Indianapolis Colts President Bill Polian on loss to Jets:'We played our worst game Sunday as a team'

Indianapolis Colts QB Peyton Manning
(Darron Cummings/AP Photo)

Bill Polian said there's a simple reason the Indianapolis Colts are no longer unbeaten, and it has little to do with who played and who didn't late on Sunday.

As Polian sees it, the Colts lost Sunday for one reason.

They played poorly throughout the game.

Polian, in his 12^th season as the Colts' president, discussed the Colts' 29-15 loss to the New York Jets extensively Monday on his weekly radio show. Much of the show was spent answering the questions from fans about the team's decision to remove QB Peyton Manning and other key offensive players late in the third quarter.

But Polian said the Colts had many chances well before that.

“First of all, we played our worst game of the season Sunday as a team,” Polian said Monday on his weekly radio show on Hank 97.1 FM in Indianapolis.

Polian, who said the Colts missed on four big plays in the first half and early in the second half – plays that included a deep just-missed pass from Manning to three-time Pro Bowl WR Reggie Wayne and another to TE Dallas Clark – said the Colts may have been feeling the effects of a season-long prime-time heavy schedule.

“Are we out of sync?” Polian said. “Are we tired? That's entirely possible. We had this year five prime-time games. Four of those were on the road. Now, that's untoward. We were getting home at 5 o'clock in the morning, 4 o'clock in the morning, 6 o'clock in the morning. We had a road game in Jacksonville on a short week (on Thursday, December 17). That takes a lot out of your team.

“If you ask me, a guy who has been watching this team for 12 years, that was a tired team on the field Sunday. We were not clicking on all cylinders. We did not click.”

Polian also said the Colts lacked the focus that had gotten them to 14-0.

“We did not play with the kind of focus Sunday that we should have in order to win against a good, playoff-caliber opponent, which the New York Jets are,” Polian said, and pointed to a 106-yard kickoff return allowed on the first play of the second half that he said “unfortunately but deservedly put a blemish on a wonderful coverage year.”

“Our special teams coverage had been virtually flawless the whole season,” he said. “The kicking has been flawless. On Sunday, we just did not execute and allowed out of the box in the third quarter a kickoff return for a touchdown, which I have said repeatedly is in excusable and which I said last year we would rectify. We did.

“ (Special teams coordinator) Ray (Rychleski) has done a marvelous job. The players didn't execute. Now, is that because they're tired? Is that because they're not focused? I don't know. That's an age-old question in football. It's hard to know. I will say this: We didn't have a lot of bounce in our step and we didn't have a lot of body control and hand-eye coordination. And we didn't have a lot of focus Sunday in certain areas.”

Also damaging, Polian said, was settling for a field goal after having a 1st-and-goal from the Jets 4 early in the second quarter. That put the Colts ahead 9-0, and they had possessions in the second quarter with chances to extend the lead to 16-0 and 16-3, but entered halftime with a 9-3 lead.

“Is your team tired?” Polian said. “Are they worn out? Probably a little of all of the above. Maybe the Jets were a little more focused than we, although I don't think so until the fourth quarter when they recognized that maybe they had us on the ropes a bit and the defense wore down at that point in time. Sunday was a poor football game from top to bottom.”

Regaining freshness, Polian said, is the focus for the rest of the season. Quoting Hall of Fame Head Coach Marv Levy, Polian said, “Given a choice between a fresh team and a tired team, take a fresh team every time. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to get back to that level of freshness, of focus, of fly-around-kind of play that has been our trademark. We did not have that Sunday regardless of who played. It didn't matter. We didn't have that kind of focus.

“That was our poorest game all year. And I daresay that if Peyton had been in the game in the fourth quarter that it would not have made a heck of a lot of difference. We didn't play well Sunday, period.”

history.”

More from Colts President Bill Polian’s weekly radio show:

 * "Sixteen wins in a season was not our issue." Here.

* RT Ryan Diem and TE Gijon Robinson likely to miss Sunday’s game against Buffalo. Here.