Don’t book those Super Bowl flights to Miami yet, Jets fans.
Former Indianapolis coach Tony Dungy remembers the Broncos taking advantage of his Colts reserves late in 2003 and ’04 just to get pummeled when the teams met again in the playoffs a couple of weeks later.
“You look at Peyton Manning’s history when he’s played teams the second time around and we’ve had this experience a couple of times before in ’03 and ’04,” said Dungy, now an analyst for NBC’s ‘Football Night in America.’
“We played Denver in games that didn’t mean a whole lot to us, but Denver had to win them to get in. Peyton saw the defense, and even when it was Jim Sorgi [Manning’s backup] playing, he saw how they were going to play us. Then the second time around he generally knows what he wants to do and is able to execute some things, learn from that first time and they’ll have a pretty good game plan and I think they’ll score some points.”
Denver won those regular-season meetings 31-17 and 33-14, but got manhandled in the rematches 41-10 and 49-24 with Manning and the starters playing the full game. The Jets used a similar script to get into the playoffs — scoring the final 19 points against Indianapolis’ backups in Week 16 to pull out a 29-15 win and begin their run of four straight wins that took them to Sunday’s AFC Championship. But a rematch in Indianapolis is where coach Rex Ryan’s dream season ends, according to Dungy.
“It’s going to be up to the Jets to respond and score,” Dungy said. “They’ve been winning with their running game and they’ll need their running game to keep up with Peyton and the passing game. I think that will be hard to do.”
Like the Jets, the Broncos had dominant running games in those seasons ranking second in 2003 and first in 2004. What they didn’t have was a No. 1 defense to accompany it.
“He’s got the guys believing they can win that way and that’s half the battle,” Dungy said of Ryan. “He’s got the guys believing they can run the ball on anybody, so far they’ve done a good job of that. They are hot right now, confident and playing with nothing to lose.
“But it’s also that style of play makes for a lot of close games. They had a close game against Atlanta and weren’t able to win it. It’s just a style that doesn’t leave you a lot of margin for error. The chances of holding Indianapolis to 13 points at home, I just don’t see it happening.”
For it to happen the Jets are going to have to use the same formula they used to upset the Chargers 17-14 last week.
“They are going to have to make it a game where they dominate the ball running it, play field position and turn the game into what they did in San Diego,” Dungy said. “They need to run the ball, get takeaways, wear the opponent down and get into a low-scoring game. To do that they are going to have to count on some missed opportunities, missed field goals and things like that.” justin.terranova@nypost.com