It does not get much stranger than this.
When they last met in the American Football Conference Championship Game in January with a Super Bowl berth on the line, the New England Patriots thumped the Indianapolis Colts 45-7.
Yet their rematch on Sunday is being touted as a long-awaited chance for revenge by the Patriots. Such is the fascination with ‘Deflategate’.
Its shadow is eclipsing one of the most humiliating defeats in recent post-season memory. It was the Colts, of course, who collected footballs used by the Patriots offence in the first half of that AFC title game, and it was general manager Ryan Grigson who insisted the balls be tested for air pressure at half time.
Months later, an NFL investigation concluded that Brady was “generally aware” his team deliberately under-inflated game balls. The league hit the Patriots with a US$1 million (Dh3.6m) fine and took away first and fourth round draft picks.
Brady also was suspended for four games, but he later had that punishment tossed out by a judge. He has led the team to a 4-0 start.
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The assumption among media is that the Patriots, who deny they tampered with the footballs, cannot wait to make the Colts pay for snitching to the authorities.
Getting the Patriots to say it is about revenge, though, is a whole different thing. Extra motivation this week, Tom Brady?
“I’m always pretty motivated,” Brady told reporters at his weekly media session, going on to say how good the Colts were, how every game is important and how hard he works every week etc.
The Colts have not been any more forthcoming.
“It is the defending Super Bowl champs,” Colts quarterback Andrew Luck said when asked about the extra attention the game is receiving.
“We’re trying to get a win. It’s a conference game, at home, on Sunday night. Certainly there’s some excitement.”
Yes, there is. The rivalry does not need a whole lot of extra energy pills. The teams have been getting in each other’s way ever since Brady arrived as a starter in 2001 and former quarterback Peyton Manning was the Colts established superstar.
Manning clinched one Super Bowl and won a few key match-ups with the Pats. But the Patriots (and their four titles) have dominated in the Brady Era, going 13-5, including 4-1 in the post-season against the Colts.
Indianapolis have never gone quietly, also accusing the Patriots of videotaping Manning’s hand-signals during the Patriots’ other brush with the NFL law — the Spygate scandal of the mid-2000s.
Lately, it has not been any better for the Colts. Luck has lost all four of his starts against New England. Even though the game is at Indianapolis, the unbeaten, high-scoring Pats (37 points per game) are favourites. The Colts are 3-2, but they have not been very impressive.
Luck is expected to play after missing the last two games, a pair of narrow victories piloted by 40-year-old Matt Hasselbeck.
If Deflategate is not something the Colts want to talk about, they do acknowledge the lopsided AFC title game. “It was an embarrassing defeat,” Luck said. “You don’t want to be associated with those type losses.”
Coach Chuck Pagano is taking the amnesia route. “We’ve moved on. We got beat. They outplayed us. That’s the end of that,” he said.
Maybe not quite.
Rice can’t have it both ways over cheating
We will concede that Jerry Rice put together the finest career of any American football-catching player in the history of the National Football League.
How much of that was helped by the illegal sticky substance he said he sprayed on his gloves is hard to say.
But we will go out on a limb and say that his remarkable 20 years — those NFL record 1,549 catches, 22,895 receiving yards and 208 receiving touchdowns — did not have much to do with “stickum”.
That doesn’t mean Rice gets a free pass out of Cheatertown.
Happily, fans are having a field day with Rice’s giggling admission last January on a national broadcast that he sprayed tacky help on his gloved hands.
It was the same week that, when asked about the New England Patriots’ alleged use of under-inflated balls, Rice said it was “cheating” and said their victories needed to come with an asterisk.
Rice reportedly spends time these days live-tweeting at NFL games. At the New Orleans Saints-Atlanta Falcons game last week he criticised Falcons players for “mistakes”.
You can guess the response from Twitter Nation. “They need that stickum huh haha!” “Probably should use stickum … stay classy.” Etcetera.
Rice’s response? “Never used Stickum … my work speaks for itself.”
That’s a faster back-pedal than any cornerback who ever played against him. Sorry Jerry, can’t have it both ways.
If you cheat, don’t call out cheaters. And if you tell the truth and it comes back to haunt, don’t lie. Roll with it. It’s funny, remember?
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