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Pats defeat Colts in a super contest
From there, Brady hit Moss for 5, Stallworth for 33 and Kevin Faulk for the 13-yard winner, sucking from the RCA Dome 56 minutes of happiness.
"To come here, do this in a hostile environment against the Super Bowl champions . . . that says something," Stallworth said.
Associated Press
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady barks out signals in second quarter of victory.
To do it despite committing 10 penalties for 146 yards; to do it despite having your quarterback's unparalleled first eight games (30 touchdowns, two interceptions) marred by a one-score, two-pick performance in the first 50 minutes; to do it despite giving up a gut-punch touchdown to end the first half says plenty.
It says the Patriots have "character and heart and all those good words," Stallworth said.
It says they have some pretty good talent, too.
Meanwhile, the Colts played without their best player, Harrison, for the third time in their last four games, and his knee injury might hinder him all season and beyond.
Harrison's absence glared most in the game's first minutes, when the Colts drove to the Pats' 32, 3 and 4 and came away with two field goals.
"Field goals don't do it, especially against championship-caliber teams, teams like New England," Colts center Jeff Saturday said.
With Reggie Wayne blanketed (five catches, 62 yards) Addai did all he could.
Addai made five Patriots miss on his 73-yard touchdown catch-and-run, a dump pass called with 28 seconds left in the second quarter. It was a play meant to do no more than help the Colts reach midfield to set up another play or two and perhaps facilitate a field-goal try.
Addai finished with 112 yards on 26 carries and got the bulk of his 114 receiving yards on that catch.
"I had some key blocks," said Addai, inaccurately.
His play helped fill the void Harrison left – a void lately filled by Dallas Clark, whom the Patriots neutralized: two catches, 15 yards and a big part of why Manning was 16-for-27 for 225 yards.
"I don't really want to get into the X's and O's," said Manning, who seldom speaks in any other language.
Rest assured, after logging an 83.1 passer rating, he'll absorb every X and O this game's film has to offer as the season progresses, hoping the Colts get another shot at the team it had beaten the last three times they met - including last year's AFC Championship. Manning's rating was 95 for those three wins.
Certainly, there is no guarantee either team makes it to the title game but, after yesterday, they appear to be the class of the league.
The Patriots' four-point win was 21 1/2 points shy of their average margin of victory, a pattern of poor sportsmanship that had the ethics police howling at Pats coach Bill Belichick - an arrogant, irritable sort whose cheating ways helped make the once-cuddly Patriots villainous, to a degree.
Even Dungy, the game's most elegant diplomat, shot barbs at the Pats coach during the league's investigation into Belichick being caught taping an opponent's defensive signals on the sideline. The pair exchanged a cursory, chilly handshake (hand-glance) after yesterday's game.
Ethics police be damned, said Belichick's players. Clearly, they said, he was preparing them for this sort of tilt: one in which the last 15 minutes mattered, one in which they needed to be well-conditioned – unlike, say, the Patriots of 2006, when they, not the Colts, faded down the stretch.
"Obviously, the situation last year, we ran out of gas," said Pats linebacker Rosevelt Colvin.
