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My interview, Manning wins an award, and whiny Texans fans

By Brad Wells

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Texans fan after another loss to the Colts
River City Rage over at Big Cat Country interviewed me regarding the upcoming Jaguars v. Colts game. Head on over there and check it out.

In other news, the Colts listed 21 players as "questionable" for Sunday's game. Questionable means they have a 50/50 chance of playing. And yes, you read this right about Freeney:

The team's three-time Pro Bowl selection [Dwight Freeney] strained a gluteus muscle (buttock) in last Sunday's win over the Houston Texans.
Yes, it's true. Dwight strained his butt.

Also, Peyton won AFC Offensive Player of the Week for his 400 yard 3 TD performance against the Texans. Some Texans fans, like Stephanie Stradley at AOL Fanhouse, are claiming the Colts ran up the score on their team, which is something we Colts fans always seem to hear from teams that whine like little babies after the Colts have throttled them:

The Peyton stayed in the game late, and kept throwing the ball down field. (Kind of like the DirecTV commercials showing the Peyton throwing a late TD on the Titans).

A less evil Manning might have given the ball to his running back to eat up clock time.

Ah yes. Another whiny fanbase claiming the Colts were out to pad stats rather than simply run out the clock. This claim was picked up by the folks over at AOL Sports Bloggers Live in their weekly podcast, who questioned the motives behind Manning throwing the ball around to pad stats rather than simply run the ball and end the game.

What's funny about this is the Colts weren't intending to score at all with about 8 minutes left in regulation. They deployed their "clock chewer" offense, putting in RB/FB Ran Carthon. The problem was Houston's defense was so BAD that the Colts ended up scoring an additional 14 points when all they really wanted to do was end the game.

And what's even funnier is if Stephanie, or the gents at Sports Bloggers Live, bothered to take a quick glance over at NFL.com's play-by-play of the game it shows that Manning wasn't throwing the ball around in the fourth quarter, ala Air Coryell, but was instead handing the ball off to running backs Dominic Rhodes, Joseph Addai, and Ran Carthon. But I don't need to check the play-by-play to lay waste to the silly claim that Manning ran up the score.

I was there at the game, seated in section 126.

Shame, shame on you AOL Sports Bloggers Live

But what the heck. I always enjoy destroying false claims and making whiny fans look even more pathetic after they lose to the Colts. In the fourth quarter, the Colts ran 11 run plays to just 5 passing plays. Both Colts TDs in the fourth quarter were rushing TDs (one by Rhodes, the other by Carthon). Maybe Texans fans should be more concerned about the pathetic state of their defense than the Colts supposedly running up the score on their team. When you front seven can't stop RAN CARTHON, that's not the fault of the team with the ball.

Now, we at Stampede Blue often enjoy reading Stephanie Stradley over at AOL Fanhouse. Stephanie covers the Texans, which should earn her a some sort of national charity or Red Cross award. However, we just assume that Stephanie is so sick of writing about how her team sucks that she has to make something up about Peyton Manning in order to dull the pain of yet another Houston Texans season. We also assume that neither she or the AOL Sports Blogger's hosts actually watched the game between Houston and Indy, because if they did they'd know just how stupid the whole "stat padding" claim is.

Despite this, we point a mean finger at the guys at AOL Sports Bloggers Live. Shame on you, fellas. Next time, check the facts before you start believing the wild rantings of a fan whose team has fallen victim to the Colts, again.

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