Quick Slants - Week 8: The BIG Game, Part 3

This is actually in response to a good comment, and it seemed worthy of a little attention, so bear with me.

How, exactly, in this day and age of free agency and salary caps, do the Patriots and the Colts maintain their endless annual dominance?

After all, we remember what happened to the San Francisco 49ers. The DeBartolos tried every dirty trick in the book to circumvent the cap, only to drive the franchise off the road in the process. As a result, the Niners haven't mattered since T.O. was openly questioning Jeff Garcia's sexual preferences some years ago.

It seems like there's a new "worst-to-first" story in the NFL every season; last year, it was the Saints. This season, the Browns seem to be similarly blessed. And, every year, some formerly good-to-great team suddenly becomes schedule fodder (and we'd like to say hi to the readers in Cincinnati and Chicago, both of whom have bantha poodoo for football franchises).

Still, it seems that the Colts and the Patriots continue to dominate where other teams wax and wane. Hindsight being what it is, let's see if we can figure it out, and then sell it to the other 30 teams in the league.

1. It starts with the head coach. The Colts have been relatively stable since bringing Tony Dungy on board. The Patriots have become a model franchise under Bill Belichick's leadership. Both teams seem to reflect the character of their coaches, perhaps more so than any other teams in the league right now.

1a. It helped that the coaches walked into environments that were quickly conducive to their coaching strategies. Tony Dungy inherited a team with the great Peyton Manning already on board, and it took a relatively short honeymoon for Manning to buy in. Once Manning was in, everyone else bought in. In Belichick's case, there were already a core of solid veterans like Troy Brown in place, good soldiers who just wanted to win. Tom Brady was also already in place, just waiting for Drew Bledsoe to eventually break something. This leads us to...

2. It doesn't hurt to have Hall-Of-Famers at quarterback. There may be no position in football more bedeviling than QB. Current Bears QB Brian Griese is a great example of this. The guy had exactly one lights-out season in Denver, and has stunk ever since. Don Majkowski caught lightning in a bottle for a hot minute, and then couldn't catch a cold. Quarterbacks who are merely good for a long time are a rarity; guys like Brian Sipe or Danny White or Kenny Anderson would be jillionaires in today's current climate. As stated earlier, Dungy inherited Manning and Belichick inherited/unearthed Tom Brady. Right now, Manning is the Colts' franchise leader for TD passes, surpassing some guy named Unitas, and Tom Brady already owns three Super Bowl rings while doing his best Joe Montana impressions with time running out and the game on the line. Both men are extraordinary leaders with strong and accurate arms. They are patient and will wait for a mistake; they are the Anti-Favres of their generation. They are durable; neither coach has had to find out how good the clipboard carrier really is. And they both have Lombardi hardware on their resumes.

3. Their personnel men are the best in the business. Bill Polian is the modern version of Tex Schramm/Gil Brandt all rolled into one. The man has taken two different franchises to the Super Bowl. You might remember his first one, the starcrossed Bills that went to 4 straight Super Bowls in the '90s, only to lose all four. His second franchise, the Carolina Panthers, went to the NFC title game in their second season of existence. His third, the Colts, are one of the finest teams in the NFL, with their own newly-minted title on display at team headquarers. For the Patriots, personnel man Scott Pioli forms a great tandem with head coach Bill Belichick, and that is so much more vital than we can imagine. There's a reason why so many head coaches also want to be GMs, because they know in their mind what kind of player to get for their scheme. The problem is figuring out the money end and all that paper-pusher stuff that coaches aren't cut out for. Pioli is the executive version of Belichick. He thinks like him, agrees with him, and brings enough credibility that he can respectfully dispute a player with Belichick and win.

4. Both teams have genuine depth on their depth charts. Kevin Faulk and Sammy Morris are currently listed as the number 2 and 3 running backs in New England, and both could start in Chicago right now. Kenton Keith is the number 2 in Indianapolis, and he too could start in Chicago right now. When they replace a player for injury, they rightly expect the understudy to do the job that the starter was doing. This is so crucial to their overall success. It means that the coaches and GMs in question have to be able to identify genuine talent, AND then keeping that talent happy behind a similarly-skilled starter. The backups on both teams don't just stand around; they all get regular game action and are all involved in the game plan. Thus, the Colts can rely upon Anthony Gonzalez when Marvin Harrison goes down, or the Patriots can survive the loss of a Richard Seymour for half of the season.

5. Neither team has overpayed for the wrong guy. This has a lot to do with point number 4. Because of that depth, because of their ability to identify players who fit the mold, both teams can afford to buck the market and let starters go through free agency. Basically, the selling point is this: you can stay with us for less and win, or you can break the bank with a loser. Someone might want to ask Edgerrin James and Deion Branch how free agency worked out for them; sure, they both got paid, but they may never play for a winner again...and no amount of money will make getting beat every week feel good. The Colts lost a lot of guys from their championship defense last season, and the result is that they are actually better now than last season. Meanwhile, some of the guys they lost (Cato June, Nick Harper, we're talking to you) are on some baaaad teams and making Polian look like a genius for letting them walk.

6. Finally, because they can find and sign their guy for less than premium market value, they have players that they are certain will fit into their scheme of doing things. This leads to simple execution. They continue to win because they continue to do the things that lead to winning regularly. They execute.

Because of this, both teams are fun to watch.

Again, I can't wait!

Quick Slants - Week 8, Part 1: The BIG Game

Let's get the obvious stuff out of the way first: the Super Bowl will be played Sunday in Indianapolis.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, New England and Indianapolis have gone unscathed through the season. Given the way both teams have played, their meeting this weekend might be the only legitimate reason (barring unforeseen injury) that we won't have two teams go undefeated.

As Cris Collinsworth of HBO notes, the winner of the game will basically be two games up on the loser for home field advantage throughout the playoffs. Even should the winner lose one game, the winner would own the tie-breaker by virtue of victory this weekend. Thus, the winner would have to lose two games to lose home field advantage.

Does that seem a tad unlikely to anyone else?

Are we really prepared to believe that either Indianapolis or New England will lose two games the rest of the way?

The Colts have more than answered any questions about the allegedly depleted defense. This unit is superior to the one that took them to the Super Bowl last season...and let's not forget that last season's unit was at or near the bottom of league rankings. From one point of view, it might seem difficult for someone that bad last season to get that much worse this season (the Miami Dolphins excepted), but this Colts defense isn't just a little bit better. It's a LOT better.

It's so much better that we'd be talking dynasty in Indy, what with the offense continuing to do what it has done ever since Peyton Manning took over...

...except that there is already a dynasty in New England.

And they are taking no prisoners.

If the Colts were impressive in their business-like dismissal of Carolina, the Patriots were absolutely breath-taking in their complete dismantling of the Washington Redskins.

It is rare to see a professional team beat another professional team the way that college powerhouses regularly pummel schedule-fodder, but that's what it looked like on Sunday. The Patriots looked like the old Steve Spurrier Gators running up the score against Mother Theresa Community College.

There simply aren't enough adjectives left after their 8-game blitz of everyone in sight. As Peter King of Sports Illustrated points out, no team in the history of the game has opened the season with 8 straight games of 34 or more points. Tom Brady has already surpassed his career-high for touchdown passes in a single season. The defense has been spectacular, and that without all-world defensive end Richard Seymour for most of the early season. Randy Moss is back to making highlight-reel catches on a routine basis, and he's arguably not the best receiver on the team. Wes Welker has been a revelation, and he doesn't look any faster or stronger now than when he was on a miserable Dolphin team last season (ask him for perspective on both teams, and you might have to listen to him giggle incessantly for about 30 minutes before he can give you a coherent answer...). Donte Stallworth is actually playing up to his considerable potential, giving the Patriots two legitimate game-breakers at WR, something only the Colts and the Arizona Cardinals could say for a long time.

And they aren't just beating teams. They are walking through them like there is no opposition whatsoever.

(By the way, ProFootballTalk's Mike Florio has a little blurb about Redskins linebacker Randall Godfrey complaining that the Pats showed no class by running up the score. To which I say: Shut. The. Hell. Up. If you don't like the Patriots scoring so much, well, stop them. It's not their job to ease up on you. It's your job to keep them out of the end zone. If you don't like running backs getting touchdowns, tackle them. If you don't like quarterbacks throwing the ball deep in the fourth quarter, sack them. The only time a game is won is when the final gun sounds and one team has more points than the other team. Just last weekend, Sage Rosenfels led his wounded Houston team to 29 points in the fourth quarter; they were winning a game they had lost until Rob Bironas kicked his NFL-record eighth field goal for Tennessee. The only reason your team didn't duplicate Houston's feat is because you quit playing, not because the Patriots are a bunch of blue meanies. If the Patriots offense scored 52 points, it's because the Redskins defense let them. Butch up, tackle someone, and shut up.)

Make no mistake: the Patriots are as real as real gets.

And, thank God, so are the Colts.

This game is the Ali-Frazier of our generation, but without the political ramifications. It is Houston-UCLA. It is Affirmed-Alydar. Hell, if that whole space-time continuum thingy weren't such a bother, it would be Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods tied for the lead on Sunday at Augusta.

Both teams are utterly professional. Both coaches are utterly prepared. Both quarterbacks are Hall-of-Famers right now. Both offenses are prolific. Both defenses are disciplined, if not occasionally savage.

If ever a game was threatened to be drowned by hype, this is that game, but these two teams will not be caught up in the wash. They will do their jobs, the same as they have done all season. Do not expect bulletin-board material from either squad; if Randy Moss didn't rise to T.O.'s bait before the Dallas game, he'll have even less to say about the silent assassins at WR for the Colts.

I can't wait...