Colts Strengthen Grip On No. 5 Seed After Win Over…

It’s one thing to draw up the right plays; it’s another thing for players to execute them. And the Colts executed at a high level – Taylor was magnificent with and without the ball in his hands; Darius Leonard and Bobby Okereke each had interceptions; Kenny Moore II led another lock-down day for the back end of the defense; Adams found a weak spot in the Patriots’ protection and aggressively attacked it.

And zooming out, the Colts were penalized just twice for 13 yards; the Patriots were hit with eight flags, costing them 50 yards – including three false start penalties thanks to a loud, charged-up, sold-out crowd packing Lucas Oil Stadium.

“If you want to sit down,” Moore said, respectfully, of how impressive Colts fans were on Saturday, “don’t come here.”

But the larger point is one the Colts have been making for weeks: If we don’t beat ourselves with turnovers and penalties, we have the squad to beat anybody. That mentality is why Leonard bristled at a question after the Colts lost to the Buccaneers a few weeks ago – the premise of it was the same problems that showed up against Baltimore and Tennessee led to the Colts’ coughing up a double-digit lead against Tampa Bay.

They weren’t, Leonard said. The problem was the Colts beat themselves against the Buccaneers. Against the Patriots, this team didn’t do that – two penalties, one turnover – and the result is what everyone in that locker room expected.

“I kept saying we were continuing to get better and people on the outside looking in weren’t seeing the adjustments we were making, and it just continued to show each week and finally everything’s clicking, everything’s going the right way, (we have) great game plans and (are) going out and executing them,” Leonard said. “… We always say, we play clean football, we can be a tough team to beat and that’s what we did.”

The Colts will leave Week 15 as the AFC’s No. 5 seed and, according to FiveThirtyEight’s numbers, an 88 percent chance of making the playoffs. This is a squad that absolutely looked like a playoff team on Saturday night – and has for a while now.

But the Colts aren’t there yet. They know that. And the climb doesn’t get any easier next week in Arizona.

So there’s no time to rest now, no matter how impressive it was for this team to reach a not-yet-permanent elevation of the AFC’s No. 5 seed.

“With it being December, we all want to challenge each other to play our best games with this last stretch,” Moore said. “We don’t have any time to make any mistakes or have some games that, oh, we lost this game, we (feel like we) should’ve had it.”