Peyton Pats' Pushover

This is a bad day for forward-thinking football fans. Defense and the running game ruled yesterday in New England. There's no denying it.

My friend and colleague Scott Pianowski, who most of you hopefully know from our Breakfast Tabling, sent me an interesting article from Slate on investing, the lessons from which I think apply here.

Author Henry Blodget talks about Conservatism and Confirmatory Bias thusly :

"Once we form opinions, we tend to overvalue information that reinforces them and undervalue information that undermines them (conservatism bias). We even tend to seek out supporting information (confirmatory bias). Thus, we irrationally cling to incorrect conclusions, and, to paraphrase Simon and Garfunkel, hear what we want to hear and disregard the rest."

In other words, did defense and the running game win the championship for New England last year when the footballs were flying down the field against Carolina? Didn't the Rams win a Super Bowl? Didn't Rice and Montana (and Young) win their fair share of Super Bowls? But the Smashmouth Set is going to be cramming this game down our throats all week.

By running the ball so much in the first half and settling for field goals, New England kept the Colts in the game well into the third quarter. Had they combined their pass defense with an emphasis on pass offense, they could have KO'ed the Colts sooner.

I feel bad for Manning, who had a great year and now has to hear the criticism for failing on the big stage, again. But I've seen this Patriots defense do this too many times, especially at home, to get down on Peyton. What about those Patriots' underrated linebackers? Everyone on defense has a very specific role and they do what's asked of them (and nothing is ever asked of them that they can't do, which is the genius of this coaching staff).

No one expected the Colts to get shut down like that considering the injuries and factoring in how Manning performed this season and even in the season opener at New England. I was surprised that the Colts came out in two-TEs and tried to get Edgerrin James off early. I was surprised they didn't build on their offensive momentum (albeit slight) at the end of the first half. The Pats didn't seem to be doing anything that crazy. They were rushing four most times and dropping seven. They were pretty vanilla, as usual, on first and second downs (which are the downs when you have to beat them). They were mixing zone and man on third down and were dropping eight at times. Of course, they didn't blitz.

Reading the post-game stuff in the papers today, you can tell the Colts didn't know what hit them. I get the feeling they could still be playing and Manning still wouldn't have found the end zone.

Now the historic season is over. The passing game, by all accounts (but don't believe them), has been rendered moot. But passing game proponents never underestimate the importance of pass defense, which New England, like Spinal Tap, turned up to 11 on Sunday.