This week saw a game that we all anticipate too much every year. The game that if you were told, “You’ll only win one game this year and you get to choose it” you’d choose to win this one without ever questioning it. That’s right, it was Patriots week and there were not good expectations coming into the week that the Colts would be able to hang with the team that has been on fire more than members of White Snake. However, the team proved that it could not only hang, but outsmart and outplay them for a large chunk of the game. A lot of risk/reward situations led to the game being better than expected and only set me up to crush me harder by the time the triple zeroes hit the screen. Seeing this game reminded me of my favorite horror movie of all-time, John Carpenter’s The Thing. Only playing this game in Antarctica with Norwegians and a dog would’ve made it more correlated.
Movie Synopsis
Okay, if you haven’t seen The Thing by now then I truly pity you. “I don’t like horror movies,” you say in a pathetic and whiny tone that I hate. Well, you uninformed slob, The Thing is a brilliantly crafted work about an alien crash landing in Antarctica and being discovered by Norwegian scientists. All of that takes place off screen and actually starts with the scientists trying to murder a dog with rifles they are shooting from a helicopter or as some people call it: The coolest way to murder a dog. The dog escapes their clutches (because the helicopter blows up) and is rescued by American scientists because if America isn’t the hero then what’s the point of the movie? Turns out, saving the dog was a suuuuuuuuper terrible idea because the dog was actually this blood lusting alien that wanted to kill every living thing on the planet. “So the alien comes from a planet where they look like dogs?” your egg headed stupidity whimpers out. NO! The alien can change shapes and mimic behaviors to perfection and no one is the wiser.
After the alien dog murders all the other dogs in the lab and is caught in mid transformation by Wilford Brimley, the crew becomes aware of the presence and powers of the other worldly being. Snake Pliskin Kurt Russell plays RJ MacReady and is the rational person in this frozen hellscape that doesn’t let anyone leave because if they hop on a helicopter and try to escape, they could be transporting the thing to a place that has more than a dozen people and a couple penguins roaming around. So they decide to stay and try to find a way to fight off the outer spaced beast and not let it destroy the planet. Finding out that fire is it’s weakness (because fire is everything’s weakness) they burn everyone’s blood to see who is human and who isn’t. I won’t spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it because you’ve already gone through life getting nothing but C’s and D’s in school, but know that it doesn’t necessarily go smoothly.
How it was like week 6
I usually put the Colts organization, players, coaches, and perspective in the roles of the protagonists, but I really feel like we were the antagonists in comparison to the film. You see, the alien has the upper hand through a majority of the movie. It starts out on screen in a position to be decimated, but overcomes expectations. It takes a few risks early on by allowing the Americans (Patriots) to be lulled into a false sense of security and then BAM, strikes at the perfect time. We mimicked the Americans by running quick plays, power running, and just being all out ruthless with our aggression like they have been this year. We gave them a taste of their own medicine and sent out a warning to the rest of the world (the 30 other teams) that if we are unleashed then they better watch out. Whenever we were up against a wall, we fought our way out. The Patriots built flamethrowers and we used an onside kick (that was horribly called on the field and after the replay) to claw our way back into supremacy. The Americans regained the upper hand. Not by being smarter. Not by being stronger. Not by being better. No, they regained the upper hand because of flaws within the design…or by having someone play center that weighs 110lbs and has never ran the play you are about to run…same difference.
If you know the end of the film then you know that even though the humans “win” the end is pretty ambiguous as to what is going to happen moving forward. I do know that we tore up a lot of their crew and they are going to have a hard time recovering from that.
So we lost. It wasn’t unexpected by most, but it still would’ve been nice to be wrong for a change. John Carpenter’s The Thing has had remakes and was a remake itself, a whole episode of The X-Files was a blatant ripoff of the movie, but it still stands the test of time. It is good and better than the mimickers and homages it produced. There is a lot to work on with this team, but we still lead the division at 3-3 and there is no way we are going to just roll over and die. We showed a lot of heart and the rest of the league knows they are going to have a tougher time against us than originally thought. Especially the Patriots. A lot of the speculation was that it would be a total beat down of the Colts and records would be broken, but losing by one score isn’t a routing. I think they will be a lot more worried facing us if we meet in the playoffs and frankly, I hope we do play them because we will eat them alive if we play their style for a full 60 minutes instead of 30.
