The Billiken's Bluff

The Colts play indoors and rely on the speed of their offense to win games. Conversely, the Patriots, who rely on their defense have a reputation for thriving in bad weather playoff games. Yesterday I wrote:

"[Sunday's] weather isn’t supposed to be terrible, low 30s and sunny, which favors Indy."

Today I came across this:

Pats uncover a new home-field advantage: Team's plan to protect turf is out in open
By Michael Felger
Thursday, January 13, 2005

FOXBORO - Yesterday dawned cold, wet and miserable across New England. In Foxboro, the conditions were probably worse than anywhere, with an overnight snowfall giving way to a driving rain that lasted from morning until night. It was, by any measure, a day to cover up and get out of the elements.

Unless, that is, you like to wallow in the cold and mud.

It's safe to say the Indianapolis Colts don't, and that explains why the Patriots kept the field at Gillette Stadium uncovered as the turf was pelted by the weather. As always, there were tarps nearby, ready to be rolled out. They sat untouched.

The Pats enjoy home-field advantage for Sunday's divisional playoff against the dome-dwelling Colts, and they obviously plan to capitalize on every inch of it. Not that you'd ever get Bill Belichick to fess up to that.

``My job is not to pull weeds,'' he said.

As everyone knows, the Colts are at their best on the carpet of their climate-controlled RCA Dome, where defensive end Dwight Freeney can take advantage of the turf and crowd noise to blow by left tackles, and record-setting quarterback Peyton Manning never has to worry about his receivers slipping or his passes being knocked down by the wind. The Pats, meanwhile, have a championship-proven defense built on size, toughness and physical play. In the parlance of horse racing, they're mudders -and they've won 19 straight at Gillette.

After this week's pelting, the Colts can only imagine what it will look like Sunday. More rain is expected tomorrow, while the forecast for the game is partly cloudy skies with a chance of flurries and a high temperature of 30. History shows that the worse the conditions, the worse off the Colts will be.



[Via Boston Herald]

"My job is not to pull weeds," said Belichick. Plausible deniability. That's genius. Without a doubt this is the perfect man for the Secretary of Defense position.