On Sunday, New England visits Indianapolis in a renewal of an old rivalry, a rematch of the AFC championship game and the first meeting since the Colts dropped a dime on the Pats and deflate-gate occurred.
The game has been circled since the schedule came out. It's being broadcast in primetime. It's one of the most highly anticipated contests of the regular season.
At least it is unless you listen to – or care to believe – any of the actual participants.
"Regardless of the team or the week, whether that's a preseason game, whether that's a regular-season game, they're all important because there's so few of those that you get an opportunity [to play] in your life," Patriots quarterback Tom Brady said.
A preseason game? Life opportunities? How philosophical of him, not to mention consistent with the message coming from both sides.
Everyone else may see revenge and emotion and intensity and essentially everything other than just another ho-hum regular-season game.
The coaches and players though would like to welcome you to the Just-Another-Week Bowl.
It's oddly entertaining just how far everyone will go to say nothing. It's kind of revealing, too. Such as, if you were hoping to run into Bill Belichick in a Massachusetts grocery store, hanging out in Aisle 5, peering at myriad flavors of Cheerios and contemplating deep thoughts – isn't cereal really just cold soup? – well, forget it.
Reporter: "I know you can't concern yourself with the mentality of Patriots fans, but has anyone pulled you aside at the grocery store and urged you to kick Indy's butt?"
Belichick: "I haven't been to the grocery store in a couple years."
Reporter: "Are you hearing from friends, family, neighbors?"
Belichick: "Have I heard from my family and friends? Yeah, sure."
Reporter: "I think you know what I mean."
Belichick: "I mean, look, it's the same questions every week. We're getting ready to play a game on Sunday. We're going to do the best we can to prepare for it and be ready to go and perform well on Sunday night. That's what we do."
See, just another week. That's what they do, just like not doing the grocery shopping is also something Belichick does.
On a base level this is all true. There is nothing more than a single game that can be won or lost on Sunday. And not playing it up as anything more than that is likely the best way to secure said victory, which is and always will be the goal for both the Colts and Patriots. There isn't a lot to be gained by barking. As always in the NFL, this is about execution and focus and strategy.
Except the fans are barking, the media is barking, the talk shows are barking. You have to be inhuman to not at least want to do some barking. These guys are human, correct?
Reporter: Isn't there any human part of you that wants it a little extra this week?
Tom Brady, laughing: "I'm a human. There's no doubt. I'm definitely human."
Glad we got that cleared up. Or not.
"I'm not human," Patriots linebacker Rob Ninkovich revealed to laughter. "I've done some superhuman things at times. I was a superhuman hero back in my old Purdue days."
See, the Patriots are always up to something, like suiting up superheroes. Someone shoot league exec Troy Vincent an email about this, get investigator Ted Wells to Lucas Oil for the game and start searching for capes.
It was no different in Indy, just downplaying relevance and double-downing on reverence. That's as it should be. The Patriots have won the past three meetings between these two by an average score of 43-16. Two of them were in the playoffs, including that 45-7 beat-down in January. New England arrives at 4-0 and steamrolling through the season.
"We're 3-2 and trying to get a win," Colts quarterback Andrew Luck said.
Since halftime of that AFC championship game, when the Colts' complaints caused the NFL to seize the Patriots footballs, Brady has thrown 17 touchdowns against two picks and won his fourth Super Bowl. Luck has thrown five touchdowns, nine interceptions and is hoping to be healthy for the game.
Did deflate-gate change your opinion of Brady at all, Luck was asked?
"Yeah, no," Luck said with a laugh.
"They're a combination of very good players with very good coaching and scheme," he added. "They force you to play left-handed."
So it's compliments all around while the fans rage. The Indianapolis Star can run features on "Ten reasons Colts fans hate the Patriots," and WEEI in Boston can run a week of callers shouting for blood, but no one else is biting.
Well, at least not out loud.
Not to call anyone dishonest here – let's go with pragmatic – but there is no question the Patriots want to crush the Colts this weekend. And vice-versa.
In Foxborough there is a profound belief not so much that the Colts crying to the league caused the Patriots to get "caught" but that they caused the league to invent a scandal that attacked the reputation of the organization in general and Tom Brady in particular.
This isn't to say that the Pats are completely innocent (or completely guilty), just that they believe they are completely innocent. There is no wiggle room there and never has been. They 100 percent maintain that no one ever tampered with the footballs and that the science of Ideal Gas Law proves it, no matter how many leaks the NFL fed to the media to frame them. To them, there is no there, there.
So imagine if you wholly believe some team you always destroy issues a false tattletale to the league that gets you embroiled in a mismanaged scandal. You think you might want to win 222-0? Yeah. You do.
Conversely, the Colts desperately don't want to be on the other side of a humiliating blowout and most certainly believe that New England tried to gain an unfair advantage in last year's AFC title game. The Pats didn't need it, but so what, they did it and they should be punished and, heck, Brady should just be coming back from suspension right now. That guy always gets out of things.
So if a team you think is always cheating kind of gets away with it, you think you want to show them up? Yeah. You do.
Which is all fine and good. Ninkovich proclamations aside, they are humans. And the rest of us humans know the truth. No one needs the participants to acknowledge it.
The intensity of the field from both sides Sunday night will tell the story.
You can bet a week of groceries on that.
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