Finally Beating the Patriots in Foxborough: Priceless

I gotta give a shout out to my boy Peyton Manning who lead an onslaught on the defending super bowl champs on monday night football in the most anticipated game of the season. After dropping the first seven (7!!!) straight games to Patriots in New England over his career, Peyton finally grabbed the monkey off his back and slapped it silly, leading the 8-0 Colts to a 40-21 victory and throwing for 321 yards and 3 touchdowns. Peyton is one of the smartest active players in football, and with his audible play calling he probably has more responsibility on the field than any one else, so its always going to be his burden to make or break a game, and last night he looked like an MVP candidate. But he wasn't the only hero. Edgerrin James rushed for over a hundred yards and both Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne caught touchdowns passes and had over 100 yards receiving. Which is why the team finally beat the Pats in Patland - it may have been Peyton's monkey, but he has never had the support he has this year. And I haven't even mentioned the defense. That's right, the defense, which limited the Pats to 46 yards TOTAL rushing and several 3 downs and punt possessions. And the former super bowl studs fall to 4-4 and look questionable for a playoff appearance. I've been a Colts fan since my days in Bloomington getting my MFA and I've been waiting for this day for a while. And it's not that I hate the Patriots, I'm just sick of them. I can't imagine a duller end to two superbowls than they have given us. And Tom Brady with his smug interviews men's magazine covers... America's team is and always has been the Colts. Back in the days of Johnny Unitas and Baltimore they were rugged and steamrolled over their opponents. THese days are much the same, its just that the steamrollers are going 80 miles an hour and resulting in amazing feats like last year's 49 touchdown passes for Manning (a new record). The Colts have been my preseason pick to win the superbowl for the last three years and this year it looks like they may just have enough to do it. THey are just going to have to get past my other boy Big Ben Roethlisberger and the Steelers to do it... we'll see a little preview of that in three weeks from yesterday on another banner Monday Night Football match up.

In other football news - the Terrell Owens soap opera has been cancelled. Thank god. SHut him up please and if the media stopped covering every time he farted in public maybe he wouldn't have morphed into the egomaniacal monster that he has become. My advice to the Eagles would have been to keep him for the whole length of his contract and never play him but I guess that's a little much money for five years of nothing so they are going to release him at the end of the season and he'll have to find a new team to undermine and destroy. The Eagles look even more done than the Pats, unless they find another receiver to catch McNabb's bombs... hey, maybe they can trade for Randy Moss.

And how about a few props for the team of my youth, the Chicago Bears, or the baby bears as Michael Wilbon of PTI has been calling them (since he spent all last season referring to the Bulls as the baby bulls), sitting atop their division with lucky win after lucky win... Maybe they had to go to a training camp to give chicago an NFC North champ.

I almost don't even miss baseball (146 days till opening)... vote Johan for Cy Young! Trade Kyle and Liriano to the Yankees for Robinson Cano.