Manning Can’t Hand Off Responsibility

When the season began, the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles appeared to be the NFL’s two best teams, and nothing happened last weekend to shake the perception that they’re both still on the way to Super Bowl XXXIX.

Although Pittsburgh won the home-field advantage for today’s AFC title game, the Patriots will be there with the wilier coach, Bill Belichick, and the more mature quarterback, Tom Brady. Each has a 2-0 edge in Super Bowl games won over Pittsburgh Coach Bill Cowher and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

To say nothing of the edge they have now over Indianapolis.

To turn back the Colts last week, 20-3, the Patriots shut down Peyton Manning.

The explanation for this, once more, is that Manning is both a good passer and a bad quarterback.

Against the Patriots, allowed to call many of the Colts’ plays as usual, he shared the snaps with Edgerrin James for as long as the game was on the line, reasoning, incorrectly, that he needed James’ runs to set up his passing.

Actually, to win, Manning needed only an occasional run, along with a few fakes and many more passes, particularly on first down. For, in pro ball, defensive teams worry about any good runner even if he’s getting the ball only occasionally.

Manning somehow doesn’t see that, and so the only NFL player who ever threw 49 touchdown passes in one season is out of the playoffs.

His is the football mystery story of the year.

Unpredictable Vick

The Atlanta Falcons, who destroyed the Rams last week, 47-17, don’t figure to win again today in Philadelphia but might pull it out anyway with their wild-man leader, Michael Vick, who is the most unpredictable athlete in the league.

Atlanta’s running game, the best in the league, is set up not by a passer but by thescrambling Vick.

Normally it takes a passer to set up a runner, or vice versa. But Vick doesn’t pass well enough to take the defensive heat off his other runners, Warrick Dunn and T.J. Duckett.

What’s freed them to gain so much ground this season is that Atlanta’s opponents must reckon first with Vick. While they chase him, Dunn or sometimes Duckett races away with the football.

If the Atlanta running game doesn’t succeed today, it will be because Vick isn’t a good enough passer to last any longer in the playoffs.

Thus, the principal challenge to the Eagles is playing defense properly against Vick.

Big Ben Best

The quarterback who has it toughest this month is Roethlisberger, who is being asked to line up Pittsburgh’s old-time offense and use it to win playoff games. Still, when he so narrowly beat the New York Jets in overtime last week, 20-17, it was instantly assumed that Big Ben had “finally played like a rookie.”

Not so. Whereas the Jets could score touchdowns only on two long returns, Roethlisberger beat them this way:

* In the fourth quarter, when Pittsburgh was losing, 17-10, he coolly directed the only long touchdown drive of the game to tie the score. He opened that 66-yard drive with a 20-yard scramble and ended it with a four-yard shovel pass. In between, he did what any quarterback employed by any old-fashioned team must do -- he completed third-down passes.

* In overtime, Roethlisberger outdid his remarkable fourth-quarter performance. After his defensive team got him the ball, he moved the Steeler offense 72 yards to the winning field goal, passing successfully on third and six and third and five.

For a rookie in his first playoff game, it was an all but unbelievable afternoon.

If Roethlisberger fails to win his 15th in a row today, it won’t be because he’s a rookie playing like a rookie but because his coaches have failed to structure an offense that matches the brilliance of their defense. Asking a rookie like Roethlisberger -- or even a veteran like Manning -- to complete third-down passes against Belichick is like asking a rock star to sing opera.

The Dominator

Already a two-time Super Bowl winner, Belichick is taking his place this season as the NFL’s most dominating coach since Bill Walsh.

The Steelers are in position to annul that impression today, but Manning couldn’t do it last week when, with a pathetic, predictable offense, he played into Belichick’s hands.

Even though first down is by far the best passing down, it was only in the last two minutes of the first half that Manning, directing the Colts’ 11-play, 67-yard drive to their only score -- a field goal -- threw the ball on every first down.

In no other series did Manning relentlessly move the Colts along, for, on every other series, he kept trying to involve running back James.

And after all the time Manning wasted stretching out to hand off, James gained only 39 yards

Even more revealing, the Colts, with the NFL’s best passing team, continued to run on every first-down play in the third quarter -- four times -- and threw on every second down.

In other words, Manning blessed Belichick with the most predictable offense possible.

Passes Preferred

The significance of first down is that it’s the one down when every defensive expert must be prepared for a run or a pass. Thus, first and 10 is the best time to throw.

On third and 10, or even third and five, everyone in the stadium can predict pass.

Arithmetically, the problem with a first-down run is that even when it gains seven or eight yards, a pass play could have gained 15 or 20 yards or more.

That’s the root argument in favor of passing over running: A successful pass advances a good offensive team closer to a touchdown than does a successful run.

Shaughnessy Defense

The conventional explanation for Manning’s many defeats in New England is, of course, partially true: Against the Patriots, he keeps bumping into the best defensive coach of his time.

In this game, Belichick’s defense was based on continual pre-snap movement to disguise Patriot intentions and change up the defensive look.

The inventor of modern moving defenses was mid-20th-century coach Clark Shaughnessy, who also invented modern offense. Now his defense has been taken to a new high by Belichick, who wielded it to beat the best passer of his time.

Even so, had Manning called an intelligent game -- as he did against Denver a week earlier when he passed on most downs to rout the Broncos, 49-24 -- Belichick loses.

The embarrassing thing to the Colts is that injuries had removed Belichick’s best defensive player, Richard Seymour, as well as his two starting cornerbacks, and Belichick still won.

Against Manning’s team, what could be worse than losing both starting cornerbacks? Why let Belichick jump around to disguise the obvious truth that he’s protecting his backup defensive backs -- that he wants you to run? Embarrassing.