The New York Jets’ plans for the victory parade in Manhattan will be filed away for use some time in the future and the AFC Championship T-shirts will be discarded.

The Jets and Rex Ryan, their rookie head coach, had made themselves hostages to fortune by proclaiming their expectation that they would not only reach the Super Bowl in Miami on February 7 but win it. But although the wild-card underdogs looked on target to fulfil the predictions when they led 17-6 in the second quarter, the class and experience of the Indianapolis Colts told in the end as they ran out 30-17 victors.

They will meet the New Orleans Saints, who reached their first Super Bowl after a thrilling 31-28 overtime victory over the Minnesota Vikings.

The Colts showed why they had compiled the best record in the regular season and are the most-winning team in any decade, with 115 victories since 2000, including Super Bowl XLI three years ago. Now they will return to the scene of that victory.

The irresistible force that is Peyton Manning, the Colts’ quarterback, overcame the previously immovable object represented by the Jets’ defence, rated the best in the NFL. Down 17-6, they came back to win as they had in the Championship game three seasons ago, when they went on to beat the Chicago Bears.

So Jim Caldwell of the Colts rather than Ryan becomes the fifth rookie head coach to take a team to the Super Bowl. “The guys have always been a very confident bunch and they don’t panic,” he said.

In the end, the Colts were able to put too many weapons at the disposal of Manning, with Austin Collie and Pierre Garcon providing receiving options to his traditional targets of Dallas Clark and Reggie Wayne. He threw for 377 yards, with no interceptions, and became the first quarterback this season to throw three touchdown passes against the Jets. “We kept our mouths shut, went to work and tried to win this game,” Manning said.

Ryan will have to be content with establishing the Jets as a team to be respected and their defence a unit to be feared, and they exceeded pre-season expectations in coming as close as they did to ending their record as underachievers.

It was in 1969 that Joe Namath led them to their only Super Bowl appearance, a 16-7 win over what was then the Baltimore Colts, before which he guaranteed victory against the heavy pre-game favourites. Ryan’s attempt to pull the same confidence-building trick backfired yesterday.

The later NFC title game between the New Orleans Saints and the Minnesota Vikings had been expected to be the game to watch, but this one opened explosively as Mark Sanchez, the Jets quarterback, threw an 80-yard touchdown pass to Braylon Edwards. Then the defence did their part, mounting resistance at the one-yard line to force the Colts to settle for a field goal rather than levelling the score. So when Sanchez found Dustin Keller for his second touchdown pass seconds before being hit to make the score 14-6, and a field goal extended the lead, the shock was on.

But normal service was resumed even before the end of the first half. Manning completed an 80-yard scoring drive with a touchdown pass to Collie to cut the arrears to 17-13 and then the Colts drove upfield for Manning to find Garcon in the end zone.

The Colts led 20-17 and the Jets’ defence was suddenly looking mortal, with Darrelle Revis, their outstanding cornerback, unable to plug the gaps that started to appear. It was 27-17 when Manning faked a hand-off to the running back and passed to Clark, running free into the end zone, and a field goal meant that the Colts had scored 24 unanswered points.

The only bitter note for the Colts is that they are not on course for the second perfect season in NFL history. Leading 15-10 in the fifteenth game of the season and with a perfect 14 wins from 14 games, Caldwell rested his stars, including Manning, for the play-off challenges ahead. The Colts’ opponents came back to win. The opponents were the Jets, whose flickering play-off chances were ignited. In the end, though, they could not inflict a second blow on the Colts last night.