Bob Cook

When quarterback Peyton Manning said after his Indianapolis Colts lost to New England that "we need some guys back," there was one guy in particular who was on his mind.

That guy is Marvin Harrison, the receiver who was already with the Colts when Manning arrived in 1998, and has been his favorite target and security blanket ever since. Harrison missed the 24-20 loss at home to the Patriots last Sunday, as well as two others because of what is being called a bruised left knee, suffered Sept. 30 against Denver.

If Harrison can’t come back from his knee injury, forget the presumably inevitable rematch against New England on Jan. 20 in the AFC championship game. Without his production, and his ability to draw attention away from other receivers, the Colts could risk getting knocked out of the playoffs before that day even comes.

No offense to Anthony Gonzalez or Aaron Moorehead, but the dropoff from the second-best receiver in NFL history to their inexperienced selves is as long and precipitous as the falls Wile E. Coyote regularly used to take off a desert cliff. Gonzalez is only a rookie, with 15 receptions for 207 yards and zero touchdowns. Moorehead is in his fifth year, and for his career has 27 receptions for 291 yards and one touchdown.

Those are numbers Harrison would get in about four or five games.

In his 12th season, Harrison is fourth all-time in receptions (1,042), fourth in receiving yards (13,944) and third in receiving touchdowns (123, 107 of them from Manning, a record for a quarterback-receiver pair). Had Harrison been healthy and put in an average season (93 catches, 1,241 yards, 11 touchdowns, all totals he beat in 2006), he would be second all-time, to Jerry Rice, in all three major receiving categories.

Harrison isn’t big — listed at 6-foot, 185 pounds, a weigh-in done after a binge on the Philadelphia native’s favorite snack, his hometown’s Tastykakes. He isn’t known for being fast. But he is known for being smart, quick and able to catch anything thrown at him. The Manning-to-Harrison quick slant route, and Harrison’s post route following Manning’s play-action, have been run so many times and so successfully, they have become the NFL’s version of the John Stockton-to-Karl-Malone pick-and-roll.

When Gonzalez dropped a short touchdown pass in the first quarter against New England, and Moorehead failed to keep both feet inbounds on a sideline catch in that period, you couldn’t help but think Harrison would have made those plays easily. Harrison was sorely missed as other receivers dropped key passes or had trouble getting open in the second half against the Patriots, who came back from a 20-10 fourth-quarter deficit. (Meanwhile, Randy Moss was making key big play after play for New England, making the argument of how big an impact a receiver can have.)

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When the Colts failed twice to punch the ball in from the Patriots five-yard-line in the first quarter, you couldn’t help but think Harrison would have been open, or at least had drawn an extra defender toward to open up the end zone.

In 2006, Harrison caught six of Manning’s 14 touchdown passes of five yards or fewer, while the Colts ran for 12 more touchdowns from that distance, settling for field goals of less than 25 yards only twice.

Eight games into 2007, only three of which have seen Harrison log significant playing time, the Colts are on pace for 14 touchdown runs of less than five yards, but only eight touchdown passes — and 12 field goals of 25 yards or less.

The New England game also showed that without Harrison in the lineup, Manning is apt to force the ball more to No. 2 wideout Reggie Wayne, who is not obliging by suddenly coming down with a case of the dropsies himself the last few weeks. Meanwhile, tight end/slot receiver Dallas Clark, used to roaming free with Harrison by his side, is now finding defenses more aggressively trying to bottle him up.

Without Harrison, it would seem the new defensive strategy for beating the Colts, as employed by New England for the second half, is to concentrate on stuffing all-around running back Joseph Addai and force Manning to throw. As strange as that sounds, if Harrison isn’t drawing defensive attention, or being a set of sure hands if things go wrong, that plan can work.

It can work particularly well in the playoffs if that opponent is Pittsburgh or Tennessee, the No. 1 and No. 2 defenses in the NFL.