Around the Indianapolis Colts blogosphere, Week 10 | at Baltimore Ravens (part one) - Indianapolis Indianapolis Colts

Indianapolis Colts S Melvin Bullitt stops RB Kelvin Faulk just shy of first down
(AJ Mast/AP Photo)

Around the web/blogosphere with the Indianapolis Colts as they prepare to visit the Baltimore Ravens Sunday at 1 p.m M&T Bank in Baltimore, Md. . . .

PART ONE OF TWO. PART TWO HERE

The Indianapolis Colts Sunday won a high-profile, memorable game, which of course isn't news to anyone with remote interest in the NFL.

But while the Colts' 35-34 victory over New England on Sunday was one of those unusual NFL games that remains topical and in the public consciousness long afterward, winning such games isn't the reason the Colts have been one of the NFL's elite teams -- and perhaps its most consistently successful -- over the last seven seasons.

Rather, it's the ability to look forward. And to focus.

"We’ve been able to adjust our sights and get ourselves focused," Colts Head Coach Jim Caldwell said this week. "Preparation has been good, up to this point. We hope that continues.”

The Colts have won 12 games an NFL-record six consecutive seasons, and certainly along the way they have won big games, and they have done so in dramatic fashion. Three times during that stretch they have rallied from 17 or more down in the fouth quarter to win, and four times last season they rallied from 10 points down on the road to win. They lost the week after rallying from 21 points down in the fourth quarter to beat Tampa Bay in 2003, but last season, they not only won the week after rallying from 17 down to win in Houston, they followed two of the other three comebacks with victories the following week, too.

In theory, this game is a potential letdown. As much as the Colts respect the Ravens, they have beaten them six consecutive times, and it's logically hard to reach the emotional highs of the Patriots game two consecutive weeks. But historically, the Colts have been anything but a team given to letdowns.

Which is where this week's trip around the Colts blogosphere begins, because while the sense around the Colts' Indianapolis training facility this week is very much of a team focused on the tak at hand, those following the Colts have had more than a little difficulty turning their sites to the future.

Still looking back . . .

A Turning of the Tide?

"For the first time, New Englanders are witnessing a prolonged view of the other side of genius," Howard Bryant writes for ESPN. "The psychology of Bill Belichick costing his team a chance to win seems more important than the ill-fated Decision itself. It has become less a football call that didn't work and more a referendum on the current state of the Patriots in the football continuum."

Bryant goes on to write, "Belichick blinked. He panicked. He feared a Peyton Manning winning drive more than he trusted a victory-preserving Patriots defensive stand. The memory of Manning beating him in the AFC title game a couple of years ago trumped the great goal-line stand -- the Willie McGinest Play -- of a few years earlier. Belichick did not believe in the safe, the traditional, the percentages, and opted for the desperate. The question isn't that he chose the riskiest play in football at the most crucial time, but why.

"The larger picture -- that Sunday's 35-34 loss to the Colts continues an organizationwide hangover effect from losing to the Colts in the 2006 AFC title game, the Spygate controversy and then falling to the Giants in the Super Bowl with a chance to be the only team to go 19-0 -- seems to be what is causing considerable consternation in New England. It may make fans crazy, but history does not lie: Devastating losses can be felt throughout the entire franchise for years if not decades, and without those two losses as part of the canvas, perhaps the sting of a November loss -- no matter how improbable -- wouldn't have been as painful."

I'm not sure that I'd go so far as to call it an organizationwide hangover from 2006, but Bryant seems to follow the Patriots closer than I. I do know that going for it there show a very different approach from New England than in 2003-2004, when you got the feeling watching Patriots-Colts games that he Patriots played not wondering if the Colts would make a critical late-game mistake, but when.

On the looking-ahead front . . .

Heading Home . . .

"I would hope that I have left a legacy here, and that my reputation stands true and people honor that," Colts K Matt Stovers tells Baltimore Sun reporter Jamison Hensley, who calls Stover -- who kicked for the Ravens for 13 seasons -- one of the "most beloved Ravens in team history."

Stover also says, "But hey, it's a mean business, too. I know the Baltimore people love their Ravens. I'm not faulting anybody for any other reaction."

Stover has handled the returning to Baltimore story with class this week, and he has avoided taking public satisfaction in the fact that the team that opted not to re-sign him this past off-season released the player who replaced him, Steve Hauschka. The team opted in favor of Hauschka because the latter could kickoff, and the theory was that would save a roster spot, but they parted ways with him this week and signed Billy Cundiff.

Ravens coach John Harbaugh said this week: "I guarantee you one thing, it'd be nice for Matt Stover [to be] kicking for us right now. We're not afraid of [saying] that. Things didn't work out in the offseason."

This is pure speculation, but it's not absurd think Stover might kick for the Ravens again. Stover was signed as a replacement for K Adam Vinatieri, who underwent knee surgery last month and is still on the active roster. If Vinatieri returns to oull health, which the Colts hope he will, the Colts almost certainly would release Stover, leaving him free to sign with Baltimore again.

PART TWO OF "AROUND THE BLOGOSPHERE" HERE

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COLTS FANS OWE RB JOSEPH ADDAI AN APOLOGY. HERE

PATRIOTS-COLTS 2009 VERSION SPEAKS VOLUMES ABOUT CURRENT STATE OF RIVALRY HERE

*** CATCH UP WITH ALL THINGS COLTS ON INDY FOOTBALL REPORT. HERE

REVIEWING BILL POLIAN'S WEEKLY RADIO SHOW

Bill Polian’s weekly radio show | Part One | “If we run this way . . . we’ll be perfectly fine”

Bill Polian’s weekly radio show | Part Two | Defense executed when it mattered against Patriots

Bill Polian’s weekly radio show | Part Three | Victory over New England garantees nothing

< RECENT COLTS STORIES >

CALDWELL: "STILL A LOT OF WORK TO BE DONE" | HERE

COLTS, 35, PATRIOTS 34: GAME STORY. HERE