Stroke of Luck: Familiar Playoff Foes Take the AFC Title Stage

Get Jonas Gray out of mothballs.

The Indianapolis Colts are coming.

Fresh off a 24-13 win over the Denver Broncos Sunday, a divisional playoff game that featured future Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning aging before our very eyes, Andrew Luck, the man who assumed Manning’s position in Indianapolis, is off to his first career AFC Championship game, where he’ll meet the New England Patriots.

This was supposed to be either Pittsburgh of Denver coming to New England. Instead, here comes Indy, the team the Patriots were scheduled to stiff-arm in the divisional round before Baltimore gummed up all the works.

Of course.

It may be unfamiliar territory for Luck, but it’s a throwback game for the Colts franchise, which hasn’t challenged for the Lamar Hunt Trophy since Manning led a rousing comeback over Tom Brady and the New England Patriots eight years ago at the old RCA Dome. That snapped Brady’s playoff dominance over Manning and the Colts, a resume that includes a 24-14 victory in the AFC title game following the 2003 NFL season.

And so as it appears Manning is indeed on his way out, it’s perhaps only fitting that Luck should take his place in vying with Brady for the AFC crown.

Fact is, we may have seen the last of Brady-Manning when the Patriots bested the Broncos, 43-21, back in November. The Broncos quarterback was noncommittal about a return in 2015 after Denver became the only home team to lose in the divisional round. It got a point on Sunday, when a majority of Patriots fans began the day rooting for the Colts, giving New England presumably an easier route to the Super Bowl in three weeks, probably shifted their allegiances into hoping for a Broncos comeback that proved to be an impossibility.

The Colts present the Patriots with a handful of challenges, namely the young quarterback, who took another big step in his young career Sunday afternoon. But the Broncos we watched? If they were coming to Gillette Stadium for next weekend’s AFC Championship, Jimmy Garoppolo probably would have taken the reins at quarterback two minutes into the third period.

And so, instead we get Luck-Brady again, which, frankly, hasn’t been kind to the Colts wunderkind. Luck is 0-3 against the Patriots, including once in Foxborough in last year’s divisional, round, and has lost the three games by a combined score of 144-66.

In last January’s playoffs, it was LeGarrette Blount rumbling for 166 yards and four touchdowns. In November, it was no-name Gray adding 200 more yards on the the ground and – yes, four touchdowns. Gray had 211 rushing yards otherwise the remainder of the season.

In 2012, Brady threw for 331 yards and three touchdowns in a 59-24 win at Gillette. Julian Edelman led the rushing attack that day with 47 yards on one attempt.

It might be too simplistic to say the Patriots just have the Colts number these days. But sometimes the obvious answer is more accurate than anything else.

The Patriots are already seven-point favorites to beat the Colts and move onto the Super Bowl against the winner of next weekend’s NFC Championship game between the Green Bay Packers and Seattle Seahawks. In dispatching the Baltimore Ravens in Saturday’s classic in Foxborough, the Patriots already settled with one demon, one of the three franchises to beat New England in the AFC title game. They would have gotten another either way no matter who was emerging out of Denver on Sunday.

Maybe the Packers will ultimately get past the Seahawks and make it a full-on postseason of retribution for New England, 18 years after Desmond Howard crushed its Super Bowl dreams in New Orleans. Perhaps the Patriots will escape the Colts in order to find the Lombardi Trophy they lost in the desert seven years ago, along with the history of perfection.

The Colts, well, they aren’t even supposed to be here. This was destined to be with the Broncos in order to avenge last January. The home-field advantage was to avoid Mile High, not…whatever they call Indianapolis. New England dialed up this January cold snap for Manning, not Luck, who doesn’t seem to be morphing into your typical dome QB. Kids these days, right?

Luck is 22-8 indoors over his first three years in the NFL, 11-7 outdoors, where he’s thrown 29 touchdowns and 18 interceptions. This year, make that 4-2 outdoors with 17 touchdowns and six interceptions.

The Luck-Manning comparison is far too easy, which is why all the talk Sunday of the Broncos quarterback “passing the torch” was ludicrous. That’s a torch Luck wants? One of playoff ineptitude?

Luck is already 3-2 already in the postseason in three trips. Manning had to wait until his fifth playoff appearance to amass three postseason victories. After Sunday’s debacle, he’s now 11-13 in the postseason for his career, including nine one-and-done’s.

Brady, for what it’s worth, has had two; Luck one so far.

If Luck deserves any comparisons on the field, it’s the guy he’ll face this weekend, a quarterback who won his first three, then six, then nine playoff games en route to a trio of Super Bowls. Luck won’t end up doing that, but maybe it’s more fair to him than having the Manning lasso around his neck.

Then again, that 0-3 sure does sound awfully familiar when we’re talking about Colts-Patriots and Manning’s legacy. The old guy, after all, didn’t beat Brady until his seventh crack at him.

Eventually, of course, Manning broke through the barrier, as Luck will one day as well.

But it’s hard to see it happening on Sunday.