Thanks to all the Pats fans who helpfully sent YouTube videos alleging the Colts were piping crowd noise into the RCA Dome. Here you are: It isn’t true.

I’ve been in the RCA Dome for high school games and it’s loud as hell.

It’s almost laughable to watch, of all teams, New England (a) whine about the refs, and (b) accuse an opponent of cheating. Imagine what they’d be saying if they lost!

Yeah, the refs were bad. And yeah, we benefited from most of the bad calls. Welcome to our world. It was about time for a little payback. Think Willie McGinnis’ fake injury. Think an entire playoff game where our receivers got mugged without a single pass interference call.

Even granting the bad calls, they didn’t help us much. At most you could credit us with six points from the two pass interference plays. Both resulted in field goals. But that’s only if you assume that both of those drives would have otherwise ended without a score. We were moving the ball quite well the first half.

As for the game itself, well, it was disappointing. We just plain got beat. I’d like to think we’d have won had we not had to play most of the game with just two receivers, minus our number one and three guys. Tony Ugoh’s absence at starting blind-side tackle hurt too, especially in the second half.

But who knows. We still gave the game away. Both our o- and d-lines crumbled in the second half, resulting in rushed throws for Peyton, and way too much time for Brady to find Moss. Addai ran all over the Pats in the first half, then got stopped in his tracks the second when the line couldn’t open holes for him. I don’t know if we tired out or if Bellichck made some masterful halftime adjustments (if he did, it wasn’t anything immediately apparent). My guess is that we played with a lot of heart, fatigued a bit, then got complacent with the 10-point lead, and thought we could ride it out. Even with the lead, I was nervous. When you’re playing a team as good as New England, you have to take advantage of your opportunities. Getting just six points out of three trips to the red zone won’t cut it.

The second half collapse was team-wide: Peyton’s interception wasn’t even close, Addai stopped running, Reggie Wayne and Ben Utecht dropped key balls that hit them square in the arms. On D, there was no second-half pressure from Freeney or Mathis, and the secondary got burned for two of the biggest plays they’ve given up all year.

The Pats were the better team on Sunday, even if they were also the whinier, more arrogant team (Roosevelt Colvin’s fourth quarter spike on the Colts’ mid-field logo was Terrel Owens-esque). New England is very, very good. But so are we. And they’re certainly beatable. 1 and 1A, indeed.

Given the two teams’ make-up this time around, I think a frigid, snowy January game in Foxboro may actually play to our advantage this year. The one area where we have a clear advantage over New England is in the running game, which tends to loom large when the weather turns sour.

My prediction? We’ll go 14-2 this year. The Pats will go 15-1, maybe 16-0.

But we’ll beat them in January.

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