Dungy: Improvement needed to defend title

INDIANAPOLIS – Tony Dungy’s Colts are 7-1 and atop the AFC South halfway through the season.\nBut if they want to repeat as Super Bowl champs, Dungy knows this: They must \nplay better.\n“We’ve played pretty good the first half of the season, but we’re only one game ahead of Tennessee, and Tennessee is playing pretty well,” he said Monday. “That’s why we have to win this week, so we don’t have a \ntie situation.”\nIf Sunday’s 24-20 loss to New England showed the Colts anything, it’s how much better they must become to defend their conference title.\nOn paper, the Colts have been as impressive as any team west of Foxborough, Mass. They’ve beaten all three division foes on the road, rank in the Top 5 both offensively and defensively, are running better and shutting down opponents’ ground games far better than they did last year.\nFor more than three quarters Sunday, they also played well enough against the Pats to take a 10-point lead. But in those last 10 minutes, the Colts’ flaws were obvious. They turned the ball over, dropped passes, committed penalties, couldn’t stop the Patriots’ deep passes and gave up a big \npunt return.\nAll of those things helped the Patriots (9-0) pull off a comeback in the game of the season, and left the Colts searching for answers.\n“If we take care of a lot of little things, it becomes habit,” middle linebacker Gary Brackett said. “If we play a little better, it’s a different outcome.”\nDungy is insistent about the solution, too.\nWhen he reviewed tape of the game Monday, he deciphered what went wrong and said his players will also be disappointed in what they see.\nYet, Dungy, always the optimist, believes the Colts can fix \nthose mistakes.\n“I think what happened to us is we were playing a really good team and we weren’t quite able to match them in the fourth quarter,” he said. “I think we’ll grow from it and learn from it.”