INDIANAPOLIS — The playoffs can’t start soon enough for Donnie Avery.
Five years after being the first receiver taken in the 2008 NFL Draft, he will finally make his postseason debut at Baltimore.
“It’s great, it’s like starting the season all over again,” the Indianapolis Colts receiver said Friday with a smile. “It’s got my juices flowing again.”
The veterans who have been there before will explain this is the way the NFL playoffs are - exciting and nerve racking at the same time.
And this week, at least, Avery isn’t the only one in the Colts’ locker room going through this experience for the first time. Of the 53 players on the roster, 28 have never played in an NFL playoff game.
Perhaps that should be expected from a team that has relied on rookie quarterback Andrew Luck, piled up more combined rushing and receiving yards by rookies than any team since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger and endured the most thorough housecleaning project of any team in the league after last year’s 2-14 debacle. More than a half-dozen key players from the Colts’ 2009 Super Bowl team, including Peyton Manning, were let go.
But the truth is only nine rookies are on that first-timer list as the surprising Colts (11-5) visit AFC North champion Baltimore (10-6) for today’s wild-card game.
The other names include linebacker Jerrell Freeman, who had a team-high 203 tackles after arriving from Canada; Cassius Vaughn, who spent the past two seasons in Denver but didn’t get to play in either of the Broncos’ postseason games last year; and cornerback Vontae Davis, who spent his first three years in Miami.
“It’s a special moment,” Vontae Davis said. “I’ve never been to the playoffs being in Miami. My brother, Vernon Davis of San Francisco, he went to this first playoffs last year. He said it’s a great feeling, a great experience. I asked him for any tips and he just said, ‘Play harder.’ ”
If Davis or the others have additional questions, they won’t have to look too far.
Outside linebackers Dwight Freeney and Robert Mathis, safety Antoine Bethea, kicker Adam Vinatieri and receiver Reggie Wayne all own Super Bowl rings. Offensive coordinator Bruce Arians and backup running back Mewelde Moore have rings, too. Coach Chuck Pagano and most of those ex-Ravens he brought along have been to the playoffs multiple times as well, and their advice is simple.
“It’s another week. We know the stakes are higher,” Pagano said. “We know the energy is higher but don’t get caught up in all that stuff. Do what you’ve been doing.”
What the Colts have done best is find ways to win.
Behind Luck, they have a league-high nine victories in one-possession games. Luck also tied the NFL record by directing seven game-winning drives in the fourth quarter, and even when the No. 1 overall draft pick hasn’t played his best, they’ve still come up with big plays - Wayne’s stretching score to beat Green Bay, Vick Ballard’s twisting dive to beat Tennessee, Deji Karim’s 101-yard kickoff return to flip last Sunday’s game against Houston.
The Colts don’t want to change that part of it now.
“I think we’ve done a lot to get to this point, so I don’t think you need to wholesale change things,” Luck said. “Obviously, intensity is going to ratchet up, things are going to kick up a notch but trust in the same preparation, in the same process and hopefully that’ll pay dividends.”
That won’t be the only reward.
Wayne acknowledged Friday he has talked to the playoff newbies about everything from the Colts midnight move to the reaction they can expect when they return to their former hometown to the need to avoid throwing at 2004 Defensive Player of the Year Ed Reed.
It was something else that really go the players attention, though.
“We tell them the more you play in the playoffs, the more checks you get. You see guys’ eyes light up,” Wayne said. “They say, ‘Really, there’s more money?’ The guys I think are very excited. I don’t think it will be too big for them, it hasn’t been all year.”
Sports, Pages 22 on 01/06/2013