Last modified: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 12:10 AM EDT Colts not ready to join in hype BY MARK FARINELLA / SUN CHRONICLE STAFF FOXBORO - Indianapolis is a much smaller media market than the Boston-Providence-Worcester triangle, but reporters are reporters no matter where they're from. And just as members of the Patriots' media corps started asking players about this Sunday's game at Indianapolis immediately after the Patriots' 52-7 victory over Washington, so it was that reporters from the Colts' media corps started peppering the players of that "other" undefeated team with questions about the Patriots mere minutes after they had put the finishing touches on a 31-7 victory over the Carolina Panthers at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte. Not unlike the Patriots, many members of the Colts wanted a day or two before turning their switches to "premature Super Bowl Hype mode." "Sorry," Colts' defensive end Dwight Freeney told reporters around his locker Sunday. "We get to enjoy this one, at least tonight and maybe Monday and Tuesday. Wins are hard to come by in this league, regardless of how many games we've won over the years." "Two days off," safety extraordinaire Bob Sanders said when asked about the looming meeting with the Patriots. "That's all I'm thinking about now. My main thing is getting rest." This will be the first time in NFL history that two teams have remained unbeaten this late in the season before playing each other. The Colts, defending Super Bowl champions, enter the game at 7-0 having already had their bye week. The Patriots enter at 8-0, and will check out for a vacation week immediately after the last regular-season game they will ever play within the confines of the RCA Dome. The game, scheduled for a 4:15 p.m. start as the second half of a national CBS doubleheader, will be shown in every other TV market in the country except Houston and Oakland (and the latter may see the Patriots-Colts game if the McAfee Coliseum doesn't sell out). The hype already began weeks ago, in the form of national columns pitting the two teams as a latter-day clash of good (personified by the spiritual Tony Dungy, coach of the Colts) against evil (in the form of the cheating, running-up-the-score Patriots). Dungy could only chuckle about the comparisons Sunday "I think it will be a circus," he told the Indianapolis Star. "I think it will be a very, very much hyped game. I told our players that I know all you (media) guys are going to ask them about next week, and that we should talk about this week and what happened. "But it's going to be a great game," he said. "They are a good team. They've played great football all year. Our team has played well. I think it's going to be a big game." "It's like, for two months, they've been the unmentionable," Colts' cornerback Marlin Jackson said. "We had to go seven weeks or whatever, and rightly so, focusing on that week's opponent. And I think it's a real strength of this team, and of how the coaches handle us, that we've been able to do that and do it well. "You always knew what (the Patriots) were doing, but it was kind of, 'OK, let's take care of our own business and concentrate on us, and not worry about anything else,'" he said. "But that's over with now. Finally, the blinders are off." Quarterback Peyton Manning, who broke Johnny Unitas' long-standing team record for career scoring passes when he threw the 288th of his career, a 59-yarder to Reggie Wayne, was gradually led into commenting about the upcoming game with the Patriots in his post-game press conference. "Everybody's been talking about it for a long time except us," Manning "And now I guess it's safe for us to talk about it. "They're playing great. It's well documented in what we face in the Patriots, how good of a team they are. It's going to be a super tough challenge."