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
I think the results of the surveys are understating the success of the Seahawks in the next 7 games.
The Detroit Lions need a win to realistically stay in the playoff hunt. Normally I wouldn’t care if the Rams win because we have full control of our destiny and we need to beat them ourselves, but I can’t help looking forward to watching how the “experts” will be running for cover if the Lions upset the Rams, and then on Thursday the Rams lose their third game in 19 days after being almost universally anointed as the NFC’s Super Bowl team.
Five thoughts.
#1, I am so confident about beating the Colts (and covering) that I'm starting to worry that I'm being unrealistic. But Rivers looked cooked when he retired. I get that the rest and healing will go a long way. I get that he knows the offense in his sleep. I have a lot of respect for Rivers; but good luck playing the #1 defense in the rain, on the road in Seattle -where you had better have practiced your silent count.
#2, I feel like this team can beat anyone, but I gave a 3 on winning out the rest of our schedule. The D will always bring it, but this offense went from explosive to very streaky. I'm glad the run game is picking up steam, at least.
#3, I can't believe that over half the responses picked 3 or higher for Myers kicking a 61 yarder again. When he hit the 57, I'm pretty sure I heard it scrape the bottom of the goalpost. And his 61-yard attempt missed so badly that we all knew the Rams had won before it was halfway there.
#4 Jonathon Taylor is a beast. I have watched a handful of parts of Colts games, and highlights and condensed games, and all I could think was that the league was getting the Daniel Jones treatment we got last year, and that running back is special. We can't let up on stacked boxes against this guy. He will break tackles he shouldn't and pick up first downs that seem impossible at the point of contact.
#5, (not mentioned but touched on regarding defensive depth) I'm PISSED that we lost Quinten Bohanna by putting him on waivers. I can name 5 other guys JS could have put on waivers starting with a bunch of guys who haven't played a snap and ending with Shaq Griffin. Bohanna was a productive developmental depth piece who wanted to be here. And now we've lost Pili and Jarran Reed is playing with an injury.
And a bonus #6. You had two quotes that resonated. "Whatever you’ve put off doing in your life to this point, it’s never too late." This is my quote of the year. Outside of extremes where your dream was playing professional football and you're over 50; it really is true. When I was in my late 20's I had a roommate named John here in Asheville, NC. I was trying to learn guitar and gave up on it because I would be near 35 before I got really good. I didn't listen to him, but he dropped some wisdom. "You'll be 35 anyway, do you want to learn to rock out guitar by then or not?" I never put much energy into learning and can only play 3 chords, but in retrospect, I wanted to be a rock star more than actually a good guitar player. His reframing has stuck with me though.
And while talking about the same guy: "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." John was that guy. He and I were like oil and water in some ways. He would say yes to almost anything. I was (am) quite risk adverse. He once did a nude cannonball off of a high dive when several friends (men and women) snuck into a public pool after hours and he couldn't believe that I wouldn't even consider it. He would talk to anyone. He didn't want anything from strangers he would meet and they saw that. He could talk to super wealthy people or the homeless while I was worried that I was being judged or about to get stabbed with a needle; respectively. But John didn't care. People were fun to interact with, and that trumped everything. We once went to a Cuban restaurant and when I got back from the bathroom our table was pulled up with a bunch of Cuban dudes who barely spoke English (and neither of us had much command of Spanish). But even though we relied on one younger guy to translate both ways for us, we had a fun time and made a memory! We went to NYC and he wanted an English breakfast. There was a Tottenham Hotspurs game on and lots of fans. He was chanting along with them even though he had never watched soccer in his life and people were buying us beers even though it was breakfast time. John passed away from cancer a week ago today. I will be at his funeral in his hometown of Charlotte on Friday. One of the last things he said to me was that life was about experiences, and he hopes his friends dive into that mindset. I'm going to try. As long as it's not a naked cannonball.