Indianapolis owed it to the fans and their players to go for a perfect season

SCOTT JACOBS

Peyton Manning’s facial expression pretty much said it all.

Partly dumbfounded. Partly deflated. Uttery defenseless, he stood on the sidelines watching the perfect season he helped lead burn to ashes.  One must wonder what he was thinking as former Purdue standout Curtis Painter strapped on his helmet and jogged onto the field, the Colts holding onto a slight 15-10 lead, in a game that was far from secured.  Manning kept his helmet on, but the straps that securely fastened it to his head were off.  Once it became evident that the straps would be off for good, he watched the straps that held together what could have been an unforgettable season for his Colts come undone.

Indy has said all along that a perfect season was never its priority.  They’ve been adament that the Super Bowl was its target objective and anything else was not important to them.  Today they made that clear, although their timing was well, o who are we kidding a bit strange.  With a five point lead against what had been an offensively inept Jets team, Jim Caldwell decided to pull many of his starters, including Manning, leaving a perfect season in the hands of a man who had never taken a snap in the NFL.

From there it was simply inevitable that the Jets, who had everything to play for– including a playoff spot– were not going to lose.  Not because the Jets were the better team, but because the Colts had waived the proverbial white flag.  Painter not shockingly was awful, and looked exactly like a man who had zero NFL experience going into the game.  Fans booed mercilessly as the Colts lead turned into a deficit, and as the Jets began to pile on en route to what turned into a relatively comfortable win, Manning and his shell shocked team-mates could only look out into the distance wondering what could have been.

New York Jets 29.  Indianapolis Colts 15.

The NFL’s last perfect team had fallen.  But unlike the 1998 Denver Broncos who steamrolled to a 13-0 record before stumbling against a below average Giants team, this game wasn’t earned.  The Jets won’t be looked at as the team that stopped Indy’s incredible 23 game regular season win streak or their perfect 14-0 record.  How could they?  The Jets didn’t beat the Colts.  They beat Indy’s scrubs.

While the Colts played the second half like a preseason game, the Jets played it like a post-season game.  When Manning left the game, the Colts led 15-10.  After the clock struck zero on a run that the fighting blue horses clearly cared about, the Jets had reeled off 19 unanswered points, turning a good game, into the ultimate head scratcher.

You couldn’t help but feel cheated as an NFL fan to watch history die like this.

Who exactly does Jim Caldwell, Indy’s first year coach think he is, screwing with history like that?

The Colts may win the Super Bowl after it’s all said and done, but no matter what they do from here, fans and players will forever question Caldwell’s historic decision.

Yes, the Colts had nothing to play for.  They had locked up the best record in the AFC and were assured of homefield advantage throughout the playoffs.  But they were also undefeated.  It’s not everyday a team goes 14-0.  In the history of the NFL just two other teams had done it: the 1972 Dolphins and the 2007 Patriots.

Miami went undefeated.  New England fell a game short.

As for the Colts, well I guess we’ll never, ever know.

And that’s the killer in all of this.  We will never know if the Colts could have been the NFL’s first 19-0 team.  Clearly a perfect season has lost a little bit of its luster since New England failed to complete their’s in a stunning Super Bowl loss to that other New Jersey team.  Indy feels that a perfect romp throughout the regular season means nothing if you don’t win it all.  That’s fair.

But wouldn’t an unprecendented unblemished mark mean even more?  A Super Bowl victory is great.  No one would disagree.  But the chance to be perfect doesn’t come around every day.  So for a team to spit in the face of history like that just because they want to avoid injuries in “meaningless games down the stretch” just sucks.  It reeks.  It smells of bad karma.  It’s the ultimate slap in the face to their fans, who booed their heads off as the Colts walked off the field following their first loss.  Fans weren’t booing because Indy lost.  They were booing because of how their beloved Colts lost.

They had to have been confused.  For the entire first half the Colts played many of their starters including Manning, taking a 9-3 lead into the half.  Brad Smith opened the second half with an incredible 106 yard kickoff return for a touchdown, and just like that the Colts were behind.  But being behind has been nothing new for the Colts who have overcome second half deficits all season. Right on cue the incomparable Manning marched his team right down the field and Donald Brown hammered home the exclamation mark to give Indy the lead right back.  The drive took 4:35 and covered 81 yards, but as usual the Colts made it look effortless.

But then came a baffling two point conversation, in which the Colts elected to run the ball, despite the fact that their ground game had been less than impressive all year.  That would be one of many questionable decisions the Colts would make on this day.

The next one cost them their perfect season.

Painter began warming up on the sideline, but Peyton still had his helmet on.  After another listless offensive possession the Jets pinned Indy deep at their own 10, and that’s when it happened: out came Painter, Manning frozen on the sidelines.  From there the rest as we like to say, is history.  Or in the case of this game, could have been history.

The Colts may win the Super Bowl after it’s all said and done, but no matter what they do from here, fans and players will forever question Caldwell’s historic decision. Whenever another team goes 14-0, and who truly knows when that will be, they’ll flash that graphic on the screen of teams that got that far unblemished.  “The Patriots lost an unforgettable Super Bowl in the closing minutes to the Giants,” the commentator will say.  “The Dolphins ran the table.”  “As for the Colts well, they lost (technically) but we’ll never truly know what could have been.”

And that’s why Caldwell screwed up.  He robbed us of a team that could have made history.  The longest winning streak in NFL record books ended because he didn’t care.  A perfect season died because history took a back seat to organizational agreement that perfection meant nothing if you didn’t finish it off.

That’s what makes this so sickening.  Perfect or not the Colts should have gone for a once in a lifetime opportunity.  Instead they turned in the towel and left a giant asterisk in their wake.  It’s no big deal really.  All they did was put up a giant middle finger to NFL fans everywhere.

Photo: Getty

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