Updated at 9:00 p.m., Sunday, January 21, 2007
Colts rally past Patriots, head for Super Bowl
Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS — A comeback, a drive, a legacy. And yes —finally — Peyton Manning gets his Super Bowl trip, too.Football's most prolific quarterback put on a show for the ages today, rallying the Indianapolis Colts from 18 points down and driving them 80 yards for the winning score in a wildly entertaining 38-34 victory over the New England Patriots.
In his nine years in the league, Manning has never played in a game like this AFC championship contest. He threw for 349 yards and one touchdown and brought his team back from a 21-3 deficit.
Joseph Addai capped Manning's late drive with the winning score, a 3-yard run with 1 minute left to help the Colts (15-4) complete the rally and send coach Tony Dungy to his first Super Bowl — and a very special one.
Dungy and the Colts will face the Chicago Bears and his good friend Lovie Smith in Miami in two weeks. Together they are the first black coaches to make the Super Bowl in its 41 years.
After Indy's last touchdown, Manning was on the sideline, his head down — he couldn't bear to watch. New England's Tom Brady — he of the three Super Bowl rings — threw an interception to Marlin Jackson and the RCA Dome crowd went wild. One kneel down later and Manning ripped off his helmet to celebrate.
Not only was it a win for Manning, the All-Pro, All-Everything son of Archie, it was a riveting, back-and-forth showcase of two of the NFL's best teams and best quarterbacks, and yet another example of why football is America's favorite sport.
It was anything but by-the-book, and that started becoming obvious when New England left guard Logan Mankins opened the scoring by pouncing on a fumbled handoff between Brady and Laurence Maroney that squirted into the Indy end zone midway through the first quarter.
It got worse from there for Manning, who telegraphed a throw to the sideline that Patriots cornerback Asante Samuel snatched and took 39 yards into the end zone for a 21-3 lead.
From there, the game plan changed because it had to, and the game morphed from another Manning meltdown into something much more than that.
He led the Colts on an 80-yard drive late in the first half for a field goal to make it 21-6. In the third quarter, he was at his cruel best, dissecting an exhausted Patriots defense for a pair of long drives and scores.
The first came on a 1-yard quarterback sneak. The second was capped by a 1-yard pass to Dan Klecko, a defensive tackle who came in as a supposed decoy at the goal line. A circus catch by Marvin Harrison for the 2-point conversion tied the game at 21.
