National Football League

Column: Colts' fans need a reason to believe

Published Sep. 12, 2011 8:20 p.m. ET

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Turns out all those sirens going off in Indy last week weren't false alarms.

And those jokes about Peyton Manning being named the league's Most Valuable Player a fifth time without setting a foot on the field this season?

Not so funny anymore.

The downside to having the NFL's longest-running one-man act is what happens when that man can't go. Never mind how many injuries the Colts quarterback avoided or overcame to string together his league-best consecutive-game streak (227, including postseason). He turned 35 in March, an age when even the greatest athletes are cresting the hill and their teams have started laying the groundwork for a successor (more on that later). Not the Colts. Instead, Indy gave Manning the biggest contract in NFL history.

Even after it became apparent the Colts' Iron Man was going to be in the shop for a while, owner Jim Irsay seemed to think he would find Manning's replacement on Twitter. First there was Irsay's mischievous tweet about hunting for a possible replacement down around Hattiesburg, Miss., the environs of never-quite-retired Brett Favre. Soon after came an even more unnerving tweet, this time about Manning's actual replacement - Kerry Collins.

Despite Collins' performance Sunday in the humbling 34-7 loss at Houston, there's no need to pile on. He fumbled back-to-back snaps early in the game, but that only hinted at the deluge of failures sure to follow. Center Jeff Saturday was the lone starter from last season's offensive line playing the same spot; so when he and Collins couldn't even get the snap right, smart Colts fans could have turned off the TV and anticipated exactly how coach Jim Caldwell would react afterward.

He didn't disappoint.

''It's a marathon, not a sprint,'' Caldwell said. Considering the way the Colts were put together - of Manning, by Manning and uniquely for Manning - you have to wonder whether he was looking at the right roster.

The running game in Indianapolis long has been an afterthought. The defense has always been undersized and built around pass-rushing specialists, the better to take advantage of opposing quarterbacks trying to climb out of the holes Manning's quick-strike offense dumped them into. Caldwell's words aside, things likely will get worse before they get better.

Colts fans thought they had a sneak peek of the future when it was revealed team president Bill Polian made a trip to the Stanford-Duke game to scout can't-miss Cardinal quarterback Andrew Luck.

Not so fast.

First, Polian's son, Brian, is an assistant at Stanford and the family home is in nearby Charlotte, so who knows how much of the trip was business and how much leisure.

Second, Polian is a forward-thinker when it comes to finding franchise quarterbacks. As first noted by Sports Illustrated's Peter King, Polian's first moves after taking over as general manager in Buffalo, Carolina and Indianapolis were to hire Jim Kelly from the now-defunct USFL, draft Collins from Penn State (when he could still play) and use his No. 1 pick on Manning.

Either way, by the time the draft rolls around, another quarterback - say USC's Matt Barkley - might shine just as bright, assuming the Colts finish the season as bad as they started it.

But let's focus on now. The most urgent question might be why not take a flyer on recently released Jacksonville QB David Garrard? His availability appears to have less to do with declining skills than the Jaguars' tight-fisted ownership, and he's only bigger, stronger, younger and better than Collins. And he wouldn't be that far behind on learning the Colts' playbook - at least on the admittedly limited evidence of one bad game.

We have no idea whether Garrard, or any other quarterback, is on Irsay's radar screen at the moment. According to his latest tweets, Colts fans can expect ''shocking, dramatic, inspiring, unimaginable things happening in Coltsland the next 18 months.''

''Buckle up, stay faithful, BELIEVE,'' he added in another tweet.

Nice words. But isn't believing too much exactly what got the Colts in this trouble?

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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org. Follow him at http://twitter.com/JimLitke.