Colts get prime-time slots, slew of late games in ’07

INDIANAPOLIS – The Indianapolis Colts will be working late next season.\nLeague officials made the Super Bowl champions their feature attraction in 2007, giving the Colts five prime-time games including a Thanksgiving night game at Atlanta and four late-afternoon Sunday contests on the 16-game schedule.\nIt won’t bother coach Tony Dungy.\n“Being the defending champs, we take that as a compliment,” Dungy said after the full schedule was released Wednesday. “It makes it a little more challenging, along with the first-place schedule, but you know that goes with the territory.”\nSome of the night games had already been announced.\nIndianapolis knew it would host the league’s season-opener Sept. 6 against New Orleans, a privilege reserved for each Super Bowl winner since the Sept. 11 attacks. It also had been slated for a Nov. 22 visit to Atlanta, the second Thanksgiving Day game in four years for the Colts.\nWednesday’s announcement added a Monday night game at Jacksonville on Oct. 22 and two possible Sunday night games – Nov. 11 at San Diego and Dec. 9 at Baltimore, the second of which could be switched because of the league’s flexible television schedule.\nTo Dungy, there was only one mild surprise. The season-opener will be the only prime-time game played at Indianapolis this year, the final season for the RCA Dome. The Colts open Lucas Oil Stadium in 2008.\n“It seems we can’t get any (prime-time) games at home for our fans,” Dungy said. “It’s not anything competitively, but you’d like your fans to be able to take part in the atmosphere.”\nIndianapolis fans will still get their biggest wish, though, when rival New England visits Nov. 4. New England and Indianapolis, former division foes in the AFC East, have played six times since the Patriots’ last regular-season trip to Indianapolis in 2003 and five were in Foxborough, Mass.\nThe lone exception came in January when the Colts earned home-field for the AFC championship game and rallied from a 21-6 halftime deficit to win the title. Indianapolis has won three straight in the series.\n“It seems like it’s been a long time since we’ve had them at home in the regular season,” Dungy said. “It will be tough, as games against all good teams are. But it will also be nice to have them here.”\nSome oddities on the schedule include back-to-back December trips that take the Colts coast-to-coast. The week after playing Baltimore, the Colts travel to Oakland on Dec. 16.\nThe league also flip-flopped the Colts division schedule.\nLast year, Indianapolis played its first three division games at home. This year, they’ll visit Tennessee and Houston in Weeks 2 and 3, then head to Jacksonville in October. Indianapolis will host all three division opponents in December.\n“We said last year those were important games to win at home so we’d not get caught in a must-win situation on the road,” Dungy said. “This year, they’ll be important, too, but we know if we win them early in the season, they’ll still have to come back here.”\nA six-week span from November to December also has the Colts facing all three teams – Kansas City, Baltimore and New England – they beat to reach the Super Bowl. But the most rugged stretch comes in November when the Colts play four games in 18 days, culminating with the trip to Atlanta.\nIndianapolis has faced that situation before. In 2004, the Colts won four games in 17 days.\nThe league also gave Dungy a birthday present. On Oct. 7, one day after Dungy turns 52, he’ll face his former employer, Tampa Bay, in the first game since the Colts dramatic Monday night comeback against the Buccaneers in 2003.\nTampa Bay fired Dungy after the 2001 season, and the Bucs won the Super Bowl the next year.\n“I was hoping they’d schedule it on my birthday again, but they missed it by a day,” Dungy joked. “It will be almost four years to the day since that game and it will be a fun game for me.”