Inside the NFL
Inside the NFL: Manning up to the task, has Colts surging again
The Indianapolis Colts stand 11-4. If they did not have Peyton Manning they might be 4-11.
Manning is getting this voter’s pick for the Associated Press Most Valuable Player award, regardless of what happens the last two weeks of the season.
The Colts have played much of the year without five starters on defense. They rank 31st in rushing. Their offensive line has been banged up with various injuries to center Jeff Saturday, guard Ryan Lilja and tackle Tony Ugoh. Manning himself has overcome offseason knee surgery that kept him out of action all summer.
Yet this has been one of the great seasons in Colts history, even though they are not as good as they were in any of the previous three seasons. Manning has directed them on winning fourth-quarter drives in seven games this year.
Two games stand out as the most remarkable:
• Week Two: The Colts were forced to start rookie seventh-round pick Jamey Richard at center and former undrafted Canadian college baller Dan Federkeil at guard against the Vikings’ Williams Wall. The Colts rushed for 25 yards on 19 carries. But Manning threw for 311, brought them back from a 15-0 hole and hit Reggie Wayne on a 20-yard pass on third-and-9 with 25 seconds left to set up the winning field goal.
• Week 12: The Colts faced fourth-and-1 at the Chargers’ 48 with the score tied, 20-20, and 26 seconds left. Instead of a QB keeper, Manning faked the run, bought extra time in the pocket and hit Marvin Harrison on a 14-yard pass to set up the winning score. An incomplete pass would have put the Chargers one play away from a field goal try.
“That’s probably the ultimate play to me,” coach Tony Dungy said. “It tells what type of confidence we as a coaching staff and as a team have in him.”
If he wins, this would be Manning’s third MVP.
Gregg packing
Jaguars defensive coordinator Gregg Williams is expected to part ways with coach Jack Del Rio at the end of his one-year contract with the team, ESPN’s Chris Mortensen reported last weekend. Del Rio said it’s up in the air but didn’t say Williams is back. Williams has presided over a Jags defense that ranks 16th in yards allowed and has dropped from 10th to 19th in points allowed.
But it’s hard to blame Williams. The Jags’ defensive talent has slipped. The lack of a pass rush has caught up to them. Several key players ( Mike Peterson and Paul Spicer) are showing their age. Marcus Stroud is missed. They brought in Drayton Florence to start at corner this year, and he’s a backup. There are not enough playmakers, so Williams has not been able to blitz as much.
The Jags gave up 50 points in the last five quarters of last season. So defensive chief Mike Smith, who left for Atlanta, got out at the right time. Aside from that, two strong personalities like Williams and Del Rio probably are not the best fit. If Tennessee defensive chief Jim Schwartz gets a head job, Williams could go back to Jeff Fisher and the Titans.
Winfield rewarded
A much-deserved and overdue reward went to ex-Bill Antoine Winfield when he was named to his first Pro Bowl. It’s his 10th season, and he has been outstanding for Minnesota the past four years. He finally made enough highlight plays to get a trip to Hawaii. Winfield keyed the Vikings’ win over Carolina in Week Three with a sack, strip, fumble recovery and touchdown all on the same play. He keyed the win over New Orleans on a Monday night game with a blocked field goal return for a touchdown. He also had a sack-strip-fumble recovery in that game.
The 5-foot-9, 180-pound Winfield is, pound for pound, one of the best tacklers in the NFL, just as he was for five seasons in Buffalo.
“This is one of the best days of my life,” Winfield said after getting the Pro Bowl news.
London Dangerfield
On the loser’s side of the Pro Bowl derby was ex-Bill London Fletcher, who has had another outstanding year for Washington’s fifth-ranked defense.
Fletcher, however, was beaten out at inside linebacker by San Francisco’s Patrick Willis and Carolina’s Jon Beason. The New York Giants’ Antonio Pierce was named the first alternate. Fletcher has led his teams in tackles each of his 10 seasons as a starter and leads the NFL in tackles this decade. He wasn’t happy.
“I don’t garner a lot of attention, but when you turn the film on each and every week, each and every play, I’m gonna show up,” Fletcher said. “That’s what I do. My career has been Hall of Fame worthy. But some coaches and some players get caught up in the hype reading the newspapers or listening to some national TV game as opposed to watching the game with no sound. It’s some BS. I put myself up against anybody playing the position, anybody.
“To have it happen, year after year after year after year, you can’t tell me . . . an eight-time alternate, c’mon man,” said Fletcher.
You’ve got to feel for Fletcher, and he should have made it some of those seasons. But this year, as good as London has played, you would not trade Willis or Beason for Fletcher.
Favre on Holmgren
Mike Holmgren coaches his last home game in Seattle today against his old QB, Brett Favre. Holmgren is 12th on the all-time victory list for coaches with a regular-season record of 160-110. He has been in Seattle 10 years, seven of them winning seasons. He has taken his teams to the playoffs 12 out of 17 seasons. Here’s what Favre, now of the Jets, said this week about Holmgren’s introduction at Green Bay in 1992:
“The first team meeting, I’ll never forget. I didn’t know Mike Holmgren really from any other coach. He scared not only me, but he scared our team. He said, ‘I’ll run half you guys off, or we’ll run half you guys off, but I got to build a team. In time, half of you will be gone. I want guys who are winners, who believe in winning, and believe in doing it a certain way.
“And I can promise you this,’ he said in his first meeting, ‘we’re not going to talk Super Bowl around here, because you guys have been crappy for a long time. But we’re going. And we’re going soon. Now, if you want to be on board, be on board. But if you don’t want to do it the way I want to do it, you’re going to be gone, and you know who you are.’
“And he was like that every week. I mean, he’d come in with a play on Fridays in the red zone, and he would say, ‘This is a touchdown. I promise you.’ And we believed it.”
Tasker protege
Arizona’s Sean Morey made the Pro Bowl as a special teamer for the first time in his eight-year career, and he credits Steve Tasker with helping him succeed in the NFL. Morey, a 5-10, 180-pounder who starred as a receiver at Brown, was a seventh-round pick of the Patriots in 1999. He said upon entering the NFL, he called Tasker and interviewed him by phone for about an hour.
“I wrote verbatim, word for word, everything he said,” Morey said. “He coached me up on all the different punt rushes he used, different coaching points, how to give yourself an edge. It was really a big help, especially at that time in my career, when I knew little.”
Morey said one of Tasker’s strongest tips was: “Always do more than the coaches expect you to do.”
Morey is in his second year with the Cards. He was special teams co-captain in Pittsburgh in 2005 and ’06.
Onside kicks
• It’s going down to the wire in the chase by Atlanta punter Michael Koenen to set the 16- game NFL record for fewest punt return yards allowed. He’s now up to 42 yards allowed, after being at only 14 three weeks ago. The record of 53 is held by the 1991 Bills and punter Chris Mohr. Atlanta plays its last two games in domes, at Minnesota today and at home versus St. Louis next week. Ten of the Falcons’ games will have been in domes this year. The Falcons lost outstanding gunner Antoine Harris to injury two weeks ago.
• Astute fan Dave Meinzer points out that the AFC has pulled ahead of the NFC in interconference games, 29-28-1. The NFC has not won the regular season against the AFC since 1995. Last year it was a tie, 32-32. The AFC won five straight years from 2002 to ’06, including a 40-24 bulge in 2006.
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