Belichicked

First, the good news, for those of you whose favorite Blob pastime is Trolling The Dumb Guy:

The dumb guy said 42-14.

That wasn't even in the same galaxy as Patriots 34, Colts 27.

Yes, the Deflaters came, they saw, they conquered, but they did not, you know, conquer. Tom Brady, the Deflater-In-Chief, did not drop 50 on them. Outright humiliation was forestalled if not entirely routed.

I say "forestalled," because even in making the Patriots work for it, the Colts once again demonstrated just how utterly Bill Belichick owns their kindly souls. No one but Chuck Pagano knows how deep Darth Hoodie was in his head when Pagano ordered an unnecessary onside kick and then a ridiculous fake whatever-that-was, but reasonable people can reasonably infer he was trying to out-Hoodie Hoodie.

Of course, it didn't work. The Patriots recovered the onside kick and turned it into a score. The fake whatever-it-was failed miserably, first by being stuffed and, second, by not being a legal formation to begin with.

After which the Patriots immediately scored again.

And so all Pagano and the Colts succeeded in doing is elicit gales of knowing laughter from the general direction of Boston, where Patriot Nation long since concluded that the Colts were not so much a rival as the perfect foil, a sort of football version of the Washington Generals. Like the Generals vs. the Globetrotters, any trickery imposed by Darth Hoodie is destined to succeed spectacularly; any similar stratagem by the Colts is destined to backfire laughably.

And so the takeaway from last night, if you're the Colts, is that Andrew Luck finally was Andrew Luck against the Cheat Fleet, with three touchdown passes, no turnovers and 312 passing yards evidence, perhaps, of a coming of age of sorts. Belichick might have been able to bumfuzzle the kid before, but not this time. So, there's that.

Of course, there's also this: Belichick still has not lost to Pagano. And Pagano's trickery, collapsing as it did like a fallen soufflé, likely did not enhance his allegedly shaky job status.

Belichick wins. Colts lose.

Same as ever.