I’ll link to the first of Johnny O’s maze of pages.
“The idea that you somehow lose momentum or that you get rusty has no basis in fact, none whatsoever,” Polian said Monday on his weekly radio show on 97.1 Hank FM in Indianapolis.
“It’s just a theory and it is great to be spoken about and written about, but the facts say otherwise.”
Polian as evidence cited the 1999 season.
The Colts that season won the AFC East title and entered a game at Buffalo in the final game of the regular season with chance at the AFC’s No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the postseason. To get it, the Colts needed to beat Buffalo and have Jacksonville lose at home against Cincinnati.
The Colts’ plan was to play starters until Jacksonville secured the victory.
“Lo and behold, for the first quarter and a half, the score [of the Jacksonville game] was close,” Polian said. “So, we left our starters in the game and [linebacker] Cornelius Bennett – who spent only one year with us, but who was the lynchpin of our defense at a time when our defense was nowhere near as good as it is today – went down with a knee injury from a chop block. It finished him for the playoffs.
“We came in against the Tennessee Titans [in an AFC Divisional Playoff game] here, lost in a tight ballgame where our defense gave up a 60-yard-plus run to Eddie George to lose the ballgame, and they went on to play in the Super Bowl and we went home.
“That’s a fact and I can recite all of the facts surrounding that situation because I’ve never forgotten it. It never has left my mind. That is the price you pay for playing players in meaningless games.”
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