Are you ready for a full week of YOU can’t stop Andrew Luck!

Or is it going to be Will you Boo or Cheer Darius Butler, Sergio Brown and Adam Vinatieri???

Or Admit it caller, you would trade Tom Brady for Andrew Luck right now!

Or Who SCARES you the most on the Colts? Luck, Hilton, Mathis, Vinatieri?

OK, I’ll admit, I can’t stop Andrew Luck. I can’t even hope to contain him.

The Patriots will play the Indianapolis Colts Saturday night at Gillette Stadium in the Divisional Round of the playoffs. The Colts are coming off a historic comeback against Kansas City Saturday afternoon in which they erased a 38-10 deficit to beat the Chiefs, 45-44.

While many felt it would be the Bengals (and perhaps hoped, given that they had beaten the Patriots this season) coming into Foxborough this week, Cincinnati pulled their usual one-and-done performance, allowing San Diego the chance to go to Denver and play the Broncos next Sunday afternoon.

It happens every year: Pats meet the Colts again – Paul Kenyon has a solid piece on the annual matchup.

Quick Take: Colts at Patriots – Mike Reiss says that Luck and Mathis can take over a game.

Curran’s quick glance at the Pats-Colts matchup – Tom Curran thinks this matchup might be the best scenario for the Patriots.

Five incredibly early thoughts on the Patriots and Colts – Chris Price thinks turnovers and penalties will both be at a premium this week as these are both well-disciplined teams that take care of the ball.

Belichick: Colts have ‘explosive, well-balanced attack’ – Curran has the Patriots coach analyzing and praising the Colts on both sides of the ball.

Colts bring respect, knack for drama – Jeff Howe has the Colts with a lot of respect for the Patriots.

Get all the coverage at PatriotsLinks.com

The Celtics have reportedly traded Courtney Lee to the Grizzlies for Jerryd Bayless.  A somewhat minor move, but from a salary cap perspective, a decent one for the Celtics.

Lee trade part of the bigger picture – A. Sherrod Blakely says that this move is one that could pay dividends down the road if the Celtics want to absorb a bigger salary.

The Bruins are heading to warmer weather, though the competition will be heating up, too. – California trip sure to be tough for Bruins

Advertisement

Published by Bruce Allen

Automattician.

7 thoughts on “I’ll Admit, I Can’t Stop Andrew Luck”

  1. No one on the Patriots fears the Colts. Fear is for the unprepared, or those hoping to boost readership and ratings.

    Like

  2. Welcome back, Class. I hope you all had a good break. Today Prof. Felger is going to start the semester with a lesson titled: “Identity Crisis.” This is another one of those classic discussions that you can position yourself to be in the right no matter the outcome. There are a number of ways to start off, but they all lead back to this singular question: “What do we really know about this team?” Pay attention because this will be on the final.

    To effectively use this argument, you first need to establish the backdrop. In the case of the 2013 New England Patriots, you need to lay the groundwork that the whole American Football Conference is bad. Every team. Even the division winners. They’re all bad. It’s a subtle point, but one that is crucial. With this as the baseline, you can effectively neutralize any possible enjoyment from a home team victory. How can you celebrate a victory when your team beats a fraud?

    It might not be as widely-known as the “Straw Man” technique or the “Staunch Contarian,” but it’s supremely effective if for no other reason that it applies for the entirety of a season. For instance, the Patriots will play the Colts in the divisional round of the playoffs this weekend. If the Patriots win, it was just another fraud team the Patriots should have beaten because the field is so bad. Remember, every team is bad. Every single one of them. So, and say it with me, “What do we really know about this team?”

    And if the Patriots fail to defeat the Colts, well that brings us to our next victory lap. One of the many additional benefits of the “Identity Crisis” argument is that it allows you to state unequivocally that, “This team simply isn’t that good.” If the entire conference is bad, and the Patriots are part of the conference, then it only stands to reason they’re bad too.

    And it applies all season, in good times and bad. You can say it during training camp, you can say it after victories, and of course you can shout it from the mountaintops when they lose. In fact, the only way we’ll know anything about this team is if they win the Super Bowl. And by then, your footie-pajama-wearing friends will be too busy at a rolling rally watching duck boats to acknowledge that the entire season was an unknown element. But we’ll always know the truth. What did we really know about this team?

    Now there are some footie-pajama-wearing fans out there who will try to shake you by claiming that a term like ‘bad’ is only relative to the level of play in that particular year. They’ll try to tell you that the absence of a singular truly dominant team (i.e. 1976 Steelers or 1989 SF 49ers) does not mean that every team is bad. They may even go so far as to tell you that good teams losing to inferior teams at least once a season are the statistical norm and not the anomaly (Carolina losing to the Bills on 9/15/13, or New Orleans losing to the Jets on 11/3/13). They may even go so far as citing overcoming injuries to key players as some sort of proof that the team is good, and therefore, you know who they are. But that just means those people are in the bag for the team.

    Is there a way to truly know anything about your team? Actually, yes. If your team possesses the ability to time travel and play every Super Bowl winner of the last 19 years (a regular season and three rounds of playoffs) and go undefeated, then you can relent and admit that you know your team. However, those honks are unfamiliar with the sort of temporal paradox that would be created by having 2013 Brady cross timelines with 2004 Brady, 2003 Brady and 2001 Brady.

    The takeaway here is that unless you want to trample the space-time continuum, you don’t know anything about your team.

    Good luck and may all your sportztakes be hot.

    Like

    1. Dan Shaugnessy is gonna sue you for trademark infringement. Didn’t you know he recently received a patent for “Tomatocanology” ?

      Like

        1. Looks like he decided to flex the muscle in today’s Globe.

          “The Patriots are ready to dance to the Waltz of the Tomato Cans straight into the AFC Championship game.”

          http://b.globe.com/1idhOjq

          Over/under on radio interviews he gets in the Indy market?
          ———
          I forgot that the new talking point is all about Deion Branch, who had a tryout in December, and with DHB down, needs a player…. So, another team pulls something BB would do and the media are “upset?” I’ve seen nobody on Twitter, Patriots forums, even Reddit, that is upset.

          Like

  3. Boston.com’s two biggest trolls, Kaufman and Wilbur, are already predicting a cakewalk for the Pats on Saturday. Either way they will be happy since if the Pats win it is expected and if they lose it is a complete choke.

    Like

  4. Since this is a Smörgåsbord of topics, when the hell did we start naming winter storms? Is this another media fabrication so they can hype up not just “big storms that happen during warm months” ? I’m surprised that the silly local news outlets don’t already have sponsors lined up.

    Like

Comments are closed.