That is not a prediction; that is the report from the Meadowlands on January 4, 2003. That day in East Rutherford, New Jersey, Chad Pennington led the Jets on a successful mission to slice, dice and leave for dead Peyton Manning and his overrun Colts. It was a stinging defeat for a bright young talent that everyone respected as a man, but critics questioned whether he had the intangibles to win a Super Bowl.

Manning might be the next Dan Marino; that is a great talent and stats to match but no Super Bowl win.

In 2002, after the Jets had mauled the Colts, Manning had completed a five-year National Football League career that included three trips to the playoffs and no postseason wins. It was a pattern established in college, where his perennially highly regarded Tennessee Volunteer teams were always in the running, but never won a National Championship while Manning quarterbacked the squad.

Sunday, will be the second time Manning has met the Jets in the postseason. After his first meeting, he blasted the Denver Broncos in his next postseason appearance. Three years later, he guided the Colts to a victory in Super Bowl XLI over the Chicago Bears. This season, Manning has picked up his unprecedented fourth Most Valuable Player Award, and was mostly responsible for the Colts keeping open the possibility of a perfect season with as few as two games remaining on their schedule.

Many thought the Colts could, and should, have beaten the Jets the first time these two teams met at Lucas Oil Stadium in Week 16. The Colts led at halftime, and first-year sideline mentor Jim Caldwell decided to take his first string off the field and try to beat the Jets with backups. 

Fans saw that the chance for a perfect season was only holding a halftime lead over the Jets and beating Buffalo the following Sunday on the road. Caldwell saw the necessity to have Manning healthy for the playoffs, and enhanced his chances by not having his most prized player exposed to possible injury in the second half of a game that meant nothing in regards to the Colts quest for a Super Bowl Championship.

The Colts already owned the top seed in the AFC Playoffs when they last met the Jets and New York was playing for postseason survival. In that game, Caldwell made coaching decisions aimed at this game. We don’t know if the Colts would have won if Manning had been left on the field the first time these two teams faced each other this season … but we do know he is not injured and ready to play this Sunday when the Colts get to cash what Caldwell banked last month; a healthy most valuable quarterback.

Manning did register one extra series of work in the Colts and Jets meeting in December. When the Jets returned the second-half opening kickoff for a touchdown, erasing the Colts 9-3 advantage, the Indianapolis coaching staff thought it best to give Manning one more series of downs to regain the lead for their 14-0 team. Manning took his offense right down the field against the statistically top ranked Jets defense to put the Colts back on top, but a missed two-point conversion left the Indianapolis lead at only 15-10 when Manning trotted off the field for the last time as a member of an undefeated squad.

The five-point advantage was quickly surrendered by Manning’s backup, Curtis Painter, who offered the most glaring difference for the talent on the field, as weighed against the talent on the Indianapolis sideline. While Manning had to watch his backup fumble away the lead, and throw away any chance for success, he was joined by the less obvious defensive players who were witnessing missed assignments by backups ill equipped to contend with a Jets team still playing for a postseason berth. New York scored the final 19 points of the game after Manning’s departure, and the Jets were handed a playoff saving 29-15 victory.

Since the Colts surrendered the Jets a win and postseason life four weeks ago, New York has gone on to beat a disinterested and underachieving Cincinnati Bengals squad to end their regular season and open the playoffs, before catching the San Diego Chargers flatfooted last weekend.

According to the stats the Jets have a real good chance on Sunday at Indianapolis.

New York has the topped ranked defense against both the pass and rush along with the best running game in football. Maybe their head coach is right … they should be favored to win Super Bowl XLIV in Miami on February 7.

But, statistics on a season, stats accumulated while still failing to win their own division during the regular season, now runs smack into its worst enemy … a better team primed for a huge effort.

When stats go wrong, when truly the weaker team has a heavy edge in the statistical category, the shift from season edges to a day of deficits is most often dramatic. The idea that the Colts fans, first upset by the fact their team allowed the Jets to end their perfect season, would now have to confront the fact that the team they kept in the playoffs later came back to knock them out, is not going to happen.

The Super Bowl is going to be a lot tougher contest to conquer for Peyton Manning and his Colts team than this home playoff game. What we have here is a Colts team in front of their home fans for a second straight week following a bye, against an opponent that not only ended their perfect season last month, but is now playing their third straight road game.

Of the 80 teams that have advanced to their conference championship games since the adoption of the regular season bye week in 1990, only two of them lost both the games going into their bye week and the game after their regular season week off. Few teams not good enough to win a game headed into their bye week, or two weeks later after preparing off the spike of a straight-up loss, are teams that usually advance to the postseason, and in only two cases, to their conference championship games.

The first was the Pittsburgh Steelers, who in the 1995 AFC Championship Game narrowly avoided a loss on the game’s final play while edging the Indianapolis Colts, 20-16, while giving 11½ points on the spread. 

This year, by default, the AFC Championship Game was going to include a team that lost on both sides of their bye week because both the Jets and their opponent last Sunday, the San Diego Chargers, did so during the 2009 regular season. San Diego lost in Pittsburgh when their comeback fell short, and two weeks later at home on a Monday night against the Denver Broncos. Not only did the Week Six loss to the Broncos complete the Chargers defeats on both sides of their bye week, but it also was the last game San Diego lost before dropping last week’s Divisional Playoff Game against the Jets.

The Chargers were due for a let down, and the Jets took advantage.

This week, the Colts are primed for an uprising, and the Jets are banking on stats that are teetering on the edge of getting smashed.

If this is close, I’m sorry, because I really think I’m giving you a day away from a stressful win … this one smells of blowout … it is a very sweet bouquet.

Qoxhi Picks: Indianapolis Colts (-7½) over New York Jets