Colts-Patriots take NFL’s center stage

New England is favored by five against the defending champs.

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — The preliminaries are over. Eight blowout wins in eight games.

Now the New England Patriots are preparing for their main event. Their weekly chatter about how good the upcoming opponent is finally makes sense when they talk about the Indianapolis Colts.

“They’ve won however many straight, won a championship last year,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said Monday. “They haven’t been beaten since then. They’ve won however many straight at home. That’s more than anybody else can say. That would put them No. 1 in my book.”

Other readers of the NFL scene might disagree.

Yes, Indianapolis has won 11 straight at home and 12 in a row overall. That includes the 38-34 win over New England in the AFC championship game, the last time the Patriots lost.

This season, though, the Patriots (8-0) have been the best. Why else would they be favored by 41⁄2 points next Sunday against the Super Bowl champions, who are 7-0 and playing at home?

One reason: Tom Brady, who has thrown 30 touchdowns and two interceptions and is on target to shatter NFL single-season records for scoring passes and passer rating.

Another: Mike Vrabel, who forced three fumbles by quarterback Jason Campbell that led to 17 points in Sunday’s 52-7 rout of the Washington Redskins.

And there’s Belichick, who has orchestrated it all, from the 41.4 points per game to the party line his players parrot when they downplay their own amazing accomplishments.

“We just have to continue to get better,” wide receiver Donte’ Stallworth said. “That’s the one thing that Bill preaches all the time is correct your mistakes and make sure that they don’t pile on and you make more and more mistakes as the weeks go on.”

The win over the Redskins was the most lopsided in the NFL this season. Belichick might prefer to dwell on the touchdown with 3 minutes left that ruined the shutout.

Where most people see Brady’s 29 completions, Belichick might focus on the nine passes that fell incomplete Sunday.

There was more:

“Four false starts on offense isn’t exactly what we’re looking for,” Belichick said. “We’re still trying to get our return game going. Defensively, we had our moments there. [The] two-minute drive at the end of the half, the end of the game, we could have played better.”

And more:

“We were fortunate,” he added. “We got some good breaks. We’ve had strip-sacks before and the ball bounces right back into the quarterback’s hands. Yesterday we had one, Rosie [Colvin] turned around, wasn’t even looking at the quarterback and the ball bounced right up into his hand for a touchdown.”

Such problems.

If he shows his players tape of last year’s AFC title game, he’ll have some real evidence.

The Patriots were seemingly on their way to their fourth Super Bowl in six seasons with a 21-3 lead when they scored with 9:25 left in the second quarter. They were still in front at halftime, 21-6. But they were outgained by a more than 2-to-1 in the second half and lost 38-34.

“That film will definitely come up. I can tell you that,” Patriots defensive end Ty Warren said.

The teams, though, have made many changes since then. New England’s turnover was greater with the addition of wide receivers Randy Moss, Wes Welker and Stallworth and linebacker Adalius Thomas.

So last year’s playoff game will be just a small part of the preparation.

“We’ll mainly watch what they’ve been doing this year,” Warren said. “What we can’t do is fall into the trap like we did with Indy in the playoffs where we jumped out in the first half, like what we did in Miami last week, and then [the Colts] won the second half and ended up winning the game.”