The Pats do not "own" Peyton Manning.

[Steve00007]

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Indy were doing what they should have done: Taking what the defense gave them. Trying to force a big play would be reckless.

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I will take my chances if it gives me a shot at scoring more than 3 points. Taking what the defense gives you may be appropriate at times, but if the defense is only giving you small plays and you are a passing team, then you are getting schooled and you cannot just accept that. It is very hard to string together 6 or 7 first downs in a row against a good defense if you are throwing mainly dinky passes < 10 yards. You need big plays to score points if you are a passing offense.

I agree that the Colts got beat in the trenches, especially on running plays, but the Pats only had one sack. It wasn't like they were killing the guy back there. Peyton had a mediocre game, and that contributed to the loss.

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Since the game had low scoring, every first down was important.

Trying to throw deep would play right into the hands of the defense, and would most likely result in a wasted down. A sack or an interception were other possibilities. In other words, if I put a lot of effort into stopping the deep pass, then I want the offense to try and throw deep on me.

The Colts best chance was to successfully attack the weaknesses of the defense with short passes and the running game. If that works, you can school the defense without deep passes. You can also force the defense to focus less on the deep pass if you're successful. The problem for the Colts is they just weren't physical enough, and they didn't execute that well. I saw too much wincing when the Patriots players hit the Indy receivers.

They had only one sack because the Colts weren't trying to go deep. If they tried that, I think Manning would have been sacked more often. Also, you don't need to sack the quarterback in order to disrupt the Colts offense with pressure.