Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck walks away from New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady after the game. The Indianapolis Colts play the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship game Sunday, January 18, 2015, at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough MA.(Photo: Matt Kryger / The Star)Buy Photo
Story Highlights- Patriots at Colts, 8:30 p.m. Sunday, NBC
Here"s what they said in that morgue of a locker room nine months ago, after that 38-point loss in the rain that ended their season.
Linebacker Erik Walden: "Until we fix it, they"re our nemesis."
Tight end Coby Fleener: "It"s frustrating because it feels a little too much like dj vu."
Tight end Dwayne Allen: "They"re going to be here in our way every year, and we"re going to have to come through them."
Here"s what the Indianapolis Colts said Friday, asked about the same topic, those pesky New England Patriots, the team that has manhandled them 189-73 over their past four meetings including 45-7 in January"s AFC Championship Game and comes to town next Sunday (8:30 p.m., NBC) for the most anticipated showdown of this NFL regular season.
Allen: "It"s the next game. It"s the next opponent."
Tight end Jack Doyle: "We"re worried about us, about coming together as a team. We"re seeing how good we can become."
Receiver T.Y. Hilton: "They"re hot. Can"t wait to see (what happens). That Patriots team hasn"t played this Colts team."
No, they haven"t, but until this Colts team (3-2) proves it can do more than previous Colts teams which is helplessly absorb beatings by the Patriots the narrative will not change. New England (4-0) remains the immovable object in the Colts" path to a Super Bowl, the big bully from the Northeast that takes what it wants, when it wants, how it wants, without much semblance of a fight.
It was clear Friday, a day after the Colts" 27-20 victory over the Texans, that coach Chuck Pagano had handed down a missive to his players: Don"t talk about the Patriots. Don"t provide bulletin board material. Don"t add any hype to an already immeasurably-hyped game.
Thus the clichs spewed and the players awkwardly stumbled through interviews, avoiding what becomes the unavoidable this week. This game isn"t just "the next game, against the next opponent." This game is everything. This game is the biggest of their season, against the one opponent the Colts would rather beat than any other in the league.
This is the game that tells us if the Colts are for real or not.
"No excuses," Pagano told Sports Illustrated"s Peter King during training camp in August. "We got our a***s kicked. Period. End of story. None of us here will ever forget that day, that final score. We got a d**n near artery gushing and no sutures to stop the bleeding. You never forget that."
The bleeding looked on that rain-soaked Sunday in Foxborough a lot like it has looked throughout these annual punishings by the Patriots: New England ran it down the Colts" collective throats, daring the Indianapolis defense to stop it. The Colts could not. That"s why the Patriots have won four straight since Pagano took over in 2012 by an average of 27 points, why they"ve averaged 219 yards on the ground in those games, why 45-7 happened.
Why, when asked about the Colts" current predicament in the offseason, owner Jim Irsay didn"t need a cheat sheet to convey his feelings.
He knew the numbers cold the 657 rushing yards the Colts have allowed to the Patriots in the teams" past three meetings, all mirror images of one another. The fact that Irsay has that statistic memorized, seared into his mind like a nightmare-on-repeat that won"t go away?
That says it all.
The champs are coming to town, the team that has knocked the Colts from the playoffs each of the past two seasons. Pagano was asked Friday if Sunday would provide a measuring stick as to where his football team truly sits. He said nothing of arteries, or sutures, or stopping the bleeding.
"Really not concerned with that," he said. "Our concern is us right now and getting better, so that"s what we"re doing right now. The guys are watching the tape, evaluating it, looking at the positives, looking at areas where individually and position group-wise, offense, defense, special teams, where we can get better. Our focus is on us and us only. We know we"ve got a big game coming up because it"s the next game."
But this is the Patriots. Pagano has to love the challenge of facing the Patriots, right?
"I love the challenge of coming here every day as a coach," he said. "Our players love the challenge of coming in every day as players, coming in and challenging themselves to get better. That"s the challenge that we kind of wrap our minds around. We"re worried about us."
They should be worried about the Patriots, and about Bill Belichick, and about Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski.
The real sentiment in this locker room, the one hidden beneath the piles of clichs and non-answers, came from linebacker Trent Cole back in March, shortly after he signed with the Colts in free agency. It didn"t take long for Cole to learn.
"There"s a lot of energy here to win ballgames, to especially beat the Patriots," he said. "When I first got here, you could tell you just don"t use that word around here. But, hey, from what I"ve seen and heard and from what happened, there"s a lot of hatred and there"s nothing wrong with that."
No, there"s not. The only thing that"s wrong is not going out and doing something about it.
Call Star reporter Zak Keefer at (317) 444-6134. Follow him on Twitter: @zkeefer.
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Source: http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/nfl/colts/2015/10/12/before-biggest-game-season-colts-mum-patriots/73673024/
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