Indianapolis Colts WR Austin Collie (Michael Conroy/AP Photo)
WRs Austin Collie and Pierre Garcon may have surprised some observers Sunday, combining for 274 yards receiving to help the Indianapolis Colts advance to the Super Bowl.
Colts President Bill Polian said few around the team were surprised.
Collie, a rookie from Brigham Young, caught seven passes for 123 yards and a touchdown, and Garcon – a second-year veteran from Mount Union – caught 11 passes for 151 yards and a touchdown in the Colts' 30-17 victory over the New York Jets in the AFC Championship Game.
The young players were not only productive, Polian said.
They were calm. They were poised.
Basically, they were who the Colts knew they were.
“They didn't (look overwhelmed), nor have they all year,” Polian said Monday on his weekly radio show on 97.1 Hank FM in Indianapolis. “As far back as April, we were singing the praises of Pierre Garcon and telling everyone around the building how much he had developed and how much he had grown up in the year he spent as a rookie – and how much more physical and exciting he was looking at him in the off-season workouts.”
Polian said it was obvious quickly Collie belonged.
“When Austin got here, the first day of workouts for rookies, two guys jumped out: Austin Collie and (cornerback) Jerraud Powers,” Polian said. “You could tell right away they were going to be in the lineup. For those of us around here, and those of us who cover our team – if they bother to listen – there was a constant refrain that, 'Yeah, we have some pretty good young receivers here. They're going to be good football players.' That kind of took on a life of its own in the preseason as they began to show more and more as the season began and they've performed admirably throughout.
“They have been no surprise. They're probably a surprise to the people who simply read stat sheets. But if you've followed our team, they ought not to be a surprise.”
Polian on Monday also discussed:
* Garcon playing well in the postseason despite having family Haiti: “He has had a tough time. He has family in Haiti and he wants to try to do his best to help them and publicize relief efforts for Haiti as best he can. That has been difficult, but he is pretty darned level-headed. Throughout the year, he has kept his cool and is calm. He takes care of himself. He has an agent who cares about him being the best football player he can be, not the best marketer he can be, so working together, we've been able to craft a strategy of keeping him rested and healthy. It's a tough position to play for us. It's wearing on you. You run a lot of routes. The no-huddle offense about doubles your number of plays. You run lots of routes and you have to be careful with them over the course of the season. He has done pretty well and of course, the demands on him will increase exponentially now, but we'll handle it OK and more importantly, he'll handle it OK.”
* The Colts' Super Bowl opponent, the New Orleans Saints: “They're great on both sides of the ball and they're great on special teams, too. That's one of the reasons they're there, but I think their offense is just scintillating. They can throw it. They can run it. They have home-run hitters with (RB) Reggie Bush and with their receivers, with (TE Jeremy) Shockey. (QB) Drew Brees is having a great year. So, all of those kinds of things make them a really, really high-powered, high-octane offense – to say nothing of their defense, which is great. It's a blitzing defense, not dissimilar to what we've seen in the last three weeks. It's a totally different offensive approach. This is a down-the-field, home-run hitting offensive team. They don't hit any singles or doubles. They run the ball. They run it effectively, but they're looking to hit home runs. No question.”
* How the Colts will prepare for Super Bowl XLIV: “You try as much as you can to get an overview of the game plan in this week. The coaches will prepare today and tomorrow just as though we were going to play the Saints on Sunday. We'll go forward and practice Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Those will be practices similar to what we did in the bye week, but we'll give them a smattering of New Orleans, just to introduce them to it. Then, we'll try to finish the game plan up in Florida. We'll practice Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and take off Saturday. Normally, we would have given them the weekend off, but this Pro Bowl fiasco where you have to send healthy Pro Bowl players down to the Pro Bowl on Sunday to make an appearance on television and be part of the festivities will cause us to practice on Sunday rather than Monday morning. We'll have a practice Sunday morning, the Pro Bowl players will leave ahead of their teammates – which in my view is tremendously distasteful – then the rest of the team will fly Monday. We won't practice Monday, as we originally had scheduled. We won't miss two practices because of the Pro Bowl. Tuesday will be Media Day at the stadium, then Wednesday, Thursday and Friday we'll just have a normal practice week."
Reviewing Colts President Bill Polian’s radio show . . .
* Part One: DE Dwight Freeney likely to play in Super Bowl. Here.
* Part Two: “There should not have been a question” about run defense. Here.
* Part Three: “We got to our playoff games healthy and . . . intact.” Here.
* Part Four: WR Pierre Garcon and WR Austin Collie no surprise. Here.
SUPER BOWL XLIV: EARLY THOUGHTS ON THE SAINTS. HERE
SUPER BOWL XLIV: PREPARATIONS BEGIN. HERE.
COFFEE WITH THE COLTS: A NEXT-DAY LOOK AT THE AFC TITLE GAME. HERE.
COLTS 30, JETS 17. HERE
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