King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Colts win Super Bowl XLI. Indy dominates everything but the scoreboard. Plus: Big day for homophobia. And: Ad review.
Read more: Sports, Advertising, TV, Super Bowl, Commercials, Homophobia, Football, NFL, King Kaufman, NFL Playoffs, Sports Daily
Feb. 5, 2007 | One of the great givens of NFL life is no more: Peyton Manning really can win the big one. There's an older given too, overshadowed by the Manning given in recent years: Tony Dungy can't win the big one. That's also gone.
As he has done throughout these playoffs, Manning played game manager more than superstar Sunday night as the Indianapolis Colts beat the Chicago Bears 29-17, making Dungy the first black head coach to win a Super Bowl. Dungy had gained a reputation in his years in Tampa Bay and Indianapolis as a coach whose teams fizzled in the playoffs.
Manning was given the Most Valuable Player award that perhaps should have gone to his two running backs, Dominic Rhodes and Joseph Addai. They combined for 190 yards on 40 carries, Rhodes collecting 113 of those and Addai adding 66 more on 10 catches.
The Colts dominated the line of scrimmage on offense and defense. They dominated the game, the first Super Bowl played in steady rain, but not the scoreboard. The Bears, who got a charge when rookie Devin Hester returned the opening kickoff 92 yards for a touchdown, led 14-6 at one point in a thrilling first quarter and trailed only 22-17 early in the fourth.
Indianapolis turned the ball over three times, twice on fumbles, and bogged down in the red zone four times, Adam Vinatieri kicking three field goals and missing one. That failure to turn 430 yards and 24 first downs into a similarly huge pile of points left the door open for the Bears, but Chicago couldn't make anything of the chance.
A breakthrough performance by Rex Grossman might have done it, but Grossman was bad. He sailed floating passes to the sidelines, fumbled snaps and made disastrous decisions. Grossman made a nice throw to Muhsin Muhammad for a 5-yard touchdown following Thomas Jones' 52-yard run midway through the first quarter. That gave the Bears their 14-6 lead -- and their last effective offensive moment.
The Colts defense, the worst ever to win a Super Bowl, had played well throughout the playoffs, shutting down the running games of the Kansas City Chiefs, Baltimore Ravens and New England Patriots after not stopping anybody's running game all year. But while the Colts made some nice plays Sunday, particularly Bob Sanders' crunching hit on running back Cedric Benson, separating Benson from the ball and forcing a first-quarter turnover, the Bears' woes looked more like offensive incompetence than defensive strength.
Next page: Bad Rex's worst mistake. Plus: Super Bowl of homophobia? And: Super Sunday ads have jumped the shark