It was definitely tough, but we arrived back in Indianapolis about 1:30 Monday morning with the division championship in hand.  Our win, coupled with Pittsburgh's loss, gives us the #2 seed and first round bye in the playoffs.

 

The weekend started off roughly for us, as we had to wait out the snow and ice Saturday, trying to leave for Oakland.  We sat on the runway from 1:00 pm to 3:30 before we were able to take off.  Once we got in the air it was pretty smooth, but still a long flight out to the West Coast.

 

We knew it wouldn't be an easy game and, as we were watching the early games, we could see that some upsets may be happening.  Seeing the weather at some places, we were definitely glad to be in Oakland rather than on the East Coast.  Just as we were leaving the locker room for introductions Jacksonville scored to go ahead of Pittsburgh and we knew we could wrap a lot of things up with a win.  We got off to a great start, helped by T J Rushing's big punt return and were up 10-0 and driving in Oakland's territory.  We thought Peyton had scored on third down, but after a replay it was 4th-1 at their one yard line.  I'm usually conservative in those situations but I thought a 17-0 lead might put them away.  We went for it and didn't make it.  I think that turned the game around as they became energized and had a 20 play drive to score.  It was a dogfight from there on out as their crowd really gort into the game.  They even took the lead in the 4th quarter 14-13, but our offense answered with a TD drive that was made possible by a fantastic catch by Reggie Wayne on third down.  That's what you need to win in tough situations--someone to make a big play and, for us, it seems like it comes from different people every week.  Our defense then stopped Oakland's last drive with a 4th down incompletion.

 

Knowing that we had won our 5th straight division title and secured that first round bye made for a great plane ride home.  That is the fun part of winning--enjoying 4 hours together and having some fun, whether it's card games, movies, music or just hanging out with each other talking. It's great to have that feeling that your hard work and togetherness has paid off.

 

Now we have to get ready for the next two weeks.  We want to get ready for the playoffs but we finish the regular season with two division games--Houston and Tennessee.  We don't need to win those games for the standings but you never want your division opponents to feel like they can beat you.  So we'll sit down and discuss how we want to play those games and how we want to handle the bye.  But right now we're just going to enjoy this victory for a day.