Manning will never win a Super Bowl

Football is the most team-oriented sport in all sports. Every single Sunday, 90 guys fight against each other, on a football field for the glory, till the last drop of their blood and sweat.

Teams win Super Bowl in a lot of different ways. Look at Pittsburgh, San Francisco and Dallas, the teams of the 70s, 80s and 90s. Be it Chuck Null, Bill Walsh or Jimmy Johnson, they had their different ways approaching the games. Wash invented the west-coast-offense. Chuck Null established the steel-curtain defense. Jimmy Johnson just dominated on both the offensive and defensive sides.

As it turned out, one common theme on all those three teams. Not one player was above the team and head coaches made the final decision on the football field. Star quarterbacks, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Montana, SteveYoung and Troy Aikman, all current or future HOMers, blended into the system seamlessly. Fans of those teams could hear once in a while complaint between head coaches and quarterbacks. But in the end, the authority of head coaches was never challenged. As great as he had been, Montana was replaced by Steve Young when Montana’s career was in the twilight. Was it cold? Yes. Was it necessary for the goal of winning? Definitely!

Let’s fast forward to the free agent and salary era. We don’t see teams as dominant as those in the past, and also mediocre teams could rise to the top within a year. Still you see the Super Bowl champions of the last 10 years, still one thing is certain: head coaches had the final say.

True, John Elway ran Dan Reeves out of town, and they never won Super Bowl together. But Elway never challenged Mike Shanahan’s football authority and willingly let TD to be the show. Results: they won 2 Superbowls together. Brett Favre to Mike Homgren, Kurt Waner to Dick Vermeil, Jamal Lewis to Brian Billick, Warren Sapp to Jon Gruden, Tom Brady to Belichick, you could never find a case where head coaches have to listen to the star players of the teams.

Only with the Colts, Peyton Manning runs the whole show. Not only that, he even ran coach Mora out of Indy several years ago. If you believe that Polian and Dungy are calling the shots, you’re just too naïve and deadly wrong. Once an owner committed $100 million of his own money to a star player, Jim Isray knew that the success of the Colts totally rests on Peyton Manning’s arm.

As a result, Peyton got whatever he wanted, calling his own plays, getting all the offensive weapons that he desired. But the fact is: Peyton Manning can only dictate the offensive side of the game. (For that matter, even with all the weapons, Peyton Manning still laid several big eggs at the biggest stage of his career: being shut out by the Jets, played poorly twice against the Patriots, and the last one was playing against such depleted cornerbacks.) Isray forget that football is the ultimate team sports. One superstar, or even an awesome offensive machine cannot put a team over the top. When one player is above the whole team, that’s the beginning of the end.

I know Colts are 13-0, play defense, and will very likely go to 16-0. And I have enormous respect for Tony Dungy. But Colts will lose in divisional to the Steelers or the Patriots. And it is all because they have a choke artist/one Individual: Peyton Manning.

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