Colts Looking to Notch Second Consecutive Perfect Season within the AFC South

The Indianapolis Colts will conclude the regular season this Sunday on the road against the division rival Tennesee Titans.  The NFL recently made all week seventeen games in a season division games (which was a brilliant idea), and a storyline for the Colts entering the game is that they'll be going for their second straight perfect season within the division.

Of course, the Colts are 10-5 overall and looking to improve to 11-5 for the third straight season, and they've already locked up the AFC South title for the second consecutive year.  But they're also looking to do something that no team has done since the division realignment in 2002: have back-to-back seasons with perfect records against the division.  In fact, from 2002-2013, there were only sixteen instances where a team went perfect against the division in a given year.  Only three teams have done it multiple times in that span: the Steelers, the Patriots, and the Colts - who lead all teams with three such seasons in the time span.  They're looking for their fourth on Sunday, and they're looking for their second in a row.

Currently, three other teams throughout the league will be looking to notch a perfect season against their division (the Falcons, the Broncos, and the Lions), so the Colts aren't the only ones (there hasn't been more than two teams in the same season go perfect against their division since the realignment).  But the Colts are the only ones that are looking to do so for the second straight year, and they're looking to be the first to do that since the current division realignment took place before the 2002 season.

The last time the Colts lost a division game was in week sixteen of the 2012 season, and since then they have won twelve in a row against the AFC South.  It has been over two years since Indy lost to a team within the division, and overall in the Andrew Luck era the Colts are 15-2 against the South.  With a win on Sunday, Luck's Colts would match the same number of 6-0 seasons against the AFC South as Peyton Manning's Colts had, with Luck doing it in a three year span versus Manning's nine years.

What does this mean?  Not much, really, other than a nice milestone for the Colts.  And let's certainly not diminish the impressiveness of going unbeaten for two straight seasons against the teams that know you the best.  But what it shows also is the futility of the AFC South division that the Colts play in.  Take Sunday, for instance.  The Titans are 2-13.  While they certainly could upset the Colts, they're one of the worst teams in the NFL.  And the division is one of the worst in the NFL, too.  So yeah, it's a mix of both - the Colts have been good and have taken care of business in division games recently, but their division isn't very good.  Still, an unbeaten season within the division is always something to be commended, and the Colts can become the first team since the 2002 realignment to do that in consecutive years with a win on Sunday against the Titans.