Reoccurring theme around here: Bill Polian does not handle criticism well. No apologies if that theme 'annoys' people. It annoys me too. I take no pleasure in writing about it. But, ignoring it doesn't make it any less annoying.
One gets the distinct vibe that the Colts president thinks people who make pointed observations about his shortcomings, and the shortcomings of the teams he is in charge of, are dumb. He lashes out at the media and fans whenever they show the slightest inkling of resistance to him. For all his genius at building strong rosters, the man often acts like a petulant child when it comes to facing his critics.
Tonight, Mr. Polian will most certainly hear it from fans when he does his weekly call-in radio show for HANK FM and 1070 The Fan.
After an off-season of Polian pointing fingers at his offensive line, Colts fans watched four-time NFL MVP Peyton Manning get knocked around against the Texans yesterday. Manning was playing behind a line that one assumes Polian felt was 'better' than the group he chewed out back in February. However, the only difference between this year's line and last year's is that key performers (like Ryan Lilja) were cut for no reason while known scrubs (Mike Pollak) were starting for no reason.
Despite an entire off-season in an uncapped year, the only people Polian thought were good enough to bring to 'fix' the line were Andy Alleman (cut during training camp), Adam Terry (cut after preseason), and Jacques McClendon (inactive on Sunday).
So, it's pretty fair to say that fans are going to lay into Bill Polian tonight on his show, if he goes through with it at all. I've called 1070 The Fan and asked them if the Internet feed for The Bill Polian Show will be made available. No reply yet from them. Last year, after Week Sixteen, the feed was no longer provided. We still were given no reason as to why that was done, but we have are suspicions. Those suspicions fall under the 'Bill Polian does not handle criticism well' category.