The Super Bowl awaits. The Big Game, the Big One, the Monster in Miami, or whatever else the media has to call it becuase the tyrants of the NFL trademarked the term "The Super Bowl"; that will all go down on Sunday. My team is in it (well, one of my teams, but at this point I want to just disown the Raiders, like they are some drug-addled black sheep prostitute), and my team is the favorite. My team has the single greatest player in the NFL today (undebatable), and possibly the best player in teh history of the NFL (debatable). My team has the better matchups, and my team is the one that has not lost a game all year when they tried to win. However, I am nervous, if not downright depressed. Why? You ask. Why, when everything is set on a silver platter, everything is set for the Colts to stake their claim as a dynasty, for Manning to be able to shove his two rings into the two lobes of people's brains that still say Brady is better, for Jim Caldwell and Bill Polian to be redeemed like nothing else? Why am I upset? Here is why:
It all started with one innocuous play. It started with a rush, when Dwight Freeney came un, pushed (bulled his way, really) through a block and had Mark Sanchez owned. Sanchez threw an incompletion, before falling to the ground, and put his leg right where Freeney was coming down. Now, it was all a fluke, all one man's leg in the wrong place, and one man's ankle in the wrong area. Now, it was a play that could have happened to anyone at anytime, and yet, it was wrong, it was unfair. Freeney is the second most important Colt. Now, there might be a sizable gap between him and Brady, but he is still that good and that important. He is more important than Sanders (remember him), Wayne, Clark or even Jim Caldwell (kidding. Jim, I love you). Freeney is that important. The best way to play the Saints is to play cover-2. The Colts can play cover-2 better than any team in the NFL. Freeney is the key. If he and Mathis get consistent pressure, just ship to Lombardi to the Luke, and cancel the game. It is over. The one strategic advantage the Colts had over the Saints defensively was Freeney. That is gone.
However, the real reason I am sad is this. The season is 60 minutes away from becoming a decrepid thing of the past. Nothing matters after this upcoming game. Win or lose, the 2010 season is all I will be thinking about after it. Win or lose, I still expect the 2010 Colts to be great, and I will be counting down the days to September 9th, 2010. I wait all season for this day, especially since my prediction of the Colts making the Super Bowl has come true. This is the judgement day. The day where all the hours, all the days I have spent on stampedeblue.com or 18to88.com imbibing Colts knowledge, datum and talk, is going to be for nothing come Sunday at 10:30-ish. It will be done. Slam the lid on the casket of the 2009 Season. It was a glorious one, where we saw two teams run at perfection. We saw an offense play as well as any offense ever, and a QB play as well as any QB ever, and I got to see the destruction of the post-dynasty Pats. That was all fun, that made the season worth it. But really, is anything worth it? is anything worth it when it all comes crashing down quickly on Sunday night.
There is nothing better in sports than the NFL Season (with the exception of the World-Cup). It is a perfect amalgam of scheduling, swagger and style. It lasts the perfect length (again, Roger, take the hint), has the perfect intensity for each and every week. The NFL Season is most-like a good TV show. Once a week it comes, with anticipation preceding it and reaction succeeding it. Each week builds up into one big culminating story, one hour long (or in this case 20-hour long when you count pre-game shows, the show and the post-game triad of CBS, ESPN and NFL Network). When the season finale ends, there is no celebrating of the season past (that is for when the DVD comes out: Road to Super Bowl XLIV, I am there), there is no season-end swoon period. There is sadness that the weekly joy has left my life for 8 months, that I have to wait 8 months to see if Stella says yes, to see why Susan was kissing some random man, to see if Peyton can do it again.
