An Ultimatum Lit a Fire Under the Colts' Defense

Coordinator Challenged Unit, And It Responded

MIAMI, Feb. 1 -- Late in the regular season, Indianapolis Colts defensive coordinator Ron Meeks told his players they needed to start performing better.

Or else.

"If you don't get the job done," Meeks said this week, reiterating the message he'd delivered in late-season team meetings, "someone else will."

Meeks's players listened. The Colts are in the Super Bowl, preparing to face the Chicago Bears on Sunday, in part because they have a quarterback and an offense as good as any in football, but also in part because a defense that couldn't stop anyone for much of the season suddenly started holding up its end of the bargain during the playoffs.

"Essentially we did the same things we were doing before," linebacker Cato June said. "We just started to do them better. We started to actually perform and guys were making plays. We were playing fast. We were playing with a lot of energy and confidence. Everybody already knew what to do. It was just a matter of going out and doing it."

The Bears undoubtedly will use tailbacks Thomas Jones and Cedric Benson to test an Indianapolis defense that surrendered 173 rushing yards per game during the regular season -- 27.6 more than any other team in the league -- but yielded only 73.3 rushing yards per game during the AFC playoffs.

"The problem was us," Meeks said. "We weren't doing a good job of execution. We weren't doing the things we normally do to make the system work on a consistent basis. Things kind of snowballed on us a little there. I think the key was that we realized that everything we were doing scheme-wise was okay. It was just how we were doing it. We had to do a better job of execution, have a greater sense of urgency. Our energy level had to pick up and the speed at which we play had to pick up. . . . We're playing with more urgency and more accountability. Guys who were missing tackles aren't missing as many now."

Meeks followed through on his improve-or-else threat by benching outside linebacker Gilbert Gardner and replacing him in the lineup with Rob Morris, who's normally a middle linebacker and would serve as another run-stopper. The Colts benefited during the playoffs from the return of dynamic safety Bob Sanders, who played only four games during the regular season because of knee troubles. Otherwise, it was simply a matter of the same players doing the same things, only doing them better.

"We could have started pointing fingers," June said. "We could have broken down as a defense. We stayed together. We kept it inside the locker room. More so than anything, guys looked at themselves and said, 'I have to see what I can correct myself so that I can help this team play better.' "

For the Colts, the refrain had been familiar throughout Coach Tony Dungy's tenure: The defense wasn't good enough to do its part and help quarterback Peyton Manning and the offense reach a Super Bowl. The struggles were perplexing in one way because Dungy was a highly successful defensive coordinator before becoming a head coach. But, in another way, they weren't. The Colts had tied up their money and their salary cap space into retaining their key offensive players, and had to mix and match and patch on defense.

The defense was greatly improved last season after the addition of tackle Corey Simon. But the Colts still fell agonizingly short of the Super Bowl, and this season Simon was hurt and didn't play a single game. With Sanders also missing, the defense wasn't the same. Dungy's reaction was to continue to believe in his system, but streamline it. He thought back, he said, to something one of his coaching mentors, Chuck Noll, used to say: "When you struggle, do less."

So the Colts simplified their defensive playbook. They also traded for Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive tackle Anthony McFarland to fill the void left by Simon's absence, and things got better.

The defense that the Colts will put on the field Sunday will have several players with Washington ties. June attended Anacostia High School. He went from there to the University of Michigan, where he played safety. The Colts were the only NFL team that projected him as a linebacker, and he reached the Pro Bowl last season.

Rookie safety Antoine Bethea was a sixth-round draft pick last spring out of Howard University. He played in the same secondary with Ronald Bartell, a second-round draft choice by the St. Louis Rams in 2005, and his coaches at Howard told Bethea to make sure that when NFL scouts came to see Bartell, they noticed him, too. Bethea began training camp last summer thinking he'd end up on the Colts' practice squad or perhaps would make the roster and play mostly on special teams. But, in part because of injuries, he ended up starting all but two games.

Meeks, too, passed through Washington, spending the 2000 season as the Redskins' secondary coach. He was the Rams' secondary coach for a season in 2001 -- working for Lovie Smith, then the St. Louis defensive coordinator and now the Bears' head coach -- before being hired as the Colts' defensive coordinator. His time with Smith and Dungy has taught him to be calmer, he said, but that didn't stop him from delivering this season's ultimatum to get his players going.

"They needed to understand, 'Hey, I've got to pick my game up.' I think all of them did," Meeks said. "We don't do a lot of yelling and screaming. It's accountability."