Indianapolis may be team to beat this year
I don't actually follow the NFL standings or various teams' W-L records. I just like to watch the games and cheer for, in order, the Tennessee Titans (who melted the Steelers again today for the third time in less than a year) and the Washington Redskins, who sneaked by the Pats today and for whom I still cheer from living in the DC metro area for five years.

But with barely more than three-quarters of the game between the Colts and the Saints on Sunday Night Football as I write this, the Colts lead 55-13. That's not a football game, it's a reenactment of the Little Big Horn.

The Colts seem to me to be the league's leader so far this season. They sure took the Titans to school two Sundays ago. They now stand at 4-0 (the fact that more than 10 minutes remain for the Saints to writhe in agony as I write this means nothing for the Colts).

I am not a fan of Colts QB Peyton Manning. I don't dislike him, I just never fell victim to the Peytonmania that infected most people I knew in the Nashville area when Peyton was finishing his collegiate career at the University of Tennessee a few years back. And it was a very serious infection: during his first season with the Colts, many Titans season-ticket holders said that would cheer for the Colts that year versus the Titans because - sigh - Peyton deserved it. And of course, they'd never met him.

Fortunately, that kind of nonsense has abated.

Peyton's successor as UT’s QB, T. Martin, led the school to national championship (Peyton never did) and was conceded by many UT fans I knew and some commentati to be a better overall quarterback. But he never achieved anything like the personal adulation that Peyton enjoyed, and nothing like the laudatory media coverage that Peyton had received.

The reason? IMHO, and that of many truly diehard, Peytonmanaical UT fans I know, it was the fact that T. Martin’s ancestors were too southern - that is, from way down yonder where the equator runs across Africa.

This is not to detract from Peyton’s true skills. But as an NFL QB, he’s simply high average. However, the total package of the team he leads is far from merely average, so far this season.

BTW, I still think that the Titans’ Eddie George is seriously overrated. Today he had 21 rushing yards on 11 carries. Don’t give me any rot about how he needs a fullback to block for him. The Titans don’t have one on the roster and they aren’t paying Eddie his millions to make sniveling excuses (which is fact he is not doing). The fact is that Eddie seems unable to find the other side of the line of scrimmage.

And that’s the way it is. Now you know why I never was a sports writer.

by Donald Sensing, 9/29/2003 06:51:37 AM. Permalink |