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Not a great team.

One of the first thing that comes to mind in a quick retrospective about the 2009 Colts is that the Colts have not been a great football team this year.

This is in no way meant to be disrespectful to the team that I picked at the beginning of the year to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl.*  At the beginning of the year, everyone knew that the Colts would be good.  It’s a team of superstars from Peyton Manning to Reggie Wayne to Dallas Clark, Freeney, Mathis, Brackett, Kelvin Hayden, Bob Sanders.  We didn’t know about Jerrod Powers, Jacob Lacey, Jeff DeVan, Austin Collie, and Pierre Garcon before the season, but it was well established that the Colts’ talent development system could churn out some great skill players.

*I picked the Seahawks in the NFC.  Yeah. Had the Saints deep in the playoffs, at least.

And in close games, the Colts performed fantastically this year.  But, overall, people are going to forget how injured this team was because they preserved, not through greatness, but through goal-achievement and close wins.  The 2009 Colts will be remembered for doing everything that THEY came to do, and leaving their egos (and particularly those of their fans) at the door.  They’ll be remembered for Peyton Manning’s great season and his 4th MVP.  It will be forgotten that, despite overwhelming consistency, the greatness was in their accomplishments, not the team itself.

Luckily, there are statistics that suggest that New Orleans was a slightly stronger team throughout the season, or at least that it was very even.

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DVOA

New Orleans 23.4%, Indianapolis 17.1%

Weighted DVOA (includes both teams resting starters)

New Orleans 13.5%, Indianapolis 9.8%

Brian Burke’s NY Times Game Projection

Indianapolis 52%, New Orleans 48%

Regular Season Point Differential

New Orleans Saints 169, Indianapolis Colts 109

Brian Burke’s GWP (Generic Win Percentage)

Indianapolis 0.78, New Orleans 0.77

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None of this really supports the 1 TD line being given to the Indianapolis Colts in this game.  It appears the Colts, at best, were the Saints’ equal, and at worst, were inferior for most of the season.  At least, that’s what the numbers say.

But I think, by and large, the Colts are being expected to win this game comfortably, which supports the line, and furthermore, I think I can support the Colts as favorites even in the face of the evidence I just brought to suggest they might not be.

Everything I cited above was based off regular season totals, which means it’s the largest sample we have of these teams, but it’s also only relevant up until about four and a half weeks ago.  Based on what we knew four weeks ago, it would have suggested that the Colts would NOT be here, and that the Saints would be in a dogfight with the Cowboys and the Eagles to represent the NFC.

The Colts got to the Super Bowl by raising their level of play and performing more in line with the league’s best offense in victories over great teams in the Ravens and the Jets.  I think it’s safe to conclude that if the Colts did not raise their offensive level, they would have fallen in the postseason, and therefore, they’re playing better on offense now than they were in the regular season.

On the other hand, the Saints had to play neither the Packer or the Eagles or the Cowboys entirely because of the NFC seeding system.  The Eagles and the Cowboys had to play in the first round, which the Cowboys won (meaning the Saints didn’t have to play the Eagles).  The Cardinals got to host the Packers only because an offseason rule change that would have granted home games to the best records in the conference instead of division winners failed to pass, in what was likely the decisive factor in that game.

The Saints and Cards were a more intriguing match-up than an actual danger for the Saints.  And when the Vikings managed to do the Saints a favor at home and beat down the Cowboys, the Saints had managed a pretty easy road to the super bowl through only the Cards and Vikings.  They still had to go take care of business against Minnesota, and through plenty of chances to put the game away, the Saints ended up playing the Vikings in sudden death overtime before making it to the super bowl.

You could say the Colts struggled with the Jets for a little bit, but a good, long drive in that game by Manning and the Colts, and they had reached a level that the Jets could not match.  While I believe the Colts spent too much of an otherwise perfect regular season not at that level, their ability to get there and stay there for an extended period of time is unmatched.  But for the Saints, their inability to put away the inferior Vikings rings a lot louder.  There are similarities between the Colts and Vikings, but the ability to adjust to how the Saints are trying to attack is not one of them.  The Colts will be vastly more prepared than the Vikings, and that really makes one think: blowout.

Unit for unit, the Saints match-up very well in this game.  Their defense has the ability to rise to any occasion, and if the super bowl ends up being a defensive struggle that neither Peyton or Brees can solve, the Saints have the advantage in the kicking game.

Ultimately though, there’s a really simple maxim that can defend the Vegas line in the face of two seemingly similar teams.  If the game is a blowout, there’s hardly any doubt that Peyton Manning will be the one directing it.  But if the game is close as many expect, Manning is still going to be there for a last crack at it.  At some point during the game, the Saints defense is going to have to stop the elevated Colts offense cold.  And even then, that might not be enough.

Maybe these teams really aren’t that equal.

I still think they are pretty close, if the Colts have a slight advantage.  That advantage might be nullified by Dwight Freeney’s injury.   But it sure seems like the Saints are going to have to come up with a uniquely dominant offensive and defensive scheme to compete like they have competed all year.  And the Colts have an advantage that the Saints can’t do a thing about:

Their schematic advantage stands in the middle of the field and gets to handle the football.  It’s why the Colts continue to exceed all their projections every year.  And it’s why the Saints will have more problems adjusting to the Colts this week than they have with the rest of their schedule all of this year.

Before looking at the super bowl match-up from a few different angles, I wanted to take a quick look back at Kurt Warner’s retirement, and where exactly the Cardinals are left in terms of quarterback.

Basically, we understand already that it’s Matt Leinart’s job to lose.  But what kind of quarterback is Matt Leinart, and can he hang on to the job?  Will he be the one to get the Cardinals back to the playoffs next year?  Does he have to in order to have a future?  And who, if anyone else, is available for the Cardinals to chase?

Question #1: exactly who is this Leinart kid? Matt Leinart hasn’t accomplished much in the NFL except that he earned his reputation as a bit of a party boy which, unlike in the past, is viewed as a character flaw for an NFL quarterback, rather than the product of a personality that is shared by all great gunslingers.

The first thing that strikes me in my Leinart analysis is that, clearly, he has the goods as far as an NFL player is concerned.  Accuracy at the NFL level has been an issue, but Leinart can play within the offense without a major dropoff from Kurt Warner, and he’ll get the ball out on time without questioning what he’s seeing.  The arm strength here is good, but not great.  The completion percentage isn’t there yet, but he got it up to 66.7% in a small (77 attempts) sample this year.  It raised his career totals to 57.1%

In other words, Matt Leinart is very much in the same boat as Brady Quinn, though the method of arriving there was very different.  The thing that stands out about Leinart at the pro level is a poor touchdown rate in an offense that Kurt Warner lit up the league in.  This, essentially is an extension of his accuracy issues.  Warner could use the vast advantage he had in talent to extend drives on third down, and Leinart sometimes misses on easily defined throws.  He may never become a 20 TD guy in the NFL, but teams–especially good teams–should be able to win with less.

Leinart won’t make the big mistake to hurt his team, but he’s a medium to low efficiency player at the NFL, and his future might ultimately be in the dreaded game-manager mold.

Question #2: Who’s the competition? If there’s one thing for certain, it’s that Leinart will be getting competition for this job from all directions.  Two veteran names that come to mind to replace Warner on the roster are Miami’s Chad Pennington, an unrestricted free agent, and Tampa Bay’s Byron Leftwich, who figures to be released from the last year of his contract.  Shaun Hill is another guy who might stay within the division if he is released by San Francisco.

But Leinart is also going to get competition from a rookie due to the massive depth of the quarterback class in this NFL Draft–not for the job this year–but for the quarterback of the future designation.  If Leinart loses, he’s not guaranteed a roster spot at all: Ken Whisenhunt would be willing to go with a veteran acquisition at No. 1, particularly Pennington, and Brian St. Pierre as the No. 2 guy.

Warner’s retirement really kills the Cards leverage with regards to Leinart’s trade value.  A year ago, the Cards probably could have flipped him for a second round pick to a team like Tampa or the Jets if they had acted promptly prior to the Jets.  Now, the Cards need Matt Leinart to be the guy who keeps their playoff streak together while the defense becomes the type of unit that this offense can win because of.  He’ll either be the franchise guy here by year’s end, or he will be expendable, but without very much trade value.

Question #3:  What kind of timetable is there for replacing Warner?  Everything we think we know about Ken Whisenhunt suggest that he’s not in a rush to get things right.  It’s critical to him that everything that happens in Arizona under his watch happens the right way in the right order.  With Kurt Warner’s retirement hardly catching the Cardinals by surprise, this becomes Matt Leinart’s team.

Clearly, however, there is no timetable on how long Leinart will be the unquestioned number one guy.  There’s no reason to suggest that the Cardinals have given up hope that Leinart can be the quarterback that he was drafted to be by Arizona, but these guys are realists.  The only reason that Warner and Leinart were in a QB battle in the first place is not because it was obvious that Warner actually had a lot to add to his hall of fame resume, but that even in a limited time, it was obvious that Warner was the better quarterback.

That’s not because Leinart was a poor prospect, but it is because he hasn’t really turned into a great prospect.  And the time remaining on Leinart’s “prospect” status is down to about a year, if that long.  The only thing we know about him right now is that he can handle the demands of his position.

Whisenhunt is also a quarterback-intentive coach, which means that he will find someone better than Leinart if he doesn’t develop into anything more than a ball distributor at a reasonable age.  And we’ve also seen in the past that once the conclusion has been made that Leinart is not ready, Whisenhunt has been willing to go significant older to get the type of efficiency his offense requires.

It’s critical, more for the Cardinals than the player, that Leinart continues to improve at quarterback, and gets his completion percentage and TD rates up to what the Cardinals offense allows them to be from a guy who is making the plays that he has needed to.  To date, the Cardinals offense since the firing of Denny Green has proven a poor schematic fit for Leinart, but with all the time he has had to sit and watch the position played by a master, things could be different this time around.

Or they might not be, in which case, Leinart becomes a sunk cost to the Cardinals.

In summary, Leinart is going to get the first crack at being the next franchise quarterbacks of the Cardinals, but he only has a few demerits remaining before he fails for the last time, and gets released into NFL-backup oblivion.  For the sake of party-boy quarterbacks everywhere, America pulls for you Matt Leinart.  May you throw five or six touchdowns against a Pete Carroll led defense this year.