In the aftermath of the 31-9 exclamation mark the Colts pounded into the Nashville turf Sunday night, the Colts have positioned themselves in familiar territory: holding an iron-clad grip on the top spot in the AFC South.

Yep, that's what happens when a team rolls out to a blistering 5-0 start on the same day as every other divisional foe loses. Incredibly, the Colts have a whopping three-game lead in the division race after just five weeks.

Nearly everything that can be clicked is clicking, and never was that more true than in their stone-walling of the 2008 division-champs-turned-bottom-feeder Titans on Sunday. Peyton Manning was his normal brilliant self, rookie Austin Collie emerged as another dangerous cog in the offensive wheel, the defensive line flexed its muscles and the no-name injury fill-ins in the secondary looked like spitting images of the star-studded cast for whom they're replacing.

The PFW spin

With so many deserving candidates, it's tough to hand out just one game ball. But if we must isolate just one person deserved for Indy's whitewashing of the Titans and their remarkable start to the season, the choice is clear: Bill Polian.

The team's president and general manager is lauded throughout the NFL as one of the most astute personnel directors, and the manner in which he crafted the current Colts juggernaut stands as possibly his finest effort yet.

In no uncertain terms, the success of first-round studs Peyton Manning, Dwight Freeney, Reggie Wayne and Dallas Clark have been central to the Colts' dominance. However, those four along with fellow stars such as Bob Sanders and Kelvin Hayden are paid top dollar, an issue that has Indy boasting what is widely considered the NFL's most top-heavy roster in terms of salary.

What that means, of course, is that Polian and the Colts' scouting department must fill out the remainder of the roster with capable players for their system that fit within the team's budgetary restraints. And as if that's not a challenging enough task, many of those unheralded players were asked to man central roles this season given the avalanche of injuries to starters such as Sanders, Hayden, Marlin Jackson and Anthony Gonzalez.

Panic? Anything but. In fact, an argument can be made — heck, this argument was made by former Colts coach Tony Dungy on Sunday night — that the 2009 Colts are playing better after five games than any of the fast-starting teams Dungy directed.

In the banged-up secondary, a pair of rookie corners, third-rounder Jerraud Powers and undrafted Jacob Lacey, swarmed the Titans' receivers while 2006 sixth-rounder Antoine Bethea and Sanders' replacement, Melvin Bullitt, laid the lumber from their safety spots.

At receiver, breakthrough performer Pierre Garcon took a backseat in Week Five to allow for a thoroughly inspiring effort from fourth-rounder Collie, who has made legitimately standout plays in his own right on two of his three touchdown grabs the past two weeks.

Throw in longer-tenured Colts stalwarts who have matured into top-flight performers after arriving with little fanfare such as Gary Brackett, Robert Mathis and Jeff Saturday, and it's more than obvious that superb coaching by freshman skipper Jim Caldwell can't be singled out among the non-players responsible for Indy's surge. Credit also needs to be dispensed to the man who pinpointed the players needed for such a run in the first place.