NFL Insider – League Needs to Investigate Manning-Gate (Part II)

Tony Dungy did his best to be the shill for his former assistant and the rest of the Colts organization on NBC’s "Football Night in America," as he covered up for "Manning-Gate," a breach of integrity perpetrated by Indianapolis coach Jim Caldwell when his team went into the tank, like a paid-off crooked prizefighter, on Sunday.

On the telecast, Dungy pointed out that "They made a decision early in the week as to how they were going to play this game," suggesting, without even realizing it, that people from the Colts may have held back pertinent information, and in fact, perhaps misinformed the public, for a period of days. He added that the players knew about the tank job early on and were on board with it.

I guess there was a certain element of surprise on the part of Peyton Manning. As it was reported on my friend Mike Florio’s ProFootballTalk.com on Sunday morning,

"The Indianapolis Colts still maintain that they’re more interested in entering the playoffs as healthy as possible than in going undefeated. But Colts quarterback Peyton Manning says he plans to play today’s game as long as the outcome is in doubt. Rachel Nichols of ESPN reports that Manning told her he thinks he will play until the end of the game if the game is competitive."

A 15-10 score in the third period, against a team scratching to remain playoff eligible is about as competitive as it gets.

Dan Patrick of NBC brought up that there have been seasons where Manning took every snap for the Colts, regardless of the score.

"Not in games we were way ahead," Dungy said.

There is some truth to that, but also some canard.

Payton Manning, for example, took every snap for the Colts in the 2006 season, when they won by margins of 24 over Philadelphia, 19 over Houston and 18 over Cincinnati. Backup Jim Sorgi saw action in only 15 games in a five-year period from 2004 to 2008. As a rookie second-stringer, he saw precious little action in blowouts over Chicago (41-10), Detroit (41-9) and Tennessee (51-24). he played in his second year against San Francisco (a 28-3 game), Tennessee (35-3) and St, Louis (45-28) but did not throw a pass.

Incidentally, it is intentionally dishonest to suggest, as Dungy did in a subtle way, that the choices for Colts fans were either to accept them laying down for the Jets or get Peyton Manning injured. As far as I can tell, Peyton Manning has never missed a start due to injury in the NFL – EVER. If there is such an overriding fear of injury, why would Dungy have ever used him in a pre-season game?

Here the Colts put a quarterback in the game who had never thrown a pass for money in the National Football League, and you let him fumble, thrown an interception, and move the team for almost no yards whatsoever, seemingly by design.

At the same time there are a whole bunch of other teams with the same record as the Jets, who have had to continue to earn their way into sustained contention, and they watch as this gift is given to one of the teams they are competing with. Now other players in the league are insinuating that kind of thing about the games this weekend.

You have players like Pittsburgh linebacker LaMarr Woodley saying "Cincinnati is probably going to go into New York and lay down for the Jets and not play them hard, just because they don’t want to see Pittsburgh in it, because they know if we get into the playoffs, we’re a dangerous team." He said something similar about the Patriots as they play the Houston Texans, another playoff aspirant.

It’s a pretty cruel thing to put a quarterback in the game in that situation, before what quickly became a hostile home crowd, with the fate of a undefeated season on his shoulders. What I found so odd about it was that Caldwell, when he was the head coach at Wake Forest, had acquired a reputation for stockpiling redshirts, because he wanted to avoid throwing true freshmen right into the fray.

Well, this was the first time Curtis Painter, a middling college prospect to be honest, had people chasing him in anger since the exhibition season in August. Why would Jim Caldwell do that in a game where there was some history on the line; a game which could have continued something very special; a game that meant something to the sport?

The answer is simple; he wouldn’t. The fact is, he didn’t have any intention of winning after that point. I wouldn’t go so far as to classify it as a "fix," but it is unquestionably – and I will use the word again – a tank job. Someone suggested to me that maybe a "back-room" deal had been made, where if Rex Ryan agreed not to take super-aggressive shots at Manning, Caldwell would agree to remove him early in the second half.

There’s no evidence of it, but I wouldn’t disqualify anything right now. And by the way, if anything like that was ever discussed, even as part of a "gentleman’s agreement," it would subject anyone involved to arrest for violation of federal "sports bribery" laws.

Regardless of those details, it’s just plain bush-league behavior, and if I was the commissioner of the NFL, supposedly concerned with "competitive balance" as well as ensuring that the games could stand up to scrutiny, I would levy a fine on the Colts that would be as high as it was in my power to do so.

After all, there’s no reason to believe that the Colts, and the NFL, were charging fans any less in the way of ticket prices for this game than they were any other. There is no reason to believe that CBS got a "discount" or "make good" for their pro rata licensing fee on the game because one of the teams was clearly trying to lose, is there?

With no action, the NFL would be sending the message that it really doesn’t care if games are on the level, and expects fans to pay through the nose anyway.

Incidentally, in case you want to take the side of Dungy and another NBC commentator, Rodney Harrison, who suggest the Colts have absolutely no obligation to anyone but themselves, not the game or to any other team, let me point out that the NFL is currently keeping its fingers crossed on a prospective Supreme Court decision in a case called American Needle vs. NFL. Essentially, the league is attempting to get itself declared a "single-entity" (i.e., one single business instead of 32 separate ones) for various purposes that we don’t have time to get into here. Suffice it to say that they are going after the "all for one, one for all" argument. In that case the NFL is suggesting a very strong common interest.

One Indianapolis city councilman has put forth a resolution that the NFL and the Colts should refund part of the ticket price back to the fans because the team was not trying to win. God bless that guy, even though I think he’ll get laughed out of the city council chamber and laughed out of the NFL office with that kind of suggestion.

But you know what? I think there’s a pretty decent chance LaMarr Woodley gets fined for his comments.

That’s because this is the NFL, where TALKING about a tank job is the crime, while actually PERFORMING one goes unpunished.

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