FOXBORO, MA — The high-powered Indianapolis Colts are heading into Foxboro this week, and they’ll have to be wondering what defensive scheme Bill Belichick will have waiting for them.
Following Sunday’s win over the Broncos, Denver head coach Mike Shanahan said that the Patriots showed them a totally different defensive scheme than they had prepared for that week. They confused Brian Griese and held Denver’s runningbacks to under 100 yards rushing. They got them out of their game plan and then were able to get into an offensive groove of their own, scoring a season-high 28 points en-route to their first ever victory at Mile High Stadium.
But this week’s game against Indianapolis is the reason why Patriots owner Robert Kraft hired Belichick in the first place. He hired him because of his ability to stop high-powered offenses and to give his team a shot at winning each week. He hired hired him because of his ability to break down game film and find weaknesses within great teams who appear to be unbeatable.
He hired him for games just like this.
But Belichick’s record against the Colts tells an interesting story. With the Jets last season Belichick’s defense held the Colts to just 16 and 13 points respectively in their two meetings. The Colts may have won both games, but from that point on it appeared that his game plan was copied by several other teams, one of which was the Tennessee Titans who knocked the Colts out of the playoffs. Patriots owner Bob Kraft recognized Belichick’s defensive prowess, and now he’ll be waiting to see if it will be his team that other clubs base their defenses around.
The bad news for the Colts may be that Belichick has already been hard at work, studying quite a bit of game film of them.
“I’ll bet I’ve seen practically every game that they’ve played in the last three years, and probably watched 10 or 11 games in the last couple days,” said Belichick Wednesday. “I went back and watched 6 games from last year, and a couple of preseason games, plus the regular season games this year.”
“I think they’re a very consistent football team. There’s always a couple plays or a couple of things here or there, but overall they don’t give up a lot of points, they’re aggressive on defense, they score a lot of points, they move the ball, and they hit a lot of big plays.”
Belichick has a lot of respect for the Colts, and though he enjoys the challenge of trying to stop good teams, he did say that Indianapolis isn’t exactly on his Christmas wish list.
“I think that even though they’re the defending division champs and they’re clearly one of the top teams in the league, it seems like they’re a little bit underrated,” said Belichick. “I think that this may be the team to beat.”
They are the team to beat, but then again every team right now is for New England. After dropping their first four games including two within the division, they’ll need to go on quite a run if they have any plans of making a post season appearance. The good news may be that despite their 1-4 start, it’s been business as usual each week inside the locker room and so far Belichick has done a great job of keeping his players focused.
Beating the Colts on Sunday will definitely be a challenge, but with their new coach hard at work studying game film, the Patriots have to be feeling pretty good about their chances.
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Ian Logue is a Seacoast native and owner and senior writer for PatsFans.com, an independent media site covering the New England Patriots and has been running this site in one form or another since 1997.
