Hello, Colts fans! Here is an excerpt from a post that I wrote at Checking the Numbers that I thought you would enjoy. Thanks to shake-n-bake for his help to post this! -WolfpackSteelersfan

via thesportsunion.com

The Indianapolis Colts have won 12 games for each of the last 6 years, which is an NFL record. According to wikipedia, that is two more than the next closest team (scroll to the bottom), which is the Dallas Cowboys (1992-1995). Last year, with Peyton Manning missing all of the preseason, they got off to slow start, but finished strong to preserve the streak of 12 win seasons. Will they continue that streak this year, or will the loss of Tony Dungy prove too much for them?

Comparing their 2008 schedule with 2009, it appears that they are facing a slightly tougher schedule than they did last year. In 2009, the Colts' Strength of Schedule is ranked 13th, with a 0.512 winning percentage based on 2008 records. That is only slightly higher than the 0.496 winning percentage of their 2008 opponents. Of course, we won't know the final SOS for this schedule until the end of the season, but at this point, it appears that the Colts will face a similar schedule to last years, overall.

In this post, I wanted to break down the Colts' 2008 and 2009 schedules a little further to get a better understanding of what they are up against this season (much the same way I had in previous posts on the Falcons, Cowboys, and Patriots). Taking my raw data from Pro-Football-Reference.com, I have compiled the Offensive and Defensive rankings of the Colts' opponents from 2008 and 2009, broken out in the following 4 categories:

To read the rest of the post, please click here.