Mag 7 Week 17

Oehser wraps things up with a good read

1. A final thought. Since we opened with the Jets fallout, why not close with it, too? Probably, this repeats a thought, but when you write a topic as often as this has been written in recent days, a repeated thought or two happens. In life, most people make decisions and act based on their experiences. It has been vogue to say in recent weeks that the past decisions that ought to be dictating the Colts’ thinking is that they have somehow lost momentum in past postseasons by resting players late in the season. Feeding into that argument is the fact that they won the Super Bowl following the 2006 season when they played players through regular season’s end. This has been used more often than not in recent weeks to show why the Colts need to play starters through this season’s end, but to understand the Colts’ decisions, you’ve got to look at it a little deeper. First off, they see the aforementioned information as coincidence and not a trend. What they see is that injuries have crippled them in past postseasons. The Colts lost to New England with Clark out of the game, and they lost the following season to New England without Mathis. There’s a belief that their chances would have been much better, and that they might have won those games – and possibly the subsequent Super Bowls – had they been a bit more healthy. They lost to the San Diego Chargers in 2007 with Freeney out of the game, and last season, they lost to San Diego again – this time, without MLB Gary Brackett. The Colts watched their chances at history slip away with what they considered injury-depleted teams, making the priority whenever possible to be as healthy as possible. That certainly won’t appease the fans, but that’s motivation.