Pelissero: Not pretty, but Colts have earned another shot at AFC big boys

INDIANAPOLIS – Somebody once told Ricky Jean Francois that when you accomplish a goal, you need to take a moment to remember the date you set it and the date it became reality.

So there the Indianapolis Colts defensive tackle sat about an hour after Sunday's 17-10 triumph over the Houston Texans, staring into his locker with a smile on his face as he thought back to the first day of training camp and the other goals he and his teammates wrote down then.

"I'm not even in a rush to leave the building," Jean Francois told Paste BN Sports. "I just want to realize, like, 'We won the AFC South.' It came from hard work, dedication, execution and sacrifice. Everybody played their part. Everybody did their job. I understand that everybody's saying it ain't pretty. But you can't tell me every NFL game is pretty."

Skeptics will say the Colts have won a lot of games this way: outlasting a team that's challenged at quarterback, as the Texans were in an extreme way after Ryan Fitzpatrick's second-quarter leg injury forced rookie fourth-round draft pick Tom Savage into his first real NFL action.

The Colts' four-game winning streak has come against four teams – Jacksonville, Washington, Cleveland and Houston – that almost assuredly will be watching their playoff opener here next month from the couch. When they had shots earlier in the season against the AFC's two front-runners, Denver and New England, the Colts lost.

But they've gotten to 10-4 one way or another. In a league where sustained success is elusive for so many teams, the Colts are division champs for a second straight year and in the playoffs for the third time in three years since drafting quarterback Andrew Luck No. 1 overall.

"I'll be wearing this (division champions) hat probably all night," left tackle Anthony Castonzo said as he put it on. "Everybody's going to celebrate a little bit, because why not? You only live once."

Luck has played his best football this season, some costly mistakes – including one Sunday – notwithstanding. As receiver T.Y. Hilton pointed out, the Colts are healthier on offense than a year ago, when they beat Kansas City in a wild-card game before the Patriots knocked them out.

"We've got all our playmakers back," Hilton said. "Last year, we kind of was on our last leg. We didn't have 87 (Reggie Wayne). We didn't have 83 (Dwayne Allen). Right now, (the goal is) continue to get hot."

The Colts defense did its part Sunday, too, holding the Texans offense to a long field goal, albeit on a day Houston was forced to play its third-string quarterback.

After an early pick-six, Luck rebounded to toss two TD passes and put Indianapolis ahead before halftime, thanks in part to a botched Savage handoff that set up a short field. But the Colts didn't put away the decision until Vontae Davis intercepted Savage, halting a Houston 2-minute drill.

"It's been 144 days since we got together in Anderson (Ind.) on July 23rd," Colts coach Chuck Pagano said. "It was a Wednesday. We talked that night about a lot of things. We talked about our goals and our No. 1 goal was to win the division."

Jean Francois said No. 2 on that list was winning the AFC championship, which would require the Colts to crash the Tom Brady-Peyton Manning party that has been planned practically since before the season began – likely knocking off the Patriots and/or Broncos along the way.

Those two teams sealed their spots in the postseason Sunday, too. Ben Roethlisberger and the Pittsburgh Steelers, who rocked the Colts defense for 639 yards and 51 points Oct. 26, got another step closer by winning at Atlanta. The Colts are 2-4 against teams with winning records.

"People say, 'You have ugly losses.' It's hard as hell to get a win in the NFL," Jean Francois said. "Like Coach said, it won't kill us to stay in the building 45 (minutes) or an hour or an hour and 30 minutes (extra), because it's going to pay off – as you can see."

Now it's time to figure out if it'll pay off in January, or at least it will be after road trips to Dallas and Tennessee the next two weeks. A first-round bye might be out of reach, but the Colts' goals aren't.

And the hope is these wins – yes, even the not-so-pretty ones – have built some character that will come in handy when it's not some wide-eyed rookie QB on the other side, but a multiple-time MVP who's won it all.

"Check off the box," Hilton said. "We had the goal in mind: Win the AFC South, and that's what we did."