Colts Will Visit San Diego in First Round of Playoffs
INDIANAPOLIS – The Colts are California bound.
And that means that in the first round of the postseason, the Colts will play a team with which they have become very familiar in recent seasons.
The Colts (12-4), who won nine consecutive games at the end of the season to make the playoffs for a seventh consecutive season, will visit the San Diego Chargers (8-8) in an AFC Wild Card playoff game on Saturday, January 3, at 8 p.m.
The Chargers, winners of their last four games, beat the Denver Broncos (8-8) in San Diego on Sunday night by a score of 52-21 to win the AFC West.
The game will be played in San Diego because under NFL rules, a team winning its division plays host to a first-round playoff game against a wild card team no matter the records of the teams.
The Chargers and Colts have played five times since 2004, with the Colts winning 34-31 in overtime in 2004 in Indianapolis before the Chargers won three consecutive games in the series – 26-17 in 2005, 23-21 in 2007 and 28-24 in an AFC Divisional Playoff game following the 2007 season.
The Colts beat the Chargers, 23-20, on November 23, this season. The Chargers rallied from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit in that game before kicker Adam Vinatieri's 51-yard field goal as time expired.
Earlier on Sunday, the Colts beat the Tennessee Titans, 23-0, in a game without playoff implications for either team. The Colts clinched the No. 5 seed in the AFC playoffs with a victory over Jacksonville on December 18.
