5 Colts Games Fans Can Look Forward To In 2018

INDIANAPOLIS, IN — Our first look at the upcoming NFL season has come as the league released its 2018 schedule Thursday night. Die-hard fans of all teams naturally take a look at the slate and immediately pick out the wins and losses. Although that's a pointless activity since many things can change from now until early September, it's still fun.

But we aren't going to do that. It isn't too early to pick out the most intriguing match-ups of the season, however.

For fans of the Indianapolis Colts, the 2018 season will be the one with the lowest expectations in quite some time. Probably at least since the beginning of the Peyton Manning era. RELATED: Indianapolis Colts 2018 Schedule Released

Coming off a 4-12 season, the team is only slated to appear in one prime-time game. They will most certainly be picked to finish last in the AFC South, but this is the NFL and the league's history of parody means a division title would not be the strangest thing to occur.

Let's take a look at the five dates on the 2018 schedule Colts fans can look forward to the most.

- Week 1, Sept. 9: Colts vs. Cincinnati Bengals: This one could be either a 100 or a 0 on the intrigue scale. If quarterback Andrew Luck is ready to play, this game will be a sellout and one all Colts fans will have circled on their calendars to see how he can throw against an NFL team in a meaningful game. If he's not ready to play, this could be the NFL snoozer of the week.

The last time the Colts opened the season against the Bengals was in 1995. They lost that game, which was also at home, but rebounded to put together one of the most memorable seasons in Indianapolis Colts history. The '95 campaign saw the Cinderella Colts come within one play of the Super Bowl.

- Week 3, Sept. 23: Colts at Philadelphia Eagles: The rebuilding Colts will get quite the challenge early in the season as they travel to the City of Brotherly Love to take on the defending Super Bowl champions. But before you mark this one as a sure-fire loss, the Colts will have at least one thing going for them on this date. New Head Coach Frank Reich surely knows the Eagles' offense inside and out as he was their offensive coordinator during their 2017 Super Bowl run.

The Colts have lost their last two games against the Eagles. A memorable win in the series history came in 2002 when the Colts were a heavy underdog in Philadelphia but came away with a big 35-13 win.

- Week 5, Oct. 5: Colts at New England Patriots: This Thursday night tilt is the only scheduled prime-time game on the Colts' schedule in 2018. And we are all too familiar with the opponent. The Colts and Patriots have been rivals since the beginning of New England's Brady-Belichick era. This game gets an added dimension though as the Colts will face the Patriots' Offensive Coordinator Josh McDaniels, who infamously spurned the Colts this off-season after he had already committed to be the head coach.

Sadly, the rivalry during this decade has been of a "hammer vs. nail" nature. And the Colts have been the nail. The Patriots have won the last eight meetings between the teams. The most recent Colts' victory in the rivalry was an epic 2009 battle in which they erased a 17-point fourth quarter deficit to win by a point in what NFL historians know as the "4th and 2" game.

- Week 10, Nov. 11: Jacksonville Jaguars at Colts: If the Colts get off to a good start in 2018, this game could be a big one in the AFC South. The Jaguars are coming off a solid 2017 season in which they advanced to the AFC Championship Game. They will surely be the favorites to win the division again, but this game could go to the home team if they start to gel well at this time of the year and/or the Jaguars prove to be a one-year wonder.

The Colts have historically dominated their division rivalry with the Jaguars, but they were dominated themselves pretty badly last year. Jacksonville came into Lucas Oil Stadium and blanked the Colts, 27-0 in 2017. The game in Jacksonville didn't go much better for the Colts. They lost that one, 30-10.

- Week 16, Dec. 23: New York Giants at Colts: The penultimate game of the season pits two teams coming off awful 2017 seasons. But even if this one turns out to be meaningless, it will be interesting to see a Manning play quarterback in Indianapolis one final time. Of course, Peyton's little brother, Eli is on the Giants. He may or may not grab a selfie with the statue of his big brother outside the stadium.

If Eli is still the quarterback for the Giants this late in the season, it will be the first time he plays at Lucas Oil Stadium since he won Super Bowl XLVI at the stadium his brother built following the 2011 season.

Watch Coach Reich's reaction to being read the team's 2018 schedule:

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Photo: Indianapolis Colts fans take in a 2016 game against the Tennessee Titans / Patch file photo, Tim Moran