One Man Couldn't Win It

You couldn’t have too much of a problem accepting Drew Brees as the Super Bowl MVP. After a bit of a rough start, he completed just about everything that left his hand. He threw the ball hard, he threw it soft, the ball always rotating in a perfect spiral. He threw from the pocket, he threw on the run, he sat in the pocket, he slid back and forth and one time he even shook a defender off him. And he continued to be the team’s unquestioned leader on the field.

But a football team is more than just one player. Nobody seemed to understand that before the Super Bowl and nobody will want to hear that now. America loves heroes. No…let me amend that…mankind loves heroes. That’s why many countries still hang on to their royal houses, I guess.

Peyton Manning had been the anointed one before the game. We heard that he was the best quarterback ever to play the game. He was the MVP for the regular season. He was a coach on the field, he worked harder than anyone and he brought those young Colts wide receivers into synch with him in a sophisticated offensive scheme.

Those same groveling sycophants are now making Manning the goat. Now he has fallen into the abyss. He threw the key interception. He called an inappropriate timeout. He couldn’t overcome a good football team playing great all by himself. He couldn’t overcome a conservative game plan for a team seemingly playing not to lose. He couldn’t overcome a team convinced they were figureheads for the resurrection of an entire once-drowned city.

And now Drew Brees is the god (and the King of Bacchus too). As good as he was though, the Saints wouldn’t have won without those other guys, the offensive line that gave him time to throw, the running backs who ran hard, broke tackles and provided an outlet for him when all those marvelous receivers had Colts hanging off their backs, most notably Marques Colston and Devery Henderson but also Lance Moore who only proved a contortionist could play wide receiver in the NFL.

And there was that marvelous Saints defense. Not just cornerback Tracy Porter or linebacker Jonathan Vilma or those smart and active players on their defensive front, the ones who made Peyton Manning throw in a hurry, the ones who even seemed to have the great one confused at times.

Even the special teamers were terrific, not just Garrett Hartley who kicked 3 long field goals to keep them in the game or even Thomas Morstead, the combo placekicker and punter who placed that all-important onsides kick to set up the black and gold in their dominating second half. Courtney Robey and the rest of those bombers provided solid kick coverage all day long. And a no-name like Chris Reis recovered that onsides kick.

An NFL roster has, I believe, 53 active players. At any one time, there are 22 players on the field. There are also the head coaches, the coordinators, offensive and defensive, and assistants for every conceivable function. In professional football more than any other sport, the head coaches and coordinators are sometimes more important than any single individual on the field. They call the plays. They decide who plays. The entire plan of the game is theirs.

And so it was yesterday. Any number of Saints players could have been named MVP. After watching the game again and then again, I discovered that virtually every Saints player played well. The only exception may have been Usama Young, a Saints defensive back who was immediately victimized by Manning and Garcon after taking over for an injured Jabari Greer, hardly an indictable offense.

While all of this may sound like so much claptrap to the more cynical, football is truly a team sport. No one man can win a game all by himself, not Peyton Manning, not Drew Brees, not Tom Brady, and not the immortals of yesteryear, Montana or Aikman or Bradshaw or Unitas. And the converse is true as well, although this writer may want to make exceptions for Brett Favre, Brad Childress and Herman Edwards.

Boldness won the game. Timidity lost it. There was that bold Saints onsides kick, but there was also a failed attempt to score on fourth and goal rather than take the easy three, a move that could have hurt much more if the timid Colts didn’t go 3 and out, allowing the Saints to get their three after all. The Colts decision to kick a field goal from 51 yards out, although seemingly a bold move, was actually motivated more by their desperation to put points on the board against a team they realized they couldn’t stop.

The Saints played to win the game. They pulled out all the stops. The Colts played not to lose. If one man can be legitimately canonized, it is Sean Payton, the Saints head coach who set the tone. If any one man must be the goat, it would have to be Colts first-year head coach Jim Caldwell, who talked only about a lack of execution after the game.

I couldn’t be more thrilled. I had rooted for the Saints all year long. I had predicted Saturday that they’d win this game, citing their ability to run and pass the ball, citing the injury to Dwight Freeney, and figuring that they’d get the turnovers they’d need to win the game, even against the great Peyton Manning.

Of course, it didn’t work out exactly as I had thought. I had thought Bush and Pierre Thomas would run the Colts into the ground. But they only did so after first catching a pass. While I thought Freeney couldn’t play well, he actually did make one play. While I thought the Saints would force fumbles, they only recovered an onsides kick and made an interception for a touchdown.

And I thought that a good team would beat even the great Peyton Manning.