TERRE HAUTE — Fans marvel at the seemingly telepathic connection between quarterback Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts receivers.
He knows which way they’ll turn on a pass route. They know whether he’ll throw high or low. He anticipates their footspeed. They anticipate the velocity of his passes. Sure, it’s carefully choreographed movement. But when the opposition forces Manning and his targets to improvise, the Colts seldom appear to confuse each other.
They play by intuition, as The Who might sing at halftime of the Super Bowl XLIV matchup tonight between the Colts and the New Orleans Saints at Miami.
The bonds between Manning and pass catchers Dallas Clark, Reggie Wayne, Pierre Garçon and Austin Collie began forming in Terre Haute. Manning and center Jeff Saturday got to know each other here too, at the Colts summer training camp on the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology campus. The team has trained here since 1999, when Saturday joined the club as a free agent. Since then, most new Colts forged working relationships with their teammates at the practice facilities around Rose’s Cook Stadium. It’s where Gary (Brackett) met Freddy (Keiaho), as linebackers.
The players and coaches devote those three sweat-filled weeks to repetition, to eliminating mistakes and the pursuit of precision. If all goes as planned, by the end, Manning and his mates know what each other will do even before they do it.
National Football League rivals respect the Colts for their superior execution of a vast array of plays. Hauteans should feel a special twinge of pride tonight, each time the CBS announcers gush about the instinctive collaborations by Indianapolis. It all started here, way back in August.
Obviously, the Colts’ intuitive style is not infallible. The unheralded New York Jets disrupted Indianapolis’ plans in the first half of the American Football Conference championship game. The Jets led 17-13 after two quarters. But, of course, Coach Jim Caldwell’s Colts regrouped at halftime and rolled to a 30-17 victory, and their second Super Bowl berth in four seasons.
New Orleans poses an even larger threat. The Saints outscored all other NFL teams, with 510 points in the 16-game regular season. Their quarterback, Purdue alum Drew Brees, set a league record by completing 70.6 percent of his passes. New Orleans also has a stronger running attack, the NFL’s sixth best, led by back Reggie Bush. The Colts ranked last among 32 teams, in rushing.
Still, the Saints’ defense faces a mountainous task. They force a lot of turnovers, but rate only 26th best against the pass. And that is what Manning, Clark, Wayne, Garçon and Collie do best.
The Saints’ bring a compelling story to Miami. They represent a city still staggered by the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. They have the empathy of the entire nation, including Indiana. Their Super Bowl appearance — the first in the Saints’ franchise history — is an achievement to celebrate.
But we still want the Colts to win today. And, when the game’s over and Manning, Caldwell and Wayne hoist the Lombardi Trophy, we wouldn’t mind if one of them said, “This one’s for Terre Haute.”
