Monday Leftovers

OK, home after a marathon commute from Denver to Providence and then home in Massachusetts. I took my middle son, Dan, to a haunted house one of his school friends set up in the family garage.

As we're driving up, the 8-year-old says, "If you don't go in with me or they don't let parents go in, we're out of here."

He's got an iron will, that one.

A few leftovers from yesterday's Denver-Indy game.

1) That's the best I've ever seen Peyton Manning play. And given the way Tom Brady's playing tonight with almost 260 yards passing in the first half, what a tremendous matchup. I wonder which network has that game.

2) The point was made, I think it was on ESPN Sunday night but I've been wrong before, that the Broncos should have been wise to the fact that the best way to unnerve the Indy offense is get Peyton Manning moving around. Some teams can do it with a four-man rush as the Patriots did in the 2003 AFC Championship when they laid back in zone and relied on their pass rush exerted by Jarvis Green, Ty Warren, Richard Seymour and others to force mistakes. The Steelers did it in last year's playoffs by being blitz happy. Denver tried to get after Manning with a four-man rush with defensive tackle Gerard Warren inactive and they couldn't do it. And then they didn't seem to have a backup plan to switch to in the second half when the rush didn't get there and corner Darrent Williams got eaten alive by Reggie Wayne. You can't sit around all day waiting for Manning to misfire. And that seemed to be the gameplan.

3) "I think it's been very successful for this defense so far this year," Broncos safety John Lynch said when asked why they didn't blitz. "We had a bad game but you don't go make wholesale changes because you had a bad game. I'm all for what the coaches feel will give us our best chance. (Blitzing) is a double-edged sword. When you blitz you expose yourself and thats what makes hm so great. His ability to adjust. We played well in the first half and then they go in and make adjustments and he comes out firing."

4) Jake Plummer played a very solid game for Denver. He did a tremendous job avoiding a sack on the third-and-9 play at the end of Denver's final drive, spinning out of trouble but then throwing low to Rod Smith. "The first thing Ii was thinking, was that I had to get out of the sack or we'd be out of field goal range. When I got out of the sack I didn't want to stand there holding the ball and I knew Rod was in man and I tried to get my feet set and get it to him I just didn't have enough on the ball. I'm sick with that play. I should have run, i should have made the throw. It's going to bother me."

5) Broncos strong safety Nick Ferguson has corner Darrent Williams' back. "It had nothing to do with the matchup between Darrent and Reggie. I'll take Darrent all day every day. A couple of things got mixed up but other than that our corners held it down. I don't want anybody writing stuff about the fact that Darrent didn't do the job against Reggie Wayne. He did what he needed to do. It wasn't our best performance but you know what you're get with this team. If I see something in the paper about someone trying to scapegoat, I'm going to call them out and I'm not going to be too happy. Someone tried to do that last year with (Dominique Foxworth) after the Pittsburgh game. That's BS."

6) Hunter Smith punted once for the Colts on Sunday. As he was leaving the locker room, I said to him, "Quiet day, huh?" Smith smiled and said, "Quiet career."