The Billiken's Bluff

I don’t think referring to Bill Belichick as The Brain really does him justice. He is some type of entity, more cerebral, pure gray matter (in a gray hooded sweatshirt). He's like one of the brain bugs from Starship Troopers.



Last week I wrote about the much-hyped Colts vs. Patriots Divisional Playoff game. Many were calling it the most-anticipated playoff game of the decade, and many more were picking this to be the year that Peyton and the Colts finally won in Foxboro. I knew it would come down to Belichick vs. Peyton, and whether or not Belichick could psych Peyton out. And well... it didn’t even turn out to be a game on Sunday. It started snowing. Peyton started slumping his shoulders in defeat after the second series of the game. The Colts who averaged over 30 pts/game mustered all of a field goal. (And apparently Bill Belichick chewed his team out for even allowing that many points. Talk about holding your players accountable.)

On to this week. The Patriots are playing in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh barely squeaked past the Jets last Saturday. If the Jets didn’t pull one of the all-time chokes (actually two of the all-time chokes, since Doug Brien missed not one but two field goals in the last 2 minutes of the game!!!) the Steelers wouldn’t even be playing this week. But regardless, Pittsburgh has home field advantage. They have won a basically unheard of 15 games in a row (only rivaled by the Patriots who have won 31 of the past 33 games). And yet Pittsburgh is still the underdog heading into Sunday's game. You won’t see this again for an awful long time. The Patriots are 2 ½ point favorites on the road. People aren’t making the same mistake of betting against New England this week. The only way the Steelers will have a shot in this game is if they pull some KGB-style covert mission and slip a bit of dioxin into Belichick's Gatorade.