INDIANAPOLIS — Ev erywhere else in football America, from Maine to Maui, from Oshkosh to Oklahoma and everywhere in between, there will be outrage and fury and cries of contempt. The men who run the Indianapolis Colts, Bill Polian and Jim Caldwell, will be mocked and mauled and riddled on talk radio like Sonny Corleone at the toll booth. And rightly so.
Everywhere else in football America, there will be an asterisk slapped next to the “8” in the win column for the Jets, and in those cities that had to watch their playoff chances imperiled by the Colts deciding to take comp time across the final 20 or so minutes of Jets 29, Colts 15 — in Miami and Jacksonville, in Baltimore and Pittsburgh — they will demand apologies.
From the Colts. From the NFL. From the Jets. From everyone.
This is what Bart Scott, for one, thought about this:
“I’m not apologizing for jack,” Scott said.
Nor should he. Nor should the Jets. These are two separate issues, the Colts’ folly and the Jets’ fortune, Indianapolis’ choice to voluntarily snap its 23-game winning streak and ruin its shot at the ’72 Dolphins, and New York’s willingness to take a tardy Christmas present and make the most of it. The Colts keeping a seething Peyton Manning on the bench. And the Jets all but turned his rattled replacement, Curtis Painter, into a grease stain.
“The Colts earned the right to play this game any way they wanted to play it,” was the way Rex Ryan described what happened on the floor of Lucas Oil Stadium yesterday, and he was absolutely correct. “All I know is, it’s a huge win for us.”
So much had to fall just right for the Jets yesterday, so many dominoes had to topple just so in order for them to have what they have this morning, which is a playoff berth in their sights and in their hands, with only a home game against the Bengals — who aren’t likely to expose Carson Palmer to much in the way of harm, either — standing between them and a most unexpected trip to the postseason.
And it all happened like a charm. The Dolphins fell behind big. The Jaguars fell behind big. The Ravens fell behind big in Pittsburgh, rallied, surrendered a late field goal, then got buried by a questionable penalty flag. Hell, for kicks, even the suddenly free-falling Broncos lost again, in Philadelphia.
And then there was this: Painter trotting out onto the field with 5 minutes and 36 seconds left in the third quarter, snuck out there during a TV timeout as if the Colts didn’t want the 67,222 people in attendance — all of them pleading for 15-0, begging for it — to know right away what they were doing. Which, diplomatically, was this: keeping everyone fresh and healthy.
And in reality was this: flushing history down the toilet.
“They have to do what’s best for them,” said Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis, who, after Manning traded in his helmet for a cap, officially became the best player on the field. “And we had to do what was best for us. Which meant taking care of our own business.”
This is what the rest of America won’t want to hear this morning: that the Jets made Caldwell’s choice a tough one by hanging around during a first half when they easily could’ve been blown out, by inviting an uneasy buzz inside the building when Brad Smith returned the second-half kickoff 106 yards to inch the Jets ahead. Caldwell said later he really was hoping for a two-possession lead before removing Manning, but the Jets never allowed that, were still within 15-10 when the hammer fell on history.
“We still had to make a play,” Calvin Pace would say, appropriate since it was Pace himself who made the game’s biggest play, strip-sacking Painter on the first snap of his second series, allowing Marques Douglas to fall on the ball in the end zone, giving the Jets the lead for good. It all but bought at least one more week of meaningful football for the Jets, and all but popped the corks on more bottles of bubbly than the ’72 Dolphins could possibly consume in one sitting.
That won’t console the rest of football America, but you know what? The Jets don’t answer to the rest of football America. They answer to New York. And neither team nor town are planning to apologize for jack.