Time to move on planning for Manning

MIAMI -- If there was a tried and true formula to stop Peyton Manning, you still would be reading about how he can't win the big one, not even one large enough to reach the stage of Super Bowl XLI.

All of the defensive schemes one can cram into a playbook the size of a stack of phonebooks have been tried against Manning. The Colts' maestro of pre-snap machinations doesn't just find a way to overcome them -- he beats the daylights out of them.

Blitz him, and he'll find the hot receiver every time. Get him to third down, and he's deadly. This season alone, he was 94-for-151 (62.3 percent) on third down for 1,227 yards and 18 touchdowns with only three interceptions and a 119.1 rating. So much for taking him out of rhythm.

But take Manning's last move away from him, and you have a fighting chance. The head turning, arm waving and symphony of gyrations that make him look like Houdini trying to get out of a straitjacket -- it's all designed to do a few things, not the least of which is puzzle the defense. It's also meant to give Manning the final chess move on every play. When he finds out what the defense is aligning to do, he often will make a final adjustment on a play call.

That's why the Colts don't involve much motion in their offense. They are not trying to force a team to react to them; they want to react to it. The key is taking that final move away from Manning before the snap. The Dallas Cowboys, who terminated the Colts' bid for a perfect season at 9-0 with a 21-14 victory Nov. 19 at Texas Stadium, found one way to approach that task.

The Cowboys rolled play clocks onto their practice field in preparing for Manning and his high-flying circus act. Bill Parcells' staff had done its research and discovered that with 10 seconds remaining on the play clock, Manning didn't have time to make that final adjustment, especially on the road in front of a hostile crowd. The Bears will face him at a neutral site, but their followers figure to outnumber the Colts' based on the size of the respective fan bases.

The Cowboys instructed their defense not to shift into its final look until there were 10 seconds on the clock. Bears defensive coordinator Ron Rivera is aware of the Cowboys' practice tactic, and the Bears might use it today when they take the field at the University of Miami for the first time.

''We had our show-team quarterback [Matt Baker] go through all the talk and signals and [junk], and the defense stayed in some disguised look,'' said Todd Haley, the former Bears receivers coach who recently left Dallas, where he was the passing-game coordinator, to become the Arizona Cardinals' offensive coordinator. ''Then you show what you're going to do, whether you have the middle of the field closed, you have a safety dropped down or you're having a linebacker walk out on [tight end Dallas] Clark and he was going to blitz. That's when he would start to creep down. The whole key was the practice.

''But holding that look until the clock runs down is easier said than done. We weren't as good in the game as we were in practice. Peyton still got stuck in the wrong play from time to time. If you show early and he checks to what he wants, he's getting the play he wants every time.''

The Cowboys intercepted Manning twice -- one of only two times that happened all season -- and Kevin Burnett returned one of them 39 yards for a touchdown. Four of the Colts' 10 possessions lasted three plays or fewer.

Of course, if you're waiting for the clock to hit 10 and Manning snaps the ball quickly, the defense could be caught out of position from what it wants to do. Rivera wants his players to be patient but is stressing that being in position before the ball is snapped is paramount. He already has had them study the timing of things in film work.

''[Manning] knows what we're doing probably before we're doing it,'' said middle linebacker Brian Urlacher, the man charged with making adjustments to Manning's adjustments. ''When you check, he checks. If you check back, he checks back.

''You're probably not going to fool the guy. He's probably seen every defense thrown at him in the last nine years that you can see. We just have to not get frustrated when we're out there. They're going to make some plays; we realize that. We have to make some plays of our own and just stay on the field and play hard.''

Having the final say helps, too. That's why the Bears might roll out some play clocks this morning and do their own countdown.

''The bottom line is you have to make sure you understand what routes are coming and what runs are coming,'' Rivera said. ''There are a lot of things to go into it. He wants to make the final move. You have to be ready to counter. Ultimately, you have to do what you do better than them.''

bbiggs@suntimes.com