Peter King and the preemptive strike

Peter King is one of the top football commentators in the country. He writes for Sports Illustrated, appears on HBO and NBC to discuss the NFL, and his "Monday Morning Quarterback" column on SI.com has become a must-read to the country's NFL fans.

Plus, he's a good guy, because he'll occasionally take a call from a nameless Viking Update writer and offer his take on the Purple.

Every Tuesday, he pens a follow-up to his MMQB column that responds to reader e-mail reactions to MMQB. He also usually tosses in a few new points, like his first item today, a preemptive strike for the ages that I hope gets posted on the bulletin board in the Colts' locker room:

I don't want to hear one thing from a Colt in the next two weeks along the lines of: "Nobody is giving us any credit. Everybody's jumping on the Patriot bandwagon, and people seem to forget we won the Super Bowl last year. We're getting dissed.''

Excellent point. All too often, players fall back on this straw-man argument and end up sounding like scared, petulant little children. This isn't a comment on the Colts, per se, but on all athletes in general. It will be interesting to see if the Colts, led by one of the classiest people in all of sports (Tony Dungy), will be able to resist this tired, fake motivational ploy.

While we're on the subject of the NFL, I went 3-for-5 last week, losing with the Raiders at home and Steelers on the road. I'd make those same picks every week, as I think both losses were flukes. We'll see what this week holds ...