A vintage rivalry: New England Patriots and Indianapolis Colts jostle for supremacy in the NFL
[I write quite a bit of stuff that I don't publish for one reason or another. The following is a piece I wrote in spring 2007, after New England's brutal loss to Indianapolis Colts in the 2006 AFC Championship Game. With New England having completed the first ever 16-0 regular season and Colts sitting on the number two seed in the AFC playoffs I guess you could say it's still timely and topical.]
It has been a good decade for fans of the New England Patriots and the Indianapolis Colts. The two teams have combined to win four of the last six Super Bowls, and they have gone head to head against each other in the play offs in three of the last four seasons, twice in the AFC Championship game. When the Pittsburgh Steelers won the 2005 championship, they did so after beating the Colts in the AFC Championship game.
The Colts and the Patriots have been the class of the National Football League over the last four years and their rivalry rivals that of past great rivalries: The Steelers v the Dallas Cowboys in the 1970’s, and the horse race between the San Francisco 49′ers, Washington Redskins, and the New York Giants from 1981 to 1991, an era during which those three teams collectively won nine Super Bowls.
How much longer the rivalry between the Colts and the Patriots can be sustained is a question without obvious answers. The NFL is constructed to create parity between the teams, so that last year’s loser can be next year’s winner. While there is some turmoil in the standings every year, some teams have proven capable of remaining at or near the top of the league for years, while some teams are mired in mediocrity season after season. The Steelers have been contender almost every year since the mid 1990’s, the Philadelphia Eagles went to four straight NFC Championship games in the first half of this decade, and managed to make the play-offs again last season, in spite of losing its starting quarterback Donovan McNabb to injury.
It is too early to tell how this rivalry will be viewed in the decades to come. Perhaps it won’t be viewed as a rivalry at all, but as two distinct eras: The first one, 2001- 2004, dominated by the Patriots and the second one, starting in 2006, dominated by the Colts. Or maybe 2006 will be a blue blip in a decade of domination by the Patriots. Or perhaps both teams will rapidly decline.
Any of a very long list of things can go wrong and short-circuit a team’s quest to win the Super Bowl, but Colts and the Patriots each have four reasons to believe that they will have a good chance at making a run in the play-offs next season.
The owners
The Patriots have Robert Kraft who purchased the team in 1993 after spending almost his entire life as season-ticket holding fan. Had Kraft not bought the team, it probably moved have been moved to another locale. In his early years as an owner Kraft was a bit too much hands-on in the football part of the operation of the franchise, which contributed to head coach Bill Parcells’s leaving the team (given Parcells’s track record before and after his tenure with the Patriots he probably would have left anyway). After a few years of declining performance under the dual leadership of head coach Pete Carroll and personnel-chief Bobby Grier, Kraft brought in Bill Belichick to turn things around.
That alone was a masterstroke, but Kraft has also been a wildly successful owner outside of the football operations. He secured a stadium deal with the state of Massachusetts that allowed the Patriots to remain in Foxboro outside of Boston and make a bundle of money while doing so. He has become influential in shaping the NFL’s highly lucrative television contracts and he has poured substantial resources into expanding the team’s fan base and revenue streams.
The owner of the Colts, Jim Irsay, had a much easier path to becoming owner of a football team: He inherited it from his deceased father in 1997. Irsay, however, inherited not only a team but also a legacy of on-field underperformance and off-field shame: The team’s mid-night move from Baltimore to Indianapolis in 1984 is one of the low-lights in the history of the NFL. Jim Irsay also has to keep his team competitive while operating in one of the smallest markets in the league.
Irsay has made two decisions that have proved to be very wise: He hired Bill Polian as president in 1998 and Tony Dungy as head coach in 2002
The executives
Scott Pioli is the Patriots Vice President of Personnel, the man responsible for making sure the team’s roster is stuffed with players Belichick can win the next game with. Pioli is one of those football geeks that the head coach surrounds himself with, people who pretty much eat, breathe, and sleep football. They first met when Belichick was the defensive coordinator for the New York Giants, when Pioli was still in college.
Pioli was later hired by Belichick when he became the head coach of the Cleveland Browns in 1991 and he was the coach’s first hire after he became the head coach of the New England Patriots in 2000. Belichick and Pioli get along very well and are both deeply committed to the Patriots. Both also appear to enjoy working for the Kraft’s, and when Pioli was given permission to interview with the Giants this year for the General Manager position he politely turned down the opportunity.
Pioli helped salvage a roster that was laden with athletic-looking people who just weren’t very good football players after years of poor draft decisions by his predecessor Bobby Grier. Under Pioli’s stewardship the Patriots have drafted several very good to great players, including defensive ends Richard Seymour and Ty Warren, nose tackle Vince Wilfork, center Dan Koppen, right guard Logan Mankins, wide receiver Deion Branch, tight Daniel Graham, and, of course, quarterback Tom Brady.
Bill Polian is the President of the Indianapolis Colts and one of the most successful executives in the NFL. The Buffalo Bills made four straight, though losing, trips to the Super Bowl with Polian as General Managers. In the mid-1990’s he took the expansion Carolina Panthers to an NFC Championship game. As president of the Colts he has so far managed to maintain and improve a team that has been contending for league championship for a half-dozen years or so.
Polian has quite a temper. He has reportedly made a nuisance of himself in press boxes in stadiums around the league where decorum requests guests to not engage in partisan behavior. Last year Polian reportedly attacked an employee of the New York Jets. While the Colts denied the incident had taken place, the Patriots, who use just about anything they can to needle opponents, asked the NFL to provide security for the Patriots’ staff when the Bills played New England in Foxboro. Polian has also vigorously lobbied the league’s rules committee to ensure a stricter enforcement of pass interference and illegal use of hands rules. Polian felt the Patriots had used lax enforcement of the rules to disrupt the Colts’ passing game in the 2003 and 2004 playoffs.
The coaches
Bill Belichick was just about born to be a football coach. His father was an assistant coach in the NFL before accepting a job with the Naval Academy and young Bill grew up watching game film and scouting Navy’s opponents.
Belichick’s first job in the NFL was actually with the Colts, then in Baltimore, for whom he worked as pretty much the lowliest of assistants, making $25 a week. Belichick won two Super Bowls as the defensive coordinator for the Giants. He had some success as head coach for the Cleveland Browns, but alienated many fans with his decision to bench longtime quarterback Bernie Kosar in 1993. The whole team fell apart when it became known that the club would move to Baltimore. Belichick reunited with Parcells in New England as defensive coordinator, and then followed him to the Jets. After Parcells retired in 1999, Belichick was made head coach but then retired by jotting the famous note that read “I resign as HC of the NYJ.” Instead he was hired as HC of the NEP.
Belichick cleared house and restocked the team roster with Pioli’s help. After going 5-11 in 2000, the Patriots went 11-5 the following year and somehow managed to win Super Bowl in spite of having one of the weakest teams ever to win the Lombardi Trophy. One of Belichick’s many strengths is his ability to take away what the opposing team does best. Another is to find and exploit its weaknesses. While he’ll tweak his defense anyway necessary to win a game, his starting point is the basic 3-4 defense, and his goal is to stop the running game and pressure the quarterback. Probably no coach in the league can match his ability to successfully plug rejects, cast-offs and has-beens into the lineup.
Belichick is often criticized for not being quotable the way colorful coaches like Jim Mora (”Play offs?”) and Dennis Green (”Go ahead and crown their asses”) are. Belichick’s list of stock answers include exciting material such as “It is what it is,” “I’m just trying to win a football game,” and “We need to do everything better.” He will, however, talk at length about pretty much any aspect of football, especially at Wednesday and Friday press conferences during the season, when he is in between games so to speak.
Tony Dungy made his into the coaching ranks by way of playing in the NFL. He won the Super Bowl as a member of the Steelers in 1978. He got his first head coaching gig with the almost chronically inept Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 1995 after a stint as Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator. He turned the Bucs into a fearsome defensive force that made the Cover 2 a widely popular defense in the league. While Dungy’s Buccaneers racked one impressive season after another they never made it to the Super Bowl and he was fired after the 2001 season.
Irsay immediately offered Dungy the job as Colts head coach. It seemed like a perfect match: The Colts already had one of the most explosive offenses in the league, but its defense was one of the worst. In spite of Dungy’s background and defensive expertise, the Indianapolis remained hobbled for several years under his leadership by a weak defense. It was until the second half of the 2006 season that the defense gelled enough to not sink the offense.
Dungy is quite a contrast to Belichick, and no doubt a more widely like person. He is soft spoken, virtually never curses, rarely if ever raises his voice and is sure to show opponents reasonable professional courtesy. Belichick, on the other hand, can be quite petty in his dealings with people, doesn’t mind rubbing it in on vanquished foes and is said to have a very foul mouth in team meetings. Dungy is properly dressed while Belichick dresses with all the panache of a penniless and homeless man.
I don’t mean any of that as a criticism of Belichick. His style clearly works for him and I personally, as a Patriots fan, don’t really care about what people think about him. Heck, I barely care about what I think about him. As he might say, all he’s trying to do is coach a football team. That’s all he’s trying to do. If that means tossing F-bombs in the locker room, looking like a bum, and running up the score on the Jets, then so be it.
I would no doubt feel differently if I had been a Jets fan, or really a fan of any team other than the Patriots.
The quarterbacks
Tom Brady v. Peyton Manning is almost literally the story of the Pauper and the Prince. Manning is just about NFL royalty, born to be a quarterback the way Belichick was born to be a coach.
Manning was the first player to be drafted in 1998 and he reached the upper echelons of quarterbacks after a rough rookie season. He has thrown for more than 4,000 yards in seven of his nine seasons, and, amazingly, he hasn’t missed a single start in the NFL. He’s been to seven Pro Bowls and won two league MVP titles (one shared, one outright).
Manning is extremely competitive, has a strong arm, tremendous accuracy, a great football mind and a tireless work ethic. He has also matured as a quarterback over the years, become more patient, more willing to take the easy yards instead of chasing the bigger, riskier plays.
Brady was picked in the sixth round in 2000, the 199th player selected overall that year. He was thrown into action in the second game of the 2001 season after the starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe was knocked out of the game. Brady went on to lead the Patriots to Super Bowl victories in 2001, 2003, and 2004.
Brady has killer accuracy and a tremendous understanding of the game. Like Manning he is insanely competitive and a hard worker. While Manning has had all-star players on offense, Brady has been supported by a strong defense that frequently enabled him to win close games.
At first there was nothing
The Colts and the Patriots played in the same division, the AFC East, from 1984 to 2002. Both teams were fairly mediocre most of those seasons. Patriots made it to the Super Bowl once, where they were blown our by the Bears, and the Colts lost a thrilling AFC Championship game to the San Diego Chargers. But usually both teams were pretty bad. In one particularly forgettable season the Patriots only victory came against the Colts and I think the Colts returned the favor a couple of years later. The Colts once ran the wishbone offense against the New York Jets in a Monday Night Football game. That is about as low as it gets in professional football.
The Patriots started their climb out of perennial mediocrity when Kraft bought the team, drafted Drew Bledsoe and hired Parcells. Things turned around for the Colts when Irsay took over in 1997.
Dungy’s quest to make the Super Bowl as head coach of the Bucs was cut short twice by the Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles themselves made it to the NFC Championship game in four consecutive seasons (2000 - 2004) but managed to advance to the Super Bowl only once and was then defeated by the Patriots. As noted above, the Bucs inability to overcome the Eagles was a major reason for why Dungy lost his job and ended up with the Colts. The Panthers made it back to the Super Bowl before Polian did, in 2003, where they lost to the Patriots. New England Patriots won its first Super Bowl title by defeating the Saint Louis Cardinals, whose defensive coordinator Lovie Smith was a former linebackers coach for Dungy at Tamp Bay, and who later became head coach of the Chicago Bears, with whom he lost to Dungy’s Colts in Super Bowl 41.
