Tony Dungy's team let him down
BILL PLASCHKE
If this was indeed the Colts' coach last game, he deserved to go out on a better note.
The white helmets sailed through the night air. The powder-blue jerseys bounced across the pock-marked field.
All of Qualcomm Stadium shook, screams and soda cups and shock dropping on the devastated, departing Indianapolis Colts.
None of it touched Tony Dungy.
None of it ever touches Tony Dungy.
The coach walked away from the smoking wreckage of his team's 23-17 overtime wild-card playoff loss to the San Diego Chargers as if he were walking out of church.
His shirt tucked tight. His face blankly devout. His eyes red, but that's what happens sometimes when you are saying goodbye, and there is a chance Dungy has just done exactly that.
After spending previous days intimating that this could be his last season, the historic coach did nothing Saturday to dispel the notion that this was his last game.
"I don't know," he said quietly from the bowels of a house gone mad. "I'll let you know in a week."
As the league's first and only African American coach to win a Super Bowl, Dungy understands all about the difficulty of beginnings.
Now he knows the equal pain that can be found in endings.
Playing a mediocre, sometimes clueless bunch that sprinted breathlessly just to get here, Dungy watched his proud, sturdy group disintegrate before his cold stare.
Nine straight wins, then one remember-forever defeat.
If Dungy is indeed retiring forever to spend time with family and charity as he has warned, he will leave with the door smacking him firmly and unfairly in the behind.
He will leave with his high-powered offense needing one first down -- two yards -- to win this wild-card playoff game in regulation.
But Peyton Manning disappeared under the sweaty rolls of Tim Dobbins, the most suffocating of sacks, and they lost.
"We've got to make a first down to ice the game and we weren't able to do it," Dungy said.
He will leave with the MVP Manning needing only one drive to win this playoff game in overtime.
But the Colts lost the coin toss, and, thanks to the dumbest rule in all of sports, Dungy's leader may have spent Dungy's final moments sitting on the bench wearing a baseball cap.
"It's hard for me to get into that right now," said Manning of an overtime rule that guarantees only one team possession.
He will leave with his defense needing to get one stop of a tired Chargers offense to give Manning his overtime shot.
