THE NFL / BILL PLASCHKE : Colts Are Earning Respect--the NFC Way

Bill Tobin, an old Continental League running back who now builds football teams, was taking his early morning walk on the outskirts of Indianapolis the other day when a car pulled up in front of him.

Out stepped a stylishly dressed woman. Tobin slowed.

“I thought, ‘This woman has had a flat tire, and now I’ve got to fix it,’ ” he said. “I thought, ‘My walk is ruined.’ ”

As it turned out, the woman was a football fan and she simply had to tell the Indianapolis Colts’ general manager how much she loved his team.

“She walked with me past her car while praising the Colts and telling me how proud she was,” he said. “Pulled off the road just for that.”

After this weekend, the rest of the AFC is doing much the same.

With a 7-5 record and games remaining against teams with a combined record of 17-30--including consecutive outings against the expansion teams--the Colts should make the playoffs for only the second time since moving to Indianapolis 11 years ago.

And they won’t qualify only as a first-round diversion, to be crushed the first weekend in January.

Thanks to Tobin, who built the Chicago Bears’ Super Bowl winner as an executive in the ‘80s, this is an AFC team with an NFC heart.

Monsters of the Speedway? You decide:

--These Colts have a defense. It ranks second in the NFL against the run after finishing last in that category two years ago.

You may be familiar with the singer named Tony Bennett, but the football player by the same name? Yet nobody is rushing the passer better than this free-agent defector from the Green Bay Packers. Bennett, among the league leaders with 8.5 sacks, nailed Dan Marino three times Sunday and recorded the team’s first safety in more than eight years--the longest such drought in the league.

Only one other team has sacked Marino more than three times this year.

The Colts also have the three ingredients that make up modern-day defenses--a strong but pudgy nose tackle, Tony Siragusa; a veteran middle linebacker who tackles in anonymity, Jeff Herrod, and a cornerback who hits like a safety, Ray Buchanan.

“The way to build championship teams, I have always believed, is with defense and a running game,” said Tobin, who joined the Colts two years ago. “And before anything else is defense.”

--These Colts have a running game. It ranks sixth in the NFL after finishing last two years ago.

And we know you’ve heard of Marshall Faulk, the team’s leading rusher, receiver and scorer.

Remember when Tobin engaged in the verbal on-air battle with ESPN announcer Mel Kiper two years ago after Kiper had ripped him for not taking a quarterback with one of his two top-five picks?

Faulk was one of those picks, along with improving defensive lineman Trev Alberts.

The players the draft experts chided Tobin for not taking? Trent Dilfer and Heath Shuler. Enough said.

The celebrated exchange between Tobin and Kiper is credited with sparking a new attitude in Indy. Locals say it was the first time somebody had publicly defended the Colts since they left Baltimore.

“I heard somebody saying that the Colts were the stupidest team, always the stupidest team, and I couldn’t listen to it anymore,” Tobin said.

--Best of all, these Colts have Jim Harbaugh, until now pro football’s most lovable loser, a man best known for the coaches who used to yell at him.

First, there was Bo Schembechler at the University of Michigan. Then, it was Mike Ditka with the Bears.

When Harbaugh was kicked out by the Bears and eventually trudged to Indianapolis two years ago, he says his life was like a country-western song. He had lost his job and his girlfriend, and his dog was sick.

Now that things have changed, so has the song, which he recently used to serenade some visiting writers.

It was something about dusting off a bottle and finding a rare liquor inside.

“Jim was tired of hearing all the junk--you can’t do this, you can’t do that--and has done something about it,” Tobin said.

With a 58.5 passer rating before this year, with Craig Erickson acquired from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at the behest of owner Bob Irsay, Harbaugh began the season with less credibility than Ditka.

But Erickson couldn’t learn offensive coordinator Lindy Infante’s new offense. And Harbaugh could. Suddenly, in a system that allows him to throw most of his passes to running backs and tight ends, and not requiring that he throw into the end zone much--he has half as many touchdown passes, 14, as the Packers’ Brett Favre--he leads the NFL with a 108.4 rating.

And he doesn’t even pretend to be a star.

“He once yelled at me because there was a chart in a Chicago newspaper that showed he made more money than Michael Jordan one year,” said Leigh Steinberg, Harbaugh’s agent. “He said he was embarrassed to be making so much, and could I do something about it?”

This is the guy, remember, who once was so disgusted with his play in Chicago that he donated a game check to an orphanage.

“I ain’t pretty to watch,” Harbaugh said. “The other quarterbacks are Secretariat. I’m a mudder.”

Sort of like his team. Only, come January, you may not want to be caught in the same puddle.