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Fellow Colts fans, it is with a heavy heart that I must confess this very painful, very heartbreaking fact regarding the upcoming contest between the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots: we cannot win this game.
It's hopeless.
It's useless.
Why even play the game?
If you follow the expert opinions of the folks at HBO's Inside the NFL, ESPN's NFL Match-Up, "The Sports Guy" Bill Simmons, Peter King, and just about any other corporate paid sports pundit you know that the Colts have absolutely no chance to beat the Patriots Sunday Night. The Spartans at Thermopylae had better odds than our blue ponies. David drew better odds over Goliath. The chances of the Colts winning are so remote it isn't even funny.
For this reason, we Colts fans surrender. We give up.
For me, I realize that even if the Colts manage to pull off the unthinkable and beat the Patriots in Foxboro (again), the victory would be short lived, hollow, and largely ignored by both the media and the rabid, foam spewing Neanderthals that frequent the stands at Gillette Stadium. Yes folks, should the Colts win, a miracle so astounding it would make Mother Theresa rise up out of the grave and scream BOO-YAH, no one will care. Not many cared when the Colts walked into Denver last Sunday and put 34 points on a team that had given up only 2 TDs all year going in. Not many cared that the Colts, once again, made the prognosticators and pundits look silly with an upset over a Denver team that looked unbeatable at home. None of that mattered. No one cared. If you think about it, especially with how the Colts are being treated this week, it's as if it didn't even happen. The Denver win was more the Colts exposing Denver as a fraud than Indy proving to others that they are good.
So, even if the Colts win, they lose. A Colts win will get shrugged off with a slight, and the words, "Let's see what they do in January" will shortly follow. A Colts loss would result in the coronation of the Patriots as NFL champions twelve weeks before the Super Bowl gets played followed by a lot of media pundits patting themselves on the back.
If you really look at this Colts team, this has to be the most slighted and disregarded 7-0 team in NFL history. They are 7-0, having beaten teams like the Giants and Broncos on the road, and teams like Jacksonville at home. They've come back to win close games. They've won in blowouts. They sport, arguably, the best QB in football who is having a year so impressive it nearly dwarfs the year in which he threw 49 TDs.
Yet, to many folks, none of that matters.
The reason they say Indy has no chance is because of the defense. Last season, when Indy walked into New England and slapped the Patriots around Ike Turner-style, the excuse given by the media pundits and Patriots fans was injury. The Patriots were hurt. They didn't have their usual defensive stars. Forget the fact that essentially the exact same defensive unit had clobbered the Colts several months before in the playoffs. Facts never get in the way of a good excuse. The Patriots were hurt. That's why Indy won.
Fast forward to the present day: the Colts are walking into New England minus their starting DT tandem from last year. Their starting safety, Mike Doss, is done for the season. Indy's other safety, Pro Bowler Bob Sanders, may or may not play because of a nagging knee injury that has kept him out since Week 2. Yet, when trying to justify the Colts porous run defense, injury is never an accepted excuse. Despite four new starters playing the positions on defense most known for stuffing the run, injury is not an acceptable excuse.
Translation: Injury card OK for Patriots, but unacceptable for the Colts.
So, even if the impossible happens and the Colts manage to spank New England again, only this time with a depleted roster, it doesn't matter. No one will care. In their eyes, it's all just smoke and mirrors until January, when some team will come along and upset the Colts in the playoffs. You almost wish they'd come out and say what they really think: that the NFL should just disqualify the Colts right now. Everyone knows they will choke. Everyone knows they will falter. Why prolong the inevitable?
So, in light of New England's widely apparent dominance, and knowing that the odds so clearly put the Colts in the poop house, we fans surrender. Even if the unimaginably hopeless happens, we fans cannot celebrate it because to everyone else the victory is hollow. We Colts fans are a lonely, sad bunch. We know when we are licked. Our apologizes for even thinking to dare to dream that our boys could play with the big, bad, mighty Patriots of Foxboro.
We humbly beg your forgiveness, and ask you to be merciful towards us following Sunday Night's contest because, should the amazingly unimaginable happen, we Colts fans will certainly make it a point to be merciful towards you.
Go Colts!!!