After giving up a TD on the opening kickoff the Colts held the Raiders out of the endzone for the following 58 minutes while putting up 31 points themselves. Field goals of 59, 38, 51 and 45 yards long with a TD against the Colts prevent in the final two minutes kept the game close, but a resurgent Colts running game propelled the Colts offense to a pace the Raiders just couldn’t match.
Dom Rhodes narrowly missed 100 yards on the day and the Colts fell a bit short of 200 rushing yards as a team, but 4.9 ypc on 35 carries is one of the best performances the Colts backs have posted in a long time. The continued success of the run game was needed as the passing game was off all day. Peyton completed just over half his passes and was picked off twice as Jacob Tamme was the only Colt with more than 3 catches or 40 yards receiving.
Defensively the Colts put on a clinic in bend, but don’t break D. The Raiders ran for 4 ypc, were effective in the short passing game and didn’t turn the ball over, but they didn’t get into the Colts redzone until the final 2 minutes of the game.
The Bengals upset over the Chargers both takes SD out of playoff contention and means that with a win over Tennessee and a Raiders win over the Chiefs next week Indy gets the 3 seed in the AFC.
Oh yeah and that naked bootleg play was 7 kinds of awesome.
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