Here, I'll explain exactly what I mean. I wrote this for Stampede Blue (a blog I used to write for).
Obviously the story of the year is Peyton's injury/lack of recovery/recent surgery. Truthfully, this season is dead to me now. But before you decide to attack my fandom, hear me out.
To me, there is no silver lining to this season, no matter what happens (that last part you can take literally). This team does not deserve to win without Peyton. Considering everything he has done for this team, it just wouldn't be right for this team to have anything that resembles success without Peyton on the field. Obviously, it's a major pipe dream to consider the possibility of this Colts team making the playoffs, let alone winning the Super Bowl. But for the sake of argument, if the day comes that up is down, hell freezes over, pigs fly, and I'm baby Jesus reincarnated, I wouldn't feel a sense of happiness about the success of the Colts. If what I just said resembles blasphemy to you, then I guess my Colts fanboy card should be revoked.
This might sound absurd, but the best analogy I could come up with is the feeling of knowing your spouse cheated on you. It would be absolutely insulting for this team to finally come together and work as one in the absence of the guy who gives them a fighter's chance week in and out. How many game-winning/game-saving/game-tying drives has Peyton orchestrated during his career? How many times has this team needed that proverbial get out of jail free card because the defense decided to shit the bed one Sunday afternoon? Or all those years when the special teams units were basically nonexistent? Even in games that Peyton struggles mightily (re: 2007 Chargers game), the dude still manages to find some way to get the team in position to win the game, or at least a chance to not lose it, only to be let down time and time again by the rest of the team (re: Vinatieri turning into shankapotomous, 3rd and 1, 2005 divisional game, etc etc etc).
It's almost as if the team owes him a little something more than their sympathy and kind words. And the only thing I can think of is somehow everyone enters self-preservation mode and pretend like this season never happened. I don't mean to jinx anyone on the team so I'll refrain from naming specific players, but how shitty would it be for a key player on this team to go down with a season/career ending injury in a meaningless year?
As for the quarterback situation, holy cow what a mess. Allow me to break down my assessment of this quagmire.
It's quite obvious that the Colts didn't expect Manning to go down this hard, otherwise Kerry Collins wouldn't be the starter right now. Kerry Collins was brought in merely as a band-aid to slow the bleeding of this team. The Colts FO was hoping that Peyton (the stitches) would return shortly to finally sew up this gaping wound up to prevent the team from bleeding out. Obviously with Peyton's complications he wasn't able to return and needed a new surgery. So the remedy to the injury with this team (the stitches) is lost, nowhere to be found. And as the band-aid, Kerry Collins is holding on as best he can. Unfortunately, the adhesiveness of a band-aid is not the greatest in the world. And what happens to a band-aid when the adhesive gets wet? It loses it's stickiness and becomes useless. Now, if you've somehow kept up with where I'm going with this, the band-aid losing it's adhesion is a clever metaphor for the fact that neither the Colts FO, Kerry Collins, nor the team expected Kerry Collins to be used for an entire season. They expected that Peyton would be back within a relatively short period of time and all would be well in the world, ala the Steelers and Ben Roethlisberger last season. But that's obviously not what's happening. This wound is going to keep bleeding, and bleeding, and bleeding, until the Colts die and their season is done come week 17. It's inevitable. If a human loses too much blood, they will die. The Colts without Peyton is like a guy on deathrow, it's only a matter of time.
The question is, what do the Colts do now that they know their fate for this season? There are two options as far as I can see:
Option One: Give Collins the keys to the Ferrari and watch him drive it like Captain Slow from Top Gear UK.
Despite what some extremely optimistic Colts fans have to say, Kerry Collins is an average quarterback. He has always been average. I'm not just saying that, his record speaks for itself. When you have an average quarterback you have an average offense. When you have an average offense, you aren't winning a damn thing. This league is a passing league. The old adage that defense wins championships is a thing of the past. Great passing offenses win championships, as mgrex has proven time and time again. And with Kerry Collins at the helm, the passing game of the Colts is maybe half as good as with Peyton. And using maybe is being very generous.
This team has no running game for KC to rely upon like the Titans have. And even if the running game was mediocre and not completely horrible, the game plan for opposing defenses would still be the same; stack the box, dare Collins to beat you with his arm, watch him fail miserably, profit. It's as simple as that.
So that begs the question: why start KC if we know it will do no good? That's a good question, and it leads me directly into option two (my personal preference).
Option Two: Start Painter.
Yeah I said it, start Painter. I'm sure all five of you who will ever read this are asking yourself, "Why in the world would he want to start Painter?" And that's that wrong question to be asking yourself. The question you should really be asking yourself is, why not?
Hopefully by now you've come to grips with the idea that the season is pretty much a wash and that nothing good can come of it, except one thing, and that is we can finally find out how good or bad Painter really is.
Before I go on any further, I want to say that I think Painter has be given a raw deal for the most part. In reality, he hasn't had that much exposure in real game time situations, and 2009 doesn't count. During the infamous week 16 debacle, Painter wasn't given a chance to play in a meaningful game, he was thrown to the wolves. I think the idea of throwing Painter out there against the league's best defense (at the time) was worse than actually giving up on the *undefeated season (I'm on record as one of the few who didn't give a crap about the Colts going undefeated and actually predicted to a T how the season would play out).
The thing the bothers me most about the Painter situation isn't that he's still on the team, or how horrible he's looked thus far in his career. My problem with him is two fold.
1. For whatever reason, the Colts decided that they had to use a sixth round pick on him in the 2009 draft. Apparently, their line of thinking led them to believe that if they hadn't drafted him at that very spot Painter would somehow not be around in the seventh round or as an undrafted free agent. They believe that he was a good enough player to draft, not just sign off the street. The pick number and round are irrelevant in my opinion. If you get drafted, you are to be considered a player with at least marginal talent, making you worthy enough to be selected out of a pool of hundreds of other players. When a team drafts a player, whether it's the first or last round, they obviously thought this guy was pretty good. They had to, because they know everyone who follows the NFL would see who they selected. Being drafted means something. It doesn't mean every player selected is going to be a great, that's just crazy talk. But it does mean that the player selected has been deemed worthy by an NFL team.
2. My second issue with the Painter situation is the fact that the Colts have kept him around for the past three seasons as Peyton's backup, only to strip that away from him when Peyton actually goes down in favor of someone who knew nothing about the offense at all. What the hell is that all about? Maybe the FO doesn't realize this, I don't know, but by keeping Painter around the FO is saying Painter knows what he is doing, has talent, is capable of being Peyton Manning's backup, and deserves a roster spot. But that's not what they've shown recently. Basically what they've done is make all of those aforementioned statements with their non-verbal communication, only to redact it when the time comes to put their money where their mouth is. Either you think the guy is good or you don't, it's as simple as that.
And that's why I think they should start him over Kerry Collins. I mean why not? The worst thing that could happen is the Colts struggle mightily, which is already going to happen anyway. If the Colts start Painter, by this time next year the Colts will either have one hell of a backup quarterback (finally), or a 53 man roster without a dude named Painter on it (finally).
That's all I have for now, aloha.
KR
yes...
