INDIANAPOLIS – Lining the walls of the Indianapolis Colts' dressing quarters at the team's base here are cubicles in which the players stow their gear. Every player has one, except for one player.
Peyton Manning has two.
Most of these spaces are heaped with football shoes piled one upon another, pads and oddments of clothing. Manning's cubicles are immaculate, with tapes neatly stacked and everything precisely placed. If there were a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for locker-room maintenance, Manning would win it in a walk.
Order clearly is important to the quarterback, which gets me around to how the Chargers should approach defending him today under the RCA Dome. They have to clutter up his world, to get after him, to get him on the run, as the New England Patriots did in last season's AFC Championship Game when they sacked Manning four times, intercepted him four times, permitted him to complete fewer than half his passes (23-of-47) and came away with a 24-14 conquest.
Manning's history is that he is far less effective when he has to use his legs than he is when he can rely largely on his mind. Manning doesn't often lose mind games.
The Chargers want to play this one conservatively, which shouldn't be difficult for Marty Schottenheimer, a conservative at heart. Getting into a scoring bee with Manning and his associates cannot be recommended. The Kansas City Chiefs did it and got away with it, winning 45-35 on Oct. 31 in Arrowhead Stadium, but the Chiefs had to withstand Manning throwing for 472 yards and five touchdowns.
The Manning family is not a favorite of mine. Quite the opposite. The stance the Mannings took before the draft – that San Diego was not a fit place for Eli Manning to pursue a football future – was insulting. One, though, has to admire Peyton Manning. On the field, that is.
He constantly is making reads, after the ball is snapped and sometimes before, when he is moving up and down the line of scrimmage, calling out how he intends to orchestrate his no-huddle tactics.
Against the Ravens, he several times took the football and immediately whipped it out to a wing without even a glance at the defense. His pre-snap stroll had convinced him what it would be.
How the Chargers align their secondary is going to be interesting. The Ravens frequently had six pass defenders on the field, even on first downs. They came. They feinted coming. They backed off. They did just about everything in a defensive team's repertoire.
"They got us; we got them," summed up Indianapolis coach Tony Dungy. "It was very much a mental game."
As today's will be.
In one area, however, the Ravens failed. They did not get Manning on the run except for a time or two, and they lost.
A common bond
Marv Levy being the man he is has resulted in the Colts and the Chargers being the teams they are.
An explanation: The steward of the Indianapolis club, Bill Polian, and the architects of the San Diego team, the late John Butler and now A.J. Smith, received their grounding in the game from Levy, best remembered for taking the Buffalo Bills to four consecutive Super Bowls and losing all four.
Those Bills taught us something about how fulfilling it can be to strive, to fail and to go on striving. In my mind, what they did was extraordinary. I admire Levy as much as any man I have come across in all my years in press boxes.
When I sought him out at his Chicago home, he was characteristically gracious. "I can't say they're my teams," he said of today's combatants. "It was all of us. We just clicked."
In our conversation, Levy touched on a couple of his precepts:
"It's amazing what you can accomplish if no one gets the credit."
"Only draft players with high character. If you don't, the players you get will lose you two games before they win you one."
Levy was coaching the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League when he became aware of Polian. Then serving as a salesman for a magazine, Polian had been dispatching some personnel reports to the Montreal club.
"I read some of Polian's stuff and I said, 'Who is this guy?' " remembered Levy. "We met at one of the Grey Cup games, and I signed him."
When Levy was coaching the Kansas City Chiefs from 1978 to 1982, he arranged for Polian to be employed there, and Polian later accompanied him to the Chicago Blitz of the U.S. Football League and on to Buffalo.
In Chicago and Buffalo, the Levy-Polian alliance would be joined by Butler and Smith. "We never defined responsibilities," said Levy. "We never said, 'This is your turf.' "
Levy, in his 80s, is doing commentaries on broadcasts of Chicago Bears games and writing a column for nfl.com. He is the author of a new book, "Where Else Would You Rather Be?" – a title drawn from one of his challenges to his players.
Anywhere he is would be all right with me.
Want a ticket?
In Indianapolis, scalpers have put a price of $150 on tickets to today's game. Scalping is legal in Indiana.
Jerry Magee: (619) 293-1830.
