gets that thought in his head, pressing, bad throws, and turnovers are almost inevitable. Brady isn't immune to this phenomenon. But it's deadly for the Pats when he does, because the root of Brady's gifts as a great quarterback is the belief it's not all on him. Run 60 times and pass six in a 17-3 snoozer? Fine by Tom, as long as he's got the 17. His egalitarian ball distribution to receivers shows Brady's core thought-any guy on my team, given the opportunity, can help us win. My job is to give him that opportunity.

That approach should make Brady's life much easier than Manning's. The Colts QB is under no illusions. On his team, it IS all on him, and it always will be. Yes, Manning's a great player, but that burden cracks a superstar sooner or later. It's always cracked Manning in January.

Maybe this year is Manning's statistical outlier, like the 1966-67 NBA season was for Wilt Chamberlain when the 76ers finally beat Bill Russell and the Celtics for the first and only time. I remain skeptical. Demanding perfection from human beings is both wholly unfair and an excellent formula for perpetual disappointment.

I'm less skeptical than I was before last night, however, and not because of anything Manning did. What struck me is how Belichick and Brady acted as if they were seeing Manning's outlier season.

posted by Michael Gee @ 10:09 AM