Just when you thought the Colts couldn't get weirder than Jeff Saturday ...

Seahawks-Colts 5 most important players: All eyes on STARTER Philip Rivers against Seattle's top-ranked defense

Imagine being born before Hollywood started making movies and still living long enough to compete in a track and field competition after Marcus Mariota’s Ducks lost to Ezekiel Elliott’s Buckeyes in the first ever CFP game. That’s the life of Stanislaw Kowalski, who became “the oldest ever professional athlete” in 2015 when he competed in sprinting, shot putting, and discus competitions at the Polish Veterans Championships.

Kowalski was born in 1910, before the Titanic sank, before the establishment of Hollywood’s first movie studio, before the end of China’s Qing dynasty and the start of the Republic of China. He died in 2022, after the launch of the James Webb Telescope, after the premiere of Squid Game, after the first newsletter was written by Seaside Joe. Kowalski died as the oldest person in the history of Poland, 12 days shy of his 112th birthday.

And in between those events, but much closer to his death than his birth, Kowalski set a world record as the oldest athlete in history at age 105. He didn’t start his athletics career until he was 104.

Whatever you’ve put off doing in your life to this point, it’s never too late.

History really does repeat itself because under basically the exact same circumstances and also born before the Titanic, Philip Rivers is going to start for the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday.

In the world of mindboggling midseason decisions, nothing comes as close to this as the time that a team hired Jeff Saturday to be the head coach despite his only coaching experience being three seasons of middling results at a high school that he resigned from several years earlier. That was also the Colts and it went as bad as everyone predicted it would go, as Saturday went 1-7 with a single victory over Josh McDaniels’ Raiders.

Indianapolis’s quarterback that season was Matt Ryan, who at age 40 and three years after retirement, would make more sense than what the Colts are about to do.

Shane Steichen was hired to replace Saturday and presumably under the impression that when you join the Colts you are automatically entered into a “do the weirdest thing you can imagine contest” (the same franchise that left Baltimore in the middle of the night; hired Josh McDaniels in 2018 only to have him change his mind and renege; unnecessarily punted the ball while leading with :10 seconds left and losing; so improperly managed Andrew Luck’s career that he retired before he turned 30; drafted John Elway even though he refused to play for them and threatened to go play baseball instead; had another quarterback “TAP OUT” of a game because he said he was tired; ran the worst special teams play in history; but arguably the greatest/craziest coaching rant of all-time too) so is it really any surprise that Indy’s head coach feels that his best option at quarterback against the Seahawks is a player who The Athletic wrote was in an obvious and rapid decline of abilities…in October of 2020?

Maybe Steichen had no other choice when he found out that Stanislaw Kowalski was “unavailable”.

The Colts are like that friend you invite to parties because they’re crazy. You don’t know what insane thing they’re going to do next but as long as nobody gets hurt it’s that wild quality that gets them in the door (Luck would probably like a word about taking things too far); I don’t know what other purpose the Colts would be serving to NFL fans if not for their crazy stories.

Well, this may be it. The pinnacle of Colts insanity and Seahawks fans get a front row seat.

Let’s get into the 5 most important players, but first your answers in Friday’s confidence survey:

You’re confident in the game

If you’ve been following the world of prediction markets, then you might be interested to know that 87% of users on Kalshi believe the Seahawks will win.

You’re getting confident about Rams

Got to take care of the Colts first.

You’re maybe leaning towards 13-4

It’s gotta land between 12 wins and 14 wins then right?

You’re slightly more confident about the 1-seed

Very slightly perhaps.

But you don’t want it to come down to the same kick

I think we’ll settle for 20-point wins from here on out.

What are your thoughts on the results?

5 most important players

QB Philip Rivers, Colts

Sure you could definitely argue that Sam Darnold is more important in this game than Rivers (and imagine the articles that will come out if somehow Darnold gets outplayed) but there’s not a QB in the league who is half as interesting this week. Everybody is talking about the Colts, which just wouldn’t be possible with Riley Leonard, and maybe that’s part of the reason that Indianapolis is going in this direction.

There’s nothing anyone can say about Rivers as a football player in 2025 and that’s why I can’t wait to watch.

And if the Seahawks defense has their best game of the season, I won’t have any complaints about that either.

Colts OL

The Seahawks have the third-highest pressure rate in the NFL, the seventh-best sack rate (sacks per pass attempt), and the fourth-most sacks.

The most intriguing matchups here could be on the inside with Byron Murphy II and Leonard Williams going up against future Hall of Fame (probably) Quenton Nelson. And if you double-team either of them, or miss the stunt, then here comes DeMarcus Lawrence or Uchenna Nwosu or Nick Emmanwori or Devon Witherspoon on a nickel blitz.

There are so many defensive weapons on Seattle that teams have to account for and Mike Macdonald will show no mercy against Colt 44.

RB Jonathan Taylor, Colts

I usually highlight 3 Seahawks and 2 opponents but it feels appropriate to focus on the Colts offense this week for obvious reasons. Regardless of who is under center, Seattle still has to account for the league’s leading rusher:

1,356 yards, 16 TD, 5.5 YPC, 1,660 total yards

The Colts had QB problems a month ago against the Falcons and Taylor still rushed for 244 yards and three touchdowns. At 26 (man, he’s still only 26?!) Taylor is having the best season of his career. Seattle’s run defense is the best by a number of measures (they now have a big lead over second place and a huge lead over third place in EPA per run allowed) but one back you can’t afford to make a mistake against this year is Taylor.

We’re talking so much about Rivers that we might have forgotten that all it takes for Indianapolis to have a chance to win is a great day on defense. On defense.

The Seahawks have to protect the ball this time (31st in turnovers) and not shoot themselves in the foot.

TE A.J. Barner, Seahawks

Seattle quickly ruled out Elijah Arroyo this week with a knee injury. It’s the first missed game for a rookie who fell in the draft because of injury questions. As I write this, the Seahawks have not officially activated Eric Saubert from IR to play on Sunday but there’s some expectation that it could happen with two open roster spots. (The Seahawks released Cam Akers and Shaq Griffin.)

Jalen Sundell and Rylie Mills are two others who could return.

Maybe Barnyard gets a little more work in this game and potentially he scores his fifth touchdown of the season. Barnyard has 631 career receiving yards, which puts him 4 yards shy of the second-most receiving yards by a Seahawks tight end through his first two seasons:

And he’s considerably younger now than John Carlson was in 2009.

OLB DeMarcus Lawrence, Seahawks

It feels like a good week for Lawrence to get a sack, and by the way if Lawrence gets two sacks he’ll have seven on the season;

Lawrence has not had that many sacks since 2018!

• Uchenna Nwosu’s 6 sacks is the second-most of his career and he needs 3.5 more to match his personal best.

• Williams needs 4 sacks to match his total from 2024.

• Murphy’s 7 sacks is the most ever by a second-year Seahawks defensive tackle; Cortez Kennedy had 6.5 in year two

Everybody this week is focused on the Colts quarterback, including the Seattle’s pass rushers, and watching the Seahawks sack the quarterback is something that never gets old.

Seaside Joe 2476