King Kaufman's Sports Daily

NFL Week 9: Patriots vs. Colts! Game of the Century! Winner take nothing! Plus: Those other games, for some reason.

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Nov. 2, 2007 | NFL Week 9 is one game: The New England Patriots at the Indianapolis Colts. Looked at a certain way, it's the best regular-season matchup in NFL history. Here's the way: Never before have two undefeated teams met so late in the season.

The Patriots are 8-0, the Colts 7-0.

Stakes are everything, which is why you'll be watching a whole lot more badminton and whitewater canoeing next summer than you did this summer, and there isn't nearly as much at stake in this blockbuster as there is in any number of late-season games with playoff berths on the line.

The Patriots and Colts could both play the rest of the season with their shoelaces tied together and still make the playoffs.

The actual stake is the tie-breaker that Sunday's winner would hold should the Pats and Colts end the season with the same record. In that case, the winner Sunday would host a playoff rematch, which, if both teams avoid upsets between now and then, would be the AFC Championship Game.

A bit abstract, if you ask me, and home-field advantage may not mean too terribly much in this rivalry anymore. The Colts have shown in the last two years that they can win in Foxboro, while the Patriots' new speed on offense mutes the advantage the Colts traditionally have while playing on their fast carpet.

But this game's so good, it doesn't need stakes. Here is the NFL's best rivalry of the past decade, with both teams arguably better than they've ever been during that time.

The football stathead Web site Football Outsiders has been home to a running Tom Brady-vs.-Peyton Manning debate for years, and this week it had so much traffic its servers blew out, forcing it to post a notice apologizing for being unable to handle the load "with the GAME OF THE CENTURY looming." The Outsiders argue that the Patriots and Colts are the two best teams after Week 8 in the last 12 years, which is as far back as the site's data goes.

Here is a chance to measure the two teams that have adamantly separated themselves from the rest of the league in the first half of the season. The Colts may learn they have a lot of work to do to catch up to the Patriots. The Patriots may learn they're not quite as dominant as their first eight wins would indicate.

Or we might all learn that if these teams lined up against each other 10 times neither would win more than six. And, deliciously, there's a very good chance they're going to line up against each other again in January.

Next page: So who wins? Plus: Forget all those other games, but here they are just in case you can't