'Hot and healthy' flies out the playoff window - NFL - Yahoo! Sports
But what I really want to point out is that on Nate Kaeding’s 26-yard field goal that tied the game with 33 seconds left in regulation, San Diego’s Dave Binn – a 15-year veteran who may well be the best long snapper in NFL history – flipped the ball between his legs with a hauntingly low trajectory, an uncharacteristic slip that could’ve spelled disaster for San Diego and propelled Dungy’s team into the next round.
The holder who fielded it cleanly and, in one motion, placed it down so perfectly that Kaeding didn’t even realize the snap had been off-target? Ladies and gentlemen, Mike Scifres.
Then came the overtime coin toss, where hot and healthy took a backseat to lucky. The captains came to midfield, and Manning, before making the call, deferred to teammate Darrell Reid, who chose heads.
Up in a luxury suite, the quarterback’s wife felt her stomach drop.
“I don’t know why he did that,” Ashley Manning said afterward. “Peyton always picks tails.”
The coin came up tails, and 68,082 fans erupted, and San Diego defensive tackle Jamal Williams, who was also at midfield, yelled “Game over!”
It wasn’t quite that simple, but after a couple of key plays and three defensive penalties, San Diego was at the Indy 20, well within Kaeding’s range.
Now Dungy was helpless, and Turner, San Diego’s embattled coach, had a decision to make. On first-and-10 he ran Sproles off left tackle, and the halfback was slammed for a two-yard loss by linebacker Clint Session.
What next? Should Turner go ahead and send in Kaeding on second down? Should he run another play, and if so, what? There was a lot of hemming and hawing on the sidelines, and suddenly Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers was in Turner’s field of vision.
“Iso! Iso! Iso!” Rivers screamed at his coach, urging Turner to call a running play that would isolate the speedy Sproles against an Indy linebacker off left end.
Turner obliged, and then Sproles was alone in space, where he burst forward and made a sweet inside cutback. Then he was in the end zone and the Chargers were in the divisional round (they’ll play the Steelers in Pittsburgh next Sunday) and Dungy, whose team won the Super Bowl as a No. 3 seed two years ago, was entering that dark decompression zone that may push him toward retirement.
As one of the NFL’s best pass rushers of his generation, the Colts’ Dwight Freeney believes that he is held by opposing pass blockers “every single damn play.” Let that serve as a backdrop to the utter disgust the Pro Bowl defensive end displayed as we walked to Indy’s team bus outside Qualcomm on Saturday night over the trio of penalties called against the Colts’ defense that helped facilitate San Diego’s winning touchdown drive in overtime. The rundown: Second-and-4 from the San Diego 43 – Sproles is stopped for no gain, but Eric Foster is called for defensive holding. Third-and-8 from the Indy 40 – Rivers throws incomplete to Chris Chambers, but cornerback Tim Jennings, who helped break up the pass, is called for defensive holding. Next play, first-and-10 at the Colts’ 35 – Sproles is stopped for no gain, but Session, who made the tackle, is whistled for a 15-yard facemask penalty. In my opinion it could be argued that any of the three penalties was justified, and a case could be made that each was unwarranted. But to have all three of them called in that context was regrettable, and the fact that the Chargers were only penalized three times all game (and only once on offense, for an ineligible man downfield) makes it even worse. In Freeney’s opinion, the flurry of calls that helped end his season was flat-out unconscionable. “Those were the worst [expletive] calls I’ve seen in a long time,” he said. “To have a game of that magnitude taken out of your hands, it’s just disgusting. It’s not like they made one [expletive] bad call – it’s three calls, in overtime. On one the ball’s 50 feet over [Chambers’] head. And they have the nerve to call defensive holding? When they can’t even call one friggin’ offensive holding the whole game? What’s going on? They need to start investigating some other [expletive].”
