I believe I know why. I could be wrong. I'm probably nowhere near 100% right. I'm assuming a lot of things and guessing on others. I have no proof on any of this. But I still think I know what this all is about, and it really is simple. Jim Irsay believed, to his core, that Peyton Manning was either A - never going to play another snap in the NFL; or B - never going to approach the level he was even in his last season in Indianapolis. I believe that Jim Irsay earnestly thought that Peyton Manning was never going to be the best QB in the NFL ever again. That was the crucial factor to make his Grand Plan work. He was wrong, whether it was blind trust or hope, or misinformation from his team doctors who were advising him. He was wrong. And now he has to live with his decision, and he can't, becuase the worst case scenario happened.
I hate bringing up this moment, I hate everything that happened that day, and the countless hours of written and spoken words discussing this topic, but I think this all boils back to Week 16 in 2009. Bill Polian, not Jim Irsay, not coach Jim Caldwell, decided to pull the starters, decided to give up on a chance to go 16-0. Sure, Polian's plan worked, as the Colts entered the playoffs healthy and rolled to a Super Bowl where they lost to a team that could have beaten them even if the Colts were 16-0. What screwed Polian was the media and fans attacked. Bill Polian is not a nice guy. He is a football genius, but he's a prickly one, the Colts version of Bill Belichick. They attacked, and he responded by becoming more insular and more cloistered than ever before. There was a growing distrust between Polian and everyone outside of the team, and Irsay hated it. Irsay hated the fact that this arrogant SOB was running the Colts and wanted him gone.
Peyton Manning's injury gave Irsay his chance to get rid of Polian, get rid of Polian's guys, change the face of his franchise, and become more media friendly. Manning's injury exposed how dependent the Colts were on one player. It exposed a few soft drafts at the tail end of Polian's tenure. It led to a 2-14 season, and the ultimate way for Irsay to cut the cord: get rid of the top figures of the previous regime and start anew with another great QB prospect. It all worked. Peyton, someone Irsay believed to be ruined forever by injury, was gone, as was Brackett, Clark, Addai. Pagano was brought in. Andrew Luck was brought in. The Colts were going to begin anew. It all culminated when Andrew Luck threw a TD on his first pass in the preseason, and Irsay tweeted out 'The Legend Begins.' Well, the legend was also continuing, but in Denver.
This all would have worked if Peyton never came back. Even though many knowledgeable Colts fans (including me) didn't like the propaganda the Colts brass were spewing about stop the run and run the ball, and 'building the monster' on defense, and trying to build the right team, no one could complain about the ultimate decision to move on if Peyton wasn't there. Peyton was there. Peyton played like an MVP in 2012. Peyton was the best QB in the NFL in 2012. Peyton playing amazing, on a team who was built very similarly to his old Colts teams, was the worst thing that could have happened to Jim Irsay, and not only did it ruin his plan, it has ruined him.
I feel like Jim Irsay has had to overcompensate for the fact that he chose to not retain Peyton Manning by extolling the virtues of his new Colts team. He was innocently distancing himself from the Manning-era Colts through the 2012 offseason and 2012 season, but he took it to another level the last 10 months. First was some offseason comments about how he was trying to build the '04 Patriots. How he was trying to build a tough team that could win in the playoffs. Let alone the fact that those Patriots slowly tried to build a team that emulated the 2004 Colts. It reared its head in the ugliest way this past week.
Peyton is returning this weekend. Peyton is playing at a level only a few people have ever matched for an extended period of time. Irsay knows this. I think Irsay loved Peyton Manning, but he's feeling the egg on his face for getting rid of Peyton, and he is trying to go even further to show why the decision he made was right. That's why he brings up "The Ringz" argument, that Peyton-led teams won just one QB. That they went one-and-done 7 times. That the Steelers and Giants won 2 Super Bowls during that period, and the Patriots won 3, without putting up 'Star Wars Numbers'. Irsay might say that this is not about Peyton, but about how they built the team to rely on offense and didn't give Peyton help on defense, but that really isn't what he said. What he said first was about Peyton, was about Peyton's perceived failures. That's why he brought up Tom Brady and his rings, going after the lowest hanging fruit possible.
Jim Irsay comes off as totally ungrateful for what the Manning era gave him, but more than that, he came off as ignorant. He claimed that the Colts spent 70% of their salaries on offensive players. Well, Jim, what is going to happen when Andrew Luck enters the final year of his contract in two years? What happens when those other guys on offense drafted that year are about to be Free Agents? Andrew Luck will command a boatload of money. Is Irsay going to refuse to pay him because, 'Hey, we paid Peyton Manning all this money and look what that got us?'. Irsay claimed that he's building a team that can run the ball, that can win in different ways. Well, recent Super Bowl teams haven't won in different ways. The Ravens had their worst running year in the Flacco era last year. The 2011 Giants were the worst run team in the NFL. The 2010 Packers had a bad run game. This isn't how teams win. The Manning way was how they win. He threw that away, and because Manning is doing well in Denver, he's created this line of thinking through the organization that they have to win the opposite way.
Most of all, he sounds ungrateful. Jim Irsay better hope Andrew Luck wins at least two Super Bowls, because he basically said one Super Bowl, and the winningest decade in NFL history, is not good enough. He basically said that all wasn't good enough, and getting rid of Peyton wasn't only about Peyton's uncertain medical status, but about the way he played and the way his teams played. He made this personal. He made this about more than a mysterious injury and uncertainty and millions of dollars potentially wasted. I believe that was what the decision was about. I believe Jim Irsay believed that he made the right choice for medical reasons. I believe this. I also believe Jim Irsay never wanted Peyton Manning to return at this level because then he was wrong, he put his faith in the wrong people. Jim Irsay showed he was above his head in PR during Super Bowl week, and he looks even more over his head now, overcompensating to a potentially harmful degree to show why what he did was right. Instead of Jim saying that he was wrong, and he's going to try to build the exact same team that had all that success with Andrew Luck, who is good enough to win that way, Irsay did the opposite, said he was right, for all the absolutely wrong, wrong reasons.
