Rivalry weak

You had to feel for Colts GM Chris Ballard, meeting the press yesterday with the look of a man who'd rather have been in a tumbrel bound for the guillotine. He'd just presided over the spectacular botching of a coaching hire, albeit a botching mostly not of his doing. When a guy gives you his word he's coming -- when he's even begun assembling a staff -- why would you believe he was suddenly going to call and say, in essence, "Fake out!"?

That's what Josh McDaniels did, and whether or not he was honestly conflicted and decided for his family's sake he couldn't uproot them (his story), it remains on him that he didn't express his misgivings to the Colts before he did. He owed them that. After all, he had three weeks to talk this over with his family, by all accounts. That it suddenly didn't occur to him until he walked into that Tuesday meeting with Bill Belichick strains credulity beyond the breaking point.

Now he's just a guy who went back on his word, and his reasons don't matter. That's his rep now, and he'll have to live with it. The NFL job market being the needful creature it is, he'll get another shot down the line, despite his duplicity. Or maybe he's got a job nailed down in New England as  Belichick's heir apparent, which might or might not have been what was promised to him in that Tuesday meeting with the Patriots.

In any case, Ballard, and the Colts, were royally screwed, and it was hard not to see the hand of either Belichick or Robert Kraft in this. As the Blob noted yesterday, it's an appealing conspiracy theory, believing they offered McDaniels the moon and stars at least partly because it would  be payback for Deflategate to mess with the Colts. And so even Ballard briefly succumbed to it as he rattled along in his tumbrel.

"The rivalry is back on," he said.

Only one problem with that, of course.

He had to shout to be heard over the laughter coming out of New England.

I know, I know. Here in Indiana it's always been an article of faith that the Colts and the Patriots had this hot-mad rivalry going for awhile, in part because the teams' quarterbacks (Peyton Manning and Tom Brady) were the greatest of their generation, and in part because they always seemed to run into each other deep in the playoffs. And of course, it was a cultural thing.

Colts fans hated everything the Patiots stood for. Problem is, most of what they hated about them was that the Patriots kept beating them.

The Pats, after all, are 51-29 lifetime against the Colts, and 14-6 since Belichick showed up. They've won the last seven meetings by an average margin of 19 points. And they're 2-1 in AFC championship games against the Colts.

The only meeting of significance the Colts have won, in fact, was the 2007 AFC championship game, when they won 38-24 enroute to winning the Super Bowl. Other than that, they've beaten the Patriots five times in the regular season in the last 18 years, and zero times in the playoffs.

And so when Chris Ballard yesterday said, grimly, "The rivalry is back on"?

It made for a great sound bite. But you know what was an even better one?

A whole lot of Brians and Sullys in Boston saying, "There was a rivalry?"

It only hurts because it's true.