had volcanic tendencies entering this game, then the result let loose a fountain of magma. And he did it against a defense coached by Jim Mora Jr., who was awarded the game ball after the win. And in this crucial game, with the 4-5 Colts trying to keep their postseason hopes alive, Manning threw four interceptions, including a pick-six, in a 40-21 loss. “It wasn’t Peyton Manning as the world knows him now,” Bragg says.Īll this infighting was the backdrop as the Colts played the 49ers in Week 11. At the time, Manning was seen (perhaps unfairly) as the guy who couldn’t win big games. He also threw six pick-sixes, the most in the Super Bowl era until Jameis Winston threw seven in 2019. Manning went on to have 23 picks that season, second most in the NFL.
According to media members who covered the team at the time, Mora felt Polian refused to acknowledge that Manning, the Golden Boy QB who was in his fourth NFL season, was not playing well enough. (Indy would finish the season allowing the most points in the NFL.) But Fangio was a good friend of Mora’s, and Mora was loyal. Colts general manager Bill Polian pinned Indy’s issues primarily on defensive coordinator Vic Fangio.
How long to beat infamous first light full#
The blame game was already in full swing. (Mora had coached New Orleans for so long that, before he resigned, he was the longest-tenured active head coach in major American sports.) As the Colts prepared for a Week 11 contest against the San Francisco 49ers, they had lost five of their past seven, leaving them with a 4-5 record that put them at risk of missing the, well-you know. In Week 10, Indy lost by two touchdowns to the Saints-the team Mora had previously coached for 11 years. In Week 7, star Colts running back Edgerrin James-who had led the NFL in rushing the previous two seasons-tore his ACL. Brady’s Patriots waxed Indy 44-13, and three weeks later, they did it again, walloping the Colts 38-17. The Colts started 2-0 that year, but the wheels came off in Week 3, as they lost to a young Patriots quarterback named Tom Brady who was making his first career start. So coming into 2001, Mora’s fourth season in Indy, there was tremendous pressure for the Colts to win in the, uh, playoffs. The two consecutive early playoff losses squandered much of the goodwill Mora had earned for turning around a 3-13 team. The year before that, the Colts went 13-3 and earned a first-round bye, but lost in the divisional round. The previous season had ended with the Colts blowing a 14-0 halftime lead to the Dolphins in the wild-card round. Volcanoes are vents, and there were a lot of reasons Mora needed to vent about Indy’s 2001 campaign. “That’s the day,” Rakestraw says, “that Vesuvius erupted in Indianapolis.” Greg Rakestraw, who currently hosts the Colts’ postgame show and was in attendance for that fateful press conference, remembers it well.
Never mind knowing why Mora was really so upset-or why the clip has taken on such a massive second life. But plenty of people who quote the line probably couldn’t tell you who said it (Mora), or the player who caused Mora to enter the press conference so frustrated (Peyton Manning). PLAYOFFS?! Don’t talk about-playoffs? You kidding me? Playoffs!?! It is on the short list of all-time press conference quotes, alongside Allen Iverson saying “We’re talking about practice,” and Dennis Green shouting “They are who we thought they were.” Thanksgiving marks the 20th anniversary of the tirade. If you’ve followed the NFL much at all over the past two decades, you can probably hear the line in your head. “I don’t know if I’ve ever heard the word come up in conversation in Indianapolis and that not be mentioned with someone trying to imitate Jim Mora,” Bowen says. Kevin Bowen, a radio host for Indianapolis’s The Fan, says the phrase is ever present. So, like Bragg’s kids, sports fans have also run around yelling “playoffs” for the past two decades. The internet turns all of us into children. “And so then for about six months, they would run around yelling playoffs, playoffs, playoffs.”
“Even my little kids saw it, and they’re like, ‘Daddy, that’s you on TV,’” Bragg said. Bigwig administrators he hardly knows in the school district have reached out and asked, “You’re the guy?” But he’s since become a physical education teacher, and on his very first day at Belzer, he was ambushed by his new coworkers, who played the video as he walked in to meet them. But somehow, people find out.”īragg used to work at Channel 6 WRTV in Indianapolis. “I don’t go around and say, ‘Hey, by the way, I’m the guy who ,’” Bragg says.