Colts say they can win without Manning

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Reggie Wayne believes Sunday’s game at Houston will be just like any other Colts’ season opener.

He’s excited to play some meaningful football, even if his old pal, Peyton Manning, isn’t throwing him the dang ball.

“The next guy is going to have to step up,” he said Friday. “And everybody is going to have to rally around that guy.”

Next man up has been a mantra Indianapolis players have embraced for nearly a decade. But until now Tony Dungy’s three-word phrase never applied to an Indianapolis quarterback.

Manning’s streak of 227 consecutive starts including the playoffs will end Sunday in Houston, three days after his latest neck surgery. He’s expected to be out at least two months and perhaps for the entire season, temporarily leaving Kerry Collins in charge of the team Manning has run since September 1998.

Doctors said his third neck surgery in 19 months went “very well, without complication” and that his prognosis for recovery is good.

Father and son doctors Robert Watkins Sr. and Robert Watkins Jr., who performed Thursday’s surgery, issued the statement Friday. The surgery was performed at Marina Del Rey Hospital in California. Manning’s previous surgeries were at Northwestern Memorial in Chicago.

The doctors confirmed that Manning needed surgery for a herniated disk and that his rehab program, which is expected to take at least two months, will begin soon.

Under Manning’s leadership, Indianapolis has become an annual Super Bowl contender.

Without him, most of the so-called experts say the Colts are an average to below average team and that the NFL world is about to see just how many mistakes Manning covered up. Many say Indianapolis is headed for a doomed season that will end its record-tying run of nine straight playoff appearances.

Inside the locker room, players don’t buy it.

Veteran leaders such as Wayne and Dwight Freeney have long proclaimed that while Manning is the engineer of Indy’s success, it’s never been just a one-man show.

“What can you do about it? There’s nothing you can do,” Wayne said of the dire predictions. “Either let it go on deaf ears or you let it bother you. I think everyone in this locker room has dealt with it the same way and that’s to not let it bother us at all. We don’t feel like we have to prove anything to anybody, and we’re going to go out there and it’s going to be the same mentality.”

Of course, the Colts have won without Manning playing his best ball.

_ In 2006, the Colts won the Super Bowl with Manning throwing seven interceptions and only three touchdowns in four postseason games. And the Colts wouldn’t have reached the big game without Adam Vinatieri making five field goals in a 15-6 second-round win at Baltimore.

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