They Were No Shoe-In : Nobody Gave the Colts a Chance, and That Was All the Motivation They Needed

It is a miracle.

The Dolts--pardon--the Colts will be in Sunday’s AFC championship game in Pittsburgh, and to put that in perspective, imagine the Clippers taking on the Houston Rockets in the NBA’s Western Conference finals.

Too ridiculous to even consider.

“Did you see what HBO’s Nick Buoniconti said about us?” asked Bill Tobin, the Colts’ vice president of football operations.

What Buoniconti had said was, “I don’t think anybody wants to see this team win. The Colts aren’t sexy and they have no superstars to speak of.”

The Colts in the Super Bowl. Say that three times in a row without scoffing. This is the team that left Baltimore to get lost somewhere in middle America. Browning Nagle was the Colts’ starting quarterback in last year’s final game. This is a team with one big-name player, Marshall Faulk, and he doesn’t talk to reporters.

“Come here,” Tobin said, while moving into the Colts’ strategy room. “Check out this list we have kept on the board.”

Instead of viewing a chart on the benefit of turnovers, sacks or red zone efficiency, there was a list detailing each team’s national exposure on TV this season.

“Look at this group of teams,” Tobin said. “Every one of them is on three, four and five times, and here we are with one game. One game on ESPN the night before Christmas.”

Craig Kelley, the Colts’ director of public relations, was standing next to Tobin with additional ammunition.

“When we played against the 4-0 Rams earlier this season, 6% of the country was shown the game,” he said. “For our game in the [Hoosier Dome] against the Chargers, the game was seen in Yuma, Fort Wayne, South Bend and San Diego. We were the last team to be shown on TV this year.”

Who wants to watch the Colts? “That was part of our motivation,” Tobin said. “We told the players before the last game, ‘We win this and we will make them put the rest of our games on TV this year.’ ”

OK, so Tobin acknowledged, some of the players didn’t catch on. They had never been to the playoffs before so how were they to know that all the playoff games are shown on TV, regardless of the teams playing.

“We have played 18 games, including preseason games, and we haven’t had a bad game where we were out-coached, outclassed, out-hit, out-talented in any of them,” said a defiant Tobin.

It is a miracle.

“Tell us how bad we are,” said Trev Alberts, linebacker for the Colts. “Tell us why we can’t win. Tell us why we don’t deserve to be here.

“The worst thing that can happen now is for everyone to say we’re going to go out and beat the Steelers. Please, don’t do it.”

The Colts, who began the season with Craig Erickson at quarterback, Faulk at running back and Flipper Anderson at wide receiver, are within a game of playing in the Super Bowl with Jim Harbaugh at quarterback, Lamont Warren at running back and Sean Dawkins at wide receiver.

Lindy Infante, the Colts’ offensive coordinator, said, “I think anybody in their right mind, if they were to go back six months and say, ‘OK, guys let me throw this scenario at you: You’re going to lose Flipper Anderson, you’re going to have Jim Harbaugh be the top-rated quarterback in the league, Marshall Faulk and [starting fullback] Roosevelt Potts won’t play because of knee injuries, you will lose your left guard [Randy Dixon] and you got to go to Kansas City, what are you going to do?”

Lose, of course, but then nothing has gone as one might think this season for the Colts:

--Indianapolis gave Tampa Bay a No. 1 pick in the draft, along with a fourth-round choice, to acquire Erickson during the off-season and then awarded him a $6-million contract for the next three years. Erickson lasted two games as a starter before being replaced by Harbaugh, who is paid less than 34 other quarterbacks in the league.

--The Colts signed Anderson, the former Ram wide receiver, to a five-year, $8.5-million contract, and then lost him because of a knee injury six quarters and eight catches into the season.

--Faulk, the Colts’ game-breaker, injured his knee in the final regular-season game against New England, and then hurt it again on the first play of the playoffs against San Diego. He had arthroscopic surgery Friday, is not expected to play against Pittsburgh, and is listed as a longshot to play in the Super Bowl should the Colts advance.

--Potts, blocker for Faulk and good enough to average 4.8 yards a carry himself, tore a ligament in his knee in the fourth quarter in the regular-season game with San Diego.

--It was generally accepted here that Coach Ted Marchibroda, who was in the final year of his contract, would be fired at season’s end and replaced by Tobin’s brother, Vince, the team’s defensive coordinator. Now Marchibroda figures to be in line for a raise.

“I’m sure the perception is still out there that we don’t belong here,” said Marchibroda, who has one picture on his office wall--that of the pope. “That’s fine with us. The important thing isn’t the perception. We’re here.”

The Colts’ rise to prominence coincides precisely with Tobin’s arrival as director of football operations two years to the day on which Indianapolis stunned the Chiefs, 10-7. Tobin, the director of player personnel for the Bears during their Super Bowl season in 1985, took command of a team that had finished 4-12 the previous year.

“[Owner] Bob Irsay’s recommendation was to get rid of all the coaches, which was his history,” Tobin said. “My recommendation was to keep Ted Marchibroda and let all the defensive coaches go, and hire my brother.”

When the Colts finished 8-8 a year ago, Tobin, who had traded quarterback Jeff George to Atlanta a year earlier, went back to Marchibroda and relieved him of his duties as offensive coordinator, suggesting Infante, who had been out of coaching the previous three years.

Infante, former head coach of the Packers and a proponent of an offense that has the quarterback spraying the ball to all corners of the field, immediately provided the missing piece in Tobin’s grand plan. Under Infante’s tutelage, Harbaugh became the top-ranking quarterback in the league.

“All year long our club has fought with everything it had,” Marchibroda said. “We have been involved in 10 games that were decided by three points or less. I think the character of this team is such that we will hang in any fight.

“So why not us? That’s what I told the team at the end of the season. There are no clear-cut favorites, no dominating team. So why not us?”