Oehser shares his always interesting observations
The player pictured above, QB Peyton Manning, has received credit, deservedly so, for without him the streak or anything close to it doesn’t happen. For his effort, he likely will receive an NFL-record fourth Associated Press Most Valuable Player award, and for that, he will rightly continue his ascension toward if not a consensus choice as the NFL’s best quarterback and perhaps best player even, then at least a spot on the league’s Mount Rushmore. Be the argument player or quarterback, how could Manning by now not have at least a spot in the Final Four? And don’t roll out the tired argument of Super Bowl Rings — but he’s only won one Super Bowl — for there is no more tired and irrevelant argument in a team sport than to judge a great player on the shortcomings of those around him, or the strengths of the opponent. Nearly all of those years Manning “didn’t win a Super Bowl,” he didn’t do so with a team that wasn’t the best in the NFL. The 2005 was the one season this decade they had the league’s best team. They lost, but in 2006 they didn’t have the best team and won. It’s a wash, but that’s an entry — or possibly entries — for another day, because this entry is not about Manning, specifically, but more how while he is a huge part of the Colts’ success, he is only a small part. And remarkable as he has been this season, he perhaps is not the most remarkable part.
Stan writes with this comment about something Oehser said:
Oehser’s appreciation of the Colts today has a note near the end: “Far more games are lost in the NFL, Dungy used to say, than are won, and the Colts have been by far the NFL’s best team at knowing how to negotiate difficult situations this season and not lose.”
One of the greatest coaches ever, General Neyland wrote his famous Game Maxims on a blackboard in the locker room and the team always read them aloud as part of his pre-game message. Those game maxims continued to play a prominent part of pre-game preparation at UT games in the decades that followed. I know that Coach Majors and Coach Fulmer, as former Vol players, stressed them. Fulmer even had them painted on the wall of the Neyland Stadium locker room. http://www.volnation.com/neylands_maxims.php
The most important is the first.
“1. The team that makes the fewest mistakes will win.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if 18 can recite them from memory.
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