SportsFullCircle

Most Indianapolis Colts fans are extremely disappointed in their coach’s decision to rest their starters in the second half of what ended up being their team’s first loss of the season to the New York Jets 29-15.

As a Jets fan, I’d like to thank them for it; as a football fan, however, I’m as mad as they are.

Now, I know that the Jets needed this win just to keep their slim playoff hopes alive on a day where every game that they needed to go their way did.  The Broncos and Ravens, who held the two AFC Wild Card spots at the day’s beginning, would have created a Russian Roulette’s worth of situations with losses.  Even then, they also needed both the Dolphins AND the Jaguars to lose.  That scenario meant that for the only time this year, Jets fans were actually rooting for the Patriots.

By the opposition, done, done, done, and done.

So all the Jets needed to do was rip history from the hands of Peyton Manning.  Hell, beating Peyton Manning is hard enough; there’s a reason that in his only trip to the SuperBowl so far, he left with hardware - the ring AND the MVP award.

Now, as any fan will tell you, a win is a win is a win, etc.  But this one felt a little hollow.  While Manning and the first team was in the game, the Jets gained the lead once - and they got it right back on the ensuing possession.  They definitely made sure that the Colts had something to think about…but something tells me that when Donald Brown ran in for the touchdown with 10:13 left in the third quarter, Coach Caldwell thought that the five-point lead against the Jets would suffice with the second team.

Pulling your first team with less than five minutes left in a blowout win or loss is one thing.  But in the third quarter?  Bad move.

Against a hungry team?  Worse move.

Against the league’s best defense and ground game?  Terrible move.

With a rookie who hadn’t played one snap in the National Football League prior?  Even worse.

But to do it with an undefeated season on the line?  With a chance to be one of two teams in NFL history to do it?  That was the worst move of all…and the Jets made the Colts pay for it dearly.

As for the Colts’ players’ reactions, as a coach you could ask for nothing more.

“Until any player in here is the head coach, you follow orders and you follow them with all of your heart,” team captain Peyton Manning said.

But as I watched Manning’s reaction on the sideline to being pulled, even as he spoke to Curtis Painter, his replacement and the eventual goat of the game, never before had I seen a look of such consternation and sorrow on his face.  He watched the game slip away without being able to do a damned thing about it, and I felt for him.  Don’t get me wrong; I wanted him to lose for the sake of my team…but not like this.

Not by watching a rookie quarterback get over-matched by a hungry defense that seized the opportunity and changing the game.

Not by internally wishing that he could spurn his coach and just run onto the field.

And certainly not by sitting it out with his receivers and offensive line on the sidelines, looking all the world like he and they had been robbed by someone they knew and trusted.

Maybe an undefeated season wasn’t in the cards for the Indianapolis Colts, but their hand should never have been played like that.

Manning quote courtesy of ESPN.com; Photo courtesy of Colts.com, the Official Website of the Indianapolis Colts.