INDIANAPOLIS -- In the solitude of night, all alone with his thoughts, Chuck Pagano had to be dreaming up heroic scenarios for his big moment in the Sunday night lights. No, he was not only going to beat Bill Belichick. Pagano was going to beat Bill Belichick at his own game.

The coach of the Indianapolis Colts was going to outsmart the coach of the New England Patriots, the potential consequences be damned. If a completely unnecessary onside kick in the second quarter didn't work -- in fact, it set up a Patriots touchdown -- then Pagano would run a fourth-down play near the end of the third quarter that even Belichick's mad scientist of an aide, Ernie Adams, couldn't cook up in his underground lab.

Maybe the same teambaffled by Belichick's trick formations in last year's playoffs, the Baltimore Ravens, lent this play to the Colts as eagerly as they allegedly alerted them to the possibility the Patriots were deflating footballs. Or maybe Pagano and his staff came up with this baby on their own.

Either way, the play turned out to be funnier than Belichick's affection for "My Cousin Vinny"; it was a full-season blooper reel all its own. If the Patriots did take the air out of the balls before their 45-7 destruction of the Colts in the AFC Championship Game, all Pagano did in this 34-27 defeat was take the air out of his own building.

You've likely seen the replay a half-dozen times by now. In a fourth-and-3 punting situation, the Colts sent nine