A Thing of Beauty

A round trip on the light rail, 60 minutes of football beauty, 76 pictures, 2 performances by Lee Greenwood, 1/2 a tank of gas, chicken fingers, a diet coke, and a bottled water later and I'm even more amazed by Peyton Manning than I already was. I was there for one reason, and one reason only...to watch Peyton Manning play a professional football game with every ounce of his talent.

Sammie and I got to the stadium with plenty of time to spare, so we stood outside the door where the Ravens players enter the locker room. Ok...so Sammie really just wanted to see what kind of cars they drove. Baltimore apparently has a deal with GM because the foreign cars were few and far between in the player parking lot. In the middle of our ogling of the vehicles, the police escort came by with the buses of Colts players. Sammie still doesn't believe me, but I knew exactly which one of the silhouettes through the tinted glass was Peyton. I've studied this man for 12 years, I think I know what his head looks like by now. We walked over to get in line to go through the gates where I was heckled...all in good nature. I try not to trash talk as much as I can for 2 reasons: (1) it'll come back to bite you almost every time and (2) I'd rather let the teams' actions speak for themselves. And speak they did...in the second half.

I was in my seat when he ran out on the field to warm up and I've got some really great pictures of that. (Insert Mischievous Laugh Here) From the coin toss until the final seconds ticked off the clock, my eyes were on #18 in the white and blue jersey. We sat next to some really nice people. A couple of Ravens fans on my right and a couple of, I think, Ravens fans on Sammie's left, but the wife was seeing eye to eye with me on Peyton Manning. Some times I feel alone in my appreciation of Peyton Manning, but last night there were actually a good number of Colts and Manning fans there. I was greatly impressed to know I wasn't alone.

Marvin Harrison was driving me crazy in the first half, and I was glad to see he was demoted to screen passes after dropping a couple of balls that could have been touchdowns. I mean come on. Peyton all but handed the ball to you. Peyton couldn't seem to catch a break with his bullet of an arm and precise aim. In fact, I realized that it really wasn't the Ravens defense that was keeping Peyton from getting it done. It was all the mistakes that the Colts were making. Dropping passes, not converting, etc. They were beating themselves and things weren't looking good.

Ok...so maybe that every ounce of talent thing was a little premature to think as I sat through an entire 2 quarters with nothing more than a field goal from the one person on the Colts team that I can't stand (Mike Vanderjagt). I really thought...oh this is just my luck. Sammie and Jill go to all that trouble to get the tickets and we come all this way to see the game, and they're only going to score 3 points. I was sitting in the lucky number 13 seat. Then I realized...who was I kidding...this is Peyton Manning we're talking about and he's not playing the Patriots, so he'll turn it around after halftime.

Halftime brought a performance by the Marching Ravens who were actually pretty impressive. They're no Drumline, but they're not bad. Before the game, they spelled out Ravens...in cursive. Now that's talent. Then the teams came back out for 30 more minutes of football, and the Colts were ready...the WHOLE TEAM...not just Peyton. I was determined to take pictures of every play of the first offensive scoring drive, but I spent most of the first half deleting pictures to get ready for the next drive. Sammie found this funny as during the punt he started chanting delete, delete, delete. But Peyton came through and tossed in 2 touchdowns in the 3rd quarter...one to Marvin Harrison who finally (as Sammie put it) washed the Land O' Lakes off his hands. The other was to Ben Utecht. Now this guy I don't know. Just as I learned the names off all 5 receivers from last season, Peyton starts throwing to someone new.

For a while there we thought the Colts were going to shut out the Ravens. Even the Colts defense got in on the action and intercepted the ball three times...one they ran in for a touchdown. This was after I started calling them the Almost Intercepted Defense. Guess I should have gone with that earlier in the game. Oh well...it was 24-0, Colts heading deep into the 4th quarter. I was very impressed with the Colts defense which has seemed to be the downfall of the team for longer than I'd like to admit. Maybe things are starting to look up. (Insert Begging Here)

The last minute and a half was quite interesting save for the stupid timeouts the Ravens had held on to. Here we thought Peyton was going to get to take a knee and run out the clock, but NOOOOOOOOO. Peyton took a knee, then the Ravens called a timeout. Well the Colts knew they couldn't do this and still run out the clock, so Peyton just kind of used the downs as passing practice until they punted the ball back to the Ravens. Then the Ravens drove down the field and actually scored. They tried the on-side kick...but really what are the statistics on those things?...It can't possibly work more than 5% of the time...if that. With 12 seconds left on the clock, Peyton finally got to take the final knee. I have a picture of that, too. :) We stayed until #18 ran off the field (the last player out there) after his interview with Suzy Kolber in standard fashion, throwing his towel into the stands.

He is one amazing football player to watch. The amount of work he gets done during one 25 second play clock is more amazing in person than it is on TV. You just don't realize how much he does. The audible is a thing of beauty, and I swear the man must have eyes everywhere. He sees it all and knows exactly what each person is going to do. I think the funniest thing is to see, as the lines are set, the Ravens defense starts slowly stepping backward in preparation Peyton's pass. His dedication to his job is something rarely seen in this world today and the fact that he doesn't for one minute take for granted that he gets to be an NFL quarterback gives me hope that there are more players like him out there. His brother plays for the Giants (who also won on Sunday) and of all the advice Peyton could have given his little brother when he came to the pros, he told him to never, ever forget how lucky he is to have this job because there are tons of people in this world who would give everything to have his job.

If you can't tell, I had a really great time, and I'll have some pictures on the picture blog (after I get around to putting the Boston pictures up there). I got some really great shots even from the upper deck. I love my zoom camera, and I love me some Peyton Manning. Thanks for not letting me down #18. You truly are a thing of beauty.