This is getting good.
In response to comments to USA Today (which, frankly, were buried under far less compelling quotes) from Colts owner Jim Irsay regarding the various one-and-out playoff runs and absence of multiple Super Bowl wins from the Peyton Manning era, Broncos coach John Fox fired back.
“I saw the comments [from Irsay] and to be honest with you I thought it was a bit of a cheap shot,” Fox told Pat Kirwan and Jim Miller of SiriusXM NFL Radio. “To me, in my opinion, they were disappointing and inappropriate. I mean, Peyton would never say anything. He’s too classy to do that. But they sounded a little ungrateful and unappreciative to me for a guy that has set a standard, won a Super Bowl, won division titles, won four MVP awards. I’d be thankful with that one Super Bowl ring because there’s a lot of people that don’t have one.”
“We’ve changed our model a little bit, because we wanted more than one of these,” Irsay said, referring to his Super Bowl XLI ring. “[Tom] Brady never had consistent numbers, but he has three of these. Pittsburgh had two, the Giants had two, Baltimore had two and we had one. That leaves you frustrated.
“You make the playoffs 11 times, and you’re out in the first round seven out of 11 times. You love to have the Star Wars numbers from Peyton and Marvin [Harrison] and Reggie [Wayne]. Mostly, you love [championships].”
Apart from whether Irsay has a point (and some would say he does), the timing couldn’t have been worse. In five days, Manning returns to Indianapolis -- and now it’s obvious he’s going to be pissed and driven and determined to show Irsay what Manning is still capable of doing.
Irsay has yet to address the situation on his favorite communications platform -- Twitter. We’ll be keeping an eye on anything he may have to say there, decipherable or otherwise.
