Packers-Colts: Longing and Belonging and a Fistful of Prop Snow in the Face

If you've been following our all-time playdowns as closely as I am, you're a liar. I'm the freaking author. On the other hand, if you've been following the playdowns semi-closely, you know the Colts' advancing to the semifinals is a point of some contention. People say they shouldn't have beaten the Vikings in the round of 16, the Cowboys in the quarters, or even the Eagles in the first round. Well, they did. They did because while the defense is little more than average the offense is consistently far above average. Put another way, they have not one but several of the most dynamic offensive players in professional football history at a rate of at least one to every position. Tight end, John Mackey and Dallas Clark. Wide receiver, Ray Berry, Marvin Harrison, and Reggie Wayne. Running back, Eric Dickerson, Marshall Faulk, Edgerrin James, and Lenny Moore. Oh, and quarterback, Peyton Manning and Johnny Unitas.

If you're still unconvinced, here's the convincer. According to pro-football-reference.com, the Colts have 13 offensive players among the top 250 players of all time – two in the top 11 (including player No. 1), three in the top 20, four in the top 30. Just doing the math, if there are 32 teams, there should be eight players per team, four on offense and four on defense. Thirteen offensive players from a team means there are more than 200  percent more offensive players from the Colts than from an average team. Throw in five defensive players, and the Colts have 18 of the top 250 players of all time, where the average team has eight – and all that with no Art Donovan, no Bubba Smith, no John Mackey, or no Dallas Clark. That's why the Colts are here.

And if you're unconvinced about the value of Peyton Manning versus his Colts counterpart, Johnny Unitas, consider this: The Colts lost Unitas and nearly won to the Super Bowl with Earl Morrall. The Colts replaced Manning with the closest thing to Morrall the waiver wire had to offer, Kerry Collins, and have nearly won Andrew Luck. Oh, and despite playing most of his career behind Jeff Saturday and an assortment of grain-storage buildings, Peyton Manning is almost never sacked.

The all-time Colts have more than enough line to block for Manning and all that firepower, and just enough defense. So enough about whether they belong. They're there.

Let's compare the Colts to the Packers. The Packers have 14 players in the top 250, eight on defense. (Twelve if you stretch and include Ted Hendricks, Emlen Tunnell, Steve McMichael, and Hardy Nickerson, all of whom spent portions of the back ends of their careers in Green Bay.) So the modern Packers are at a decided disadvantage – and they'd stay at a disadvantage, if we pulled a National Football League and started football time with the merger of the All-American Football Conference.

Unfortunately for the Colts, their time starts with NFL Football Standard Time. The Packers start their football epoch B.C. (Before Cleveland), and by doing that, they up the skill level tremendously. The Packers add the greatest receiver of the prewar era (Don Hutson), three of the best backs (Tony Canadeo, Clarke Hinkle and Blood McNally), and two great linemen (Cal Hubbard and Mike Michalske). Throw those six players in the mix and the Packers have the edge, 19 to 18.

Close game, in other words. Both teams belong, and the game shapes up as an offensive powerhouse versus a strong, well-balanced defense.

Let's play this out.

The Colts get the opening kickoff and go three-and-out. The Packers get the punt and do the same. The Colts take over at their 37 after a decent Lydell Mitchell punt return and Manning goes to work. He hits Wayne, Moore, Berry, Faulk, and Mackey in succession, broken up by a couple of handoffs to Eric Dickerson. The drive takes the Colts to the Packers' 17, where it's third and five.

You know what Peyton Manning throws in these situations like you know your own name. Fade route to Reggie Wayne, touchdown, Colts up seven-zip.

Now it's the Pack's turn. With wide receivers like James Lofton, Sterling Sharpe and Don Hutson working against Bob Boyd and some sugar cookies, Bart Starr doesn't need to be Brett Favre; being Starr is plenty. Starr largely eschews the run in favor of out-routes and screens to Tony Canadeo. The Packers stretch and wedge and ply the ball down to the Colts' eight-yard line. A Gino Marchetti sack pushes the back to the 13. Starr figures if it worked for Manning, why not? He throws his own fade route to Hutson and the game is tied.

Fair enough. The Colts come right back. This time Manning, starting to feel the heat from Reggie White et al., makes better use of draws and screens with Faulk and Mitchell. He wriggles the ball down to the nine and lets Eric Dickerson take over from there. Three straight-and-I-mean-straight runs make it 14-7.

The Packers can't get into a shootout with the Colts, but they're willing to try. Starr continues to exploit the Colts' suspect secondary, in particular on a  57-yard Max McGee route with Hutson playing the part of ol' Max. Jim Taylor bashes it in from the five and we're tied.

Games sometimes veer from flurries of scoring to flurries of ... well, flurries, in the sense of tiny snowflakes being all the announcers have to talk about (except for Kevin Harlan, who never seems to talk about anything). In the case of this game and the Packers, it's Willie Wood, Charles Woodson, and Herb Adderley asserting themselves on the back end of the D and Willie Davis, Henry Jordan and Reggie White asserting themselves on the front. For the Colts, it's using Ted Hendricks as he was meant to be used – as a rogue force playing the whole field.

All of which is a long way of saying that Hendricks blocks a field goal as time expires in the first half, and the Packers and Colts go into halftime tied.

The teams come out in the second half to heavier snow – and if snow isn't Manning's kryptonite it's his triple-decker sauerkraut-and-toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce. After the Packers go nowhere after the second-half kickoff, Manning makes his first mistake. A pass steered in the direction of Ray Berry ends up in Adderley's hands instead. He returns the interception to the Colts' 39 and the Packers are in business.

It's not much of a business, as it turns out. A pass to Sharpe and a couple of Jim Taylor runs move the ball to the 30, where Chester Marcol is called on to not run with a blocked field goal, and he performs his task admirably, putting the Packers ahead 17-14.

At this point the snow takes over, and Eric Dickerson tries to. He bulls the ball downfield into field-goal range, leaving the kicking duties in the hands of long-time bad-weather kicker Adam Viniatieri.

Now is the time when poetic justice should assume power, and the Green Bay Ted Hendricks should block the kick of his former team, forcing the Baltimapolis Ted Hendricks back out on the field to stop the Packers, but that doesn't happen. Fred Carr doesn't even get an island-sized paw on it. Instead, Viniatieri simply pulls it left.

There's not much after that, fans of offense, lovers of the Washington-Baylor Alamo Bowl. Everyone sort of slips and mucks around for 10 minutes, Manning throws a pick to Dave Robinson, and Reggie White supplies the exclamation point with an exuberant belly-whopper of a sack. The gun fires and the Packers escape with a 17-14 win.

What a gyp! What a dirty, rotten gyp of a game! To have a absolute upset-in-the-making, one of the greatest pretend games in the entire history of made-up football games, ruined by the oldest trick in the book – a blast of stage snow in the face.

Okay, but think about it. The game is played in Green Bay in winter. It snows in Green Bay in winter. One of the greatest real games in history, the Ice Bowl, was played in Green Bay and was made great in part by the temperature. See, it gets cold in Green Bay in the winter. The game itself minus the temperature was no greater than a score of other games. Add the temperature and – voila! – instant classic. And a cup of instant coffee to go with it.

Besides, there's nothing that says the Packers wouldn't have won the game on a dry Green Bay field on a placid Green Bay winter's day. The superior Packers lines and a better Green Bay secondary were starting to assert themselves before the snow. Bart Starr didn't have a multitude of weapons to attack the colts with; he just had the right weapons. You don't need four great running backs and seven great wide receivers; two of the former and three of the latter work fine.

Of all the great players in this game, Sterling Sharpe really stands out. The receiver was on his way to a Hall of Fame career before the neck injury. As it stands, his seven-year numbers compare very favorably to Lofton, Steve Largent, Berry, and Bob Hayes. Sharpe pulls down 11 balls in this game for 117 yards. Hutson is fine – five catches for 87 yards and a TD – but no one matches up with Sharpe.

Dickerson has a nice game for the Colts – 97 yards rushing, mostly in the second half – but Manning's numbers fall off a ledge once the snow starts. He finishes 21 of 38 for 225 yards and two scores, but also an interception and three sacks. Manning's had better games, and that's part of the point. Most of Manning's better games have not occurred in big games in bad weather. This game is completely in character for Peyton Manning and the Colts – even if it took a silly vaudeville prop to do it.

So the stage is set for the last game in our all-time playdowns. Sorry, all you non-traditionalists and disavowers of the NFL's prewar past: It's Packers-Bears.

Let the railleries begin.

Rams vs. Pats: Good Now Vs. Previously Good

One of the unfortunate aspects of the current wave of sports narcissism – come to think of it, they’re all unfortunate aspects – is that it trivializes the past. This is totally true in basketball, slightly less true in football, and somewhat true in hockey and baseball, though baseball in particular will claim otherwise.

Compare this to non-sports history, which trivializes the present. Time will show that the 2000 election was a watershed moment in American politics, 9/11 a foreign-policy turning point and George Bush a barmy gink the likes of which haven’t appeared in a leadership role since George III, but right now feeling our way through with all three.

This whole dichotomy comes to the fore when dissecting the first-round matchup between the all-time CleLaStl Rams and the all-time BostoNe Patriots.

The Patriots have been the most successful NFL franchise over the last 15 years. The Rams have been feeling their way for most of the last decade.

Both teams have known fairly equal measures of success and failure over their history and are near .500 only by virtue of several sizable spurts.

The difference between the two teams is the timing of their spurts. The Rams’ spurt occurred in the ‘50s and ‘60s. The Patriots are spurting right now.

Because the Pats are spurting and sports memories are short the instantaneous response would be that the Patriots’ all-time team would wallop the Rams’ all-time team in a head-to-head matchup. And nothing would be further from the truth except for this book (sent my way by the ever-helpful John B. Seals): The Bush Boom: How a Misunderestimated President Fixed a Broken Economy.

The Pats are a curious team in that their recent successes have been accomplished largely without the aid of talent. Outside of Tom Brady, who is marvelous in much the same way that Penelope Cruz is marvelous (though not nearly as pregnant), what do the Pats bring to the table? Vince Wilfork? Several tight ends? Logan Mankins? BenJarvus Green-Ellis? New Boston is the definitive whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts team, because the sum of this team’s parts is null-point-seven.

What Bill Belichick PLC has accomplished is admirable, but admirable and five bucks get you a Fatte Latte at Starbucks in this man’s game. The bald fact is that when New England lines up its contemporary talent against the Rams’ historical talent, the Pats fall over dumbstruck.

For all their accomplishments, the Patriots have had four HOFers, none of them exactly top-shelf talent – John Hannah, Nick Buoniconti, Mike Haynes, and Andre Tippett. They have two more sure HOFers in the pipeline in Brady and Belichick.

The Rams trot out six HOFers on offense – Bob Waterfield, Eric Dickerson, Tom Mack, Tom Fears, Jackie Slater, and Elroy Hirsch – with one (Marshall Faulk) in the pipeline for sure and a possible in Torry Holt. They add five more HOFers on defense (Deacon Jones, Jack Youngblood, Merlin Olsen, Les Richter, and Night Train Lane) plus one on special teams (Ollie Matson). They augment this with a couple of possibles (Kevin Greene and Maxie Baughan) and perennial All-Pros in Ed Meador, Leroy Irvin, and Larry Brooks. Dick Vermeil may be no Bill Belichick, but he’s going to be an HOF coach someday.

Depth counts for a ton in these games, and the Rams are all about depth. Where the Pats have Steve Grogan backing up Tom Brady and then, oh all right, Drew Bledsoe, the Rams have Bob Waterfield – and behind him Norm van Brocklin, and behind him Kurt Warner, and behind him Roman Gabriel. The Rams bring in Lamar Lundy, Hacksaw Reynolds and Roger Brown as situational pass rushers; the Pats throw out Tedy Bruschi and Jesse Richardson into the meat grinder known as Dennis Harrah and Rich Saul. When the Rams go to five wides the five are Fears, Hirsch, Holt, Isaac Bruce, and either Henry Ellard or Harold Jackson; the Pats counter with Irving Fryar, Stanley Morgan, Terry Glenn, Randy Moss (all three-plus years of him), and, yes, Darryl Stingley. The fifth defensive back for the Rams – not a team abounding in D-backfield talent by any means -- is Jerry Gray or LeRoy Irvin; the Pats offer up – who? Don Webb? Tebucky Jones? The more you look at the Pats, the less there is to see.

Given the setup, the conclusion is inevitable. The Pats’ only real hope lies in bad weather at Foxboro, and when that doesn’t materialize the BostoNe bench hangs its collective head and the groundskeeper reattaches the mower deck. The Rams spread out the Patriots, tucking Marshall Faulk in the slot, and it becomes immediately apparent that all of King Belichick’s horses ain’t nearly enough. Mark Haynes does fine, but the other D-backs – Ray Clayborn, Ty Law, and Asante Samuel – struggle against the Giulietta Alfas and Lancias that are the Rams’ wideouts. Defensively Merlin Olsen et cie. dismantle the Pats’ undermanned O-line, shut down a running game that was asking for it, and force Tom Brady into throw after ill-advised throw, turning Captain Cool into Spec Four Favre.

Once the Rams get a lead, the Greatest Show on Turf makes its astonishing transformation into Ground Chuck, riding Eric Dickerson and his mates straight out through the fourth quarter and on to the next round.

This one’s a rout, over almost before it begins. Waterfield and van Brocklin go a combined 24-for-39 for 327 yards, four TDs and a pick; Hirsch, Holt, Faulk, and Fears each get one; the Rams’ backs rush for a combined 187, pushing the team-total-offense total over 500 yards. Brady throws for 292 with a TD and a pick, but it’s not nearly enough. Rams 48-10.