Lessons learned

Jared Putnam

There's an old saying that claims, "Close only counts in horseshoes in handgrenades." Ironically, when it came to the team that wears the horseshoe on its helmets, close is all it had ever been.

Every time it looked like the Indianappolis Colts had everything they needed to win a championship, something always derailed them. The defense collapsed. Peyton Manning threw one too many interceptions. On more than one occasion, a couple of guys named Belichick and Brady picked them apart.

But this season the Colts finally looked like they had the pieces in place. An 8-0 start had a lot of people thinking perfect season until once again, Indy seemingly fell apart.

The Colts looked like a different team over their next six games, losing four of them. The Cowboys beat them. The Titans surprised them. The Jaguars ran all over them in a 44-17 rout. Worst of all, the misery culminated in a 24-27 loss to the lowly Houston Texans.

The Colts paid a heavy price for the losses. They went from having a virtual lock on the top seed in the AFC to falling to the third seed, losing both homefield advantage and their first round bye in the process. Once it was known that they would face Kansas City in the first round, more than a few people thought that Chiefs running back Larry Johnson might blow enough holes in the Colts run defense to sink their ship before it ever really sailed.

The Colts were getting criticized from north, south, east, west, and every angle in between.

Suddenly Peyton Manning wasn't the best quarterback in the league, he was the guy that couldn't get it done when it really counts.

Suddenly Tony Dungy wasn't a successful coach, he was a guy that didn't know how to utilize the talent he had and couldn't outcoach his opponent when he needed to.

Suddenly the Colts weren't winners for notching 12 victories, they were losers for dropping 4 games.

The team could have spent its time beating itself up over losing the bye and homefield advantage. It could have just as easily cracked under the mounting scrutiny and pressure.

Instead, everything changed in Indy.

The Colts seemed to forget about trying to provide the scoring clinic they were known for, and just started doing what they needed to do to beat each of their opponents, no matter how little glamour was involved.

Refocused, the Colts' run defense shut down Kansas City. They beat Baltimore without ever scoring a touchdown. They rallied from 18 points down to break the Brady- Belichick mojo. Then when everything was finally on the line, they refused to let a monsoon in Miami cause their goal to slip away.

It seems like every year there is a host of great stories and morals that can be taken from looking back down the road that a team follows to the Superbowl.

The great thing about it is that these lessons should never stop at the pro level. They can serve as fine examples for college or high school athletes to follow.

So while there may be some story to be told out of the Superbowl winner each year, every once in a while circumstances line up to make that lesson a little more valuable and meaningful than others. Maybe this is one of those years.