The Indianapolis Colts beat the New York Jets by a big score, 30 - 17 but it didn't look that way at halftime. As Braylon Edwards stretched a beautiful pitch from Jets rookie QB Mark Sanchez into a touchdown and a 10-7 lead over the Indianapolis Colts I couldn't help but think "Oh my, he's bound to collapse of exhaustion since his team didn't rest him down the stretch for the playoffs".
The Colts, who always appear so invincible going into the playoffs have been, with one exception, "vinced" every playoff campaign short of the Superbowl in this long Peyton Manning era. To avoid the Noid again, new Head Coach Jim Caldwell forsook a run at a perfect season and pulled his star quarterback and many starters early in what became their first loss in game 14 against... ummm, I forget... oh yeah, against the Jets! This strategy did have the effect of letting the Jets, who's season was given up for dead a week before by their own coach, into the playoffs. It also blocked the Steelers, who also won out their last three games only to miss the playoffs due to tiebreakers. One shouldn't be too hard on Colt's coach Caldwell for using this "lose to win" strategy to spare and repair his top guns. Noted football genius Bill Belicheck often presumed football genius Marvin Lewis both bought into the same theory after they locked up playoff spots. Both Patriots and Bengals were rudely dumped in the first round of playoffs by wildcard teams who, one must presume, didn't have the luxury of resting players down the stretch. Puts a different spin on genius dunnit?
Clearly these coaching geniuses never watch Survivor on TV. Seemingly every year a team of reality schmucks takes a dominating lead over another team of reality schmoes. Seeing an insurmountable lead they decide it would behove them to take the foot off of their opponents neck long enough to torpedo an unpopular or inconvenient teammate or settle a score. Without fail the team that pauses to take a breath or settle a score ends up losing out, chemistry shattered and spirit broken.
The football gods clearly decided to forgive the Colts rookie coach at halftime. Probably because he already sacrificed a potential perfect season on the alter of foolish football canards. Keep it up Mr Caldwell and you might become a football genius too, just like Marvin Lewis.
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