Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay. Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports
Patriots fans had to be chuckling this week in the run-up to the Sunday night game between the Broncos and Patriots.
Colts owner Jim Irsay decided to vent his frustration over the fact his team managed to advance to “only” two Super Bowls while winning one during the Peyton Manning era in Indianapolis.
Irsay told USA Today, “You make the playoffs 11 times, and you’re out in the first round seven out of 11 times. You love to have the Star Wars numbers from Peyton and Marvin (Harrison) and Reggie (Wayne). Mostly, you love this.” When he said “this,” Irsay flicked his Super Bowl ring.
The funny part to Patriots fans had to be the part where he also said, “Brady never had consistent numbers, but he has three of these. Pittsburgh had two, the Giants had two, Baltimore had two and we had one. That leaves you frustrated.
Brady “never had consistent numbers?” Seriously? Has Irsay been so busy tweeting that he wasn’t paying attention to Brady’s four, 4,000-yard-plus seasons including his 5,235-yard year in 2011? Or that the Patriots’ quarterback entered the 2013 season with over 46,000 passing yards? Or that his streak of consecutive games with a touchdown pass, the second-longest in league history, was recently stopped?
Perhaps the true irony is that when Brady and the Patriots had their own Star Wars numbers (50 touchdown passes in 2007 and that 5,235-yard year), they got to the Super Bowl, but lost.
Irsay lamented the one-and-done playoff experiences for the Colts while noting Baltimore’s two Super Bowl titles. Of course, there were 11 seasons between those championships and the second one came last season when Manning was gone from Indianapolis. In those intervening 11 years, the Ravens failed to make the playoffs four times and were one-and-done three times, with one of the losses … drum roll, please … to the Colts.
The true reality is that it’s hard to win in the NFL, especially so in the post-season because the best teams are at the party. In the seven losses for the Colts in those one-and-done years, four were by four points or less and two were by six points with one of those in overtime.
The other coincidence is that last year, in their first playoff appearance post-Manning, the Colts were one-and done, and lost by 15 points to Baltimore, a team the Manning-led Colts played twice in the playoffs, winning both.
Finally, Irsay should be extolling the Manning years rather than noting how the Colts fell short too often for his liking. The ultimate irony is that Manning getting hurt when he did led to a two-win season and the first overall pick in the draft, landing them Andrew Luck and a seamless transition from one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time to one that appears to be destined for greatness.
With two or three more wins in 2011, Irsay might not be counting his lucky stars right now.
Time to Cuddle?
San Francisco 49ers linebacker Patrick Willis was shocked when word got back to him about a supposedly strange thing he said this week while on a conference call with the Tennessee media.
The 49ers are preparing to play the Titans, and Willis was asked about his former teammate, tight end Delanie Walker, who signed with Tennessee as a free agent last March. Willis noted that he and Walker would sit on the same row during the team’s chartered flights to road games.
Said Willis, “Now when I fly, I don’t have him by my side to laugh with and cut up with.”
Unfortunately, whoever transcribed the conference call for the media, didn’t quite get it right and had Willis saying, “Now when I fly, I don’t have him by my side to laugh with and cuddle with.”
As Garry Coleman often said on Different Strokes, “Whatcha talkin’ bout Willis?” Walker might have been thinking the same thing until he found out what Willis really said.
For his part, Willis was stunned it happened. He said, “I heard that word. Cuddle? What? … That’s one more reason why you have athletes who say I don’t want to talk to the media. It’s stuff like that.
“Whether they misheard or not, that should be one of those things you just don’t put in there unless you know for sure. If there’s any doubt whether you might not have heard it or you thought you heard it … come on, man. They needed something to tickle their feathers, so they used that.”
Not Liking Thursdays
The Cardinals lost to Seattle Thursday night, and Arizona coach Bruce Arians isn’t a fan of the Thursday games. And he said that before the game. The Cardinals played on the road at San Francisco and then home against Seattle – two division games – in the four-day quick turnaround.
He said, “I don’t think it’s really fair to the players, especially the veteran players. Veteran players, their bodies, this is really, really hard on them. So many times over the course of the last 10 years, I’ve seen guys that could not play on Thursday that could play on Sunday and that’s really hard on a football team.”
49ers wide receiver Anquan Boldin is simply confused. While saying he supports some of the things the league has done in the name of player safety, Boldin then said, “But there are some things that just don’t make sense to me. I mean if you’re so concerned about player safety then why do you have every team in the league playing on Thursday night when they just competed on a Sunday, knowing how difficult it is for guys to get back to being healthy after playing on Sunday? Guys really don’t feel like they’re back till probably Thursday or Friday to prepare for that next week.”
Noting that he believes the emphasis on safety is simply the NFL “covering their butt,” Boldin concluded, “The league can say they’re doing things to protect guys, but I’m not one of the guys buying it.”
As former fullback Michael Robinson once said of playing on Sunday and then Thursday, “Go get in a car accident and go try to play a few days later. That’s how it feels.”
