s h o t g u n r e v i e w s

The View from Peyton's Head: or, Excellence Floats
by Eric Barker

Late in the first half of last Sunday night's AFC Championship Game, when Peyton Manning threw an interception that resulted in the Patriot's second touchdown in fifty-three seconds, I roared a string of obscenities that I didn't even know I knew, and still I groped for more vitriol, reaching into past vernaculars. Finding little, the brain-mouth connection failing in my mad grief, I paced the room raging incoherently until I finally sat down again and slipped into a depression the size of Massachusetts and Indiana combined. In short, I was acting like my dad.

I am a football fan again.

More precisely, I'm an Indianapolis Colts fan; I have a team that I care about so much, it's a personal affront when they're getting beaten up, or don't execute with the perfection that they did…well, that other time. This hasn't happened to me in ages.

Indianapolis used to be a lonely place for football fans, though we've always been many around here. When I was a kid in the sixties, gridiron junkies were forced to cheer on regional teams that were semi-close geographically, like Chicago and Cincinnati, or stretching to include the Midwest, Green Bay and Minnesota. Since it was my father who taught me how to love football, as well as how to have a major depressive episode over it, I followed his lead and rooted for teams that had a quarterback drafted from an Indiana university (usually Purdue or Notre Dame). Even after the Irsays brought the Colts to Indy in 1984, real fellow feeling about them in the general populace was scarce until Peyton Manning came to town. It is Peyton and his Promise, nurtured by Tony Dungy, which have rippled over Indianapolis and altered our idea of ourselves.

Teams like the Manning-Dungy Colts do not come along very often, to any city. In fact, there's very little to compare them to, despite football's century-and-a-half long history, which is why the team is often undervalued by the national sports media. It seems the only standard for excellence among sports pundits is the Super Bowl, they shake it daily like a pack of dogs with an old ham bone, even though we all know the average Super Bowl is at best an anticlimactic circus, so over-hyped and -analyzed that everyone is exhausted into indifference by the halftime show. Nothing could live up to the reverential awe with which we've framed this particular national ritual; maybe one Super Bowl in, let's say seven, develops into the mythic clash of titans that we all seem to expect.

That could be one reason Peyton Manning has never found himself there. Not that he's too good for it, oh no, this guy wants it as badly as anyone ever has and we-his-fans want it for him (and ourselves) even more. But a major reason for admiring him, whether you love him or not, is in how Peyton wins at football, not whether he does or not. The cute little home movie CBS insists on playing every other game--taken when Manning was a child of six or seven, already decked out in a helmet and pads and yelling at the other kids because they aren't playing by the rules that he already knows so well, then running for a touchdown when no one is looking--that film reveals more than is intended or being said. Manning is a genius by virtue of fanatical work and perseverance; sure, he likes the attention and celebrity that comes with outstanding excellence, but he would be doing this whether he was noticed or not, the compleat football animal. A sweet, self-deprecating guy off the field, one of the game's great gentlemen before and after a contest, when it's time for football Peyton knows more than you, no matter who you are, and he's going to hit you with all of it so be ready. Even a living legend like Bill Belichick, the Patriots' three-time Super Bowl-winning coach, knows that if you play against this kid enough, he will whup you decisively and there's nothing you can do about it. What's galling is he shakes your hand, win or lose, like it was just another sandlot skirmish.

This isn't the fiery aggression of a playoff king, which is what it takes to advance to the Super Bowl when you're “young,” as Joe Namath once did (at 26), or that overrated punk John Elway, who refused to play in Indianapolis, got himself traded to Denver and immediately took the Broncos to the Super Bowl three times during the 80s without chalking up a win (sound personal? Hey, it's not my fault he couldn't win). Elway got it together after he grew up, or so the story goes, but he didn't win a Super Bowl until his fourth try, by which time he was an old man of 37.

A man's got to know his limitations. Peyton's biggest limitation is his laser attention to the very details that make him a devastating foe when everything is clicking: his relentless dissection of the opposing team's defense. While other QBs stand next to the head coach when they're not on the field, watching the progress of their own defense, waiting to get back out there, Peyton sits on the bench thumbing through his encyclopedic playbook, then pictures of what has just happened. The guy is openly obsessive, a worrier in a game that traditionally requires at least a little stoicism from its heroes -- like that always cool and collected Joe Montana, or Peyton's own, eminently patient head coach Dungy -- if not the devil-may-carelessness of a Namath, or the unnerving, deadly serenity of the Patriots' Tom Brady. Montana, Namath, Brady, these are guys who stay loose on the sidelines, then leap into the maelstrom and force results, throwing passes at your defense until your eyes bleed and you just want to go home and they trample you without mercy.

But Peyton isn't really looking to wear anyone down, not physically, anyway. He knows that will come in good time, but it will happen because he has made you think way more than you wanted to, just like he does, about every single play that he runs, over and over, tirelessly poking, prodding--bet you've never seen this one, guys, remember that one, oops, caught you that time, don't worry it was only five yards, i'n't this fun? Come on, hurry, let's do it again!

None of this is especially obvious on first inspection. If you've never played football or followed it much, a Colts game looks like any one else's football game: the offense comes out and does what they do, then the defense, there's a lot of action, points are scored, somebody wins. Peyton Manning looks like any other quarterback, maybe a little taller, certainly quirkier. He might make you wonder what he's up to, letting the play clock tick down to frickin' 1 every time the ball is snapped. Sometimes you think he's not going to make it, because he's constantly changing the call after everyone is set, shouting an incomprehensible string of secret football code, so intent on rearranging every play he could not possibly be aware of the clock. And so it goes, the ball snaps within the time limit, the play is run, and then it dawns on you that, hey, he's lining them up again, everyone's set, Peyton shouting orders the moment he sees how the defense has decided to come at him, or maybe he doesn‘t care because, snap, he's running the hurry-up offense--two, three plays boom-boom-boom--without giving his opponent any chance to think until it's too late.

Pretty soon it's apparent this is not any one else's football game, not anyone playing now, that is. If you have played or followed football, you know Peyton has not invented any of this, nor has he invented the dazzling variety of his attack once the ball is in play--short passes, long passes, run-here-run-there, all in unpredictable combinations on and on for as long as it takes, an undisputed master of manipulating everything, including the clock--but he's the one who has mastered it in our time.

On a pass play, he seems to have unlimited choices downfield between the great Marvin Harrison right, and the great Reggie Wayne left, and the great Dallas Clark down the middle, and the up and coming Ben Utecht anywhere, if you don't have enough to watch already, while on the ground he can alternate between the amazing rookie Joseph Addai, with his consistent patience at finding the right hole to slip through, or veteran Dominic Rhodes, who has matched Addai's agility throughout the postseason. And don't be too proud of yourself if you stop Rhodes or Addai on a couple of carries because Peyton will just send them out on an obvious play action fake and pass to one of them when you've let them go. Everyone gets their yardage on Peyton's watch.

How much of this is actually Peyton and how much is offensive coordinator Tom Moore or the unflappable Coach Dungy himself, only the team really knows, and it doesn't matter anyway. What's important, what has made Peyton a star for nine years despite never reaching the Hallowed Super Thing, is his ability to work with all of these men in creating as versatile a football team as anyone has ever seen. Dungy acquired Addai for him when the team lost the explosive Edgerrin James, and Peyton has fashioned a way for Addai to live up to his potential right out of the gate, which does not happen to every NFL rookie. It doesn't hurt, either, that Addai was a superb choice, a brilliant listener and team player who doesn't make the same mistake twice, as cool as Peyton is frantic.

After a season of Sundays watching Peyton and Company, you find yourself loving them all, even though Peyton is always the most visible and entertaining. The first time you see him launch one of those ohmygod Hail Marys--on first down!!!--maybe your heart does skip a beat, but after awhile you learn: ah, he's going to Marvin, he's going to Reggie, to Dallas, it's figuratively and literally in their hands now, their duty to arrive at the point where both they and Peyton know it will fall with alarming precision, and they do. Not always, but way more than the odds would ever suggest.

In contrast, the Colts defense is, let's just say unorthodox. Small and fast, as we're all sick of hearing by now, yes, they give up more yards running than any two other teams in the league. They had a mortifying stretch of bad games in the final third of the regular season, too, giving up hundreds of yards I don't even want to talk about. But in postseason, with the return to the secondary of Bob "Lightning Strike" Sanders, the defense has continually redeemed themselves against some very scary offenses.

Until last Sunday night, when none of us--not the Colts, not the fans, not even the Patriots, nor all those people who are invested in believing Peyton doesn't have it in him to win the Big One--none of us could believe what was happening.

I could hear the screams of indignation coming from other, surrounding apartments--whenever I closed my own mouth, that is. The whole city of Indianapolis has rallied around this cultural moment, the Colts' Big Season, in a way that makes me love my fellow man. I've seen it other places, but I've never seen it here, or maybe I just never noticed. But a thing like a championship game pulls a city together in interesting ways, tweaking its identity for the better. Especially in Hoosierland, where hunkered down practicality is the trademark attitude, along with the eternal query “What makes me think I'm so special?”, it means even people who are not football fans walk a little straighter, maybe smile to themselves more. Everyone ventures to talk about it. Hey, the Colts are doing good again. Although, anything can happen, best not put the cart before the…you know…

In spite of my adoration of Peyton and Company, I knew that Sunday night's game would be a real clash of the titans, because most conference championship games are. The Super Bowl gets the hype, but it's the NFC and AFC championships that are the heart-stopping, barn-burning, bone-crunching, edge-of-your-seat shoot-outs. I dug down into my deepest Hoosierness, which it turns out isn't very far from the surface, so I could be stoic on Peyton's behalf, but the first two quarters tested everyone's mettle, a slow boil toward complete meltdown. The Patriots were their usual efficient selves, but unlike when they played the Colts in the regular season, they seemed omniscient, able to read anything Peyton tried. It grew disheartening as he failed to come up with a decent pass pattern or running play, and then it just turned into sheer horror as the Patriots hit a string of superbly managed, obscenely lucky breaks.

I wasn't kidding above, about the fifty-three seconds thing: in that time, the Patriots managed to fumble at the goal line and recover in the end zone for their second touchdown of the half, skate free of an obvious face mask violation on the return kick, and push the Colts back until Peyton, rattled, was throwing desperation passes trying to get away from his own end zone, and that's when Assante Samuel intercepted him and scored, just like that. The game clock had only moved from 10:18 to 9:25, and the Patriots had gone from a 7-3 lead to 21-3.

It was almost enough to make anyone think the Patriots really were invincible gods, that we were all fools for believing anyone even deserved a chance to play them. I was drowning in helplessness. Peyton's next time on the field, he was sacked at his own five-yard line and then got a penalty for delay of game, his first all year and pretty damned suspicious too, coming when it did, injury to injury, and given the fact he had tried to signal a time out when it happened. This game is over, I thought. If it was going to be like this, Lord have mercy on whoever played the Patriots in the Super Bowl. Where was my faith? Well, I didn't know it at the time, but it turns out no one in the entire history of pro football has ever come back from an 18-point deficit in a championship game, but if someone had told me, I would have said, “Well, not surprised.” I mean, there's good reason to suppose such a thing.

I couldn't stop watching, though. I love the Colts too much. No one is that powerful and lucky all the time: the Brady-Patriots may have three Super Bowl rings, but excellence has a tendency to float, freely and impassively from place to place and person to person. Life is mostly hard work, whether you're Peyton Manning or the parking attendant, and you can prepare yourself for every contingency and still something will happen that no one could have foreseen, or someone else has all the luck for a few minutes. You cannot follow any blood sport, from the Olympics to Little League to Washington to Hollywood, without eventually realizing that human beings are only touched with whatever it is--genius, the spirit, excellence, the flow--intermittently. Some people can marshal it more often than others, some can do it seemingly at will, but this is mostly an after-the-fact illusion and it never lasts, for anyone.

The thing is, you must never give up. That is something my dad used to drum into me all the time, along with how to yell at football games on TV. So, I looked for signs that Peyton wasn't giving up, either, and I held on a little longer, for my own honor as much as anything. Who would know if I didn't keep watching? Certainly not Peyton. But I would know, win or lose. Personally, I can't abide fair weather fans who like to drop in on a career at its peak and root while a team is winning, as if they knew something about the obstacles that have been overcome, then lose interest when the excellence floats off somewhere else; the excellence followers.

As everyone now knows, Peyton and Company figured it out in the second half and made history, drawing a whole big radiating gob of excellence down out of the ether and bathing all their fans in its glow. When the Colts took the lead at last, with just 1 minute left on the clock, I leapt for joy and, for the first time in my adult life, yelled, “They're going to the Super Bowl!” about a team I truly love. I went outside and shared whoops and hollers with the neighbors. “We did it,” they were deservedly crowing.

We did it.

Forget the many ways that statement could be interpreted. There's been way too much interpretation of Peyton and the Colts the last few years, anyway, and far too little of Indianapolis, as usual. Here's how I interpret it: We, that is Indianapolis, consider the Colts family. The Colts belong to us now, we built them into what they are, which is a damned excellent pro football team. My neighbors were making no distinction between Peyton Manning and the Colts and themselves, a common phenomenon in fandom, and it can be a good thing. Anyway, I felt really good about it.

And yeah, Peyton got the five thousand-pound gorilla of playoff hell off his shoulders, and because he is ours, so did the collective “we” of Indianapolis. He also, for now, has slain the dragon of Super Bowl-centric snobbery in the national sports media. He claims he hasn't been listening, but only he knows what that's like--to be perpetually defined by a game you haven't played, in spite of surpassing every other measure of greatness in the sport. We should all be thankful it was him bearing that psychic pressure and not us.

In the meantime, speaking of shoulds, “they” should be careful about what they whine for, now that Peyton's found yet another way to grab onto excellence as it floats by.