FOXBOROUGH -- They were like two great heavyweights slugging away, neither willing to take a backward step or bend to the other's demands.
They were Ali and Frazier, pounding away on the inside, blasting away from the outside, slamming into each other with a relentlessness that boarded on manic. Both were trying to do what neither could do. They were trying to break the spirit of the other.
In the end, though, last night's season opener at Razor Blade Field ended like the last two meetings between the Patriots and the Colts -- with a difference between them as thin as a wafer but as gaping as the Grand Canyon.
One field goal made, another missed. Three points. Nothing really to pick between them. Nothing until you got to the reason the Patriots hung their second Super Bowl champions banner in three years on their wall last night. Nothing until you got to their defense, a defense that made plays at every turn. Plays that ensured that, for at least one more night, there was a difference between them and the Colts. A difference Indianapolis could not bridge last season or last night.
Certainly Tom Brady had another spectacular night, passing for 335 yards and three touchdowns, outnumbering the Indianapolis numbers machine named Peyton Manning. But it was not offense that provided the Patriots with a 27-24 victory. Not the successes of the New England offense or the failures of the Indianapolis offense.
It was defense that won last night. Patriot defense, which is to say a marauding, swarming, resourceful defense. A defense that forced the Colts into three critical turnovers and then, after New England's own mistakes with a Brady interception and a muffed punt by Deion Branch had put the Patriots in danger of losing at the last second, it was a sack by Willie McGinest with 24 seconds left that drove Manning back a crucial 12 yards, about 1 yard too many for one of the most reliable kickers in football history to tie things.
Mike Vanderjagt lined up to kick a 48-yard field goal to tie the game as time was running out. He had not missed a kick in his last 42 tries. He had not missed in so long no one could really remember the last time it had happened.
But nobody cared, frankly, because they could all tell you this morning when his last miss was. It was last night.
"Seems like all of our games with the Colts are like this," Patriot coach Bill Belichick said. "Comes down to the last possession . . . but in the end we made enough plays to win."
Sure, that defense gave up 446 yards. Certainly it was mauled at the line of scrimmage, allowing 202 rushing yards, yards that allowed the Colts' play-action passing to hit them with big plays.
But although Peyton Manning would throw two touchdown passes and Edgerrin James would rush for 142 yards, which is not what we're looking for as Belichick would say, in the end the plays that most needed to be made were made and so they lived to fight another day.
Three times the Colts would get inside the Patriot 20-yard line and three times New England would force turnovers. For all the talk of Brady's arm and Charlie Weis's innovativeness and Corey Dillon's legs, the Patriots won last night the way they won all last season. The way they won three years ago when they came home from New Orleans with their first Super Bowl victory.
They won with an ill-tempered defense that refuses, regardless of what is in front of it, to give in. In the first half it was Tedy Bruschi intercepting a Manning throw at the 1 on second-and-goal from the 6. In the second half it was twice forcing James to fumble, once at the 18 and the second time -- sound familiar? -- at the 1-yard line with 3:43 left and only 3 points separating these two adversaries.
But this time not even that was enough to stop Indianapolis. Once again they got the ball back and quickly they moved downfield, covering 45 of those yards when Manning found a wide- open Brandon Stokley to put the ball on the 19-yard line with 1:13 to play.
With the ball on the 17-yard line on third down, the Colts wanted to take one last shot at the end zone before using, if necessary, the reliable Vanderjagt to send the game into overtime. But their reliable kicker never got the chance when the Patriots called a double blitz with safety Rodney Harrison coming from the front side and linebacker Willie McGinest, who had been in coverage almost the entire night, doing the same from the backside. Next thing he knew he was picking himself up after McGinest ran him down like a scalded dog and drove him to the ground for a 12-yard loss that put the ball so far back it was a yard or so too far for a guy who never misses.
That is how the Patriots won. It is how they won 15 straight last year. Most important, it is why they are going for their 17th straight in 10 days in Arizona.
