|
|
Question of the Day
On The Next Rob Long Show
Training Camp Reports with Tony Lombardi from Ravens24x7.com
Rob Long Show
Sponsors
|
A House Of Cards?
 Less than a week after the Super Bowl, the celebration of the city of New Orleans is countered by the blame game in the city of Indianapolis.
We've sort of seen this before. After a play-off loss in 2005, Peyton Manning stood at the podium and said the Colts had protection issues. We all gave Manning a pass. We brushed it off as him being ultra competitive. There didn't seem to be a backlash from his team, so let's just let it die. Now, the finger pointing continues as the Colts recover from a Super Bowl loss that saw Manning throw an interception that, for the most part, put the game away and gave the Saints their first Super Bowl victory. This time, it isn't Manning passing the blame, it's team president Bill Polian. "Our offensive line, by our standards, did not have a good game," Polian told NFL.com. "They were outplayed by the Saints' defensive line. Our special teams, in terms of handing the ball -- both in the return game and on the onside kick -- were outplayed by the Saints. Therein lies the result. It had nothing to do with strategy or preparedness or toughness or effort."
What Polian does, if anything, remains to be seen, but he was very specific in his critisicm of the lack of execution of his team.
"There were certain situations throughout the game where we didn't execute -- most notably, the failure to get the first down and run the clock out at the end of the first half after a magnificent goal-line stand and then, of course, the failure to handle the onside kick," Polian told NFL.com. "We had four things we could have done positively on that play. We didn't do any of them. That absolutely changed the game. It went from our getting the ball on their 40-yard line to having them march down for a touchdown. Then, our inability to punch it in from first-and-goal on the 3. Those situations, we did not execute."
Rob Long
|