Monday Night Football: Indianapolis vs. Detroit

Get Bentley'd

Indianapolis travels north on I-469 to Detroit for a Monday Night Football clash with some incredibly poignant implications. The Colts are within one win of a first-place tie with the Bills, while Detroit can enter the land of wins, which hasn't become too exclusive in recent days. Albert Bentley is on the bus with the Colts for the trip, returning from a mysterious injury in Week One. On the other end of the ball is Barry Sanders, who has yet to score a rushing touchdown this year, a statistic that seems exponentially related to Detroit's winning percentage. Indianapolis' run defense is middle-of-the-road, but you can believe they're ready to stop the run as Rodney Peete has yet to show any sort of a threat in the air. Although they are both classic franchises within the NFL itself, the history between these two teams isn't filled with too many storylines, so hopefully Jeff George and crew can make a few before I run out of things to say.


Quarter One
The host team wins the toss and elects to receive. Mel Gray brings the ball out to the Detroit 12-yard line and the men from the Motor City get to work. The first play from scrimmage is a Barry Sanders pitch that's good for 17 yards. The second play is a lateral to Sanders is good for another 16, and the Detroit offense looks to be running on all cylinders. After two batted away passes, however, the well-oiled machine now looks like a Volkswagen lemon, and on 3rd and 10 when Peete's pass is nearly picked off, the Lions will be lucky if they can be salvaged for spare parts.

He not only catches footballs, he births them

Indianapolis takes advantage of their new Bentley-fied offense with a pitch to Ivy Joe Hunter for a yard. Dennis Gibson eats Jeff George for breakfast, or dinner, we're not sure when he woke up today, and it's third and long. George shows off his Fighting Illini credentials on the next play with a long pass to a wide-open Bill Brooks for 36 yards into Detroit territory. The storybook beginning for the schoolboy legend playing for his hometown comes to a startling cliffhanger, however, when he's sacked twice by Chris Spielman, with the second one being on 3rd and 26. Something tells us this villain won't be one to go away in the next chapter or two.

After being pushed back from the Detroit 45 to their own 28-yard line, Indianapolis punts it over to the Lions, with Mega-Boot Rohn Stark still limiting Detroit to a touchback with a monster 70+ yard punt. Peete gets his first completion to a man with the last name of Johnson and the first name that is not Calvin, at least not quite yet. Richard Johnson brings it into Indianapolis territory as time expires in the quarter.

Quarter Two
Peete momentarily forgets that he has a SkyNet cyborg on his team named Barry Sanders, and runs a bootleg for 12 yards twice in a row. After the resounding success of these two running plays, Peete gets a little too greedy and forces a pass out of bounds on both first and second down. On 3rd and 10, Peete drops back to pass, and Jeff Herrod drops him back a few more yards for a sack to take the Lions out of field goal range.

Like a wild stallion riding into the sunset of his career

The Colts start from their own 20-yard line after another touchback, and Albert Bentley gets his first play from scrimmage for a 21-yard dash around the right side. After this gracious display of sportsmanship from the Lions defense, they pounce on Bentley during the next play for a 5-yard loss. Jeff George puts the team on his back and gallops the necessary 15 yards for a first down, and them promptly bucks them all off when he tosses up two horrible-looking ducks for incompletions. On 3rd-and-10 from the Detroit 43-yard line, George's pass to Jessie Hester is good for 27 yards and the Colts are trotting right along. Detroit uncorks the thorn from its collective paws and stuffs Hunter, while on second down they paw away a pass by George. It's third down inside the red zone, and the Colts come back to life just in time, trampling over the Lions with a beautiful strike from George to Bentley in the end zone.

Indianapolis leads 7-0

With 53 seconds left in the half, the Lions start from their own 32-yard line. Knowing his options are limited, Peete goes with the most undesirable one and lobs up an interception to Chris Goode in Detroit territory with plenty of time remaining for another Indy score.

From the Detroit 47-yard line, George surveys his own options, scanning the field for a wide open Brooks and Hester. When he can't distinguish their routes beneath his increasingly furrowed brows, he chucks it behind him to Hunter for a loss of 4 yards and an unfortunate amount of clock time. Hunter is given the ball in a more conventional manner on second down, and he graciously runs down the clock on this uninteresting half of football.

Halftime - Colts 7, Lions 0

Quarter Three

I don't think he's down yet; better keep piling on!

Clarence Verdin is the recipient of an inadequate Eddie Murray kickoff, and he returns it to a very desirable field position at the Indianapolis 48-yard line. An Albert Bentley pitch gets the ball to exactly midfield, and then a perfect toss to Hester gets the ball to exactly within Code Blue field position for Detroit. Pat Beach gets involved with a bumbling five-yard catch-and-run in which he sheds about ten defenders, but can't quite get the eleventh to uncork his hands, and falls down at the 3-yard line. Bentley gets an opportunity for the first rushing touchdown of his short season, but instead decides to crash into the brick wall of Ray Donaldson's ass. George opts for the easier route, and tosses a fade to Bill Brooks in the corner of the end zone to move Indianapolis' chances at a possible Week 4 first place tie with Buffalo from laughable to George Lopez laughable.

Indianapolis leads 14-0

Rodney Peete does his best Heisman trophy impersonation

Mel Gray returns an equally opportunistic kick from Dean "It's soo-chie" Biasucci across midfield to the Colts' 48 yard-line. Peete overshoots Robert Clark on first down, and we here at The Tecmo Bowl are  beginning to understand that whole 'No Rushing TDs for Barry Sanders' thing. Peete spit-shines that philosophy even more when, while connecting with Aubrey Matthews for a 15-yard gain, promptly takes a blitz for a loss of 9 on the next play and tosses the ball out of bounds on second down. With 3rd-and-19 and a frothing Jeff Herrod staring at them in the face, the Detroit offense pulls off one of the trickier slot passes seen in Tecmo to Matthews, who gets the 19 yards plus one needed for a first down. The Lions and Barry Sanders are stopped on the next two plays, but Rodney Peete roars back when he sheds multiple defenders for a 16-yard touchdown run.

Indianapolis leads 14-7

Verdin returns a more traditional Murray kick to the Colts' 25-yard line. The third quarter ends with a long Hester reception into Detroit territory, busting open the Lake Michigan levees and washing away hopes of a Detroit comeback.

Quarter Four
And Chris Spielman starts building those levees back up with his third sack of the game. A Bentley pitch is picked, and ol' Uncle Alby is almost put back on a stretcher. On 3rd-and-23 back on their own side of the field, George overshoots Hester by a good 10 yards and somewhere on the sidelines, QB Bills and Co. are suiting up in silver and Honolulu blue.

The famous Barry Sanders tight-rope run

Detroit begins what will come to be known as 'The Motor City Melee' by Steve Sabol's writers with Peete absorbing a Jeff Herrod sack on first down. The second play from scrimmage is a tipped pass that falls harmlessly out of bounds. On 3rd-and-19, a pivotal sack by Sam Clancy gets the t-shirt presses in Indonesia cranked into high gear, but Wayne Fontes tosses conventional wisdom aside and shouts "Nobody punts in Tecmo!", and fucking goes for it on 4th-and-28 from the shadow of their own goal post. And in true Tecmo fashion, a Barry Sanders pitch is good for 46 yards to midfield. After this miraculous turn of events, Detroit soon faces another third down situation, to which they wisely entrust Sanders to convert once more. The glory is all Robert Clark's, however, when on the very next play he brings down a Rodney Peete pass for a touchdown.

Score tied 14-14

Verdin rumbles to the Indianapolis 42-yard line with nearly a minute and a half to go. With enough Bentley runs combined with no Chris Spielman sacks, the Colts may have a chance to kick their way into unheard-of territory within the AFC East. However, showing the infamous unconventional play-calling that usually gets them a perennial 2-14 record, Rick Venturi calls for two Jeff George passing plays that fall predictably incomplete. On 3rd-and-10, Ivy Joe Hunter is entrusted with the incredibly important conversion, and proves why his followers in Twitter are dozens less than Barry Sanders with a 5-yard run that doesn't exactly tick away the necessary amount of seconds. But the Colts didn't travel all this way for an overtime loss, and on 4th and 5 from their own 44-yard line, the Colts dig down deep and go for it. George lobs it up to Hunter, who bobbles and drops the ball. Venturi is seen pocketing an envelope with a very clear blue buffalo logo in the corner.

Who said these two couldn't exhibit exciting
and/or inept football?

With 21 seconds left to strike a final blow, Peete tosses a shovel pass to Sanders, who trucks it down the middle of the field, leaving defenders in his wake. Amazingly, he trips over a rift in the space-time continuum and falls over at the 2-yard line, sending this game into OT for the first time since we began covering them, much to this writer's seething disgust.

Overtime - Colts 14, Lions 14

Overtime
The home team wins the toss, and the momentum shift is more noticeable than the transmission of a '48 Lincoln. Sanders, the obvious horse of Fontes' overtime schematics, takes the first two plays for a total of 31 yards into field goal land. When his next play is blitzed for a loss of 6, the Lions decide to go to the air. The choice, in hindsight, could be diagnosed as a poor one by focus groups of coaches and men wearing beer helmets when Peete is intercepted in the end zone for an Indianapolis touchback.

This picture will be used for all 'Wanted' posters in Indiana

Bentley can't TCOB when he's blitzed for a loss of 6 on first down. George is reunited with Spielman on the next play for a loss of 12, putting the Colts in precarious position at their own 2-yard line. And then, in what could only be described as a twist on the modern-day home-grown quarterback legend, the villain Chris Spielman claims the spoils when he vanquishes the hero and safeties Detroit into their first win.

Detroit leads 16-14

Final: Lions 16, Colts 14 (OT)



This wasn't an easy game to watch, let alone write about, but the ending made it probably the most worthy of all games to recount this week. Don't get me wrong, the forced intrigue I wrote about early on did sort of get my Tecmo juices flowing, but right after the first kick-off I immediately began looking for pencils to sharpen or doorknobs to tighten. The first half didn't disappoint in its suckitude, but as soon as the Colts scored again, I started to take notice. A 3-1 Colts squad? Please write me if any of you in Tecmo land have seen this before, and I'll send you a notarized certificate asking you to "get out of town!" Unfortunately, the Lions struck back, and we didn't even get a Barry Sanders touchdown to show for it. The Colts go to 2-2 and will more than likely never recover, Bills fans everywhere rejoice their blasphemous lifestyles, and this writer will go to bed a more angst-ridden and jaded individual.