“Season in Between” Ep. 4 Companion Blog
“A quarterback away”
It’s quite interesting looking back on 2006 and the fact that the playoff loss that year, proving to be an especially crucial one, happened to the team that it did. It was crucial because it provided the shock to the system to the franchise that ultimately led to the end of the Brian Billick era, and into the John Harbaugh/Joe Flacco pairing; the opponent was interesting because it was the very same franchise that once hosted playoff games like this one in Charm City.
A few years ago, I did a similar project to this one on the history of the Baltimore Colts organization, from their inception in the early 50’s, to the final, bitter end 30 years later. The “end” of course was merely a new beginning for that organization, who packed up their things and headed for Indianapolis in the dead of night after a dispute with the town fathers over a number of different things (but namely their accommodations) had threatened to go nuclear.
Doing Forgotten Dynasty gave me more of an understanding for, if not a total appreciation of, the motivations behind Robert Irsay’s shady actions back in the spring of 1984. At the end of the day, football is a business, and these teams are not entirely the public trusts that we’d ideally like them to be.
But that didn’t matter to the tens of thousands of rabid, recovered Colts fans wearing purple and black during the divisional round of the 2006 playoffs as the Ravens welcomed the Colts into M&T Bank Stadium in what was a legacy rivalry game for the ages. In doing the research for this podcast, I found myself fascinated by this dynamic, but the stories I happened across were mostly predictable; the still in existence Colt fan clubs, the diatribes against the Mayflower moving company, the signs in the stands that decried the Indy players on the field that night (most of whom couldn’t have picked Robert Irsay out of a lineup by that point)… it carried emotional heft, but wasn’t what truly fascinated me while putting this episode together.
As you’ll hear, I was a bit more intrigued by the very similar spots these two clubs had found themselves in by the time of the ‘06 season. After getting to Indianapolis in the mid 80’s, the Colts did literally of nothing of note for over a decade - that is, until their ineptitude finally paid off, and landed them quarterback Peyton Manning, just as new owner Jim Irsay (the son of Robert) was assuming power.
Like the Ravens over the course of the early 2000’s, but with a bit of a different twist, Manning and the Colts found themselves continually disappointed in the postseason against the expectations that had been laid out for them. Baltimore was often disappointed that their formula of ground and pound conservative offense paired with a gnashing defense couldn’t get them back to the Super Bowl; Peyton and the Colts disappointed fans and media by not being able to take their high powered, futuristic offense to a championship in the first place.
So when these two teams with linked pasts found themselves at a moment when Peyton’s lack of playoff success was at a boiling point, and a similar drought in Baltimore had Brian Billick barely keeping his job security on the rails, it was a very intriguing matchup indeed. Add in Steve McNair’s desperate last gambit to climb the mountain and do what every quarterback of his caliber feels they should in winning a title (just like Peyton on the other sideline), plus the rest of the Ravens roster hoping to finally go back, or even just make it the first time, and you’ve got quite a storyline to delve into.
Spoiler alert, it doesn’t work out for the Ravens, and Manning and the Colts would go on to win the Super Bowl in ‘06. But the abrupt, shocking ending to this season wasn’t a total loss - in fact, the reverberations of this game would be felt into next year, when Steve Bisciotti finally gave Billick his walking papers, starting anew with John Harbaugh at the helm, and a serious option at quarterback in first round pick Joe Flacco, a pair of moves that would eventually prove to be a Super Bowl winning few in their own right.
That’s no disrespect to Billick, or to Steve McNair, but really serves as a lesson. Failure is not fatal, and as long as you’re still alive and kicking, you still have a chance to write a new chapter in your story; while this sadly wasn’t afforded to Steve McNair in just a few short years, his legacy of moving the game forward for African American quarterbacks was cemented long before he hung up his cleats.
As a quick author’s note before I close the book on this series, I’d really like to thank everyone who showed interest in it, whether you simply listened along, are just finding this now, or even went as far as to send me a kind word or two about it. These projects are very time consuming and require an immense amount of concentration, which can be in short supply these days with all the distractions we have on offer - but that’s part of what makes doing it so worth it. Losing myself in working on these projects are some of the seldom times I find myself fully immersed in the moment, and that’s a feeling that’s hard to get almost anywhere else.
On that same note, I hope I did a good job capturing a moment in time, and doing justice to the story of a team that (while we wish things had ended better for) is a fascinating case study to look back on, and chock full of cool characters to dive into. I’m sure I’ll be back with the next #podcumentary project that consumed months of my life sometime soon, but until then, thanks again for your involvement in bringing this all to life!
Yours truly,
Jake