Maybe, just maybe, the Colts and Peyton Manning are done stealing headlines during Super Bowl week. They might save the real news for later.ANDERSON – “Each day,” the quiet man with the dreadlocks says. “Each day you go out there and try to get better.”
It’s early August and the heat comes off the asphalt like a convection oven at Anderson University, heat that feels more like the quiet man’s native Louisiana than Indiana in an average summer. The dreadlocks hang limply, as the questions come. His face is shiny with sweat.
“We’ve got a couple more weeks,” Joseph Addai said on the opening day of training camp for the Colts. “I think every practice you have to get better.”
And as he stands there, saying the sort of things you expect him to say, it occurs that the August heat is more than just heat. It’s a metaphor, perhaps, for a Colts running game that ranked dead last in the league last year, and for Addai himself, who ran for 828 yards and 10 touchdowns last year but averaged just 3.8 yards per carry, and who ranked 22nd in the league in rushing, just behind Jerome Harrison and Brandon Jacobs and just ahead of Cadillac Williams.
Odd place for the hero of Miami, who ran for 77 yards and caught 10 passes for 66 more that rainy night in Super Bowl XLI, capping off a rookie season in which he went over 1,000 yards (1,081), scored seven touchdowns and provided the Colts a go-to back in the tradition of Marshall Faulk and Edgerrin James.
Now?
Now it is all about redemption or legacy or a return to form for both Addai and the Colts, who lost Super Bowl XLIV and are using that as a springboard to get back again. A large part of that, of course, involves revving up the running game.
“I think we all understand what we’ve got to get done,” center Jeff Saturday says. “You don’t want to be the 32nd-ranked rushing team. You want more rushes and you want more productive rushes.
“We all have the same purpose in mind. We’ve just got to get the outcome we’re looking for.”
That requires a number of things, of course: The jelling of a revamped offensive line, a healthy Donald Brown and, yes, a rejuvenated Addai, who’ll never put up Chris Johnson-like numbers in the offense the Colts run, but surely would like to revisit the 1,000-yard barrier he broke in each of his first two seasons.
Not that you’ll get that out of him, exactly.
“I’m just trying to help out the team,” he said last month. “I’m really just trying to go out there and be positive. That’s definitely the biggest thing. If I can go out there and do what I’ve done and continue doing what I’ve been doing, I’ll be all right.”
So far, so good. In the first three preseason games, Addai led the Colts with 84 yards on 14 carries, a robust 6.0 average.
He scored two touchdowns. His longest run from scrimmage was 49 yards.
That’s a healthy jump from last season, and even his stellar rookie season, when he averaged 4.8 yards. And it indicates that the sting finishing last in the league in rushing still serves a useful purpose.
“It gives us a lot of motivation because all we can do is go up,” Addai says.
“Myself, I’m always motivated. I’m trying to build off of the Super Bowl. That’s my goal or whatever. Just keep on and keep staying consistent with it.”
