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INDIANAPOLIS -- T.J. Rushing was all set. The Colts don’t boast much of a return team and he had fair caught three of the balls off Chris Hanson’s foot, allowing the other to be downed. Now, he’d get one more chance.

With a fourth-and-2 from the Patriots' 28-yard line, he was ready to line up and hoping he wouldn’t have to wave before catching punt No. 5.

“I think I was going to line up at the 25-yard line, about 45 yards away from him, because he was hitting them pretty good today, so I was hoping he out-kicked his coverage,” Rushing said. “Third-down stop, I got excited because I thought I was going to get a chance to make a play.

“I ran out on the field, I saw [Tom] Brady still out on the field, and I was like, ‘What is happening?’ They’re on their own end of the field, there is no way they are going to go for it.”

What was happening was Patriots coach Bill Belichick was deciding on an all-or-nothing gamble. He sent his offense back on the field to get the first down, to end the game with a gain of six feet with 2:08 left on the clock.

“That was like a video-game play,” Rushing said. “You’re playing your buddy and you’re like, ‘I’m just going to go for it.’ I guess they figured no matter what, if the offense got the ball back, we were going to win. That’s the only thing I can think of.”

Strong safety Melvin Bullitt lined up on running back Kevin Faulk with a mentality much like Rushing’s. He was going to make the game-swinging play. Defensive backs coach Alan Williams had told his guys all week in a fourth-down situation like this one, the Patriots would go to Wes Welker or Faulk.

Brady took a shotgun snap and threw to Faulk on the right. Bullitt was right there, wrapping up Faulk and taking him down for a 1-yard gain. Colts’ ball, and, four plays later, Colts’ game, 35-34, after a Peyton Manning-to-Reggie Wayne touchdown.

In showing confidence in his offense, Belichick set off an inadvertent side effect.

The Colts' defense was offended by the boldness.

“I was thinking, ‘Man, they’re going to try us like that? They’re going to disrespect us like that?' ” linebacker Philip Wheeler said. “We’ve got to stop them. We’ve got to man up. And we did that. Maybe it wasn’t disrespectful, maybe it was the smartest thing they could think of to do. I think we handled our business when they did it.”

“We just felt as though, that was a slap in the face,” free safety Antoine Bethea said. “Fourth down, in their territory? That was just a smack in the face. But the defense, we stood up and made a big play.”

Former Colts coach Tony Dungy, on NBC’s postgame show, questioned the logic.

“You have to punt the ball in that situation,” Dungy said. “As much as you might respect Peyton Manning, you have to play the percentages and punt the ball.”

The Colts (9-0) needed Belichick’s bailout plan because they’d played a game lacking their typical crispness and efficiency.

The fierce pass rush was stonewalled, the secondary toasted for 179 yards and a pair of touchdowns by Randy Moss. The offense stumbled, with rhythm issues and drops.

Pierre Garcon was targeted 11 times, and while all those throws from Manning were hardly perfect, he pulled in only three of them. He didn’t think his 29-yard touchdown catch offset the errors. Rookie Austin Collie booted at least one pass too. Manning even threw a wobbly duck for one of his two picks.

“There were a lot of things,” Colts coach Jim Caldwell said. “One of the things we certainly can’t do is give up big plays and early on there Moss was kind of having his way with us I think. … You get him where he’s even with you and Brady’s not going to miss him. He puts that ball right on the money.

“Then we had penalties that set us back a little bit and dropped passes. So there are a lot of things for us to work on. It’s great to get a victory when maybe you didn’t play as well as you’re capable of.”

The Colts’ best work may have come on the play that produced the decisive points.

Earlier, Manning had looked unsuccessfully for Wayne on a fade in the left side of the end zone. From the 1-yard line with 16 seconds left, Manning was looking to try it again.

“I gave him my C.C. Sabathia shake off,” Wayne said. “I felt like I wanted to show fade and just come with the slant and it worked. [It was] at the line of scrimmage. You’ve got to be quick with it. You’ve got to shake him off and go on to the next call. I shook him off and I gave him the signal. I think after nine years he can trust me.”

The tired Colts shrugged after it was all over as they considered just how it unfolded.

“That’s the craziest win I’ve ever been involved in,” Bullitt said. “They’re bold. We never expected anything less.”

Posted by ESPN.com's Paul Kuharsky

	Joe Robbins/Getty Images
	Indianapolis quarterback Peyton has a strong, efficient game Sunday, leading the Colts to a much-needed win Sunday.

INDIANAPOLIS -- This is unfamiliar stuff, a .500 record halfway through the season. Of course the alternative was even more unfamiliar for the Indianapolis Colts.

Sunday night's Patriots-Colts game at Lucas Oil Stadium was hardly the high-octane battle we've come to expect from a matchup that's often for AFC supremacy. While it was a tense contest, it felt as if it was played between two careful teams working very hard to build drives and not make a blunder.

Indianapolis was resourceful in finding its way to an 18-15 win. While the Colts got Bob Sanders back from a long injury layoff, the defense featured two reserves starting at cornerback and three safeties in the nickel package. But it all worked against the dangerous Randy Moss and Wes Welker.

The hosts also benefitted from mistakes, some forced, some served up -- highly uncharacteristic clock management trouble for Bill Belichick, who also undid a made fourth-and-1 conversion with a last-second timeout, as well as a bad unnecessary roughness foul by Patriots tight end David Thomas in a game with only three penalties.

"Here lately, that's been us," said Colts left guard Charlie Johnson. "That's been us, having to call the timeouts, getting penalties that stop drives, all that. It does feel good for us to play mistake-free football and have somebody else make the mistakes."

Buffalo, New England and the Jets are all 5-3 now, so the two who don't win the AFC East are right there at the head of the wild-card fight along with Baltimore. Indy is with Miami just a game off the pace.

"We feel like every game right now is almost like a playoff game," receiver Reggie Wayne said. "It's kind of like everybody that's not leading their division are kind of like in a big ball. So each game is going to be crucial. We also know that everybody that's in that big ball, most of them have got to come through us. We pretty much control our own destiny."

Whatever degree of control they reacquired, the Colts did so with a crisper game than they've been playing lately. They had one penalty, no sacks allowed, nice distribution in the passing game, pretty good tackling by the defense, good red-zone defense and Adam Vinatieri's first regular-season field goal of longer than 50 yards since 2002.

And, of course, efficient play by Peyton Manning, who posted 121.9 passer rating while hitting Anthony Gonzalez with two precise touchdown throws near the same front-right corner of the end zone below the picture window.

"He was really in control of things and understood what we were trying to do and made some really big throws especially in the red zone," coach Tony Dungy said. "The two balls to Anthony [were] very, very tight and balls that we needed. It was a very, very good performance against a defense that doesn't give you a lot."

The Colts don't exactly have a heart-on-their-sleeve locker room, but I sensed some palpable relief keyed around the ability to survive the limited personnel in the secondary and the revived sharpness in the passing game.

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