They're Super Bowl champions now, worthy of the best of NFL Films, ready to assume their spot in pro football lore.
That recognizable soundtrack voice will expound, for generations to come, on the grit, the stubborn resolve, the opportunism and the pure will of the Colts in their dominating 29-17 win over the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XLI at Dolphin Stadium.
Listen closely, and you can hear the deep, resonating voiceover: "As the rain rolls in on an uncharacteristically damp, cool Florida evening, the Indianapolis Colts' reputation as a finesse unit would be put to its greatest test..."
Cue the dramatic music. Cue the close-up of coach Tony Dungy's forever-calm face. Cue an all-style and no-substance reputation being shattered to pieces, replaced by championship muscle.
"Whatever they want to call us - finesse, too small on defense - it doesn't matter now," linebacker Gary Brackett said. "They have to call us Super Bowl champs."
The Colts' long-outdated characterization as merely a pass-happy, offensive-oriented unit was put to rest. It was destroyed by a Colts team that - other than the Devin Hester fiasco on the opening kickoff - would control all facets of the game.
"This might not have been our best team," Dungy said. "But this was our most-prepared mentally, our most-ready for the four-game (playoff) fight. We had to win tough games. We had to come from behind."
Years from now, we'll watch as Joseph Addai and Dominic Rhodes - friends and running backs - run roughshod over the Bears, helping the Colts control the clock for nearly 16 more minutes of possession time. We'll see Reggie Wayne sprint into the great wide, wet open for a classic touchdown catch. We'll see Kelvin Hayden's dramatic interception return that sealed the game in the fourth quarter.
We'll see Dungy, the first African-American coach to win a Super Bowl, doused in a two-bucket Gatorade shower.
"Tony's just a great guy and a great coach," Colts defensive end Dwight Freeney said.
We'll see, of course, Peyton Manning, his shoulders finally free of unmet expectations, perhaps playing in the first of many Super Bowls. Manning delivered the solid performance that the tough conditions and tougher opponent required and came away with the Most Valuable Player award. He completed 24 of 38 passes for 247 yards and one touchdown. But somehow the MVP award seemed more like a coronation of his splendid career than of a particularly sublime, but single, performance.
Manning did his part, no question. Yet it was no more and no less than that of Addai and Rhodes; the offensive line; Hayden and Bob Sanders; or the pressure-generating defensive front.
"We truly got this as a team," Manning said, "and I'm proud to be a part of it."
Last season, when the Colts flirted with perfection and the 1972 Miami Dolphins, everything was stacked in their favor. They had a roster stocked with quality at almost every position. They imploded in their first playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers. A year later, they were simply tougher, in resolve and resilience.
Nothing proved their resilience more than the way the game opened - with Hester taking the opening kickoff back 92 yards for a touchdown. The crowd of 74,512, heavily weighted in the Bears' favor, roared like, well, Bears.
It was stunning. For two weeks, the Colts had planned and prepped and watched film of Hester. They thought they knew what they had to do to stop him.
The opening-kick strategy, to kick it wide right-deep, failed when the Colts over-pursued, misread the lanes and left it up to Adam Vinatieri to save things. Las Vegas didn't post odds on Hester outrunning Vinatieri, much like they don't place odds on the sun rising in the east.
The Bears led 7-0 before the first funny commercial aired.
"It was like, `Oh, OK, we're spotting them seven points,'" tight end Dallas Clark said.
Maybe it wasn't quite as casual as Clark portrays. But it wasn't panic, either. And when Manning was picked on his first offensive series, the Colts were off to a start far from the way they wanted to open the Super Bowl. Yet they recovered, slowly at first, doggedly later, by relying on experience.
It was only two weeks ago, after all, that they spotted the Patriots a 21-3 lead.
"We've been behind the eight-ball a lot of times," Wayne said. "But we've never doubted ourselves."
Manning put the Colts back in the game with one of his vintage moves in the pocket, stepping up and hitting Wayne on a 57-yard touchdown pass. A bobbled snap on the extra point left the Colts down 7-6. A couple of fumbles later, the Bears were up 14-6 after a Rex Grossman pass to Muhsin Muhammad. The Colts stared at a virtual replay of the start against the Patriots. They didn't need the dramatic late-game heroics to pull this one out, however.
Adam Vinatieri cut it to 14-9 on a field goal. Manning then went to the air three times on the Colts' next possession - 22 yards to Harrison, 17 yards and five yards to Clark - before Dominic Rhodes powered it in to put the Colts up 16-14 with 6:09 left in the half. The Colts quit kicking to Hester, incidentally. The second half was all-Colts, all the time. A 14-play drive, and another Vinatieri field goal to make it 19-14, opened the second half. From then on, the Colts controlled the ball and the clock. Rhodes finished with 113 yards rushing, Addai 77. Vinatieri added another field goal in the third quarter to push the score to 22-14. The Colts held the ball for almost 11 minutes in the third quarter.
"Our offense did a great job eating the clock up," Freeney said. "After that, they had to throw the ball. No one's going to beat us doing that."
The game-clinching throw was a deep, deep ball from Grossman, intended for Muhammad. Hayden, filling in for the injured Nick Harper in the second half, stepped up and took it 56 yards for the score.
It was fitting, in many ways, that the Colts' much-maligned defense provided the final touchdown of their special season.
"Kelvin goes in and makes a tremendous play," Dungy said. "We always talk about `next man up,' and we don't change a thing."
They changed one thing. They forced a new twist into NFL Films' next production, the one titled "Indianapolis Colts, Super Bowl Champs."
This column is the commentary of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of The News-Sentinel. E-mail Reggie Hayes at rhayes@news-sentinel.com.
