Pats vs. Colts

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it's that time of year again: the New England Patriots meeting the Indianapolis Colts. Last year I thought that this was the game that would end the win streak. However, the Pats prevailed.

Now we are in a very different situation than pretty much any of the recent match-ups between these teams. The Pats are 5-2, and coping with some pretty significant injuries -- it's worth noting that those losses came to Miami (mandatory in even-numbered years: see 2004, 2006) and San Diego. Okay, the Miami thing is not so worth noting, even though they did beat Buffalo last week, which tells us that they can be a threat even to a top team. I would say the San Diego loss is more crucial here. San Diego is in a weirdly parallel situation to the Colts: they are under .500 to start and their decline is not due to any obvious reason. If the Colts lose tonight, they will both be 3-5. They have their starting QB. They have most of their players. And yet they are not the dominant team that they have been over the past couple of years. In short, both San Diego and Indy should have been contenders, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that this season they are not.

Yet the Chargers destroyed the Pats 30-10 in what was a particularly painful game: we were beat on the long ball and Cassel was sacked four times. The Chargers played the Patriots in the past four seasons even though they are in a different division and I have to think that having pretty thorough reports on the team must have helped. So one school of thought might claim that the Pats could be in trouble this week because formerly strong teams that know them well can target their weaknesses accurately.

After seeing Indy collapse in their game last week, though, I feel like the Patriots may have the upper hand in this one. Faced with a strong defense (and Tennessee has allowed the fewest points on average this season), Peyton really fell apart as the game went on. I think that the Pats can bring enough pressure for the whole game to seriously inhibit him -- provided we don't get beat on the long ball like last week.

And if we do have to get beat on the long ball, can we please not have two of our secondary players running into each other because that was just embarrassing.

I missed Texas vs. Texas Tech last night because I was at a bar watching dueling pianos. No further comment.