Say this for the NFL: Parity may breed mediocrity, but there is a comforting degree of justice for all parties involved. The same field-leveling dynamic that allows teams to rise out of a 3-13 or 4-12 morass and go a blistering 13-3 the following season, encourages a similarly swift slide back to earth.
|  | | Peyton Manning and the Colts are on the verge of playoff elimination. |
We give you the St. Louis Rams and Indianapolis Colts, who made that remarkable climb a year ago.
If the playoffs began today (and there are only 20 shopping days left until those 12 berths are ultimately determined) both teams, thought to be among the league's best and brightest if not the best and brightest, would be watching them from the comfort of their respective living rooms. It's hard to believe, but the Rams and Colts each are seeded seventh in their conference.
In some ways, this is a more startling turn of events than the breakthrough of the young, frisky New Orleans Saints and Philadelphia Eagles. Few (if any) of those in the prognostication business believed the Rams or Colts would miss the playoffs. And yet, that is just what the remaining schedule suggests.
The 8-5 Rams have a brutal three-game finale, featuring Sunday's featured game against Minnesota at the TWA Dome, followed by troublesome contests at Tampa Bay and New Orleans. The collective opponent record is a daunting 27-12. The 7-6 Colts are in the same sinking boat. They have home games against Buffalo and Minnesota sandwiched around a road trip to Miami. Those teams are a combined 28-11.
Their fall has been numbingly similar.
The usually dazzling offenses, with their usually dazzling Pro Bowl quarterbacks, have failed in recent weeks to compensate for mistakes and nonexistent defenses. On Sunday, the Rams committed seven turnovers in seven consecutive possessions in a horrific 16-3 loss at Carolina. The Colts, who had fallen into gaping holes of 20-0 and 19-0 in previous games at Chicago and Green Bay, let the home-field Jets run out to a 20-0 lead on Sunday and eventually succumbed 27-17.
A fragile coalition
The number nine has been getting a lot of play in St. Louis this week, as in IX teams in the XXXIV-year history of the Super Bowl have failed to make the playoffs as defending champions. The Rams are desperately hoping they aren't the Xth team to fall off the table.
Usually, Super Bowl teams stumble because the schedule is tilted steeply against them and opponents relish the thought of knocking off the reigning champions. These Rams, however, are victims of themselves more than anything.
After breaking from the gate like champions at 6-0, St. Louis has lost five of seven games.
The first defeat in that run was an eye-opening 54-34 loss at Kansas City that revealed numerous flaws. It was also the game that sent NFL and Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner to the sideline with a broken pinky. The Rams rallied briefly, winning two of three games with Trent Green under center, but the offense has gone south, scoring 20 points, 24 and a ridiculous three in losses to the Redskins, Saints and Panthers.
"To be honest with you, we just aren't making the plays," head coach Mike Martz said Monday, sounding as perplexed as anyone. "If it's not a protection snafu, we don't make a catch or don't make the throw.
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 In spite of what's happened for us, we're still in a great situation. We still have control of our destiny if we win out in these next three games. We can certainly do that. ” |
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— Mike Martz, Rams head coach |
"This has always been, in my opinion, about us instead of who we play. It's the expectations, our standards, that we need to play to. I think that particularly is more about us than anything defensively."
Even last year, the Rams' defense wasn't always great. St. Louis allowed 38 points in a loss to Philadelphia in the regular-season finale and another 37 in their first playoff game against Minnesota. Still, the Rams always found a way to score more points than the opposition. It was a glorious, yet fragile coalition.
That's how it worked the first six weeks, with the Rams averaging nearly 44 points per game, a record pace. But then, as the air came out of the offense due to injuries and opponents taking away the big plays, the defense was revealed. The Rams have given up an average of 29.5 points per game and are likely to allow more points than any defending Super Bowl champion.
The addition of Bud Carson hasn't been enough to stop the freefall. It's probably no coincidence that Carson's first game calling defensive alignments from the press box produced the best effort of the season, but, of course, that's when the offense threw up a big-time brick.
Warner, incandescent last year with 41 touchdown passes and only 13 interceptions, has been quite mortal this year. He's already thrown 14 interceptions in 233 fewer passing attempts. He had a career-high four picks in Sunday's loss, one of which was returned 88 yards for a game-clinching touchdown by Jimmy Hitchcock. Warner looked a little rusty in his first start since Oct. 22.
"I let them down," Warner said of the defense. "It was a great performance, their best performance of the year, and I can't do my part to win this football game. That makes me mad. I'm not accustomed to it. I don't like it. I feel bad for them."
The Rams will all be feeling sorry for themselves if they don't win their last three games. Doing that will guarantee them the NFC West title and at least one home playoff game. The odds aren't good.
Minnesota, at 11-2, has the best record in the NFL and is aching to issue some payback for last year's playoff loss. The fact that the St. Louis venue is similar to the climate-controlled, fast-track Metrodome, will make it more difficult for the Rams. Even if they escape with a victory, they must go on the road for the final two games, where the Bucs and Saints, similarly in the playoff hunt, await.
"In spite of what's happened for us, we're still in a great situation," Martz said. "We still have control of our destiny if we win out in these next three games. We can certainly do that -- that's something that can be done."
Beyond their control
Unlike the Rams, the Colts can no longer guarantee themselves a spot in the playoffs. They are two games out of the final AFC wild-card berth with three to play.
Miami, Tennessee and Oakland are all division leaders at 10-3 and are pursued by three teams at 9-4 (Jets, Baltimore and Denver). The Colts, Pittsburgh and Buffalo are all 7-6 and need to win out and get some help along the way. The loss to the Jets was particularly painful, because now New York holds the tie-breaker advantage and Baltimore and Denver have far easier schedules to navigate.
With their destiny now beyond their control, will the Colts be playing with the necessary sense of urgency? "I worry about that," head coach Jim Mora said Monday. "In a year when you have this situation, it concerns you.
"We're disappointed about the loss and the way we played. But there is a big difference between disappointed and discouraged. When you get discouraged, that's when it carries over to the next week. I think we've done a good job of not allowing that to happen this year."
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 It's not a question of not being ready or not trying. It just hasn't worked, and we've had to fight for our lives. ” |
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— Jim Mora, Colts head coach |
Mora was so disgusted with the effort against the Jets that he gave the players Tuesday and Wednesday off. It's not like the coaching staff will need all that free time to solve a three-game losing streak, the first since late in the 1998 season. The pathology of four losses in five games is fairly straightforward.
In winning six of their first eight games, the Colts produced 30 points five times. In the five games since, they've haven't scored past 24. The Jets game was the streak in microcosm.
"Feels like we've been here before," quarterback Peyton Manning said after the game. "Basically what we do is don't execute in the first half, then we kind of get out of our offense in the second half."
Even 17 unanswered points in that second half weren't enough to bring the Colts back. Manning and his running mates, Edgerrin James and Marvin Harrison, have been statistically impressive, but the bottom-line results haven't been there. On Sunday, James carried only 11 times for 49 yards. Contrast this with the Jets' Curtis Martin, who set a franchise record with 203 yards on 30 carries.
The Colts' Achilles heal has been defense, especially run defense. Indianapolis' ranking is No. 26 in this respect, a generous 127.8 yards per game. This is not a new development; run defense has been the soft underbelly of this team for two years now.
Through the first 13 games last season, the Colts were burned for 141 yards rushing only twice. It's happened 10 times in the subsequent 17 games. The Colts have been unable to find a stout run-stopper to plug the middle. The entire front seven is on the light side.
Size, according to Mora, doesn't matter. "Our tackling," he observed after the Jets loss, "was atrocious."
And so the Colts are up against a hard, hard wall that they themselves constructed.
"If I knew the answer, I would certainly correct it," Mora said. "It's not a question of not being ready or not trying.
"It just hasn't worked, and we've had to fight for our lives."
Greg Garber is a senior writer for ESPN.com.
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