Rob Lowe and Taylor Lautner Are Colts Fans? Must Be Destiny

To me, this is what Peyton Manning's problem is. He has the work habits and dedication and obsessiveness of Jordan and Tiger Woods. But he can't deal with the accompanying preparation anxiety. The Manning face is the look of someone who has just faced up to a sobering fact: I am in complete control of this offense. I prepare for games like no other quarterback in the NFL. I am in the best shape of my life. I have done everything I can to succeed -- and I'm losing. Ohmigod. I'm not that good.

~ Author Malcolm Gladwell, explaining the Bill Simmons coined "Manning Face", in a 2006 ESPN interview


Yes, I'm all too familiar with "The Manning Face". After playoff losses to Tennessee, Miami, the Jets (41-0), New England (twice), and Pittsburgh, I thought that damn face would unfortunately be the enduring legacy of the great Peyton Manning. I defended Manning on the outside, enjoying the thrill-a-minute regular seasons, even while my bruised soul longed for Tom Brady's playoff heroics come January. The theater was full of chatterboxes and my seat was uncomfortable, but I had already purchased my ticket to Dan Marino II: The Legend of Peyton's Gold, and I was damn sure going to finish my movie.

Now? With an opportunity to win his second Super Bowl in four years less than two weeks away? Here's my definition of "The Manning Face":

That's the Manning Face. The "come on, you guys knew I would do this, right?" face. The "I was born to be the best quarterback of all time" face. Or, my personal favorite, the "aw shucks, I'm humbled - or at least putting on an act that I'm humbled, when really I know I have the natural talent, and put in more work than anyone on top of that to deserve this" face.

My favorite Manning face? Obviously this one:

Notice the similarities? This one just has a sprinkle of "fuck you" to it, like the dork who goes back to his high school reunion a millionaire married to a supermodel, snickering at his former tormentors who now paint decks and install DirecTV satellites.

I couldn't win in the playoffs, right? I'm the next Dan Marino, huh? I'm nothing but a stats guy? A regular season quarterback?

I loved the shot at Sexy Rexy and the loud mouth Jets on the podium as he accepted the Lamar Hunt Trophy, reserved for THE AFC CHAMPIONS. But hey, we knew Peyton could pop off when he wants to.

I know, I know. I'm sucking Peyton so hard, you're probably waiting for me to spit. The rest of the team has played great this postseason (minus Jacob Lacey, but I'll give him a rookie pass), reminding us all how much of a genius Bill Polian is. And kudos to Jim Caldwell. It's pretty easy to say he inherited a great team, but the defense and special teams had to be tinkered with, and he made all the right moves.

Yes, I'm still mad about the pursuit of perfection. No, it doesn't really matter now. After all, my favorite team is two weeks away from a championship.

COME ON, PAT ME ON THE DAMN BACK

AFC

MY PREDICTION: Colts 31 Jets 10

REAL SCORE: Colts 30 Jets 17

NFC

MY PREDICTION: Saints 34 Vikings 23

REAL SCORE: Saints 31 Vikings 28

What? Did you think I'd let you realize that on your own without mentioning it? Come on, now. That at least makes up for the Kings, right?

RANDOM THOUGHTS FROM A RANDOM SCHMUCK

~Every Favre hater in the world wrote the script for last night's game, right?

~Malcolm Gladwell is a genius, and knows his shit. Please don't think I'm attacking him. In his defense, here's another thing he said about Manning in a different ESPN interview:

Manning reminds me of Tom Hoving, who I write about in "Blink"; he has spent a lifetime studying and handling and thinking about ancient Greek art. One day, the curator of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles showed him a statute they had just bought for $10 million, and Hoving took one look at it and blurted out: "It's fake." In that first split second, the statue struck him as wrong. And sure enough, Hoving was right. It was a fake. When we spend a lifetime studying something that closely, what we are doing is educating our unconscious. We're developing and training our instincts, so that we can glance at a unusual situation and instantly know what it means. That's what Manning is doing by studying so much film. He's educating his on-field instincts.

What I'd love to do is to put eye-tracking goggles on him. Cognitive psychologists use these a lot: they are special glasses that track exactly what your eyes are focusing on at any given moment -- to an incredible level of detail. When you read the word "moment" in my previous sentence, for instance, did you start at the 't' and work backwards, or zero in on the middle "m" or just look at the first 'm' and then skip to the last 't'? The answer would tell me how you "read" a sentence.

I'd love to know, on this same level of detail, how Manning "reads" a defense. Does he spend a extra fraction of a second on the linebacker, or the safety? When he's playing the Ravens, does he look to Ray Lewis first, or last, or does he do something completely unexpected like not looking at Lewis at all? Are there certain schemes that he takes longer to understand? If so, what are they? And so on. Manning, for instance, probably picks up blitzes better than anyone else in football. Wouldn't you love to know what he's doing, in the face of a blitz, that -- say -- Kyle Boller isn't?

What, you mean everybody doesn't know what happens to Kyle Boller in the face of a blitz?