Give me Alex Rodriguez for his Yankee-related misdeeds, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver for their yearly attempts to ruin the road to the World Series and Luke Walton for general douchery, but as far as Manning goes, he's just a general knucklehead who hasn't done much to me personally.He hasn't knocked my team from the playoffs or killed them with a last-second drive. No, he's just been a general annoyance and his high-profile on the national scene just leaves him little place to hide from my unfounded anger.
Right now Indianapolis is playing New England in the Sunday night game and after a week's worth of columns and hype, it's nice to see the tide turning on the king of the late-season choke job. Especially with the match-up against Tom Brady, the natinal media has picked up the banner for "That's great, Peyton... but why can't you win when it matters?" and I couldn't be happier.
I think the breaking point for me was before the 2004 season when the league handed down a new set of rules for the defense that made it illegal to do anything more than speak softly to wide receivers after the Colts bitched and moaned all winter about how they were mugged in the previous year's playoffs.
To this, I say, "Easy, ladies - it's football, not figure skating."
The general consensus was that Manning was a genius because he called audibles at the line and helped to tailor make the team's game plan from line line. He was so smart that he was able to read a defense and call new plays on the fly, earning him a reputation as a genius...
Right.
You know who is the real genius? Tom Moore. Somehow, he's pulling a paycheck from the Colts for a job that we've been told for years is being done by Manning. I'd take a six-figure salary to hold a clipboard and fetch coffee 16 Sundays a year, wouldn't you?
That year the Colts broke free under the new rules, rolled up scoring records and ran roughshod over the league's defenses. Then the playoffs came as always and the Colts still lost. New rules, what seemed to be the unspoken blessing of the league and in the end Indy crapped the bed and went home early.
Later that winter, reports came back to the States that Manning and his wife were vacationing in Mexico and he was still pouting about it. Mrs. Manning dragged old Peyton out of the house for sun, fun and margaritas on the beach and he spent the whole trip making bitchy comments about how he was paying for all of it, even if she used her credit card, and generally acting like a big baby.
I took the cutout of that story and posted it in my cube. Even if the Packers are due for a series of rebuilding years, this storyline will keep me interested in football until they can come back.
Anyways, this week has been interesting as the new storyline is how Brady is the closer and knows how to win and Manning may throw up gaudy numbers but has yet to show he knows how to put games away in the playoffs.
I just take a liking to the unheralded QBs making a bigger splash in the league (on the whole) that the top picks that are churned out yearly. (Going back now it's Ben Roethlisberger for the Steelers last year, Brady twice, Brad Johnson, Brady again, Trent Dilfer, Kurt Warner and then John Elway. Maybe later in the season I'll go back and pull draft positions for the QBs for the past 20 years, but looks back to the history of the league and there are plenty of late-round superstars. Why this happens is a source of constant debate, but it makes things a lot more interesting.
Regarding the Colts, there are as many theories as scoring records at this point - from Indy being tired in December after blowing teams out all season to a squad that fails to grasp the "team concept."
I don't care what happens as long as they keep losing.
(Photo from CNN.com)
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