In 2009, Peyton Manning experienced one of his more surprising and successful season’s as an NFL quarterback. He took a rebuilding offense and a limping defense to the Super Bowl, and actually had his team as a Vegas favorite going into the game against the Saints. No one was picking them at the start the 2009 season, but 14 straight wins and an impressive conference title game performance later, they Colts were the toast of the NFL. Conservatively, about 98% of all pundits predicted the Colts to win, because Peyton Manning is so good at passing a football he was going to inspire his defense to efficiently tackle.

Then came the second quarter of the game, and like so many years with the Colts and Manning in the playoffs, they came up short yet again, sustaining another heartbreaking post-season loss.

Unfortunately for the Colts — and for some reason we have yet to collectively grasp this concept in NFL prognostication — there are 21 other positions on the field that play an active hand from scrimmage. While Manning is currently (and arguably ever) the best player at the most important position, it’s tough to win a Super Bowl with a mediocre supporting cast, a hampered Dwight Freeney and a sidelined Bob Sanders.

Since this is all based on hindsight and it might seem easy for me to criticize now, not to self-aggrandize, but I posted this on my twitter page the morning of the game while suffering from a tonsillar abscess (Note: this link is wholly unpleasant, nausea-inducing unpleasant) that apparently made me fall deeply reliant on the preposition “to”. Anyways, If you don’t want to link someone’s twitter page (that’s perfectly understandable), I was mildly suggesting that my nine followers wager on the Saints money line if they wished to not only enjoy but also profit from the contest. My reasoning?  The Colts were outmatched at roughly 20 of 22 positions, and it isn’t as if Drew Brees and Jeremy Shockey are scraping from the bottom of the barrel.

But that’s how NFL analysis goes these days. A popular opinion is quickly formed, and most everyone jumps on the bandwagon for fear of looking incompetent, despite the fact that no one really cares or remembers the accuracy of anyone’s predictions. So we head into a Super Bowl with an underdog Saints team that played and squeaked out one of the harder fought, competitive games in conference title history against a loaded opponent… and the Colts, well, they dominated one half against a 9-7 wild card team that snuck into the playoffs because the Bengals had already secured a divisional crown.

If you do roughly five minutes of research you’ll see how misguided and simplistic this is. The Colts were asked to beat 9-7 wild card teams to make the Super Bowl in the semi- and conference finals; and during the regular season they only played two games against teams that finished 10-6 or better (squeaked out a 35-34 win against New England and a convincing 31-10 win against the Cardinals, they both finished 10-6). But no, clearly the Saints and Colts opponents were identical, and all that matters was how they won their conference championship games. Why, just look at the final scores! It’s obvious Indy is superior!

This is so much more fun than admitting it was a down year for top-tier teams in the AFC (much more parity than we’ve seen in year’s past), and that on paper Minnesota and New Orleans were the more versatile teams than the oft-times one note Colts. Especially when everyone desperately wants to see Brett Favre 2.0 (at least as far as media perception is concerned) win another ring. This is how a team unjustly goes from good to great in the eyes of the public and press alike. And it has been happening with the Colts for about ten years. Naturally, the one year everyone counts them out (2005), they manage to win a Super Bowl against Rex Grossman, something no one had ever thought possible.

Odds are Peyton Manning will dazzle everyone throughout the season with needle-threading passes that defy all laws of physics, then the Colts will take the last couple weeks off while everyone considers the wisdom of this decision, then everyone that values entertainment over substance will wet themselves proclaiming This The Year Manning “finally” gets his second Super Bowl, all while either forgetting or willfully ignoring two facts: 1) That time and again he has either been responsible for costly turnovers in pivotal moments, and/or 2) that he can hardly be held responsible for a depleted roster and an occasionally mismanaged and cheap/ineffective front office (seriously, Donald Brown in the first round last season and not a defensive asset? What, Mike Hart’s not good enough to be your injured backup?).

Usually a team’s winning percentage is determined by more than the greatness of their best player, but in regards to how we judge them this isn’t the case with Manning’s Colts. It’s doubtlessly a cliché, but a team is only as strong as its weakest link. And of all the teams we regard as contenders every year (and the Colts are always one of them), Indy generally has a toddler with muscular dystrophy somewhere in the mix. Thus the one Super Bowl win in Manning’s thirteen years with the franchise.

Their upcoming season is set up for a similar result. I love what they did in the draft with Jerry Hughes out of TCU (though would it kill them to acquire a prized defensive tackle instead of an end?) and the left tackle Pat Angerer from the Hawkeyes to help improve the running game (a paltry 3.5 YPC, good for a tie at 31^st in the league). If nothing else, Corn-fed Iowans tend to make effective offensive lineman. But with yet another off-season with nary a single noteworthy free agency acquisition, hoping for these or any of their draft picks to immediately and significantly improve the quality of the average Colt is unrealistic.

Odds are, it will be in 2010 like it always has: Their front seven is too reliant on Freeney and Mathis to put pressure on the quarterback and somehow stop the run, their secondary looks like something out of Necessary Roughness when Bob Sanders is on injured reserve, which he most commonly is; the running attack is almost non-existent (as mentioned above), and while Manning can make Pierre Garcon and Austin Collie look like vital parts of a championship caliber team, could they start for another team in the league? Alright, they probably could, but they’re the beneficiary in this relationship, not Manning. I mean, it probably isn’t a complete coincidence that Marvin Harrison can’t find a job. Despite whatever legal issues he’s been facing, Pacman, Chris Henry (RIP), Tank Johnson, Jared Allen and countless others have proven that regardless of off-field conduct, if you can play, someone will hire you. And that someone? Probably the Bengals.

Point being, assuming he has at least an average offensive line and the natural effects of aging haven’t bested him, Manning’s going to be dominant. And for as long as he’s on the team and they have a decent pass rush, the Colts will typically be reliable for at least one playoff win or bye week. I think this much has been established this decade.

But what of the corners? The interior offensive and defensive lines? The linebackers?  The thankless supporting cast that’s necessary to get guys like Peyton Manning their rings and cement legacies for everyone who uses such an inaccurate measuring stick? These are the positions that always seem to impede the Colts post-season progress, yet they continue to go unaddressed. Maybe Bob Sanders will stay healthy for a full season, maybe the incoming rookie class will provide the spark they need for the ground game on both sides of the ball, and maybe Manning will stay as efficient in the playoffs as he is in the regular season. But so long as they rely on virtual perfection from their quarterback against playoff-caliber teams and never expect more than the bare minimum from 70% of the remaining starters, I’m inclined to believe that history will continue to repeat itself.