Don't Feel Sorry for Captain Comeback

First appeared on September 25th, 2013
in The Lebanon Reporter

The San Francisco 49ers have gone from their SuperBowl appearance to preseason favorites to win the NFC West to a team racked with desperation after a 1-2 start. In the throes of Sunday’s 27-7 win, euphoric Colts fans became strangely conflicted over images of a lonely man on the sidelines. The one sporting the black turtleneck, sharpie clipped to his neck hole. A laconic face forced to look on helplessly, anguishing over every play, staring at his team in disbelief. That’s not the Jim Harbaugh we remember.

Sunday Indy was flawless. The defense reacting from perfect position, tackling with textbook precision. And in a league fawning over the pass, the Colts jettisoned one of the best defenses in the NFL by promptly running the ball down their throat in the Fourth Quarter. So with four minutes remaining and their team leading, a long forgotten part of every Colts fan began thinking comeback.
For, Colin Kaepernick voodoo doll or not, the tide simply had to turn at some point. This is completely understandable considering Captain Comeback himself was at the helm of the enemy ship.
But in the end Harbaugh came up short again.

Alas, don’t feel sorry for the man and don’t offer a hand up. The sons of football coaches line their bird cages with “Get Well Soon” cards. Besides, Harbaugh’s Midas touch from last year only meant his clipper ship was bound to hit rough waters some time. That’s Murphy’s Law and nobody’s exempt from it except apparently Bashar Al-Assad and the Chicago Cubs.

And while they exchanged a quick handshake at midfield, perhaps Chuck Pagano owed his opponent more. After all Harbaugh’s prints are all over Pagano’s team and the franchise. From his Captain Comeback days to the grooming of Andrew Luck at Stanford to helping Colts Offensive Coordinator Pep Hamilton author a ball control running style that, at least on Sunday, looks very promising, this latest incarnation of the Indianapolis Colts were built following a blueprint Harbaugh authored.

To Colts Fans Harbaugh remains a hero whose fate is tied to one play. One that again saw their quarterback scrambling for his life trying to avoid one of the 36 sacks he survived that season. One play from David, clutching a well worn copy of Football for Dummies, the chapter on ‘Winning Football’ still bookmarked with a Mayflower packing slip, versus the Goliath that was the Pittsburgh Steelers defense.

One play, one Hail Mary that would determine the AFC representative in the SuperBowl. One wobbly pass that seemed to hang in the frigid Pittsburgh air for an entire season, pulling Colts fans one and all from their couches in unison only to watch as it ricocheted off players like Oswald’s magic bullet before falling to the cold, hard, Three Rivers turf.

We recognized Harbaugh’s steely stare, his fiery bravado. But by Sunday’s Fourth Quarter, the stare was blank and the Colts had doused the bravado, if only temporarily. There was no better time for Indianapolis to play their best game. Falling to 1-2 after a disappointing home loss the week before and the earth-shaking trade it prompted would have been bad. And by bad, we’re talking a “Jim Irsay lobbying Twitter for more than 140 characters” kind of bad.

So many are quick to credit Peyton Manning with creating a football culture in Indiana. But history tells us it was more likely the run the Colts made in 1995, primarily under Harbaugh’s guidance, that first planted the seed. A magical season that saw Captain Comeback, and a once hapless franchise, come one play away from the SuperBowl.

© 2013 Eric Walker Williams