A Brief History: Oakland Raiders vs. Indianapolis Colts

A quick look at the history between the Oakland Raiders and the Indianapolis Colts.

Total Games Between the Raiders and the Colts: 15

All-Time Record: Raiders lead, 8-7

Current Streak: Colts have taken the last four games

Total Raiders Points Scored, Head-to-Head: 356 (23.7 ppg)

Total Colts Points Scored, Head-to-Head: 347 (23.1 ppg)

Longest Raiders Winning Streak Against Colts: 4 (September 15th, 1967 – September 16th, 1974)

Longest Colts Winning Streak Against Raiders: 4 (December 11th, 1988 – December 8th, 1991)

As is the case with my generation, I most associate the Indianapolis Colts with Peyton Manning, in all of his deliberately-gesturing, incessantly-audibling glory. Which means that I most associate Raider games against the Colts with feeling of an all-but-guaranteed beatdown — the same sense of impending doom you feel when you wake up from a nap to find that your phone is not where you left it and your girlfriend is nowhere to be found.

Indeed, the only time the Raiders beat the Colts during their Manning Era was early on his career, which just so happened to coincide with our Gruden/Gannon run. Those are also the only two losses to the Raiders during his entire career, but I was genuinely surprised to (re)discover that only once were the Raiders actually truly trounced by Peyton when he donned the horseshoe, a 35-14 loss in the RCA Dome in 2004 (and an MVP season for #18). The rest of the games were actually pretty competitive!

I suppose it doesn’t feel that way because the lasting image I have of Peyton beating the Raiders as a Colt is the Week 16 meeting in Oakland during the 2010 season, in which at some point in the game, Peyton called his own number and ran a damn bootleg around the Oakland defense for 27 yards.

This singular play, while insignificant in the grand scheme of things, boggles and infuriates me to this day. Peyton Manning is a bonafide Hall of Famer who has been heaped with arduous amounts of praise for his quarterbacking prowess — he has never been envied for his mobility. And yet, he called that bootleg with the utmost confidence that it would work, because it was the Raiders, so of course it’d work.

And of course, it worked.

The Raiders’ elder fans will certainly remember much more success against the Colts. During a much simpler time, when the Colts were based out of Baltimore, they came across an 11-3 Raiders team on Christmas Eve, in a playoff battle that is, to this day, considered one of the greatest NFL contests (and moments) of all time.

I am, of course, referring to the “Ghost to the Post”, the Ken Stabler-Dave Casper connection that led to a (double!) overtime win for the Raiders, en route to their second straight appearance in the AFC Title Game.

Now, almost forty years later to the day, these two franchises meet again with major playoff implications at stake. While the Raiders have already clinched a playoff berth, they’ll be playing with their eyes on their first division title since 2002 (should the Chiefs lose to the Broncos at home on Sunday night, the Raiders will clinch both the AFC West crown and a first-round bye in the playoffs). In their stand the Andrew Luck-led Colts, who have been through a bit of an up-and-down season, but are still in the hunt for a postseason berth of their own.

If none of that is enough to get you hyped for this game, check some of these tweets Civil War-era themed Andrew Luck parody account:

Enjoy the game, Nation. Merry Christmas.