New England Patriots vs. Indianapolis Colts – NFL Playoff predictions 2015
By Dan Salem
The New England Patriots have been the best team in the AFC all season, but the Indianapolis Colts have a new star at quarterback. NFL Playoff predictions 2015 isn’t falling for the trap. Dan Salem and Todd Salem debate in today’s NFL TD Sports Debate. Two brothers from New York yell, scream and debate the NFL and sports.
DAN:
It’s the New England Patriots versus the Indianapolis Colts for the AFC title game, just as I predicted back in September in our 2015 Super Bowl piece. Thank you, thank you. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m surprised to see the Colts in the championship. Several teams looked much better down the stretch, but in the end quarterbacks (healthy quarterbacks) rule the day.
Tom Brady and Andrew Luck represent two overlapping generations of great signal callers. Luck just dispatched a hobbled Peyton Manning and now looks to take down Goliath. Yet he is no David and the Colts are a formidable football team. These boys will be balling on Sunday.
Everything about how the Colts played Sunday in Denver, everything about their surge deep into the playoffs screams upset in Foxborough. Yet everything about the New England Patriots screams upset stopper. Their entire team was built for this game.
I will not pick against my prior prediction and I see no reason to change my previously foreshadowed outcome. The Patriots are defeating the Colts, in a game that won’t be as close as the final score and won’t be nearly as close as the nail biter in New England last weekend.
Darrelle Revis will shut things down. Tom Brady will light things up. Andrew Luck will be unable to win this game for the Indianapolis Colts. Excellent season Andrew, but this game is as far as you get.
New England 27 – Indianapolis 17
TODD:
I have to admit, I am very surprised to see the Indianapolis Colts here in the AFC Championship.
They haven’t been getting much of anything from the running back position since Ahmad Bradshaw went down. T.Y. Hilton and company have been dropping a good amount of passes on the outside. Dwayne Allen hasn’t been himself since returning from injury. And this defense has been nothing like it was earlier in the season (what it did to Peyton Manning notwithstanding because no one thinks that was on Indy).
Maybe they got lucky in their matchups and how the playoffs worked out. Maybe they’ve been just good enough to be declared the second-best team in the conference. The point is, it all has to end here, right? Indy is not beating the New England Patriots.
Of course, stranger things have happened. It doesn’t help the Patriots’ cause that they seem to suddenly have an even worse running game than the Colts. It doesn’t help that Tom Brady isn’t exactly setting the world on fire and could easily be outplayed in this game by Andrew Luck. And it certainly doesn’t help that the New England defense was sketchy at best last week against Baltimore.
Even Bill Belichick made a gaffe during the divisional round when he told his team to kneel out the clock at the end…only the time didn’t add up and they gave Baltimore a punt-return chance and Hail-Mary chance to win.
The NFL playoffs are really turning into a survivor series. No one in the AFC has looked all that epic just yet, even if the games themselves have been entertaining.
I have to stick with the Patriots just because it doesn’t make sense to fall for recency bias. The Patriots have been the better team all season. Expect the pieces to come together a bit more this week.
New England 31 – Indianapolis 21