Game 9: Jets-Colts, Happy Landings Edition
Hey, it’s Derek Schultz and first mate Nate Miller, and once again we have been left COMPLETELY UNSUPERVISED to run a Colts’ game recap for Indy Monthly. Let’s do a journalism!
Just a few weeks after hijacking the magazine’s ship, we’ve now commandeered Michael Rubino’s PJ. Nate has his head out the window—cue Nicholas Cage’s 1990’s Con Air hair blowing in the wind—and I’m at the controls. Fitting, because the Colts completely controlled a bunch of way crappier Jets in their domination of New York’s least-competent major pro sports franchise last night on Thursday Night Football, Indy’s first primetime home game since the Reagan administration* (*unofficially).
Nate, you were there with six other dads, which sounds a lot more interesting than the actual game.
MILLER: Let’s get this out of the way up front: Mistakes were made last night. Grave mistakes, really, albeit necessary ones—the kind that 45-year-old dads tend to make when they’re tagged-and-released into the downtown streets on a Thursday night in November, no kids or questions asked. There is danger lurking in such freedom, and we tried to cram six years of missed stories, fun, and grain alcohol into the pre-game dinner. It only went steeply downhill from there, bottoming out where such things are forever destined to bottom out: in the toxic assholery of Nicky Blaine’s at 2:30 in the morning. What was the question?
SCHULTZ: The question was about the football game, Nate. The Colts. The Jets. Does grain alcohol taste better after wins? Especially the first home primetime win at home since 2013? Did Jonathan Taylor’s awesomeness cut through the overall blurriness of Unsupervised Dad Night?
MILLER: This may be the 281 Bud Lights still coursing through my lungs, but I’m on board with this team. I’m on board with them doing unspeakable, wonderful, Atlanta Braves-y things from here on out. Specifically, I’m on board with Jonathan Taylor repeatedly making grown-ass professional football men look like they’re running through waist-high syrup. The analysts will point to the infinite reasons for why I’m wrong, but never mind them. Taylor is an impossibly fun cheat code who can single handedly win games when the mood strikes, and the mood is starting to strike with ruthless regularity.
SCHULTZ: Taylor is special, no doubt, but I don’t know what else to really take from this game. It was one of those The Colts won? They f—ing better have won! games. The defense gave up 30 points, 400-plus yards, and allowed three touchdown passes from a third-stringer, so I don’t want to be too effusive in my praise. There are still obvious issues all over the place (especially defensively), but consistently beating garbage teams not named the Jaguars is what the Colts have done since last September. Hell, they beat last year’s Jets by 29. The question is: Can they beat anyone good? Because, and I’m going to sound like a broken record here, but I do think they’re good! *Ducks for cover* They’re probably The Best 4-5 Team in NFL History. Woo! But, also, who cares? If you’re not beating anyone that matters, it doesn’t matter how you look against the New York Jetses of the world.
MILLER: The Colts are certainly the best 4-5 team in NFL history, soon to be the most suspect 11-and-6 team in the playoffs. Just like the Braves!
SCHULTZ: That’d be a great model to follow (racist tomahawk chant aside). I’m hoping another regret-soaked cigar at Nicky Blaine’s post-Jacksonville win awaits, because I don’t think we’re going to learn anything about this team until they get to Buffalo and Tampa Bay later this month. At 5-5, Indy would at least still have a puncher’s chance at a Wild Card berth in an unremarkable AFC.
I hope we can land the plane there, instead of taxiing along in Okayville and never really taking off to go anywhere.
“This is your captain(s) speaking …” (I’ve always wanted to say that). See you next week—hopefully not in another hijacked Indianapolis Monthly vehicle.
