What Should the Colts Do?

Now that the Indianapolis Colts have lost a game, the big question is how Tony Dungy should have his team play out the rest of the season. It is a big question.

There are some strategies that different people favor. I am going to lay out three of the popular ones.

1. Play your team as much as if they were still fighting for a playoff spot.

This is preferred by some people because the feeling is that a team needs to keep their edge and their wits as they move toward the playoffs. At the same time, critics will say that any chance of your starters getting hurt in meaningless game time is a waste.

2. Another school of thought is to rest them. Period. Nobody of importance plays because you don't want them to get hurt.

This strategy throws the team chemistry thing out the window. The thought is that a team was a team all season and will be prepared to re-ignite that chemistry as soon as the playoffs begin. The point is that all the players who got us here throughout the season, need to be here healthy when we hit the playoffs.

Finally, we have the third option.

3. The starters are going to play a little bit and then rest after some point in the game.

This is the half-way house between the first two points. A coach thinks that he can send out his squad for a few series - maybe a couple quarters - and then they can sit out the rest of the game to avoid getting hurt.

So, if you had to choose between these three strategies, which one would you choose if you were running the Colts?

I think there are some serious flaws with all of them. I think that playing your team hard is probably my favorite strategy because I want my team to be sharp when they get to the playoffs. How many times have you seen a team's playoff run ended because they weren't ready to compete in the first quarter of their playoff game?

At the same time, the injury possibilities are real. You want your players (especially if they are already banged up) to have an opportunity to rest a little bit. In the case of the Colts, Manning and Edgerrin are both showing a little wear and tear.

If I were Tony Dungy, I would do this. I would sit my team this week against Seattle. I wouln't let Manning, James, Harrison, Wayne, Clark or Freeney put pads on. They should treat it like a bye week and they can have 14 days off.

After Seattle, the Colts have the Cardinals coming to Indianapolis. For this game, I send my guys out raring to go just like they have all season. If they can beat the crap out of the Cardinals in three quarters then sit them in the fourth like you would have at any point in the season. This is a game that the Colts want to try to win. They want to make sure that they are all on the same page going into the playoffs and they would't want to record a loss in the last week of the season. Oh yeah, and you especially don't want another L in the Loss column by way of the Arizona Cardinals.

So that's what I would do. Sit them against Seattle and then shake off the rust against Arizona in week 17.

What would you do?


This also appeared at Blogcritics.org

This also appeared at filteringcraig.com