Best Record in '06

[BallHawk]

Miami is a good team and all, but a lot of those wins were from teams that were resting starters or had given up already. They'll be the wild card team and will lose in the first round. I have my doubts about Culpepper. However much Tank wishes it, Harrington won't have a breakout season. They have a great RB in Brown, they also have Chambers(who should be playing for us) who is a great and very underrated receiver. If they can get another good receiver and another playmaker or two on defense, then we can talk Super Bowl run. I live in Dolphin country and everyone here thinks they're going all the way this year. They're not, but Saban is doing a great job with that team.

[4and12to12and4]

Dallas beats Denver 27-17. OK, now I'm going to go shoot myself until I can't feel anymore.

[Partial]

I think the Jags have a chance to be a special team. They are really going to need either Matt Jones or Reggie Williams step up though, because Jimmy Smith was just ridiculous.

Barring injury, I think the Seahawks will be up there again.

edit - I was unclear in stating that the other receivers will have to step up because jimmy smith was just ridiculous. He retired and they need to fill his shoes. That's what I implied.

[BallHawk]

Jimmy Smith retired.

[Partial]

Jimmy Smith retired.

right, I realize that, thus saying Matt Jones or Reggie Williams should have stepped up. It was unclear though.

[GoPackGo]

Partial-quote
There is no jimmy smith and the jags in 2006.

4and12to12and4-quote
The Texans didn't draft reggie bush.



This is officially an amateur thread

[woodbuck27]

Rising from the ashes
Colts are next team headed from bitter defeat to glory

Friday June 2, 2006 11:17AM

Don Banks - Inside the NFL


Peyton Manning and the Colts entered the 2005 playoffs as the favorite to win it all before falling to the Steelers in the AFC divisional playoffs.

We're still more than eight months away from the confetti shower at the final gun of next season's Super Bowl, and another two long sweaty months stand between us and the start of NFL training camps.

It's so early and conventional wisdom says there's much to learn about the upcoming season. But we're not buying it. Not for a minute.

Long before the first spiral is snapped off, there's already a team that has put itself in prime position to win the championship next February in Miami, and it has everything to do with what that talented but ultimately heartbroken club didn't accomplish in 2005.

Write it down and underline it twice: The Indianapolis Colts will win it all this season, precisely because of the way they lost it all at the close of last season. Call it destiny, a reversal of fortune or the reaping of triumph from the seeds of bitter disappointment and even tragedy. Whatever. All I know is that the Colts in 2006 will be the latest example of a recent pattern in professional sports.

Like the Boston Red Sox of 2003 and the Pittsburgh Steelers of 2004, the Colts had to lose, and lose in the most painful fashion imaginable, before they too can now fight their way back to win in the most glorious.

Falling shy in their playoff runs, the '03 Red Sox and '04 Steelers looked like they had blown the best shot they would have to end their long and well-chronicled title droughts. But in both cases, the bitter defeats were merely the prologues to even better stories, to comebacks that have taken their rightful place in sports history.

Consider the Red Sox, coming off their gut-wrenching ALCS Game 7 meltdown at Yankee Stadium in 2003, when manager Grady Little unwisely let pitcher Pedro Martinez continue, letting his heart overrule his head and costing his club the series in the process. All Boston did in 2004, of course, was become the first baseball team to ever climb out of a 3-0 playoff series deficit, beating those same Yankees four games in a row in the ALCS before sweeping past outclassed St. Louis in four games to win the franchise's first World Series title in 86 years and finally reverse the Curse of the Bambino. Nothing to it.

The 2004 Steelers went a franchise-record 15-1 and stormed into the playoffs behind unbeaten rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and a 14-game winning streak. They had all the momentum in the world -- at which point they fell flat on their face masks. If not for two missed field goal attempts by Doug Brien, Pittsburgh would have lost to the upstart Jets at home in the divisional round. As things turned out, the Steelers lost resoundingly to defending champion New England at Heinz Field in the AFC title game -- the fourth such AFC Championship Game home defeat of head coach Bill Cowher's frustrating coaching tenure.

But the Steelers followed the Red Sox' blueprint to utter perfection. Sitting at 7-5 and on the brink of missing the playoffs last season, the Steelers put together an eight-game winning streak at the most opportune time, culminating in a memorable wild-card run to the franchise's first Super Bowl championship in 26 years. Before the Steelers, no No. 6 seed had ever won three consecutive road playoff games (against the conference's No. 1, 2 and 3 seeds), let alone triumphed in the Super Bowl. Then Pittsburgh made history of all that history.

We know what you're thinking. Recent history doesn't dictate the immediate future and that's exactly the lesson the Red Sox and Steelers taught us. But sometimes the past does matter, in that it can provide the necessary inspiration needed to start anew in the face of overwhelming disappointment and disillusionment.

In the weeks and months after his No. 1-seeded Colts fell 21-18 at home to Pittsburgh in their playoff opener, thereby negating the significance of Indianapolis' NFL-best 14-2 regular-season record and the 13-0 start that captivated the football world, head coach Tony Dungy's constant refrain was that his devastated team needed to let go of the defeat and "get back to work.''

If the Colts can heed that advice, they indeed still have much to work with, and now have the added bonus of the greatest source of motivation of all: unfinished business.

Colts players may not talk nonstop about it this season, but they know that their window of Super Bowl opportunity will not be open indefinitely, and the time to get something done on the ring front is now. Since 1999, Indianapolis has the league's best regular-season mark, at 77-35. But that record rings more than a bit hollow, given that the Colts have yet to advance past the AFC title game in that span.

After the tumult of last December and January, which peaked with the heartrending tragedy of Dungy losing his oldest son, James, to suicide three days before Christmas, the Colts, for the most part, have had a quiet offseason.

They lost some major cogs in free agency in running back Edgerrin James, kicker Mike Vanderjagt, linebacker David Thornton and defensive tackle Larry Tripplett. But they replaced Vanderjagt -- whose comically wide-right 47-yard field goal attempt late in the playoff loss to Pittsburgh summed up Indy's star-crossed fates that day -- with Patriots Super Bowl hero Adam Vinatieri. They drafted LSU running back Joseph Addai in the first round to help offset James' absence. Adding in the re-signing of talented No. 2 receiver Reggie Wayne before free agency opened, the Colts, led as always by quarterback Peyton Manning, remain as formidable a Super Bowl contender as there is.

With their determination forged by disappointment and defeat, the Colts won't be denied in 2006. They've long had the talent. Now they have the drive and the will. Add it all up and it means this time they'll find a way. No matter what it takes. Just like the resilient Red Sox and Steelers before them.

Yes, it's only May. A time of waiting before the watching begins. But in Indianapolis, the comeback already has begun.

[mngolf19]

Cards, Vikes, Panthers, Cowboys
Chargers, Steelers, Colts, Dolphins

Colts best record.
Panthers win SB

[Partial]

Partial-quote
There is no jimmy smith and the jags in 2006.

4and12to12and4-quote
The Texans didn't draft reggie bush.

This is officially an amateur thread

Amatuer thread? Being a huge Jags fan, I OBVIOUSLY knew Jimmy Smith retired. I implied it saying "since Jimmy Smith is so ridiculously good, Matt Jones/Reggie Williams will have to step up (implying to fill his shoes).