Predict this

I've got the jitters now, if I'm a certain professional football team. The die is cast, according to the wise guys. They've got it figured. Assumptions have not just been made, but tied down and cemented in place.

Yep. I'm quaking in my cleats, if I'm a certain professional football team.

No, not the Houston Texans, silly.

The Indianapolis Colts.

This is because the wise guys are all just assuming they're going to go to Houston tomorrow and knock out the Texans, champions of the AFC South. The Colts are the hottest team in the NFL, having won 10 of their last 11 games after a 1-5 start. Andrew Luck is having the best season of his career because he's no longer flat on his back looking up at the sky after every throw. The offensive line that's ensuring this has morphed from one of the worst to one of the best in football. The defense is young, hungry and aggressive, and Marlon Mack (again, because of that born-again O-line) has given the Colts something they haven't had since the days of Joseph Addai: A run game.

So they've won nine of their last 10, these Colts, including a 24-21 win at Houston. From 1-5, they've become 10-6, finishing one game behind the Texans. They're good. They're confident. Luck has answered the question everyone has been asking for four or five years -- "How good would Andrew Luck be if he had an O-line that could block a doorway?" -- with a resounding "Pretty damn good."

Here's the problem with that: Jaguars 6, Colts 0.

It's the only blemish on the Colts' record in the last 10 weeks, and it was utterly inexplicable. On that day in Jacksonville, everything that had been working for them failed to work. The entire game looked like a remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers": Luck and Darius Leonard and Quentin Nelson and all the others looked like Luck and Darius Leonard and Quentin Nelson and all the others, but they played like pod people.

And it all happened against a Jacksonville team that was 4-8 at the time and couldn't get out of its own way.

Which illustrates the salient point here: This is the NFL, and you can't figure it.

The wise guys all think they can, but nobody can. It is notoriously unpredictable, the NFL. The cratering Jaguars shut out one of the hottest teams in the league. The Colts then turned around and shut out the Dallas Cowboys, also one of the hottest teams in the league at the time. The Cowboys in turn beat Drew Brees and the Saints' ridiculous scoring machine by the ridiculous score of 13-10. The Lions lost by 31 at home to the perpetually comatose Jets, and two weeks later beat the perpetually peerless Patriots at home by 16.

You can't figure it. You just can't.

And so, yes, the Colts are a scary team right now. They're hitting all their marks. They're hitting on all cylinders. They're a whole bunch of other clichés involving the word "hitting." And if I were the Houston Texans, I wouldn't want to see them coming tomorrow, either.

On the other hand ...

On the other hand, the Texans did win the division. And they've won 11 of their last 13 themselves. And maybe they're going to use as fuel the way everyone's talking up the Colts right now while ignoring what they've done.

Everybody likes to play the lack-of-respect card, even though 90 percent of the time it's completely absurd. This might be one of the rare times it's not.

I still think the Colts are going to win. Call it, I don't know, 31-28.

But don't be surprised if it's the Texans who wind up with the 31. Because, NFL.