Norman Einstein's
ISSUE 09 (02/10)
"The Super Divide"
by Zac Soto
[Zac is a New York based writer whose work has appeared in CO-ED, V Magazine, and The Source. He runs the blog Throwing Into Traffic and can be spotted most Sundays in a Jets sweatshirt that smells like cigarettes.]
There's going to be a moment before game time on Super Bowl Sunday that will make you decide which team you want to see raise the Lombardi Trophy and act as the standard bearer for the league for the next year. The cameras will pan across the field, and one will undoubtedly rest on the Saints. It will undoubtedly be the whole team, or at least the majority of them, because that is who this team is. Drew Brees will be at the center, whipping the entire squad into a frenzy of destiny and desire combined with the pressure of responsibility for a fan base and a city that has known more than its fair share of heartbreak. Its sincerity will be all that prevents it from becoming a spectacle, but it will undoubtedly capture the eye and excite the passions.
Then the cameras will shift to the other sideline, where a group of men will be sitting, perhaps discussing strategy, but more likely than not going through their routine alone, without any pomp or circumstance, but a clear sense of purpose. Then the camera will rest on Peyton Manning, who will be throwing, or talking with his offensive coordinator, or perhaps consulting with Reggie Wayne, but even then the sense of solitude will heavy and tense.
Unlike the other sideline, where one man, Brees, blends talented individuals into one collective mind and purpose, here a handful of men, Manning in particular, will each embrace the solitude that comes with individual greatness. Where the Saints will unite as one unified mind, the Colts will follow the call of individual beacons of achievement, striving to imitate their example. The goal is the same, but one team will be playing for team, and the other will be playing for a mission dictated to them from on high.
Credit: michael starghill (Flickr)
Whether you believe the Lombardi ought to be raised by a team or by a few great men who lead others to greatness is going to determine whether you want the Saints or Colts to win the championship this year. And while other potential matchups may have given us more interesting personal conflicts or individual team story lines, none of those match what may be the most interesting matchup of team ideologies in years.
If that sounds like I'm being unfair to the individual talent of the Saints, it shouldn't. For one thing, there are teams that would kill for any one of this team's pass catchers to lead their offense. Devery Henderson is the best second option in the league anywhere else, and is a number one receiver on a lot of teams, and he's the "and" credit in this ensemble. Jeremy Shockey would like to remind you that the Giants have never been the same since he left by leaving linebacker after linebacker in the dust, running perhaps the most precise routes of any tight end in the league. Reggie Bush, having sunk into the obscurity of unmet expectations, is reemerging as the sort of amorphous weapon he would have obviously been had he been drafted one year later. He goes from the backfield to 20 yards downfield in the blink of an eye, creating potential coverage nightmares for traditional defenses.
Then there is the one-two punch of Marques Colston and Robert Meachem. In case you missed it, Meachem once again proved that physical freaks at wide receiver always need at least three years to match technical fundamentals to their natural gifts. He leads the team in yards per catch (16 yards) and shares the lead in touchdown receptions with nine. Standing 6'2" and possessing blistering vertical speed, he is the kind of receiver to whom defenses must devote special attention. The only problem is that as soon as they drop their guard, the Saints bring their 6'4", 225 pound, monstrous left hook of a receiver, Marques Colston, crashing down on unsuspecting defenses. The fellow co-leader with nine TDs, Colston makes up for his lack of top flight speed with a willingness to use his body to shut out smaller defensive backs. Nasty since 2006, Colston still plays like the team is looking for an excuse to cut him as a supplemental draft pick. Every touchdown reception feels like a flag being planted into the back of a fallen enemy, declaring that this ground belongs to Colston and nobody else. It stands out on this beautiful machine of an offense for its brutality, and paired with Meachem, the result is an offense that, given enough time or attempts, WILL beat you downfield, if for no other reason than the fact that you can't cover all the targets.
Credit: The Photo Hunter (Flickr)
Then there is Brees. I've penned an entire team profile on the greatness of Drew Brees, and it probably still fell short of capturing just how important he is to his team and to the league as a whole. If the Saints are a hive mind, it is Brees that makes its decisions. The offense moves with him. His receivers are extensions of his arm, in places where he intends to throw before the direction of the play could be obvious to anyone other than Brees. He's put together one of the most amazing statistical seasons of the last decade, racking up 4388 yards in passing, 34 TDs to just 11 INTs, and a jaw dropping 70.6% completion percentage averaging 8.54 yards per pass attempt. He kills you with accuracy; he kills you with distance; there is simply nothing that Drew Brees can't do at an elite level.
More impressive still is that Brees has done this without a single top ten receiver amassing his yardage by making each of his targets a potentially deadly weapon in his arsenal. Eight different receivers have at least two TD receptions on the year. The way his rollouts shift the entire offensive unit as a whole is a testament to his role in the swarming Saints offense. His quick release only highlights his innate understanding of where his offense is going to go, even when the play has started to unravel. He is the kind of quarterback that makes an entire offense better by the strength of his innate understanding of its ways and means, largely because he responds to it as it responds to him, a beautiful dance that devastates anyone standing in its way, breaking their spirit as they realize that as long as the music is playing, the dancers simply will not stop.
Watch Peyton Manning on the sidelines after a drive stalls and see if anyone on that sideline would call what they do a dance. Dancing requires equal partners. The Colts, on the other hand are not a democracy. This is Plato's Philosopher-Kings at their finest. Manning, Wayne, Clark, and Freeney lead the masses because they are the best of the best. So while it is undoubtedly true that the Saints have more talent throughout the team, it is also undoubtedly true that of the five best players on the field, the Colts will have at least three, and probably four. Whether or not they can slow down the barrage that the Saints bring to every game may be less important than whether the Saints will ever be able to stop the Colts' best punches. And while the Saints have seen their consistent assault stalled, nobody, regardless of their style of play, or their personnel, or their desire, has been able to counter the Colts' selection of knockout punches. That is, I suppose, why they call it a knockout punch.
To say that Peyton Manning is the best quarterback in the league is to limit his influence on football. He is one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game, if not the best, and every single quarterback to come after him must be measured against him. Even Drew Brees, for all the rhythm he brings to the Saints offensive attack, is attempting command his offense the way Manning does, finding leadership through immersion into the masses rather than emergence above them. The result is that although players have come and gone from the Colts offensive arsenal, the offense has remained every bit as potent as its leader. While it is impressive that Manning, Wayne, and Clark are able to crush opposition, what is more impressive is Manning's ability to accelerate the evolution of players like Austin Collie or Pierre Garcon, who under any other quarterback would take years to reach the production they've achieved in one season under the hawkish glare of Manning. Manning is, perhaps, more aware of his legacy than any other player, and as such feels the pressure of time like no one else in the league. It is that pressure that he transfers to his teammates.
Maybe that is the reason we hear so little about the receivers of the Colts. We all thought Marvin Harrison was some sort of antisocial lone lunatic, but how much more do we know about Reggie Wayne or Dallas Clark? After Harrison left, we saw two rising powers take on his mantle, embracing the commitment to the intense pressure that comes under Manning's offense. Dallas Clark has found the sixth sense that made Harrison indispensable. To call him a safety valve is to discredit the threat he poses vertically. At 11.1 yards per catch, he is just a yard and a half behind the much faster Wayne. Clark shifts into every single possible place a receiver can stand, and by the time defenders figure out where he is, he's already found the exact spot he knows Manning wants him to be. Wayne, meanwhile, has mastered the meshing of technical mastery and physical gifts that made Harrison deadly. So while Wayne lacks some of Clark's sneakiness, the burden of having finally gained a reputation to match skills he's had for five years, he is also unlike Clark in that he frequently finds ways to overpower opponents by simply outrunning and outgunning them. Watch when Manning and Wayne aren't on the same page and one thing becomes abundantly clear: the disconnect isn't because Wayne hasn't beaten his defenders; he just hasn't beaten them the way Manning thought he would.
Inevitably, however, Manning finds Wayne (ten TDs and 1264 yards) and he finds Clark (ten TDs and 1106 yards) because for Manning, the game isn't a matter of the game as a whole. It is a series of repeated moments. That's why Manning never appears shaken by a defense anymore, because time has taught him that he will get second and third chances. Only one quarterback in the league threw more passes than Manning. If he simply makes the one or two changes needed each time, he will eventually find the weakness. Manning's 68.8% completion rate is second only to Brees... and Manning threw 57 more passes with a lesser run game. It's why his peers with stronger or even more accurate arms have never risen anywhere near his level. Manning doesn't win because of his arm, or even because of his mind; he wins because of his process, one that he has perfected to the point of imposing it on every player in the locker room. The Saints may strike more quickly by virtue of their arsenal, it's the knowledge that Manning, upon finding the holes in a defense, will never look back that makes him the deadliest offensive weapon on the field.
Which means that defensive end Dwight Freeney, the often forgotten fourth face on the Colts' Mount Rushmore, will be the talent on whose abilities the entire game swings. I have no doubt that the Saints defense will find ways to confound Manning, though for how long nobody knows. Still, the fact that the Saints, a poor 26th against the pass, have managed to create 26 interceptions (3rd best in the league) and 35 sacks (above the league average) is a testament to their ability to create confusion and chaos long enough for their offense to leave opponents too far behind to catch up. They can do it to the Colts, too. So Dwight Freeney needs to single handedly disrupt the smooth functioning of the Saints rhythm. Freeney has done this before, and is built to do it again. He's fast enough to suffocate Reggie Bush's attempts to the outside (for those wondering, Robert Mathis is equally fast on the opposite side of the line, lacking only Freeney's power). He's powerful enough to crowd the passing lanes in a way that has proven to frustrate Brees. Make no mistake, that win over the Vikings defensive line was a triumph of the Saints' underrated depth at running back. All in all, it's a fairly simple proposition: if Freeney can successfully disrupt the Saints early, the Colts will win in a shootout.
Or maybe that's stated the wrong way. Let's go with this: if the Saints can hold off Dwight Freeney, they'll win. Of course, this is dependent on other victories over the individuals mentioned above. If they can delay Peyton Manning's eventual understanding of their defense, the Saints will win. If they can slow frustrate the talents of Reggie Wayne and Dallas Clark long enough, the Saints will win. Where we're used to seeing the need for an individual to achieve unexpected greatness to hold off a great team, here we have a handful of individuals that it will take an entire team performing at an elite level to stop.
And so, we return the divide. Do you root for the legendary team or the team with the legends? The man of destiny or the team of destiny? The NFL sits in a tension between thriving on the love of the individual and the tribe, and this Super Bowl will affect the direction of the league. Whether teams seek out individuals who will make their team great or individuals who fit the scheme of the great team they envision, hell, even how much the league is willing to pay its great individuals (lest we forget, the Collective Bargaining Agreement is up this year) will begin to be decided this Super Bowl Sunday.
So take the rest of the week to ask yourself whether that replica jersey you wear is significant for the logo and the colors, or the name on the back.
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