With perfection in sight, Dungy can't sit starters

	If Peyton Manning is playing in games that don't mean anything late in the season, he better slide a lot. Travis Lindquist/Getty Images

This season couldn't be setting up much better for the Indianapolis Colts. How many gifts did the Steelers give them on Monday night? Bill Cowher ordered that ill-considered onside kick to start the second half, and also passed on two game-tightening field-goal attempts, opting instead to go for it on fourth down. Granted, the Colts deserve credit for recovering the onside kick and stopping the fourth-down attempts -- and for putting enough heat on the Steelers that Cowher starting pressing. But some more temperate coaching from Cowher would have kept the Steelers within closing distance in the fourth quarter.

It's really looking like the Colts year. Other favorable circumstances:

-- They're playing the NFC West this year, which has one winning team in its division.

--Their own division includes the Texans and Titans, two of the league's easier targets this year

--The Jaguars will either be without Byron Leftwich or with Leftwich just returning from injury when the Colts go to Jacksonville on Dec. 11

--The Colts caught New England after the Rodney Harrison injury

--The Colts have had no major injuries themselves.

This is not to say the Colts aren't a great team. Just that in addition to all the things they do right on the field, they've also had circumstances go their way. They're swimming with the current rather than against it.

Now the question is, will the Colts take advantage of it?

If the Colts come into the last couple weeks of the season undefeated, they have to play their starters and go for a 16-0 record. They can't rest their starters to get ready for the playoffs. They can't squander their good fortune. They have a rare combination of skill and circumstance, and they have to take advantage of it. Even if it means hazarding their postseason.

Winning a Super Bowl is special. Ask anyone who has done it. But someone wins the Super Bowl every year. And for every 1985 Bears, there are plenty of forgettable squads who just happened to be the last team standing.

They arguments for Tony Dungy resting his starters are powerful. If the Colts' key players are injured and they get knocked off in the playoffs, Dungy will be second-guessed, to put it mildly. And Super Bowl windows don't stay open forever -- you have to take your shots while you have them. Peyton Manning, for all his individual achievement, has never played in a Super Bowl. Nor did he ever win a national championship at Tennessee, although the Vols did take it all the year after he left. If Manning never wins the ultimate game, you might as well tell the sculptor who carves his Hall of Fame bust to include the albatross around his neck.

But so what. Who cares.

Just go for it. How often do chances to be perfect at anything come along?

Most teams these days want to grind their way to the gold any way they can. That's what the Patriots have done in three of the past four years. They've blown away few people and shown little dazzle. But they win every game that matters -- usually by three points.

Most every franchise in the NFL wants to be like the Patriots, to enjoy the sort of success they have had, to have their steadiness, their character, their team spirit and their crowded trophy case. In fact, the past couple years observers thought that if any team in the salary cap era was going to go undefeated, it would be the Patriots.

But the Colts, who have been knocked off by the Patriots the past two post-seasons, can beat them to it.

Someone else might quote Robert Browning at this moment, but given how played out that "reach exceeding grasp" quote is, I'll just say this to the Colts: Why try to be like the Patriots when you have a chance to be better than them?

What I'm liking this week....

1. The over in the Tampa-New Orleans game.
2. The Marquette version of the Dwyane Wade shoe.
3. The Bob Dylan book, Chronicles.

What I'm not liking...

1. Duke's black road jerseys
2. The future of newspapers, if executives keep sacrificing staff to meet profit goals
3. The current Van Gogh drawings exhibit at the Met. Avoid this turkey at all costs.