[Colts And Orioles]

o


I think that the truth of the current state of the Colts lies somewhere in between Kray's apologetic defense of the team and the posters whom are asserting that the Colts won't win another game and/or will stumble into the playoffs with a 10-7 record ...... and I think that it's closer to Kray's assessment, my debate with him about the missed extra-point aside.

Earlier in the season, the Colts were not just taking care of business against bad teams, they were hammering them ...... 33-8 over the Raiders, 41-20 over the Titans, 38-14 over the Titans ...... it was the antithesis of most of the recent Colts teams that almost always played down to the level of their competition and either barely beat said bad teams or lost to them. It was a piece of evidence which displayed that this Colts team (and the quarterback leading them on offense) was not the same as the mediocre/middling Colts teams of the recent past.

After their 8-2 start to the season, the Colts' schedule has gotten much harder, yet they were still right in the game until the end with an otherwise mobile quarterback that had a broken leg ...... imagine how effective Fran Tarkenton, Michael Vick, or Randall Cunningham would have been had they ever had to play with a broken fibula.

I believe that the people whom are presuming that the Colts will necessarily lose their next 2 games are not being objective about the reality of the situation. The Colts may lose their next 2 games, but their opponents are good teams, they are not the 1978 Pittsburgh Steelers, the 1989 San Francisco 49ers, or the 1967 Baltimore Colts ...... there is just as good a chance that the Colts will win those game that they will lose them.

Of the 5 remaining games, the Colts could conceivably go anywhere from 0-5 to 5-0 ...... the difference is that I would be very surprised if they went 0-5, but I would not be surprised if they went 5-0, or 4-1. I believe that that is a more objective take than Kray's take or the doom-and-gloom posters' take. Those 5 remaining games are all contests between evenly-matched teams in which the line for the favorite will not be more than 3 or 4 points. The opening line for the Colts-Jaguars game has the Colts favored by 2.5 points. The line may vary as the week progresses, but it certainly won't swing all the way to the Colts being a prohibitive underdog by more than 7 points.

o