Down and Distance

KA-POWER RANKINGS after Week 4

2008-10-03T12:19:00.001-05:00

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 4
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their fourth year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 18 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 18 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: WK4 = This week's ranking. WK3 = Last week's ranking. POW = KAPOW-ER centigrade score)

WK4	WK3	TEAM	POW	WK4	WK3	TEAM	POW
1	1	Titans	100.00	17	7	Cardinals	60.68
2	3	Giants	93.42	18	26	Jets	58.66
3	5	Bills	88.02	19	14t	49ers	57.43
4	2	Ravens	81.13	20	18	Dolphins	57.41
5	4	Eagles	80.26	21	20	Seahawks	57.06
6	6	Cowboys	75.15	22	22t	Jaguars	55.18
7	8	Steelers	74.33	23	17	Vikings	51.36
8	11	Bucs	73.01	24	22t	Patriots	50.04
9	13	Chargers	70.36	25	25	Colts	45.51
10	14t	Bears	67.82	26	24	Raiders	45.25
11	21	Panthers	66.33	27	30	Chiefs	37.79
12	10	Broncos	66.04	28	27	Bengals	31.93
13	19	Saints	64.76	29	31	Browns	31.25
14	9	Falcons	62.50	30	29	Texans	29.16
15	12	Packers	63.24	31	28	Lions	25.21
16	16	Redskins	62.36	32	32	Rams	0.00

KA-POWER RANKINGS after Week 3

2008-09-27T12:18:00.001-05:00

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 3
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their fourth year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 18 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 18 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: WK3 = This week's ranking. WK2 = Last week's ranking. POW = KAPOW-ER centigrade score)

WK3	WK2	TEAM	POW	WK3	WK2	TEAM	POW
1	2	Titans	100.00	17	21	Vikings	60.33
2	8	Ravens	95.99	18	27	Dolphins	56.95
3	1	Giants	89.44	19	15	Saints	56.70
4	7	Eagles	86.35	20	25	Seahawks	56.63
5	5	Bills	80.76	21	14	Panthers	54.33
6	11	Cowboys	78.73	22t	6	Patriots	50.29
7	3	Cardinals	78.32	22t	24	Jaguars	50.29
8	4	Steelers	75.45	24	22	Raiders	48.97
9	16	Falcons	73.81	25	23	Colts	46.21
10	10	Broncos	73.27	26	18	Jets	43.17
11	13	Bucs	69.16	27	31	Bengals	33.89
12	9	Packers	68.92	28	26	Lions	27.89
13	17	Chargers	66.14	29	29	Texans	18.70
14t	12	Bears	65.95	30	28	Chiefs	17.73
14t	20	49ers	65.95	31	30	Browns	16.11
16	19	Redskins	60.99	32	32	Rams	0.00

KA-POWER RANKINGS after Week 2

2008-09-21T09:43:00.002-05:00

Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their fourth year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 18 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 18 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: WK2 = This week's ranking. WK1 = Last week's ranking. POW = KAPOW-ER centigrade score)

WK2	WK1	TEAM	POW	WK2	WK1	TEAM	POW
1	5	Giants	100.00	17	17	Chargers	55.92
2	9t	Titans	94.17	18	13	Jets	53.82
3	8	Cardinals	93.19	19	28	Redskins	53.38
4	6	Steelers	88.77	20	25	49ers	51.80
5	2	Bills	88.59	21	19	Vikings	48.78
6	9t	Patriots	82.97	22	30	Raiders	45.78
7	1	Eagles	80.76	23	26	Colts	42.83
8	9t	Ravens	80.65	24	22t	Jaguars	42.72
9	14	Packers	79.09	25	31	Seahawks	35.92
10	3	Broncos	76.53	26	21	Lions	33.39
11	4	Cowboys	74.57	27	20	Dolphins	26.51
12	7	Bears	72.37	28	22t	Chiefs	24.82
13	18	Bucs	70.48	29	27	Texans	24.60
14	16	Panthers	63.01	30	29	Browns	22.36
15	15	Saints	57.08	31	22t	Bengals	21.80
16	12	Falcons	56.00	32	32	Rams	0.00

You could say the Rams are perfect in the red zone in 2008: In two games, they have not run a single play inside the opponents' 20 yard line.

Have I gone to the dark side?

2008-09-17T07:55:00.003-05:00

I think I may have finally turned into That Guy. You know, That Fantasy Football Guy? In Monday night's game between the Eagles and the Cowboys, DeSean Jackson made one of the greatest bonehead plays of all time, spiking the ball (sort of) before he had even crossed the goal line. As it became clear that, because the Cowboys didn't jump on the ball once Jackson dropped it, the Eagles would retain possession at the 1 yard line, my reaction was not so much "What a goddam look-at-me idiot!" as it was "Oooooh! This could mean another TD for Brian Westbrook."

Because I have Brian Westbrook on my fantasy team. 22 points on Monday!

KA-POWER RANKINGS after Week 1

2008-09-13T14:14:00.002-05:00

Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their fourth year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 18 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 18 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: WK1 = This week's ranking. '07 = final 2007 ranking. POW = KAPOW-ER centigrade score)

WK1	'07	TEAM	POW	WK1	'07	TEAM	POW
1	11	Eagles	100.00	17	5	Chargers	47.66
2	26	Bills	81.95	18	9	Bucs	44.68
3	21	Broncos	78.75	19	10	Vikings	43.19
4	6	Cowboys	77.74	20	30	Dolphins	39.66
5	13	Giants	72.92	21	22	Lions	36.16
6	4	Steelers	72.36	22t	17	Bengals	34.81
7	20	Bears	72.31	22t	7	Jaguars	34.81
8	16	Cardinals	66.27	22t	28	Chiefs	34.81
9t	1	Patriots	65.19	25	31	49ers	33.73
9t	25	Ravens	65.19	26	2	Colts	27.69
9t	15	Titans	65.19	27	18	Texans	27.64
12	29	Falcons	63.84	28	12	Redskins	27.08
13	24	Jets	60.34	29	14	Browns	22.26
14	3	Packers	56.81	30	27	Raiders	21.25
15	19	Saints	55.32	31	8	Seahawks	18.05
16	23	Panthers	52.34	32	32	Rams	0.00

Now, obviously, the rankings are going to be a little skewed with only one week's worth of data being fed into the formula. But you'll notice that only one team opens 2008 with the exact same ranking as at the end of 2007. You don't need a lot of data to determine the obvious.

Daunte's headlong dive into hell

2008-09-08T07:22:00.006-05:00

Somewhat buried amid the fuss of the NFL's opening weekend was the news that quarterback Daunte Culpepper was retiring from football. The fact that the news passed with so little comment was amazing in itself: In 2004, Culpepper put up one of the best quarterback seasons ever and would have been the runaway league MVP had Peyton Manning not gotten in the way. Less than four years ago, the man was surrounded by talk of the Hall of Fame. Today he's puttering around in his kitchen wondering what happened. What happened was that he was betrayed by his agent.

Culpepper had spent the past two seasons with two different teams, dogged primarily by the knee injury that ended his 2005 season and to a far lesser extent by "character questions" like those that chased him out of Minnesota. How silly it is, then, that it was the character issue rather than the knee that ultimately drove him into retirement. Well ... more accurately, he drove himself into retirement, because -- that idiot agent we just mentioned? His name is Daunte Culpepper.

A lawyer who represents himself is said to have a fool for a client. I'd say the same about most athletes who choose to act as their own agents. There are exceptions, of course. For years, Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi negotiated his own contracts, and he did very well for himself. Then Bruschi had a stroke, and he got himself an agent. The stroke didn't weaken his intellectual ability to negotiate, but it did weaken his bargaining position. Whereas once he was dealing from a position of strength, now he was damaged goods, to an extent. Moving forward, he needed someone who cuts deals for a living.

Culpepper took a somewhat different tack. Since tearing up his knee in 2005, he has acted as his own agent. In those three years, he has been cut by three teams, the Vikings, Dolphins and Raiders, and he left on bad terms with all of them.

Coming into the 2008 season, you would think that if Culpepper wanted to remain an NFL quarterback, he would get a good agent to plead his case to team front offices -- tell, them: Look, I know this guy's been hurt a lot, but the knee's fine. Give him a shot to make the roster. It's not like clubs weren't interested. Green Bay offered him $1 million to back up Aaron Rodgers, and Pittsburgh reportedly offered him the veteran minimum (about $750,000) to fill in for the injured Charlie Batch as Ben Roethlisberger's primary backup.

And Culpepper said no to both offers. Why? Because I ain't no backup! Culpepper, who has appeared in maybe a dozen games over the past three seasons, insisted that he is, was and shall forever be an NFL starting quarterback and that any suggestion that he should wear a ballcap on the sidelines was an insult to his manhood. Or something. In announcing his retirement, Culpepper said that he didn't want to quit football, but that he didn't really have a choice because no team was going to allow him to compete for a starting job. In that statement, he revealed a stunning ignorance of a very well-known reality about life in the NFL.

And that reality is this: Unless he's backing up Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, Brett Favre or maybe Carson Palmer, a quarterback on an NFL roster is already competing for the starting job. This league goes through quarterbacks like digital cameras go through batteries. One bad game, and the fans are calling for a change; two bad games, and the front office starts asking questions; three bad games, and the coaches are getting the hook ready. (Exception: Chicago, where each quarterback gets eight to 10 dismal games.) And those QBs who are immune to criticism aren't necessarily immune to injury. Two of the guys on the list I just gave didn't finish their games Sunday: Brady, who's out for the year, and Roethlisberger, who went to the bench with a sore shoulder. Playing in relief of Roethlisberger: Byron Leftwich, like Culpepper a former high-first-round draft pick who had lost his job as a starter and bounced around the league. The difference is that Leftwich has an agent who told him that the best way to get a good QB job in the NFL is to be willing to take a not-so-good QB job in the NFL.

Hey, here's another former high-first-round pick who accepted a job as a backup: Trent Dilfer. He ended up winning a Super Bowl ring, staying in the league an extra decade, and securing himself a lucrative TV career. How about Kerry Collins? He had started in the Super Bowl, and yet was willing to ride the bench in Tennessee behind the apparently fragile-in-more-ways-than-one Vince Young. Guess who's starting for the Titans this weekend?

News of Culpepper's retirement was met with a chorus of "How is it that (Brodie Croyle, J.T. O'Sullivan, Kyle Orton, etc.) can land a roster spot, but a former Pro Bowler like Daunte Culpepper can't?" Ask Culpepper's agent. He didn't want to "compete" for the starting job somewhere; he wanted to come in and be handed the starting job. Based on what? All those touchdowns he threw to Randy Moss in 2004? His 3-7 record as a starter in Miami and Oakland? He didn't want a "spot" on the roster. A NFL roster has 53 spots, and Culpepper wouldn't accept 52 of them.

Maybe he really is done with football, and if so, I wish him well. But maybe his tune will change when he finds himself on the couch every Sunday afternoon. Maybe he'll get to the point where, if the phone rings with an offer to be a backup, he'll jump at the chance. (You don't think the Titans wouldn't be interested in seeing if he can run some of the plays drawn up for Young?) But just as likely, such a call will never come, because Culpepper has slid too far down the NFL totem pole, to the dreaded distinction of "distraction." Every NFL quarterback wants to be the starter. Hell, every NFL quarterback thinks he should be the starter. But those who aren't starters have to know to keep it to themselves, say the right things, and don't do anything to split the locker room. Coaches would rather lose games than lose their teams. Any team that signs Culpepper now comes preloaded with a quarterback controversy. So his phone won't ring.

There won't even be a call from his agent, just to say hi.

What we learned from opening night

2008-09-05T06:52:00.003-05:00

1. Eli Manning still throws a lot of interceptions. The guy isn't a bad quarterback. He's a good quarterback and will enjoy a long, successful career. But one solid stretch at the end of last season did not cure him of all his ills, chief among them being his unfortunate tendency, at least two or three times a game, to put a pass right between the numbers of a guy in a different-color shirt. He did it at least four times on opening night -- including once in the end zone -- but you're not going to hear about it because the Redskins caught only one of those passes. Great quarterbacks don't just rack up yards and TDs. They protect the ball.

2. Are they sure that's the West Coast offense? John Madden remarked on it at least once, and I've heard it elsewhere: The Redskins under Jim Zorn have installed a West Coast passing offense but are leaving intact the power running game from the second Joe Gibbs era. Wha ... ? This is the football equivalent of wearing brown shoes with a blue suit. There's nothing inherently wrong with either, but you don't put them together and call it anything but ugly. In the West Coast, short passes are essentially part of the running game. The passing and the rushing have to be integrated seamlessly. You can't separate them. Well, you can, but don't expect it to work. I'm not saying that this is the reason that the Redskins receivers kept running 8-yard curls on 3rd-and-10, but ... well, maybe I am saying that.

3. The Redskins have Joe Gibbs' running game, Jim Zorn's passing game and Herm Edwards' clock management. Because of their atrocious use of the clock and non-use of timeouts, Washington nearly ran out of time at the end of the first half, just when they were putting together their first sustained drive of the game. Then they did run out of time in the fourth quarter, when, with less than 4 minutes left and needing two scores, they ran more than a minute off the clock with two plays that gained a total of 6 yards. In the waning moments, in their own end of the field, they were still calling designed runs up the middle and 6-yard hitch passes to the numbers.

4. South Carolina's quarterback is named "Smelley." I had to watch something after the game, and I sure as hell wasn't going to hang around on NBC and watch a bunch of politicians sniff their own fumes.

Radar O'Really?

2008-08-13T17:06:00.004-05:00

What kind of writing ability does it take to become president of the Pro Football Writers of America? The ability to cram as many inaccuracies as possible into one stupid "clever" lede. In a story about how the Washington Redskins are, for once, attracting very little media attention in the preseason, FoxSports.com's Alex Marvez begins this way:

"The stealth bombers protecting the White House have company.
The Washington Redskins are flying under the radar, too."

Let's count the problems:

1. Stealth bombers do not protect the White House. There's no way stealth bombers even could protect the White House. Stealth bombers are strategic weapons designed to deliver payloads of heavy explosives or cruise missiles. Their job is to destroy things, not prevent them from being destroyed. If you called in a B-2 to stop a terrorist attack on the White House, you'd eliminate the terrorists, all right -- plus the White House and much of Northwest Washington. There are warplanes circling above D.C., but they're fighters, not bombers.

2. Stealth bombers do not fly "under the radar." The whole point of stealth technology is that you don't have to fly under the radar, because the aircraft doesn't have a recognizable radar signature.

3. The planes that do protect the White House don't fly under the radar, either. To get below the detection field for ground-based radar, you have to fly so close to the ground that you'll all but deafen the people down there (in which case, no one will need radar to find the planes). The fighters over D.C. do the opposite, circling at extremely high altitudes, ready when called for to, say, shoot down a aircraft that's deemed a threat.

4. Finally, pilots of planes protecting the White House would have neither the need nor the desire to evade ground-based radar -- because that radar is part of their defense network. Evading American radar is a wonderful way for an American pilot to get his ass shot down by an American missile battery.

You can accuse me of being too literal, I suppose, but you just know that Marvez thought this lede was really, really clever, and he never once stopped to think whether it made a lick of sense.

But there is one nice thing to say. At least, thank God, he didn't write "flying under the radar screen."

Screwing the Vikings with Favre

2008-08-01T08:46:00.004-05:00

It occurred to me this morning that the Packers may very well trade Brett Favre to a division rival. But don't be surprised if they wait until late in camp to do it. If Green Bay is going to battle Minnesota for control of the division, doesn't it make sense to disrupt the Vikings' preparations with a monthlong is-Favre-coming-to-Mankato circus? Then, once the Vikings have installed an offense with Tarvaris Jackson in the middle, and the team has rallied around Jackson, the Packers throw Favre into the mix? A situation like that could be absolute poison.

Super Bowl XLII Play-by-Playlooza

2008-02-17T23:42:00.000-06:00

It's back! Down and Distance presents it's third annual look at every play, every ad, every inane comment by the announcers in the NFL's biggest game. It's the Super Bowl XLII Play-by-Playlooza!

UPDATED THROUGH MOST OF FIRST QUARTER

The scene: University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, Arizona. Your hosts: Fox Sports' Joe Buck and Troy Aikman. Chris Myers and Pam Oliver are roaming the sidelines. Maricopa County sheriff's deputies have been warned to be on the lookout for Joe Namath and told to Tase first, ask questions later. (In the case of Mercury Morris, lethal force has been authorized.) Umpteen Sarah Connor Chronicles promos are loaded into the Betamax. America's greatest advertising minds have cued up an evening of guy-gets-kicked/bitten/shot-in-the-balls fun. Let's get it on!

PREGAME CEREMONIES
If you're like me, you try not to even turn on your television on Super Bowl Sunday until the game is actually about to start, because every year, whichever network has the game pushes the pregame envelope even farther back. For all I know, this year Fox just went straight from its Sunday morning right-wing politics program into the pregame show. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what they did, because early in the afternoon, I happened to flip to Fox, and there was crazy person Shepard Smith leering out at me with his creepy child-molester eyes under the rubric of some pre-pre-pre-pregame show. That guy weirds me the fuck out. I accidentally flipped back about two hours later, and someone was interviewing the ancient Patriots linebackers. Tedy Bruschi was playing the saxophone for some fucking reason, and Junior Seau was wearing a Superfly hat. Once I saw that, I resolved not to go back until the game was about to start.

So I check back at 5 p.m. (Central), when, according to my TiVo, the game coverage is to begin. No more pregame, right? Well, Joe Buck informs me that I've arrived at the "Built Ford Tough Pre-Kick Show." Buck and Aikman talk about the Patriots and the Giants, and I'm sure it's all very compelling, just like I'm sure that not a word of it hasn't already been said eight different ways in the six hours of pregame. So we'll just fast-forward through all of it.

The teams come out on the field -- first the Giants, then the Patriots. Remember back when they used to do individual introductions at the Super Bowl? One team's offensive unit would be introduced ("... and playing quarterback, number 14, Craig Morton!"), as would the other team's defense. They don't do that anymore, and you have the New England Patriots to blame for it. Before Super Bowl XXXVI, the St. Louis Rams received the traditional intorduction, but the Patriots insisted that they would only take the field as a team. So the Rams came off looking like prima-donna camera hogs who put self before team, even though they were just following tradition, while the Patriots came off looking like gritty, devil-may-care underdogs.

And this is as good a time as any to raise the specter of Super Bowl XXXVI. Let's recap that game, briefly. The Rams, who had already won a Super Bowl, came into the game with a record-setting offense that may have been the best ever. Led by the league MVP at quarterback, they were two-touchdown favorites. The Patriots, meanwhile, were seen as a team of overachievers who had played way over their heads and were sure to get ground to pieces in the Super Bowl. But with a two-pronged strategy of slowing down the game while on offense and ruthless brutality on defense, the Patriots were able to pull off the upset.

Go ahead and print out that paragraph, OK? Now, let's compare and contrast the entrances:

The Giants take the field to Kanye West's Stronger. Telling lyric: "That that [sic] don't kill me can only make me stronger."
The Patriots take the field to Ozzy Osbourne's Crazy Train. Telling lyric: "Going off the rails on a crzy train."
A team's choice of song for the introductions is always quite revealing. Two years ago the Seattle Seahawks came out to Bittersweet Symphony. A lot of unfair things happened to them that day, and after taking the field with such a dumbass soundtrack, they deserved every goddam one of them. I don't know who on the Patriots picked Crazy Train, but I'm willing to point the finger at Tom Brady. I mean, this guy has said -- on the record -- that he listens to Sunday Bloody Sunday before games because it's a good football song. Of course it is. Just ask anyone in Belfast.

The Giants come out skipping and strutting and shimmying and waving their arms and trying to get the crowd fired up.
The Patriots trot out onto the field two-by-two, all steely determination and no fun, looking for all the world like the 501st Legion entering the Jedi Temple at the beginning of the Great Purge. (And don't pretend like you don't fucking know what I'm talking about, either. Super Bowl XLII, Episode III ... it's all of a piece.)
I can't help but think of that famous bit of NFL Films footage from the Super Bowl XXXVI pregame. As the Patriots were waiting to take the field (as a team, of course), Tom Brady was going absolutely apeshit in the tunnel, bouncing up and down and yammering non-stop at Drew Bledsoe, who, if he hadn't made up his mind that this kid was his best shot at a ring, might well have killed him just to shut him up. Contrast that with the Patriots' imperial march on 2008, and you just get a bad feeling about all of this.

NATIONAL ANTHEM
Jordin Sparks comes out to sing the Star-Spangled Banner, and it's a happy coincidence for Fox that she's actually from Glendale, Arizona, and that her dad played for the New York Giants, because that way it looks like she has a real reason for doing this, beyond pimping Season 7 of American Idol. (Don't believe me? Remember who sang the national anthem at last season's NFC Championship Game in Chicago -- the final Fox football broadcast of the year? That's right: Elliott Yamin.) I have no doubt that if Blake Lewis had won last year's Idol, he'd have been here, instead, beat-boxing the shit out of the national anthem. And maybe Fox would have engineered it so that the Seahawks would be representing the NFC.

Before the game, you could place a prop bet in Vegas on how long it would take Jordin to sing the whole thing. The over/under was 1 minute 42 seconds. By my stopwatch, she went 1:55 from "O, say" to "home of the brave." Which is fine by me. America fucking rules, so it's worth nearly two full minutes of love. But what doesn't rule is her disgraceful performance. How many times do these clowns have to be told that the national anthem is not up for reinterpretation? We all know the melody, and we all expect you to follow it. We know where there should be pauses and where there shouldn't. The damn thing is hard enough to sing without some self-indulgent TV contest winner putting five extra syllables into the word "streaming." But there she goes. And the crowd roars its approval, because she's a hometown girl, and she's America's sweetheart and whatever. But it was a travesty, and she's a miserable beast so full of her own bullshit that the whites of her eyes are poopy brown.

Harsh? Sorry, but I refer you to the allegations cropping up all over the Internets that Jordin in fact lip-synched her entire performance -- allegations that have yet to appear in the mainstream media, which tells us one of two things: either they're true, and the MSM is trying to cover it up, or they're not true. Well, I just reviewed the tape, and I think they're true. Her voice and her face were a fraction of a second out of joint -- the inflection of her voice would change, then her face would change to match it -- and there's no way it was a simple technical problem.

A lot of people seem to get bent out of shape over performers who lip-synch. Me, I don't care. When you go to see Madonna in concert (and I'm sure all of you who understood the reference to the 501st Legion are also big, BIG Madonna fans), you go to see Madonna -- see her run around and dance and vogue and do all that high-energy stuff. Well, she can't do all of that and still sing, too. She'd be huffing and puffing, and she'd sound terrible. So she lip-synchs. The audience gets to hear the song as they know it and love it, and Madonna gets to entertain without sounding like your overweight uncle trying to take a shit. It's a victimless crime.

Look at the biggest lip-synch scandal of all: Milli Vanilli. They won the Grammy Award for best new artist of 1990. Then, when it came out that the Predator-looking dudes on the album cover and in all the music videos didn't actually sing the awful songs on the record, that they were just lip-synching, they were stripped of the Grammy. What has long fascinated me about the Milli Vanilli case is that the Grammy people -- who always, always claim that their awards are only about the music, not about looks or record sales or videos or anything else -- didn't just track down the people who did sing on the album and give the award to them. If the music was so good it was worth a Grammy, shouldn't it be irrelevant who sang it?

So, my policy is simple: Stars can lip-synch in all but one circumstance. Unfortunately for Jordin Sparks, that one circumstance is when they sing the national anthem of the United States of America. You JUST DO NOT lip-synch the national anthem. Afraid you might not sound your very best? Too goddam bad, sugar. When you are there to sing the Star-Spangled Banner, it's not about you. It's about America. We've all heard well-meaning performers butcher the song. We clap anyway, because it's not the performer we're clapping for. It's America. You know, America? The Bill of Rights? Soldiers, sailors and Marines? Amber waves of grain? United Flight 93? Yeah, that stuff. I think that if some kid your age can pull together the courage to walk the dark streets of Baghdad carrying only a rifle and a knapsack, the least you can do is go out there and sing one fucking song in his honor without a net. Can you do that for me, pumpkin?

And, oh yeah, your dad wasn't even that good.

COIN TOSS
Last year's Super Bowl was in Miami, so the coin toss was handled by the best and most famous Miami Dolphin of all time, Dan Marino. (And by that, of course, I do mean "Fuck you, 1972 Dolphins.") This year's game is in Arizona Cardinals territory, so the coin toss will be handled, appropriately enough, by the late San Francisco 49ers legend Bill Walsh. More specifically, by his two grown kids and by what the P.A. announcer refers to as "three of his finest leaders: Ronnie Lott, Jerry Rice and Steve Young." Which would be nice if it were true, but Young never served as anything but a backup to Joe Montana under Walsh. It wasn't until after George Seifert had replaced Walsh (in 1989) and Montana had been shipped to Kansas City (in 1992) that Young was finally considered a team leader.

But the NFL kindly asks that I not fuck with their narrative. Besides, the focal point here is Rice, who didn't wear a tie when he was introduced during the roll call of Super Bowl MVPs before Super Bowl XL, and doesn't do so again here. Instead, he appears to be wearing one of his Super Bowl rings on a chain around his neck. It's kind of high school, really. But it's becoming obvious that Jerry Rice doesn't do ties.

It's also becoming obvious that Jerry Rice, still the owner of nearly every major NFL receiving record, is no longer famous for his exploits on the football field. As he appeared on the screen, my wife asked, "Who is that?" And I said, "Jerry Rice." And she said, "The guy from Dancing With the Stars?" Now, usually, when someone tells a story like this, the point is to show how clueless the wife is. But that's not really the case here. Rice made a decision to introduce himself to a new generation of Americans as a dancing, prancing fool. He made his bed; now he has to lie in it in his shiny tap shoes.

So the team captains gather at midfield: Mike Vrabel, Tedy Bruschi, Junior Seau, Kevin Faulk and Ty Warren for the Patriots; and Eli Manning, Shaun O'Hara, Antonio Pierce and Jeff Feagles for the Giants. Michael Strahan, who has his helmet on but apparently isn't a member of the coin-toss party, comes out later and wanders around the periphery as referee Mike Carey (Yesssss! If it can't be Ed Hochuli, let it be Carey!) shows the coin (Lombardi Trophy = heads; Roman numerals = tails) and explains the ground rules. Ronnie Lott gets to do the actual flipping, and in a nice touch, Feagles, in his 20th season but playing his first Super Bowl, gets to call it: tails. Tails it is. Giants will get the ball. And we're ready for tackle football!

FIRST QUARTER

SPOT	TIME	NEW YORK GIANTS
KICKOFF	15:00	As the Patriots' Stephen Gostkowski tees up the ball, Joe Buck speaks for a grateful nation when, after two weeks of chatter, and one day of Arlen Specter whoring it up for the cameras, he spits out: "Finally. Football." Gostkowski puts toe to ball, and 10,000 camera flashes go off. Photography tip: When you're in a stadium that's lit up brighter than noon in Death Valley, you don't need the flash. Dominik Hixon fields the kick three yards deep in the end zone and brings it out to the 23. For once, thankfully, no one mentions that Hixon was the guy Kevin Everett nearly killed himself on -- as if it's Hixon's fault.
1-10-NYG23	14:55	Eli Manning trots onto the field, and Buck asks "Mr. Aikman" to describe for us what goes through a quarterback's mind as he starts a Super Bowl for the first time. "For me, Joe, it was very emotional day, and you get out there on the field, and you're not really sure how your body's going to react." Which takes us back to that first play of Super Bowl XXVII, Cowboys vs. Bills, when Aikman took the snap, looked up, saw Cornelius Bennett closing in, froze, and then his bowels let loose so violently that it made the seat of his pants sag. Aikman says we may not get a good read on Manning "Because of the nature of his makeup," whatever that means. Manning keeps all his poop up inside and hands off to Brandon Jacobs. In a clumsy bit of foreshadowing, Patriots linebacker Mike Vrabel gets his hands on Jacobs in the backfield, but Jacobs escapes for a better-than-nothing 3-yard gain.
2-7-NYG26	14:14	While the Giants chew up nearly the entire play clock, a graphic introduces the Patriots D. Buck quotes Vrabel as saying that when the New England linebackers "play awful, we're 'old'; when we play well, we're 'experienced.' " Fair enough, ya old fart. Another handoff, this time for 2 yards. For the first of many times tonight, the Fox microphones pick up someone -- an official, I assume -- shouting "We're done!" to indicate that the play is dead.
3-5-NYG28	13:32	We get our first in-game look at Bill Belichick, who's wearing a ghastly red, short-sleeve hoodie. Despite a low snap and heavy pressure, Manning hangs in the pocket and hits Plaxico Burress, who has found an enormous hole in the New England zone (and Pats fans should hope to God that that was in fact a zone defense, because otherwise it would mean they have Randall Gay manned up on the only real deep threat the Giants have), for 14 yards.
1-10-NYG42	12:53	A 3-yard completion to Madison Hedgecock gets Buck going on the perpetual-motion circus that surrounds poor Manning. "They have picked apart the performance -- heck, we have -- the personality, the leadership ability, the body language of Eli Manning." And yet, considering how he's elevated his play in the postseason, "if there has been that imaginary corner, he seems to have turned it." Go ahead and parse that baby. If there really is an "imaginary corner," then it's not imaginary, is it? Aikman just shrugs and says that it's a good thing Manning didn't turn the ball over in any of the Giants' playoff games. Else, the Giants wouldn't be here. I honestly don't know that you can make that claim, but I don't have three Super Bowl rings. And I never shit my pants on the field like Aikman did. (This is how urban legends get started.)
2-7-NYG45	12:03	While all that talking was happening, the play clock ground all the way down to :00 before Brandon Jacobs picks up 1 yard. The four plays so far have taken 41, 42, 39 and 50 seconds. Someone's been watching those tapes of the Patriots slowing the tempo on the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI -- as well as the tapes of Super Bowl XXIV, when the Giants slowed down the game and beat the Bills. Who was the Giants' D-coordinator that year? The guy in the ghastly red, short-sleeved hoodie.
3-6-NYG46	11:17	Aikman: "There's no doubt that the New York Giants want to run the football." Really? Oh, no, I can't believe that, Troy. Another third down, another conversion, as Manning hits Steve Smith for 8. Also, another case of Randall Gay getting burned for that same third-down conversion. Rodney Harrison and Randall Gay are both hurt on the play -- probably on orders from the league, since we're four minutes into the game and haven't had a single commercial break.
AD!	AD!	The first ad of the game is also the first Anheuser-Busch ad of the game. The plot: Bud Light gives you the ability to breathe fire. Guy uses that ability to light candles, then has an allergic reaction to cat dander and starts sneezing fire. After a bunch of cheap-looking special effects and the same yowling-cat sound effect that we've all heard in a thousand other ads, we're told that the fire-breathing power has been removed from the beer. Dumb and unfunny.
AD!	AD!	An Audi ad plays off the scene in the Godfather in which Jack Woltz wakes up to find his horse's head in his bed. In this "spoof," a guy wakes up to find the grill of his luxury car in his bed. Takes far too long to develop, so that by the time we get to the payoff, we're just annoyed. If it were half as long, it would be twice as funny. And what's two times zero?
1-10-NE46	10:32	As we stumble back from our first commercial break, we see an aerial shot of what appears to be a very pleasant midwinter day in Phoenix. So naturally, the roof of the stadium is closed. Also, we get a replay of the hit that led to the injury timeout: Harrison lowered his helmet and intended to spear Smith, but Gay's arm got in the way. In a nice bit of camera work, we can see that Gay is screaming and gripping his arm before he even hits the ground. Back to live action, Brandon Jacobs lowers his shoulder and blasts through the New England line for 7. Aikman: "Brandon Jacobs, for the last couple of weeks, and you virtually see it every single time he runs the football, going right through Merriweather." First of all, nobody's played any football at all for two weeks. And second, Brandon Merriweather played for Green Bay?
2-3-NE39	9:49	Ahmad Bradshaw gains 2. Pam Oliver reports on her conversation with Giants offensive coordinator Kevin Gilbride. If Eli is playing well, they're going to have him throw the ball! If he's not playing well, then they're going to run the ball more! Hey, don't let the cat out of the bag, there! Since we're talking about Eli, we get a shot of Peyton Manning up in a luxury box.
3-1-NE37	9:01	On 3rd-and-inches, Bradshaw smashes into the line, picks up the necessary inches and then, just for the hell of it, carries Ty Warren for eight more yards even though Warren has him in a headlock Aikman gets tongue-tied trying to say "tremendous elusiveness." I don't blame him. Bradshaw's a beast.
1-10-NE29	8:17	Manning tries to dump it off to Kevin Boss in the left flat, but throws it too low. Promo time! Coming up at halftime: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. More on them when the time comes.
2-10-NE29	8:11	Jacobs goes right, away from the safety blitz, for 3.
3-7-NE26	7:27	As the Giants line up for yet another third-and-fairly-long, we sneak a peek at Tom Brady sitting on his ass, without his helmet on, not tossing a ball around. It's not that he looks like he doesn't care, because obviously he does, but he doesn't look like a guy who feels any kind of urgency. I mean, I don't care that we're only halfway through the first quarter. It's the Super Bowl. It's urgent. On the field, Manning eludes the blitz, rolls right, and despite having Eugene Wilson wrapped around his ankles, hits Steve Smith for 9 yards and the first down.
1-10-NE17	6:41	Manning goes for Burress in the end zone, but Ellis Hobbs gets his paw in there and bats the ball away. It's a nice play, one that we'll forget later on. The most impressive thing about the play, however, is that Burress doesn't come up screaming for a flag, as he usually does whenever he goes into the end zone but doesn't come out with a touchdown. Belichick is pissed that Hobbs didn't intercept the ball.
2-10-NE17	6:35	Jacobs can't turn the corner. Loss of 1. Since we're down in the red zone, Aikman astutely points out that the Patriots, as dominant as they were for much of the season, weren't very good at red zone defense. If a team could get inside the 20, they usually got a touchdown. Which meant they'd lose 54-14 rather than 54-6, but you get his point.
3-11-NE18	5:47	Old-school Eli puts in a cameo appearance with a 4-yard completion over the middle on 3rd-and-11.
4-7-NE14	5:06	Lawrence Tynes, the NFC Championship Game goat-turned-goat-turned-hero, drills the 32-yard field goal. Three points seems pretty cruddy after 10 minutes and 17 plays, right? Foreshadowing! N.Y. Giants 3, New England 0

Maybe Tiki Barber was the problem

2008-01-23T15:07:00.001-06:00

Considering the way the New York Giants played over the last half of the 2007 season, I don't know that it's any great shock that they've wound up in the Super Bowl. But if back in September you had declared that this team, with Eli Manning playing quarterback, and with Tom Coughlin serving as head coach, and with running back Tiki Barber having retired, and with tight end Jeremy Shockey on injured reserve, would make the Super Bowl, someone would have called you crazy.

And that someone would probably have been Tiki Barber.

You remember Tiki, right? Played 10 years for the Giants? Fumbled the ball all the time? Finally stopped fumbling the ball all the time, but it didn't improve the team any? Him? Yeah, him.

As you may have known, Barber retired at the end of the 2006 season and took a job with NBC, where he offers the occasional opinion on Football Night in America in between discussing the Mommy Wars or the hot looks for fall or whatever it is he does with Matt and Meredith on the Today show. Eager to distinguish himself out of the gate this season, Barber seized on the Giants' 0-2 start to declare that Manning was a lousy leader and Coughlin was a lousy coach. From there, Barber continued to make headlines by ... um ...

You know, when you think about it, Barber didn't make any other headlines. Hired by NBC to bring viewers his wisdom and insight and big bald head and blah-blah-blah, Barber delivered two weeks of Giants locker room kiss-and-tell and 15 weeks of little else. He stabbed his former QB in the back, and he stabbed his former coach in the back. And then that QB and that coach and the rest of Barber's former teammates did something they'd never really done with him on the team: played spirited football in the postseason.

(Yes, the Giants went to the Super Bowl in 2000 while Barber was with the team. Perhaps even in spite of him. They won the NFC that year solely because someone had to. In the Super Bowl the Ravens exposed them for the frauds they were.)

So Tiki Barber -- a Hall of Fame player, according to Peter King, who lives in the New York area and works with Barber, so he's totally the best person to judge -- retires, and the Giants go on a better run than at any time since 1990. When is someone besides me going to theorize that maybe Tiki was the problem all along?

Think about it. The Giants players have gushed about how Manning has stepped up as a leader in the locker room this season. Perhaps that's because there is no longer a certain bald-headed self-appointed team leader poisoning that same locker room, running to whisper in the media's ear (Psst! Peter! C'mere!) that this kid can't get his shit together. The Giants have also noted that the notoriously rigid Coughlin has loosened up considerably this season. Perhaps that's because he felt he could loosen up, that he didn't have to hold the reins so tightly if there was no one there looking to grab them away.

It's just a theory, mind you.

The Giants are full of big personalities. Plaxico Burress can run his mouth. So can Antonio Pierce. And fucking Cooper Manning will win the Super Bowl before Michael Strahan will ever be content to let his play do all the talking. But those guys want to be happy more than they want to be right. (And in the NFL, being a champion = happy.) Tiki Barber? Somehow, he's just always seemed like a guy who had a greater desire to be right. Perhaps that's why he quit the game when he did, with the Giants seemingly ascendant. He wanted to go to TV, where he can always be "right." I mean, it's not like he's going to lose a battle of wits to Jerome Bettis. He would lose one to Cris Collinsworth, but Collinsworth is way out of his league in the insight department, and they both know it, so they don't get into it.

Back when he was still with the team, however, he was a leader. So when he pissed and moaned (or pissed and whispered) about the coach, the quarterback, the game plan, the hot looks for fall, whatever, other guys in the locker room took that cue. The Giants had a rep as a team out of control, where everybody was pulling in a different direction. Barber disappears, and what happens? Suddenly everyone's pulling in the same direction, and they win 12 out of 16, and they damn near punch out the 15-0 Patriots, and they bury both the Cowboys and the Packers on the road, and if I were a betting man I'd take the 12 points Vegas is offering and put a few hundred on the Giants in the Super Bowl.

Then there's Shockey. Barber may have lost credibility as a result of the Giants' run; Shockey might well lose money because of it. In a league full of look-at-me players, he's among the look-at-me-iest. And yet Manning is just fine with Kevin Boss in the lineup. Because it's the NFL and the contracts aren't guaranteed, it's inevitable that the Giants front office will ask whether they really need to be making Shockey the highest-paid tight end in the league when the team plays this well without him, especially when he comes with all the strutting and preening and tattoos and other bullshit.

But that's just riffing. Shockey has been out only two games. Insufficient data, as the scientists say. Barber has been gone all season. That's a statistically significant sample.

It was a fun litttle parity party

2008-01-21T01:38:00.000-06:00

The NFL is about to see a remarkable run come to an end. Looking at the last 14 seasons, we see that, regardless of who won the Super Bowl, there have been 14 different losing teams:

YEAR	S.B. LOSER
2006	Bears
2005	Seahawks
2004	Eagles
2003	Panthers
2002	Raiders
2001	Rams
2000	Giants
1999	Titans
1998	Falcons
1997	Packers
1996	Patriots
1995	Steelers
1994	Chargers
1993	Bills

Whether the Patriots lose or the Giants lose, we'll have our first repeat loser since the back-to-back-to-back-to-back Bills of the early 1990s. Further, it didn't matter who won Sunday's conference championship games. The Chargers and Packers are also on the list of losers.

Feel free to discuss what all this means.

Oh, grow up

2008-01-16T00:37:00.000-06:00

The NFC Championship Game gives us an interesting matchup at quarterback. For the Green Bay Packers, you have Brett Favre, who, despite the graying hair, the well-lined face and the litany of tragedies to befall his family, remains the closest thing the NFL has to Peter Pan. You know: The boy who never grew up. It's that childlike enthusiasm that gets guys like Peter King all moist in the panties.

The New York Giants, on the other hand, appear to have the Anti-Peter-Pan playing quarterback. From what I can tell by listening to the pigskin pundits, Eli Manning has been doing nothing but growing up since the third week of the season. After the divisional round victory over Dallas, we heard umpteen variations on the theme of "Eli Manning grew up today." Just like we heard it after the wildcard win in Tampa, and after the regular season finale against the Patriots.

Look, Eli Manning will be just fine. He'll never be as good a quarterback as his brother, but he's probably already a better quarterback than his dad. And I'm going to venture that he's a better quarterback than Philip Rivers. There are fans out there who think the Giants made a big mistake in trading Rivers for Manning on draft day 2004. All they need to do is look at how Rivers got into it with the fans in Indianapolis on Sunday. Think about it: If he can be driven to distraction by a bunch of Midwestern yahoos in the stands at the RCA Dome, do you really think the New York media would do anything but fucking eat him alive? Manning's been under the microscope since high school. You may not like how he deals with the spotlight -- essentially, by pretending he doesn't care -- but at least he deals with it.

Memory lane

2008-01-15T01:17:00.000-06:00

Monday night, the NFL Network was showing the original NBC broadcast of Super Bowl XXXII. The most remarkable thing about the game? It wasn't seeing Brett Favre as a 28-year-old kid. Or seeing John Elway still in uniform. Or seeing Mike Holmgren about 40 pounds lighter. Or listening to the bizarre three-man broadcast team of Dick Enberg, Phil Simms and Paul Maguire. Or even seeing the game being played in daylight. (It was in San Diego, so it was still light out at kickoff.)

No, the most remarkable thing was seeing referee Ed Hochuli, with hair, and with biceps and pecs about half the size they are today.

Just weird.

Time for Dungy to go

2008-01-13T15:26:00.000-06:00

Do I have to say it again?
Yes, PCS, I'm afraid you're going to have to say it again.

Because I really don't want to have to say it again.
Oh, come on, man, just say it.

Fine.

No coach in the National Football League mismanages the end of the regular season as consistently and as predictably as Tony Dungy. It cost him dearly year after year in Tampa. It cost him dearly year after year in Indianapolis up through 2005. And it cost him dearly again this year.

The most important event in Sunday's Chargers-Colts game was Marvin Harrison's fumble deep in San Diego territory. At that point, the Colts were up 7-0, and another touchdown would have put them in position to dictate the pace of the rest of the game. Then Harrison fumbled. Replays showed clearly that no Charger actually laid a hand or helmet on either the ball or the arm in which Harrison was carrying it. So who slapped the ball out?

Dungy, you could say.

Harrison hadn't played in a real game in two and a half months, having injured a knee against the Broncos in the fourth game of the year. By Week 16 of the regular season, however, he was said to be healthy enough to play, even though he wasn't the mythical "100%." But rather than give Harrison some action either in that game or in the season finale against the Titans, Dungy elected to hold him out to allow him to "heal fully." When questioned about whether his No. 1 receiver would be able to play effectively after such a long layoff, Dungy said he didn't think Harrison's timing would be a problem at all.

Well, it's not about timing, dummy. You can work on timing in practice. It's about contact, and Harrison hadn't had any contact in 11 weeks. Then, Sunday, the very first time an opposing player touched him (lightly), he dropped the ball.

The rest of the Colts were ugly in stretches, too. Both of Peyton Manning's interceptions came on passes that bounced off his receivers' hands. Why would a team that's as dependent on precision as the Colts play as sloppily and as unevenly as they did Sunday? Perhaps because they hadn't played a game to win in three weeks, since they wrapped up a first-round bye. Funny enough, that's exactly what happened in 2005. And yet, in 2006, when they had no choice but to play hard every week of the regular season, they came into the playoffs on a hot streak and took it all the way to the Super Bowl.

The better the Colts play in the regular season, the worse they perform in the playoffs -- because the better they play in the regular season, the earlier Dungy decides to start mailing it in. Sometimes -- or usually, if you're the Colts -- when you switch off the engine, you can't get it started again. For years, people have laid the Colts' postseason collapses on Manning. But it's not on him to get the entire team up for the game. That's the coach's job, and once again Dungy failed.

Heading into the offseason, there's uncertainty about whether Dungy will return. He says he hasn't even thought about it, which, if true, is a fairly selfish thing to do. Because every day he delays a decision is another day the Colts will fall behind everybody else in finding a successor, should he choose to leave. Nevertheless, Colts fans, if they ever want another shot at a Super Bowl, should hope he moves on.

A perspective on perfection

2008-01-04T10:51:00.001-06:00

As everyone knows by now, the New England Patriots are the first team to go 16-0 in the regular season, but just what does that mean, form a historical standpoint? I produce an English-language news publication for international markets, and just for fun, I whipped up this graphic for this week's edition. I think it helps put the Patriots' accomplishment into perspective. Do you know how hard it is to go 16-0? Hell, do you know how hard it is to go 15-0?

Readers of Down and Distance are the only people in America who get to see this graphic. Lucky you.

Victory

2008-01-03T21:15:00.000-06:00

It's official: Down and Distance has finished the season tied for first place in the 2007 Sportsfrog NFL Picks contest Thanks to everyone who ... you know what? Thanks for nothing, actually. You didn't have any thing to do with this. This is all me Me ME ME ME ME. So suck it!

Week 17: High tide

2008-01-01T11:00:00.000-06:00

The final week of the season is notoriously hard to pick, and yet Down and Distance went 12-4 to finish the season at 171-85, or 66.8%, which is a hair above the two-thirds line that delineates your ass from a hole in the ground. I'll let the boys at Sports Frog figure out where I finished in the final standings, but it may be pretty high. For those out there pulling for D and D, I thank you.

The bizarre nature of every season's Week 17 is best summed up not game-by-game, but rather archetype-by-archetype. There are only a few categories, but every team inevitably fits into one of them.

THE TEAM THAT MUST WIN, AND DOES
Played this year by: Washington, Tennessee, Cleveland
It's not the Browns' fault that their victory was made irrelevant by day's end.

THE TEAM THAT CAN'T TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS
Played this year by: Minnesota, New Orleans
Even if they'd won, the Vikings and Saints still would have been left outside. Tough titty. When you need to win to get in, you win. But the Vikings couldn't do it last week, either.

THE TEAM WITH "NOTHING" TO PLAY FOR, EXCEPT THE JOY OF FUCKING UP SOMEONE ELSE'S PROGRAM
Played this year by: Chicago, Denver
They may have had crappy years, but neither the Bears nor the Broncos are the kind of team to roll over and let someone else come in and claim a playoff spot on their home field. That's the sort of thing the Vikings do.

THE TEAM THAT'S ALREADY IN THE PLAYOFFS, BUT WANTS TO GO OFF ON A GOOD NOTE BY KICKING THE SHIT OUT OF A DIVISIONAL PUNK
Played this year by: Green Bay, San Diego

THE TEAM THAT'S ALREADY IN THE PLAYOFFS, AND SHOULD REST ITS STARTERS
Played this year by: Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Dallas
Note that I said these teams should rest the starters. Dallas didn't, and the Cowboys now look even more toothless than they did after losing to the Eagles. Jacksonville didn't need to beat Houston. The Colts didn't need to beat Tennessee, but they could have, if they'd even tried. Considering all the injuries Indy has battled through this year, I guess I'm OK with Manning and the rest taking the second half off, even though it'll probably cost them their shot at repeating. What I'm not OK with (nor was Madden) is the decision to pack it in when down by less than a touchdown with three minutes left. Even if you play your reserves, you still have to try to win the damn game. The only exception is when losing would get you a better playoff opponent (see New England throwing the last game of 2005 so they could get the Jaguars rather than the Steelers). That wasn't the case here. For shame.

THE TEAM THAT'S ALREADY IN THE PLAYOFFS, AND WOULD LIKE TO REST ITS STARTERS, BUT JUST CAN'T FOR REASONS LARGER THAN ITSELF
Played this year by: New England, N.Y. Giants
To the chagrin of the 1972 Dolphins, the Patriots figured they'd made it this far, they might as well go for 16-0. To the everlasting credit of the Giants, they also played this game to win. (Well, except for that period when they tried to sit on a 5-point lead. You do that against the Patriots for even a second, and they'll slit your throat.) Even if it costs the Giants down the road in terms of injuries, it was the right call.

THE TEAM THAT'S ALREADY IN THE PLAYOFFS, BUT REALLY SHOULDN'T REST ITS STARTERS BECAUSE THE LAST THING IT NEEDS IS ANOTHER FLACCID PERFORMANCE
Played this year by: Tampa Bay, Seattle, Pittsburgh

THE TEAM PLAYING ONLY FOR PRIDE
Played this year by: Cincinnati, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Atlanta(!), Houston, N.Y. Jets, Carolina, Arizona

THE TEAM THAT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE PRIDE LEFT TO PLAY FOR
Played this year by: San Francisco, St. Louis, Miami, Baltimore, Oakland, Kansas City, Detroit
Well, OK, the Ravens did have Brian Billick's job to play for. Perhaps that's why the Steelers let them win. Didn't work.

CORRECT PICKS
New England 38, N.Y. Giants 35
Chicago 33, New Orleans 25
Cleveland 20, San Francisco 7
Green Bay 34, Detroit 13
Houston 42, Jacksonville 28
Philadelphia 17, Buffalo 9
San Diego 30, Oakland 17
N.Y. Jets 13, Kansas City 10
Washington 27, Dallas 6
Arizona 48, St. Louis 19
Denver 22, Minnesota 19 (OT)
Tennessee 16, Indianapolis 10

INCORRECT PICKS
Cincinnati 38, Miami 25
Atlanta 44, Seattle 41
Carolina 31, Tampa Bay 23
Baltimore 27, Pittsburgh 21

PICKS
THIS WEEK: 12-4
SEASON: 171-85 (66.8%)
(2006 through Week 17: 154-102, 60.2%)
(2005 through Week 17: 172-84, 67.2%)

FINAL KA-POWER RANKINGS FOR 2007
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS have wrapped up their third year with -- duh -- New England in the top spot. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: FIN = final ranking. W16 = last week's ranking. POW = KAPOW-ER centigrade score. P? = team in playoffs?)

FIN	W16	TEAM	PWR	REC.	P?
1	1	Patriots	100.00	16-0	Y
2	2	Colts	83.57	13-3	Y
3	6	Packers	72.89	13-3	Y
4	3	Steelers	71.09	10-6	Y
5	7	Chargers	70.54	11-5	Y
6	4	Cowboys	67.73	13-3	Y
7	5	Jaguars	64.96	11-5	Y
8	8	Seahawks	64.88	10-6	Y
9	9	Bucs	57.85	9-7	Y
10	10	Vikings	53.61	8-8
11	11	Eagles	49.82	9-9
12	16	Redskins	46.68	9-7	Y
13	12	Giants	45.56	10-6	Y
14	13	Browns	44.77	10-6
15	15	Titans	41.70	10-6	Y
16	19	Cardinals	41.63	8-8
17	17	Bengals	39.55	7-9
18	18	Texans	39.54	8-8
19	14	Saints	38.71	7-9
20	20	Bears	37.28	7-9
21	22	Broncos	20.75	7-9
22	21	Lions	20.43	7-9
23	24	Panthers	19.42	7-9
24	23	Jets	17.90	4-12
25	27	Ravens	13.71	5-11
26	26	Bills	13.23	7-9
27	25	Raiders	13.14	4-12
28	28	Chiefs	9.00	4-12
29	32	Falcons	3.15	4-12
30	31	Dolphins	1.33	1-15
31	30	49ers	0.15	5-11
32	29	Rams	0.00	3-13

Teams eliminated this week* from Super Bowl championship consideration (what?): Steelers, Jaguars. Teams previously eliminated: Dolphins, Rams, Jets, Falcons, Bengals, Texans, Raiders, Bears, Vikings, 49ers, Broncos, Cardinals, Eagles, Ravens, Chiefs, Panthers, Saints, Bills, Chargers, Redskins, Titans, Lions, Browns, Bucs, Giants, Seahawks.
*The Steelers had posted five losses, but had proved they can win the Super Bowl with an 11-5 record. This week they lost No. 6.
Teams remaining in Super Bowl championship consideration: Patriots, Colts, Cowboys, Packers.

Rotten fish

2008-01-01T07:07:00.001-06:00

Wow. Just when it appeared that the 1972 Miami Dolphins were not, in fact, a bunch of pathetic old men clinging desperately to their fading moment in the sun, they go and reassert their sorry selves. For a team that won every game they played, they have proved themselves over and over during the ensuing 35 years to be an astounding pack of losers.

Exhibit A: In mid-December, as the New England Patriots were 14-0 and closing in on a perfect season of their own, Larry Csonka was taking part in ceremonies in Miami honoring the '72 Dolphins. (And it seems like they have those ceremonies about every six weeks down there. What else are they going to celebrate?) Csonka, the power runner on the early-'70s Dolphins teams before he chased the big money to the World Football League, commented that Patriots coach Bill Belichick was some kind of fool for playing his starters and playing to win even after New England had the No. 1 playoff seed locked up.

"He isn’t pulling his people out," Csonka said of Belichick. "He’s got a Super Bowl to worry about. Why would you even play Brady the next two games? Why would you even take a chance?" Well, Larry, perhaps because he has already won three Super Bowls, which is one more than ... um ... oh, I don't know ... you. (Hell, count the game plans he devised for Bill Parcells, and he's won five.)

This quote may well be the saddest I've seen all year. Every time any NFL team gets to 10-0, the '72 Dolphins -- led by Csonka's old backfield mate, former drug trafficker Mercury Morris -- take to the interview circuit to declare that all those wins don't mean nothin' if you don't win 'em all. As Morris famously declared, "Don't call me when you get to my neighborhood; call me when you get to my street." So here the Patriots were, driving up the Dolphins' street, and Csonka comes running out of the house in his bra and panties and his hair up and curlers, and he runs toward the Patriots' car waving his arms and screaming for them to turn around, turn around, for God's sake TURN AROUND.

(Despite what he says, I somehow suspect that Csonka had no problem with New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin's decision to play his starters for the whole game against the 15-0 Patriots, even though the Giants also had their playoff spot locked in. Perhaps Coughlin understood that when you have a shot at greatness, you take it. Greatness? Yes. Mention the "Miami Dolphins" and "undefeated season" to a football fan my age, and you're just as likely to hear 1985 mentioned as 1972. More likely, even.)

Exhibit B: Now that the Patriots have finished the regular season 16-0, Morris' teammates are crawling out of the woodwork to point out that New England hasn't in fact done anything yet. Guard Bob Kuechenberg probably sums up the entire team's feelings best when he pipes up from his rocker: "They’ve done a heck of a job thus far. But now the exhibition season is over and the real season begins."

In every other year since 1972, the Dolphins have made themselves feel good -- and relevant -- with the knowledge that whatever team had happened to win the Super Bowl really hadn't accomplished much because they'd still been beaten in the regular season. Lombardi Trophies are nice, they always say, but somebody gets one of those every year. WE, on the other hand, went undefeated in the regular season, and that's the hardest thing you can do. (Especially when punks like Larry Csonka are pissing all over you for playing to win.) In other words, in most seasons the '72 Dolphins are quick to point out that it's not the Super Bowl title that made them special, it was the 14-0 regular season before that. This year, the Patriots have finished an even longer regular season undefeated, and ... well, look at that. The regular season doesn't matter anymore!

Every small town has a few guys who set high school football records about 30 years ago. Some of them move away and make something of themselves, and they continue to live their lives with the tape deck set on "play." And then, decades later, when some kid breaks a record, the local paper will track down the guy who just got passed, and he'll offer hearty congratulations. He might even have assumed that the record was broken a long time ago. Over the course of his life, if the topic of high school football came up in conversation, and if it seemed relevant, he would mention that he set a record and that it felt good at the time and that he's proud of it, but that it was a long time ago, and he's got a lot more to be proud of (then he pulls out the pictures of his kids).

But some of those old record breakers never leave town and never make something of themselves. Their tape deck goes stop-rewind-play, stop-rewind-play. You know the guy: He sits up at the top of the bleachers at every game, and he looks out at the current players -- kids who dare to be young and able while his body just gets older and saggier -- and he's filled with resentment. And when one of those kids starts getting close to one of his old records (or, better yet, to the last of his old records), he starts quietly rooting against him. Wishes for an injury, even. The kid gets closer, and he's not so quiet anymore. Nothing against the kid, he'll say, but it was harder in my day. And he'll go on to talk about the better equipment and the better field and the better conditioning, and it will be clear that he's doing just what the 1972 Dolphins are doing right now: Moving the goalposts every which direction, so that no matter what that kid does -- or the New England Patriots do -- the record will always stay intact, if only in his mind.

More from Kuechenberg: "If (the Patriots run the table in the playoffs, too), they will have earned it. But my heart is dead set against it. The ’72 team is uniquely immortal in American sports, and I don’t want us to lose that special place." Now, if he'd just stopped there, it'd be OK. Even being the asshole that I am, I do understand melancholy. We all want to feel special for the rest of our lives, and there's a certain sadness in seeing our achievements surpassed. But he goes on: "We will forever be immortal, and if they win every game in front of them, then they will join us among those ranks. They will have deserved, it and I will congratulate them. But something in my heart makes me feel that we accomplished something so special that it forever sets the standard of excellence in sports. Imperfect is mortal. Perfect is immortal.”

Well, no, God is immortal. You're just a fucking football team. But between the lines, it's obvious what he's saying: Even if the Patriots finish undefeated, even if they do it in a league that's 10 times tougher and 10 times more competitive, even if they do it by beating four playoff-caliber teams from their own conference (Colts, Chargers, Steelers, Browns) and three from the NFC (Cowboys, Redskins, Giants) while the 1972 Dolphins' best opponents were two 8-6 teams, even if they shatter every NFL record along the way, it won't matter -- because Miami went undefeated first. The Dolphins are saying they will always be Neil Armstrong, and the best the Patriots can aspire to be is Buzz Aldrin. What they don't get, though, is that while they were the first to walk on the moon, the Patriots are now walking on fucking Mars, and they're thinking maybe they could stroll on the surface of the sun and not even break a sweat.

So as the '72 Dolphins hunch over the toilet tonight (I hear it's taco night at the elder-care facility), they'd do well to consider the example of another Miami legend: Dan Marino. In 2004, when Peyton Manning was closing in on the record for touchdown passes in a season that Marino had held for 20 years, Marino admitted feeling wistful, admitted hoping that he could keep the record. But he didn't bitch about how the rules nowadays go out of their way to protect quarterbacks and prevent contact with receivers. He didn't insist that the record he set in 1984 was only meaningful because the Dolphins went to the Super Bowl that year. (They didn't win, though, so Mercury Morris wants you to know that the '84 Dolphins are pussies.) But he didn't do any of that. He sighed a little, shrugged his shoulders and congratulated Manning. A few years later, when Brett Favre started approaching all of Marino's career passing marks, Marino could have intimated that Favre was hanging around the league past his due date just to break his records. He could have -- and before this season, a lot of people would have thought he was right. (Just like Jim Brown was right about Franco Harris but didn't have any problem with Walter Payton breaking his records.) But he didn't. He sighed a little, shrugged his shoulders and congratulated Favre. Marino knows he's in the Hall of Fame. Knows that he was one of the greatest quarterbacks in history. Knows that he has carved out a successful second career as a broadcaster and that that's where his energy belongs.

What Marino understands, and what the '72 Dolphins have failed to grasp after more than three decades, is that while the record books may play a zero-sum game, the history books do not. The fact that someone broke your records does not mean that you never held them. Babe Ruth and Roger Maris are still with us, after all, just as Jack Nicklaus will be with us long after Tiger Woods wins his 20th major. The fact that someone matches or even surpasses your accomplishments does not diminish your accomplishments.

Next time he crosses paths with Mercury Morris down in Miami, Marino could try explaining that. Good luck.

Tie me up, tie me down

2007-12-28T10:29:00.000-06:00

One of the things I love about the countdown to the NFL playoffs is that it's pretty much the only time you ever hear about ties anymore. Go find the playoff scenarios in your newspaper -- or just wait for them to roll around evey five minutes on ESPN News -- and you'll see those ties, sticking out like a drunkard's shirttail: "Cleveland will claim a wildcard berth with a win and a Tennessee loss or tie"; "Pittsburgh can win the AFC North title with a win or a Cleveland loss or tie." Unfortunately, none of the playoff scenarios ever depend solely on a tie -- unfortunate, because that would be so awesome. Usually, when a team is on the playoff bubble (cue Jim Nantz: "They need a win and some help"), it has to go out on Sunday and win, then come back to the locker room and root for another team to fail. It'd be great if instead they had to root for them to play poorly, but not too poorly. I wish I could see it.

And yes, Poindexter, you are correct: There is in fact a theoretical scenario that would hinge on a tie. Say that, going into the final weekend of the regular season, the three teams in contention for the final wildcard spot have identical records. If Teams A and B play each other that weekend, and if Team C would lose a tiebreaker to either of the other teams, then Team C needs A and B to tie. But that's not going to happen.

It's not going to happen because teams don't tie anymore. The playoff scenarios in the newspaper might as well say something like, "Cleveland will claim a wildcard berth with a win and a car accident or shooting that kills a key Tennessee player." Harsh, yes, but far more plausible. Two NFL players have been killed by gunfire in the past year. That's twice the number of ties in the NFL in the past 10 years, and just one shy of the number of ties in the past 18.

Ties used to be commonplace, of course. Look through the standings from the 1950s and 1960s, and you find years in which half the teams in the league had played a tie game, some of them more than once. That's because they didn't play overtime in the regular season back then. Sudden death was used only in postseason games -- which there weren't many of -- and it wasn't even needed until 1958, when the Colts beat the Giants in overtime to win the league championship. (This is the game you always hear referred to as "the greatest game ever" and "the game that put pro football on the map in America." It wasn't, and it didn't. It's just the first game that a lot of baby boomers remember. Thus, it has to be the most important game ever, right? Surprise, surprise.)

Overtime didn't come into use during the regular season until 1974, and it had an immediate impact. Whereas the NFL schedule up to then was a veritable orgy of tie games, nearly all games thereafter ended with a winner and a loser. Tie games, by season, back to the first year of the NFL-AFL merger:

YEAR	TIES	YEAR	TIES	YEAR	TIES
2007	0	1994	0	1981	1
2006	0	1993	0	1980	1
2005	0	1992	0	1979	0
2004	0	1991	0	1978	1
2003	0	1990	0	1977	0
2002	1	1989	1	1976	1
2001	0	1988	1	1975	0
2000	0	1987	1	1974	1
1999	0	1986	2	^rule change^
1998	0	1985	0	1973	7
1997	2	1984	1	1972	5
1996	0	1983	1	1971	8
1995	0	1982	1	1970	9

What's really notable, however, is not the drastic reduction in ties starting in 1974. That's easily explained by the standardization of overtime. No, what sticks out is how ties all but disappeared when the calendar clicked over to 1990. From 1974 to 1989, there was an average of one tie a season (well, 0.81 ties a season, but we're rounding). Since 1990, the average is one tie every six seasons. And that's including the bizarre outlier year of 1997, when the league had its first tie in seven years, then had another tie just a week later. That second tie, by the way, is best remembered as the game in which Redskins quarterback Gus Frerotte celebrated the tying touchdown by head-butting a padded concrete wall and injuring his neck. Five years would pass before the next (and, to date, last) tie, a Falcons-Steelers matchup on a sloppy field that ended 34-34 as Plaxico Burress caught a last-second hail mary from Tommy Maddox (who had a club-record 474 passing yards) and came down with his legs in the end zone but the ball on the 1 yard line.

So what happened? I'm not positive, but I do have a theory, and it has to do with the single biggest rule change in the NFL over the past two decades. That change wasn't the introduction of instant replay. It wasn't the two-point conversion, the liberalization of passing rules or the crackdown on contact with receivers. Rather, it was the decision in 1994 to move kickoffs from the 35 yard line back to the 30 in order to reduce touchbacks and generate more returns and thus more "excitement" (by which, of course, we mean more "injuries" and more "illegal-block-in-the-back penalties"). The sharp pencils at Football Outsiders have documented the effect this change has had on sudden-death overtime. Before 1994, they found, the winner of the overtime coin toss actually won less than 50% of all sudden-death games. After 1994, however, that percentage went up to something like 60%. The real advantage in winning the coin toss in overtime, it turns out, is not that you get the ball first, but that you're more likely to start out way ahead in the battle for field position.

The sudden-death period lasts 15 minutes of clock time, which is a long time to play when you've already been on the field for three hours. As players tire, field position becomes all the more important. The closer you are to the end zone at the start of a drive, the less ground you have to cover to get into field-goal range. When one team starts out with a decided field-position edge, that just increases the chances that that team will win -- which means there won't be a tie.

The change to the kickoff spot may not be the sole reason behind the death of the tie -- after all, ties pretty much disappeared four years before the rules changed. I can think of other possible factors, especially the retirement of the generation of players and coaches who grew up in the game playing to ties. They believed that a tie (which counts as half a win in the standings) was at least better than a loss, and they were less averse to the idea of playing to preserve the tie rather than take risks for a win -- risks that might become turnovers. Many players and coaches today, however, think a tie is actually worse than a loss. They'd prefer the certainty and finality of the "L" to the kissing-your-sister aspect of the "T." Said Falcons QB Michael Vick after the 2002 game with the Steelers, a game his team damn near lost on the final play of overtime, "The tie's a downer."

Regardless of whether the kickoff rules were what put a stop to ties in the first place, those rules have been a key reason why ties have never made a comeback, why we've only seen three ties in the past 18 seasons. And why ties remain the funny little appendix of the NFL standings, a vestigial column of zeroes between "W-L" and "Pct," waiting for the next time two bumbling clubs collide in the dark.

Week 16: Just shy of perfection

2007-12-26T12:42:00.000-06:00

Lumbering toward the close of the season, Down and Distance posted a 10-6 record in the picks for Week 16. God knows what will happen in Week 17, as good teams start their scrubs and play like shit, while players on bad teams try to impress.

CORRECT PICKS
Pittsburgh 41, St. Louis 24
The NFL put eight games on the NFL Network to try to strong-arm cable systems into putting the network on their basic tier. Unfortunately, for every Packers-Cowboys game on the network's Thursday/Saturday schedule, there were three matchups on the level of Broncos-Texans and Bengals-49ers. Yes, those were actually among the games that the NFL assumed the public would be clamoring to see. Another was Steelers at Rams, in which Willie Parker broke his leg and is done for the year. Prime time, baby!

Dallas 20, Carolina 13
Another NFL Network special. In this one, Terrell Owens got injured. As awful as the network's annoncing team is -- you really, really have to hear Bryant Gumbel yourself to understand just how truly out of his depth he is -- at least Chris Collinsworth is willing to put the league on front street by asking the question: Are these guys getting hurt because they're playing on short weeks?

Indianapolis 38, Houston 15
And just like that, the Sage Rosenfels bandwagon tumbles off a mountain road. Was it because teams have finally assembled enough film on Rosenfels that they can game-plan him? Or because Rosenfels has become overconfident enough that he's trying to make throws that anyone not named Brady or Manning has no business trying to make? I'd say a little of both, though I'm not terribly sure what I just wrote. For Indianapolis fans, all signs point to the Colts resting their starters next week. Let's review, shall we? 2004: The Colts rest their starters in the final regular season game. They open the playoffs with a win over the Broncos, whom they played in that very game, then are pounded in New England. 2005: The Colts rest their starters for the final two regular season games, then, after another week off for the bye, come out flat and listless against the Steelers and are dispatched. 2006: The Colts, slumping at the end of the year and battling for the No. 3 seed, play to win the final game of the regular season. They do, and go on a defense-driven playoff run that culminates in a Super Bowl championship. Yeah, Coach Dungy, resting the starters seems like a brilliant fucking plan.

Jacksonville 49, Oakland 11
Toward the end, the refs threw four unsportsmanlike-conduct flags on the Raiders on the same play. Warren Sapp nearly beat up an official, and got his ass thrown out. Through it all, Oakland coach Lane Kiffin stood there like he was waiting for the grown-ups to come break it up. Hey, he's not the only coach who can't control his players when things get crazy on the field. But he's the only one I've seen this year who didn't even try. About the Jaguars: If I had to play Jacksonville in the first round of the playoffs (if I were, say, the Steelers), I would be very worried. And if I were Byron Leftwich, eroding away to nothing at the bottom of the toilet bowl in Atlanta, I'd would be very sad.

Detroit 25, Kansas City 22
The Lions are back on track! Or, rather, their opponents are. Isn't it funny how you can "get things turned around" more easily when you have a bad team on the schedule? If Detroit can win three games this weekend, Jon Kitna will prove himself clairvoyant.

Arizona 30, Atlanta 27 (OT)
For a team that was looking to move to the next level, the Cardinals' 2007 has to be disappointing. Had they lost to the Falcons, it would have been a thoroughgoing disaster. Insert "they'd-be-who-we-thought-they'd-be" joke here.

New England 28, Miami 7
If Tom Brady had set the touchdown-passing record in 2004 in only 15 games, and if Peyton Manning were pursuing that record this year, and if Manning finished his 15th game still one TD pass shy of the record, don't you think Patriots fans would be screaming bloody murder right about now? How about if Manning was still throwing deep on teams with a 40-point lead late in the fourth quarter? How about if Manning was ignoring wide-open receivers underneath and trying to force the ball to the guy in the end zone? How about if Manning threw two interceptions against a 1-14 team? Maybe some backup cornerback on the Giants could talk some trash about New England before their big game on Saturday, because without that kind of motivation, the Pats have looked pretty beatable the last several weeks.

Tennessee 10, N.Y. Jets 6
Ooh, sorry I missed it.

Seattle 27, Baltimore 6
Ditto.

San Diego 23, Denver 3
Dead horses flogged by Tony Kornheiser this week: Norv Turner, Norv Turner and Norv Turner. We get it. He's not a very good coach. Check. Why hasn't anyone brought this up before Week 16? In the first half of Monday night's game -- which was the last of the year -- Ron Jaworski gave a shout-out to the people who have helped him all season: his spotters, the stats crew, the guys at NFL Films. It was a classy move, an acknowledgement that broadcasters only look good because they have people behind the scenes whose job it is to make them look good. Of course Kornheiser couldn't let that pass. He started in in that shitty Lawng Island accent of his, "I want to thank my dentist ... " Fuck you, you worthless little shit. Believe it or not, humility is not just making fun of yourself on the air. Humility is knowing -- really knowing -- that you need the help of others to get through the day. That you can't do it all yourself. That you wouldn't want to do it all yourself. What Jaws was doing was being humble. What you were doing was being an asshole. Also being an asshole: Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers. Shouting insults at the opposing quarterback? A loser's tactic, through and through. Norv Turner really is the coach of this team, isn't he?

INCORRECT PICKS

N.Y. Giants 38, Buffalo 21
You don't think special teams are important? Buffalo is leading this game 14-0 at the beginning of the second quarter, and the Giants haven't been able to get a damn thing going. Then a bad, low snap turns into a fumble by the Bills' punter, and the Giants get the ball deep in Buffalo territory. Within five minutes, the game is tied, and the Giants outscore the Bills by 31 points the rest of the way. Keep the ball up, dammit.

Cincinnati 19, Cleveland 14
Either Derek Anderson was dejected over not making the Pro Bowl, or he was puffed up over all the people saying he should have made the Pro Bowl. Either way, he played like a steaming Brown pile, and Cleveland, who needed only a win over a treading-water Bengals team to make the playoffs for the first time in five years, now need a lot more help than they have a right to expect. They need the Titans to lose -- the Titans who will be playing the Jim Sorgi Experience.

Chicago 35, Green Bay 7
This game was like the Bears' Super Bowl ... because, you know, it's a lot more fun to play your "Super Bowls" at home in December than to take care of buisness during the regular season (or on draft day) and then play in the real thing in February. Maybe returning to Dallas for the NFC Championship Game will be good for the Packers. God knows they didn't look too good in the cold on Sunday.

Philadelphia 38, New Orleans 21
These teams both won their divisions last year, and they met in the playoffs. We are told that both have had disastrous years in 2007. And yet, if the Eagles beat the Bills and the Saints beat the Bears on Sunday -- both of which are entirely possible -- then both teams will finish 8-8. That's a couple bad bounces of the ball away from 10-6, which is where both finished last year, when they were "good." What does all this tell us? Just how putrid the NFC was last year.

San Francisco 21, Tampa Bay 19
what was I saying above about the Cardinals? Tampa Bay looks right on track for its biennial opening-round playoff loss.

Washington 32, Minnesota 21
In one of life's little ironies, I was totally wrong about the Vikings while at the same time being totally right about Tarvaris Jackson. He is not an NFL quarterback, and for the second straight week, he gave a game away on national TV. The difference was that this time, the Redskins were prepared to take it.

PICKS
THIS WEEK: 10-6
SEASON: 159-81 (66.25%)
(2006 through Week 16: 144-96, 60.0%)
(2005 through Week 16: 164-76, 68.3%)

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 16
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: W16 = This week's ranking. W15 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

W16	W15	TEAM	POW	W16	W15	TEAM	POW
1	1	Patriots	100.00	17	18	Bengals	36.63
2	2	Colts	83.10	18	15	Texans	36.36
3	4	Steelers	72.39	19	19	Cardinals	35.58
4	5	Cowboys	70.95	20	20	Bears	35.18
5	9	Jaguars	68.76	21	23	Lions	24.87
6	3	Packers	67.79	22	21	Broncos	20.34
7	6	Chargers	67.19	23	24	Jets	17.89
8	7	Seahawks	66.90	24	26	Panthers	16.81
9	8	Bucs	60.22	25	22	Raiders	16.25
10	10	Vikings	58.10	26	25	Bills	16.07
11	11	Eagles	47.41	27	27	Ravens	12.13
12	14	Giants	46.28	28	28	Chiefs	10.80
13	13	Browns	41.88	29	30	Rams	5.79
14	12	Saints	40.28	30	31	49ers	4.72
15	16	Titans	39.96	31	29	Dolphins	3.58
16	17	Redskins	38.33	32	32	Falcons	0.00

Teams eliminated this week* from Super Bowl championship consideration (what?): None. Teams previously eliminated: Dolphins, Rams, Jets, Falcons, Bengals, Texans, Raiders, Bears, Vikings, 49ers, Broncos, Cardinals, Eagles, Ravens, Chiefs, Panthers, Saints, Bills, Chargers, Redskins, Titans, Lions, Browns, Bucs, Giants, Seahawks.
*Though the Steelers have posted five losses, they've proved they can win the Super Bowl with an 11-5 record. So they get a pass for now.

Week 15: Special kneel on the 1 edition

2007-12-17T23:34:00.001-06:00

A lot of upsets pushed me to 9-7 this week. Of course, a lot of bad picks also contributed.

CORRECT PICKS

Houston 31, Denver 13
Texans management must have figured that because this game was on NFL Network and was therefore unavailable to vast swaths of the population, they could dress their players like a bunch of fuckin' retards. Despite wearing the gaudiest fruit suits east of the Pecos, the Texans thoroughly thumped the Broncos with a one-two punch of Mario Williams and Sage Rosenfels. Which has to be just about the weirdest sentence you'll read about football this year. Rosenfels started his third straight game, and he won his third straight game. With that in mind, here's a short list of teams that could have had Rosenfels as their starting quarterback, because he was on their roster for four years: the Miami Dolphins. Here's a slightly longer list of the quarterbacks the Dolphins have tried to go with since Rosenfels first got there in 2002: Brian Griese (now with Chicago), A.J. Feeley (now with Philadelphia), Daunte Culpepper (now with Oakland), Joey Harrington (now with Atlanta), and Trent Green (now with a little less ringing in his ears). Meanwhile, Williams recorded three sacks. You know how Tom Brady uses the fact that he was a sixth-round pick as motivation? How he always acts like he's got something to prove? Well, Williams may be the only person ever to use that fact that he was the No. 1 overall pick as motivation in the exact same way. Some guys get in serious trouble after being drafted ahead of where they "should" have gone. They think they're better than they really are, that they don't have anything to learn, and as a result their development gets stunted. Williams, however, has been getting pissed on ever since the Texans picked him. Now, as Reggie Bush and Vince Young are both regressing, he's stepping up. Good for him. It's just too bad he has to do it in a clown suit.

New England 20, N.Y. Jets 10
Watching this game, it certainly seems like there is some bad blood between these two ball clubs. I wonder if there's something to that. You know how for the past three or four years we've been told that "Tom Brady's favorite receiver is whoever's open"? We don't have to worry about that anymore, as Brady now consistently ignores the open man and tries to force it in to Randy Moss in triple coverage.

Tampa Bay 37, Atlanta 3
The most important thing to happen in this game was Micheal Spurlock's 90-yard kickoff return for a touchdown. Every single Buccaneers game of the past decade has included at least one mention of the fact that Tampa Bay had never scored a touchdown on a kickoff return. Whenever the Bucs won the coin toss, we would hear it before the game even began. (It was like how every time Chris Gardocki went back to punt, we had to hear that he'd never had one blocked.) Now we don't have to hear it ever again. And hey, considering everything the Falcons have been through this week, 3 points has to be some kind of moral victory, right?

Minnesota 20, Chicago 13
With even a mediocre quarterback, this game is a blowout for the Vikings. With Tarvaris Jackson, it's a nail-biter. In a game with truly putrid quarterbacking on both sides, at least the Bears could say they were down to their third-stringer. What can Brad Childress say? That the guy he traded up to get, even though no one else wanted him, made one bad decision after another? Michael Vick used to work his team into trouble because he thought his athleticism alone could get him out of any jam. Jackson appears to have the same thing going on, except without the athleticism. In the end, it's fitting that the 2007 Vikings' nationally televised coming-out party came against Chicago, because the Bears' immediate past closely tracks the Vikings' immediate future: A superb defense and a powerful running game ultimately undone by poor quarterbacking. A shame, really.

Green Bay 33, St. Louis 14
Here's what I couldn't help but notice about the NFL's division leaders after Sunday's games. The 12-1 Cowboys lost to the 5-8 Eagles. The 14-0 Patriots struggled against the 3-10 Jets, as did the 11-2 Colts against the 4-9 Jets. The 9-4 Seahawks and the 9-4 Steelers both lost. The Buccaneers played very well -- against a team whose QB is in prison and whose coach is in Arkansas (you decide which is worse) -- but last week, they shat the bed against the Texans. Meanwhile, the Packers thoroughly dismantled the 3-10 Rams. Someone needs to tell me what it means.

San Diego 51, Detroit 14
And the holocaust is complete. Another Lions season crumbles to ashes and acrimony, as LaDanian Tomlinson and Philip Rivers find something they can agree on: Kicking the shit out of Detroit is fun!

Tennessee 26, Kansas City 17
Too little, too late.

Indianapolis 21, Oakland 14
Cleveland 8, Buffalo 0

INCORRECT PICKS

Miami 22, Baltimore 16 (OT)
What a waste. People have no sense of history.

New Orleans 31, Arizona 24
Coming into the season, the Saints were such a sexy Super Bowl pick that it's easy to forget that last year they were a mere 10-6, just a hair above mediocrity. Yes, they were the No. 2 seed in the NFC, but that says far more about the sad state of the NFC than it does about the Saints themselves. This year, they're right on track for another 8-8 finish. Which means that, taking out the 3-13 Katrina season, the Saints' records over the past seven years are: 10-6, 7-9, 9-7, 8-8, 8-8, 10-6, 8-8. Same old, same old. And you wonder why I'd pick the Cardinals on the road.

San Francisco 20, Cincinnati 13
The highlight of this game was hearing both Deion Sanders and Marshall Faulk call out Bryant Gumbel, on the air, as an idiot who knows nothing about football. The occasion was the 49ers choosing to go for it on fourth down in the fourth quarter rather than attempt the field goal that would have put them up by two scores. Prime Time and Marshall both said they liked the call by San Francisco coach Mike Nolan. Basically, they said, the season is lost -- as is Nolan's job, probably -- so why not really challenge your team there? But Gumbel -- who referred to Tony Romo as "Rick Romo," who confused the Packers and Cowboys for most of three quarters, who misses four out of five down-and-distance calls -- was having none of it. He actually raised his voice at Faulk. That was when Sanders started making vicious fun of him.

Carolina 13, Seattle 10
Didn't see that coming.

Jacksonville 29, Pittsburgh 22
Or that, although I guess I should have.

Philadelphia 10, Dallas 6
Or that. And you know who's responsible for Philly's upset victory, don't you? Damn right: A.J. Feeley. As I watched the game, I thought: I really wish Fox would show us some more shots of Jessica Simpson sitting up in her luxury suite, showing how levelheaded she is by drooling out of both sides of her mouth, while her boyfriend takes a dump all over the Texas Stadium carpet. Jessica Simpson ... what a fucking fraud. With the exception of, say, Paris Hilton, is there any pop-culture figure who is more completely done than Jessica Simpson? She was so sure she was going to be the next Jennifer Lopez, some global multimedia star, instead of the zit-faced dumbass yokel she'll always be. And now the only way she has to stay relevant is to take Carrie Underwood's sloppy seconds. Shit, no wonder Tony Romo threw the game away, knowing he was going to have to go back to the hotel and stick it in that venus flytrap. OK, that was crude.

Washington 22, N.Y. Giants 10

PICKS
THIS WEEK: 9-7
SEASON: 149-75 (66.5%)
(2006 through Week 15: 136-88, 60.7%)
(2005 through Week 15: 155-69, 69.2%)

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 15
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: W15 = This week's ranking. W14 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

W15	W14	TEAM	POW	W15	W14	TEAM	POW
1	1	Patriots	100.00	17	19	Redskins	40.98
2	2	Colts	82.98	18	16	Bengals	38.02
3	4	Packers	78.09	19	18	Cardinals	37.23
4	3	Steelers	73.48	20	21	Bears	30.41
5	5	Cowboys	72.87	21	22	Broncos	27.04
6	9	Chargers	65.61	22	23	Raiders	26.63
7	6	Seahawks	65.01	23	20	Lions	25.75
8	10	Bucs	64.52	24	25	Jets	21.35
9	7	Jaguars	64.04	25	24	Bills	21.28
10	8	Vikings	60.35	26	27	Panthers	20.40
11	12	Eagles	46.59	27	26	Ravens	19.09
12	13	Saints	46.29	28	28	Chiefs	12.85
13	14	Browns	45.54	29	31	Dolphins	9.96
14	11	Giants	45.09	30	29	Rams	9.62
15	15	Texans	44.02	31	32	49ers	4.76
16	17	Titans	41.50	32	30	Falcons	0.00

Teams eliminated this week* from Super Bowl championship consideration (what?): Giants, Seahawks. Teams previously eliminated: Dolphins, Rams, Jets, Falcons, Bengals, Texans, Raiders, Bears, Vikings, 49ers, Broncos, Cardinals, Eagles, Ravens, Chiefs, Panthers, Saints, Bills, Chargers, Redskins, Titans, Lions, Browns, Bucs.
*Though the Steelers have posted five losses, they've proved they can win the Super Bowl with an 11-5 record. So they get a pass for now.

Week 14: Fried chicken and fries all around

2007-12-11T23:11:00.000-06:00

No game-by-game to offer this week. Christmas shopping is going down to the wire. My son officially transitioned from "baby" to "toddler" and yet, paradoxically, has started acting like a bigger baby than ever. Some douchebag hit my car in the Menards parking lot. And I'm scrambling to get work done before we travel to D.C. for Mrs. Down and Distance's graduation from the Ph.D. program at the University of Maryland. (So that's Dr. Down and Distance to you.) With all this hanging over my head, my only solace is a sparkling 13-3 finish in the picks league.

Th only two games I feel compelled to comment on are Colts-Ravens and Saints-Falcons. (I can't possibly have anything original to say about the wisdom of a certain Steelers backup safety wrapping his dick in bacon and sticking it through the bars of the lion's cage. Just not smart.)

Last week, after the Ravens gave the Patriots the toughest four quarters New England had seen all season, I asked why the hell couldn't Baltimore get it together like that every Sunday. We soon had our answer: Because rather than spend the week building on their strong showing, the Ravens chose to piss and moan and accuse the officials of being in the tank for the Pats and whip up a pointless controversy over whether one of those same officials (a black one) called a player (also black) "boy." No wonder they came out flat and totally overmatched. Bonus observation: As happens every time Indy played Baltimore, NBC ran a montage of footage from 1983, when the Colts skipped out of Maryland in a fleet of moving vans in the middle of the night. Al Michaels then expounded at length about how the city still hasn't forgiven the franchise or the city of Indianapolis. And of course he never once mentioned that in the 1990s the city of Baltimore turned around and stole someone else's team, thus exposing a decade's worth of protestations as the worst kind of opportunistic, hypocritical horseshit.

The next night, the Falcons hosted the Saints -- just hours after Michael Vick was sentenced to two years in prison. Every television network, every sports-radio show, every news- and sports-related website was All Vick All The Time. By game time, there was almost nothing that could be said that hadn't been. And yet, there was Tony Kornheiser to say it all again. Totally narcissistic: "Yes, we've been talking about it all day, but you haven't yet heard what I have to say." He added nothing, provided no insight. God I hate Monday Night Football.

CORRECT PICKS

N.Y. Giants 16, Philadelphia 13
Cincinnati 19, St. Louis 10
Dallas 28, Detroit 27
Jacksonville 37, Carolina 6
San Diego 23, Tennessee 17 (OT)
Green Bay 38, Oakland 7
Buffalo 38, Miami 17
Minnesota 27, San Francisco 7
Seattle 42, Arizona 21
Denver 41, Kansas City 7
New England 34, Pittsburgh 12
Indianapolis 44, Baltimore 20
New Orleans 34, Atlanta 14

INCORRECT PICKS

Washington 24, Chicago 16
Houston 28, Tampa Bay 14
Cleveland 24, N.Y. Jets 18

PICKS
THIS WEEK: 13-3
SEASON: 140-68 (67.3%)
(2006 through Week 14: 125-83, 60.1%)
(2005 through Week 14: 145-63, 69.7%)

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 14
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: W14 = This week's ranking. W13 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

W14	W13	TEAM	POW	W14	W13	TEAM	POW
1	1	Patriots	100.00	17	15	Titans	38.66
2	3	Colts	83.32	18	13	Cardinals	38.24
3	2	Steelers	78.42	19	20	Redskins	37.37
4	5	Packers	75.89	20	22	Lions	32.50
5	4	Cowboys	74.17	21	21	Bears	31.43
6	6	Seahawks	66.54	22	27	Broncos	30.10
7	9	Jaguars	63.91	23	19	Raiders	27.40
8	10	Vikings	59.31	24	28	Bills	23.17
9	8	Chargers	58.26	25	25	Jets	22.77
10	7	Bucs	55.49	26	24	Ravens	18.98
11	11	Giants	48.22	27	23	Panthers	18.43
12	12	Eagles	45.45	28	26	Chiefs	12.87
13	16	Saints	44.70	29	29	Rams	11.95
14	14	Browns	43.78	30	30	Falcons	6.69
15	18	Texans	39.50	31	31	Dolphins	6.17
16	17	Bengals	39.26	32	32	49ers	0.00

Teams eliminated this week from Super Bowl championship consideration (what?): Bucs. Teams previously eliminated: Dolphins, Rams, Jets, Falcons, Bengals, Texans, Raiders, Bears, Vikings, 49ers, Broncos, Cardinals, Eagles, Ravens, Chiefs, Panthers, Saints, Bills, Chargers, Redskins, Titans, Lions, Browns.

Burger time

2007-12-05T22:35:00.001-06:00

Wendy's has a major presence on the NFL Network. The burger chain sponsors segments on NFL Total Access, as well as the halftime recaps on NFL Replay. Now there's a new ad for some sort of Wendy's bacon sandwich, and it stars Rich Eisen, the face and voice of the NFL Network. In it, some dude is watching football on TV. And the game that's on is clearly the Tampa Bay Bandits against the Houston Gamblers. What does Wendy's have to do before the league lets it use actual NFL game action, rather than USFL archival footage nearly a quarter of a century old?

Week 13: This could be the week!

2007-12-05T14:27:00.000-06:00

One week after surging to the very top of the picks league, Down and Distance came crashing back to earth with an 8-8 showing.

I want to start the Week 13 recap with the last game of Week 13: the Patriots at the Ravens on Monday Night Football. No one was more surprised than me to hear Tony Kornheiser lead off the game with an honest-to-God astute observation, namely that "If you want to beat the Patriots, you have to be willing to lose 100-0." In other words, you have to be willing to take chances -- chances that could blow up in your face -- and you can't play conservatively. Like a child hoping againt hope that Daddy has finally stopped drinking, I held out the faintest glimmer that this was the week Kornheiser would start keeping his fool mouth shut unless he had something illuminating to say.

It didn't last, though. Less than 6 minutes into the game -- 5 minutes, 13 seconds, to be exact -- Kornheiser had seized hold of a drum that he would beat relentlessly for the next three hours. The Ravens held the Pats to a field goal on their opening possession. The first two Baltimore plays were Willis McGahee runs up the middle that gained 9 and 7 yards. Kornheiser then asked the fateful question: "Do you think this could be the night?"

As the night wore on and the Ravens didn't just play the Patriots even but took the lead, a self-satisfied Kornheiser pounded the point relentlessly. "This could be one of the biggest wins in franchise history!" "This could be one of the greatest upsets of all time!" Eventually, I switched off the sound altogether, meaning I missed the Don Shula interview. Oh darn.

What Kornheiser was doing was bullshit. As the game progressed, he was reminding us that he had essentially foresaw an upset almost from the start. But go back to the first quarter. Had the Patriots proceeded to smack down the Ravens the way they've smacked nearly everyone else down, Kornheiser would have quietly dropped the this-could-be-the-night routine and moved on to something else. This is how those Jeanne Dixon-type "psychics" gained whatever shred of credibility they once had: They make bold predictions going in, and when one of them occasionally bears fruit, they take credit for it. (I did notice, however, that Kornheiser waited to see some sings of life from Baltimore before talking upset.) For as long as the Ravens were in it, Kornheiser was going to ride this monkey. That just happened to be for the entire game.

Something else that Kornheiser & Co. kept saying also sticks in my craw: "For the Ravens, this is their Super Bowl." This was supposed to explain why Baltimore was playing such inspired football despite being 4-7 and all but out of postseason contention. But think about that for a second. If the Ravens can get it up for the Patriots in an all-but-meaningless game, why couldn't they get it up for their division rivals six or seven weeks ago, when the games still meant something? The MNF crew was essentially suggesting that the Ravens are able to play hard because there's nothing on the line.

They didn't actually say that, though, which is a pity because it's an idea worth exploring. Last week, the Eagles nearly beat the Patriots, but they did it with game planning and execution. Philly didn't play New England any "harder" than they played anybody else this season. But the Ravens team that took the field Monday night was clearly different from the one that had lost the previous five games. Brian Billick ought to ask himself why.

And yes, the officiating was shitty. Inevitably, people are now saying that the officials were piping their penalty calls because the league wants he Patriots to go undefeated. That makes sense. If there's one team the league is really going to pull out all the stops for, it'll be the one publicly branded as cheaters in the first week of the season, the one fined three-quarters of a million dollars, the one stripped of a first-round draft pick. (And hey, I thought the league wanted the Colts to win the Super Bowl. Or maybe the Steelers, but only if Jerome Bettis is playing in his hometown.) The simple fact is that downfield penalty calls have lost any semblance of consistency.

If you want to see an example of game officials' emotions really affecting their work, check out the tape of last week's Big East Conference game between No. 2-ranked West Virginia and Pittsburgh. All West Virginia (at 10-1) had to do was beat a 4-7 Pittsburgh team at home, and the Mountaineers would play in the national championship game. This was huge not just for West Virginia but for the entire Big East. Ever since the conference lost Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College to the ACC, there have been calls for the Big East to lose its seat at the BCS table (to, say, the Mountain West). And here was the chance for a Big East school to play in the BCS title game, something no ACC team has ever done. So when the clock was winding toward zero and Pittsburgh led 13-7, the flags started coming out. Pass interference Holding. An absurd excessive-celebration penalty on a kid who merely threw up his arms in triumph when West Virginia failed on fourth-and-goal. Do I think the officials were trying to give the game to the Mountaineers? No, but I do believe that the Big East employees who make up the officiating crew are proud of their conference and want it to do well, and when it looked like Pittsburgh was going to flip the whole apple cart, they got frustrated.

CORRECT PICKS

Dallas 37, Green Bay 27
My impressions here.

Tennessee 28, Houston 20
When are the Texans going to quit fucking around and give Sage Rosenfels a legitimate shot already? The guy plays more snaps than Matt Schaub anyway.

Minnesota 42, Detroit 10
It's getting so I can't even say bad things about Tarvaris Jackson anymore. No, wait ... yes. Yes I can.

N.Y. Jets 40, Miami 13
Beating up the scrawniest kid on the playground just to make yourself feel bigger doesn't show much integrity, son.

St. Louis 28, Atlanta 16

Tampa Bay 27, New Orleans 23
It's not just that the Saints blew the game -- and likely their season -- with a dumb, risky gadget play. It's that in the playoffs against Philadelphia last season, leading by three in the fourth quarter, they called a similarly dumb, risky play, and they lost the ball on a fumble then, too.

Pittsburgh 24, Cincinnati 10

New England 27, Baltimore 24
See above.

INCORRECT PICKS

Buffalo 17, Washington 16
For all the talk of the Redskins playing with a heavy heart and being unable to keep their focus on the field, they lost this game the same way they lose every game: because they couldn't get from the 5-yard line to end zone even if they were riding a bulldozer.

Indianapolis 28, Jacksonville 25
At this point I'm so accustomed to thinking of the Colts as overrated and decimated by injuries that I forget how good they really can be.

Arizona 27, Cleveland 21
The last play of the game looked like a force-out to me. The idea that these "judgment calls" are not subject to replay is ridiculous. So we're supposed to trust the judgment of a guy watching (perhaps not watching very closely) a play in real-time, while he's running downfield, more than someone watching the same play in slow motion from several angles? Please.

N.Y. Giants 21, Chicago 16
I went through the whole day Sunday and most of Monday assuming the Bears had won. That Eli Manning is really something at crunch time, except when he's not.

Oakland 34, Denver 20
John Elway is not walking through that door, people.

San Diego 24, Kansas City 10
The pick was based more on San Diego's prediliction for themselves-fucking than on any particular thing on K.C.'s part.

Carolina 31, San Francisco 14
Trent Dilfer vs. Vinny Testaverde. I mean, who would you pick? In 25 words or less?

Seattle 28, Philadelphia 24
Four interceptions for A.J. Feeley. Philadelphia sports radio attributes them to the presence of Donovan McNabb on the bench.

PICKS
THIS WEEK: 8-8
SEASON: 127-65 (66.1%)
(2006 through Week 13: 115-77, 59.9%)
(2005 through Week 13: 132-60, 68.8%)

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 13
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: W13 = This week's ranking. W12 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

W13	W12	TEAM	POW	W13	W12	TEAM	POW
1	1	Patriots	100.00	17	16	Bengals	34.96
2	2	Steelers	89.15	18	18	Texans	33.53
3	3	Colts	81.42	19	22	Raiders	33.21
4	4	Cowboys	76.28	20	20	Redskins	32.45
5	5	Packers	69.65	21	21	Bears	30.74
6	6	Seahawks	62.33	22	17	Lions	29.61
7	7	Bucs	60.59	23	26	Panthers	23.66
8	9	Chargers	56.64	24	25	Ravens	20.68
9	8	Jaguars	55.31	25	28	Jets	20.33
10	12	Vikings	53.46	26	23	Chiefs	19.18
11	11	Giants	46.17	27	24	Broncos	17.63
12	10	Eagles	44.92	28	29	Bills	11.18
13	14	Cardinals	41.54	29	31	Rams	9.90
14	13	Browns	40.82	30	30	Falcons	6.36
15	19	Titans	38.36	31	27	Dolphins	5.15
16	15	Saints	37.62	32	32	49ers	0.00

Teams eliminated this week from Super Bowl championship consideration (what?): Browns. Teams previously eliminated: Dolphins, Rams, Jets, Falcons, Bengals, Texans, Raiders, Bears, Vikings, 49ers, Broncos, Cardinals, Eagles, Ravens, Chiefs, Panthers, Saints, Bills, Chargers, Redskins, Titans, Lions.

The other game of the century

2007-11-29T23:32:00.000-06:00

Long before "Peyton Manning Can't Beat The Patriots," the dominant NFL meme was "Brett Favre Can't Beat The Cowboys." Much as Manning's Colts lost to New England in the 2003 and 2004 playoffs, Favre and the Packers saw their season end in playoff frustration on the Texas Stadium turf every year from 1993 to 1995. The difference, of course, is that Manning eventually beat New England en route to the Super Bowl. Favre, however, never beat Dallas when it counted. In 1996, the Panthers upset the Cowboys, and the Packers beat the Panthers in the NFC title game. By 1997, the Cowboys were a 6-10 team.

Well, Favre still can't beat the Cowboys in a big game, it seems.

But it's all good. The Packers played far better Thursday night than I expected them to, hanging in until the bitter end and proving that they can go toe to tow with the cowboys. Green Bay fans can feel good about Aaron Rodgers taking over when Favre finally does retire. And Ryan Grant is for real.

But holy shit, if the NFL Network is going to take big games like this off of free TV in its effort to extort 10 bucks a year out of every cable subscriber in the country, the least they could do is get themselves a play-by-play man whose incompetence isn't raging like a case of herpes. Bryant Gumbel was so horrid he left me speechless. So horrid he left me wishing for Mike Patrick. So horrid that even Joe Theismann might not have been so bad. Gumbel, to put not-too-fine a point on it, has no business in the booth whatsoever. At least four times in the first quarter, he referred to the Cowboys as the Packers. Not once but twice, he told a long story about his conversation with "Mike McCarthy," who is the Packers' coach, about how Cowboys running back Marion Barber III is "the heartbeat of the Packers' offense." The first time, he told this story, I assumed that McCarthy had said in the production meeting that Barber was the heartbeat of the Dallas offense, so the Packer defense was going to focus on stopping him. Only after Gumbel stumbled through it again did I realize that the conversation wasn't with McCarthy at all, but with Wade Phillips, the Cowboys' coach. When I shouted at the screen, "What the fuck are you talking about?," it wouldn't be the last time.

Speaking of Barber: At one point late in the game, Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo handed the ball off to a running back who was stuffed at the line. Unable to tell whether it was Marion Barber or Julius Jones, Gumbel split the difference and called him "Marion Jones." Hey, she's probably stronger than both of them.

And speaking of Tony Romo: As the game ended and the teams poured onto the field, Gumbel urged us to stay tuned, because after the commercial break, Adam Schefter would hopefully have an interview with "Rick Romo."

On and on it went. A Green Bay defender was very clearly blocked into the Dallas punter, and Gumbel and boothmate Chris Collinsworth howled over the flag that (correctly) wasn't thrown. A Green Bay defender very clearly grabbed a Dallas receiver -- the very definition of pass interference -- and Gumbel and Collinsworth howled some more over the flag that (correctly) was thrown. Gumbel alluded to the list of quarterbacks who were drafted ahead of Romo -- but never actually named them. He said things like "he's still on his feet" long after a guy was tackled. He just talked and talked and said nothing. Please. Make it stop. Where's Dick Vermeil?

Week 13: RIP Sean Taylor, 1983-2007

2007-11-28T23:40:00.000-06:00

After 12 weeks of scratching and clawing, Down and Distance has reached the top of the standings in the blogger picks league. Whether this is a product of my legendary football acumen or the fact that about a third of the participants have dropped out remains to be seen. Still, a 12-4 week is not at all shabby.

CORRECT PICKS

Green Bay 37, Detroit 36
Yet another example of why an NFL team should never take its foot off an opponent's throat. The Packers led by 22 with 13 minutes left to play, they let up on the gas, and within seven minutes of clock time, the Lions had turned it into a one-score game. Green Bay pulled out the win, but they were lucky. Once you switch it off, you don't always get it switched on again. I watched this game at my wife's uncle's house, with a bunch of Vikings fans. I'd forgotten that there are people in the world who hate the Green Bay Packers. Even though I grew up in Minnesota, I never minded the Packers -- probably because during my childhood, the 1970s and '80s, they were never good enough to hate. At various times the Bears, Lions and Buccaneers all served as the biggest threat to the Vikings in the NFC Central, but Green Bay never did until the 1990s.

Indianapolis 31, Atlanta 13
A game against the Falcons is always good for what ails you, spiritually. It doesn't do shit to get you ready for Jacksonville, however.

Cleveland 27, Houston 17
The Texans are really gaining speed as they slide back down the bell curve. Hey, 7-9 won't be so bad ... until you remember that that's where they were three years ago, the last time they were poised to take the next step.

Seattle 24, St. Louis 19
When mantaining your longtime grasp on the division depends on ancient journeyman Gus Frerotte fumbling a fourth-down snap for the Rams at the same time ancient journeyman Trent Dilfer has his best game in years for the 49ers, then it might be time to blow it up and start over.

Tampa Bay 19, Washington 13
Not two days later, the Redskins would learn what it really means to suffer a heartbreaking loss in Florida.

Chicago 37, Denver 34 (OT)
I keep waiting for the law of averages to catch up with Devin Hester. I figured he was like Dante Hall. Remember how Hall was all the rage for like a year and a half, and then everyone started keying on him during kick returns, and you pretty much never heard from him again? I thought that would happen with Hester, and I think I will continue to be proven wrong. I watched both of his touchdown returns on Sunday, and while you hear a lot about his speed, that's not what makes him the best kick/punt returner in the league. It's actually his field vision. Not only does he know where everybody is, he knows where they're going to be when he gets to their part of the field. That's also why he's not as good on offense as he is as a returner. As a wide receiver or flanker, he never has all 11 guys on the opposing team spread out for him they way he does on a kick.

San Diego 32, Baltimore 14
Oh, this looked like a good one back when the schedule was coming together. These teams were a combined 27-5 last year. But then the Chargers fired their coach, and the Ravens didn't fire theirs.

New England 31, Philadelphia 28
Yes, A.J. Feeley played very well, but let me ask you this: If Donovan McNabb had been the Eagles' quarterback against the Patriots, and his second pass of the game had been intercepted and run back for a touchdown, and his second-to-last pass of the game had been picked off in the end zone when his team was in position for the tying field goal, what do you suppose they would be saying about him this week?

Pittsburgh 3, Miami 0
If you told me that this game was going to be played in conditions so mucky that all the yard lines would wash away and punts wouldn't even bounce when they hit the ground, I would have said, "Oh, man, I have got to see that." Yet in reality, it was three hours of the most wretched football you'll see all season. After 59 minutes and 40 seconds, the score was still tied 0-0. Once you get to that point, you actually start rooting for the game to end in a tie n regulation and for it to remain scoreless in overtime. Because then you could say you watched the only 0-0 tie since the NFL started playing overtime in the regular season in 1974. (Prior to then, it only did so for playoff games; that's why you see so many ties on team records up to 1973.) But the Dolphins and Steelers couldn't just give us that, and with 17 seconds left, Pittsburgh hit the "winning" field goal, and we have a 3-0 final score that makes the game seem far more interesting than it really was. OK, now for Tony Kornheiser: Coming into the game, it was obvious that he was going to spend the majority of his time talking about two things: Miami's 0-10 record coming in, and the return of Ricky Williams to the Dolphins after a 1 1/2-year, weed-induced exile. First, the 0-10 record. Look, we can all see the standings. They print them in the newspaper and various places online. We don't need to be told over and over that Miami has yet to win a game. What would have been nice would be some intelligent discussion of why a team that for the past 10 years had a been a fair-to-middling squad suddenly saw the bottom drop out. Such as the fact that the defense, once very spry and very good, got very old very quickly. Or the fact that the team has preferred to acquire "established" quarterbacks -- viz. Brian Griese, Gus Frerotte, A.J. Feeley, Daunte Culpepper, Trent Green -- rather than just draft one and develop him has finally caught up with it. That would have been too thought-provoking for the Monday Night Football crew. Next, Ricky Williams. You just knew that the second Williams stepped on the field, Kornheiser was going to start reading whatever essay he'd draw up for the occasion, and you weren't disappointed. TK immediately rehashed everything: the drug suspension, the abrupt retirement, the return, the other drug suspension, the season he played in Canada. We know all this, Tony. When ESPN first acquired the Monday night package, the network made all sorts of noises about how it was going to tailor its broadcasts for the core ESPN audience: the serious fan. Yet through Kornheiser and his weekly remedial history lessons, MNF continues to assume its viewers don't know shit about shit. To Tony's credit, he did point out that many people consider pot-smoking a relatively victimless crime, and that marijuana is hardly a performance-enhancing substance. And he and Ron Jaworski both mentioned that, in the eyes of other players, Williams' far greater sin was quitting football -- quitting on his teammates, and leaving his team in the lurch -- right before the 2004 season. As they jawed about this, I thought: Wouldn't it be nice if they took some time to discuss what it would take for a guy to shed the "quitter" label, which to an athlete is far more damaging than the "druggie" label? Because there's a guy still floating around in the NFL whose experience almmost directly mirrors Williams': a high-first-round pick who became the face of his franchise before declining into substance abuse, quitting on his team and getting drummed out of the sport. That guy is Kerry Collins. And what he did was acknowledge his alcoholism, get sober, keep his mouth shut, work hard and be a model teammate. Next thing you know, he's playing (though not very well) in the Super Bowl, and he's still pulling an NFL paycheck as Vince Young's backup and mentor. Kerry Collins -- a mentor! So it really is possible to shed the quitter label. But of course we didn't hear anything like that, because there were jokes to be made about doobies. It was especially interesting, too, because during the game there was a commercial for Coors Light that showed NFL Films footage of coaches acting like assholes on the sidelines. In one clip, a New York Giants coach is ranting and raving about whatever. I wasn't able to focus on who the coach was (Jim Fassel, I presume), because behind him on the sidelines was a player whose face had been blurred in the ad. When you see that in an ad, it means the person in question didn't give permission for their image to be used. It never happens in ads for official sponsors, though, which means this player probably specifically asked that his face not appear in a beer commercial. The player's jersey number was 5. It was Kerry Collins.

Jacksonville 36, Buffalo 14
New Orleans 31, Carolina 6
Dallas 34, N.Y. Jets 3

INCORRECT PICKS

Oakland 20, Kansas City 17
This week's Game-I-Didn't-Watch-a-Single-Down-Of. I mean, yeah, I didn't expect the Raiders to win, but I can't say I'm terribly surprised. I wouldn't be surprised if the Chiefs lost to Notre Dame at this point. Or to the Merchant Marine Academy. It's not that they're bad, necessarily. It's that you can never count on them to be good.

Cincinnati 35, Tennessee 6
Well, Chad Johnson feels comfortable enough to act like a jackass again, so the Bengals must be getting this thing turned around. It's not really the fact that Cincinnati won that was noteworthy -- the Bengals are one of those teams who can beat anybody and lose to anybody -- but rather the magnitude of the victory.

Minnesota 41, N.Y. Giants 17
Remember the 2000 NFC Championship Game, when the Giants beat the Vikings 41-0? OK, now remember the game two years ago when the Vikings scored touchdowns on a punt return, a kickoff return and an interception return to beat the Giants 24-21? And then on Sunday, the Vikings ran back three interceptions for touchdowns to rout the Giants. I understand that it usually takes a while to even the karmic scales, but man, shouldn't it be close to done by now?

San Francisco 37, Arizona 31 (OT)
The Cardinals can beat Pittsburgh, and can lose to the 49ers. This is a team with a lot of work yet to do. And as much as I love him as a fellow Iowan, I have to say that if you asked me before the weekend which quarterback would fumble in his own end zone in sudden-death overtime, I'd have probably said Kurt Warner. Sorry.

PICKS
THIS WEEK: 12-4
SEASON: 119-57 (67.6%)
(2006 through Week 12: 107-69, 60.8%)
(2005 through Week 12: 118-58, 67.0%)

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 12
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: W12 = This week's ranking. W11 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

W12	W11	TEAM	POW	W12	W11	TEAM	POW
1	1	Patriots	100.00	17	14	Lions	35.16
2	2	Steelers	84.22	18	16	Texans	32.65
3	3	Colts	81.26	19	12	Titans	32.58
4	5	Cowboys	74.03	20	18	Redskins	29.64
5	4	Packers	73.16	21	21	Bears	29.05
6	6	Seahawks	60.28	22	22	Raiders	24.95
7	7	Bucs	58.40	23	25	Chiefs	20.66
8	9	Jaguars	55.00	24	27	Broncos	17.09
9	11	Chargers	50.34	25	23	Ravens	17.08
10	10	Eagles	43.88	26	24	Panthers	13.36
11	8	Giants	42.22	27	29	Dolphins	7.95
12	17	Vikings	41.49	28	26	Jets	6.91
13	15	Browns	39.53	29	28	Bills	6.49
14	13	Cardinals	37.12	30	30	Falcons	5.15
15	19	Saints	35.85	31	31	Rams	0.86
16	20	Bengals	35.70	32	32	49ers	0.00

Teams eliminated this week from Super Bowl championship consideration (what?): Titans, Lions. Teams previously eliminated: Dolphins, Rams, Jets, Falcons, Bengals, Texans, Raiders, Bears, Vikings, 49ers, Broncos, Cardinals, Eagles, Ravens, Chiefs, Panthers, Saints, Bills, Chargers, Redskins.

Week 11: Bye bye, bye

2007-11-20T23:43:00.000-06:00

Did you notice something ominous this week? There were 16 games; every team was in action. That means the bye weeks are over, which means the end is in sight. And with six weeks to go, Down and Distance has climbed to second place in the picks league, thanks to a league-best 13-3 record in Week 11. (As of Tuesday, however, the standings still say 14-2. Everyone appears to have gotten credit for picking the Steelers.) Meanwhile, it's Thanksgiving Week, and I'm as busy as you are. So we'll be really brief.

CORRECT PICKS

Tampa Bay 31, Atlanta 7
Turns out Joey Harrington was not the problem, and Byron Leftwich was not the answer. How many times do they have to reinvent the wheel in Atlanta?

Cleveland 33, Baltimore 30 (OT)
I don't care what he said over the P.A. Referee Pete Morelli looked at the replay -- or at least had someone else look -- to determine whether Phil Dawson's kick made it through the uprights at the end of regulation. By rule, field goals are not supposed to be subject to replay review. It's refreshing to see a ref, for once, say: Fuck the rules, I'm gonna get it right.

Green Bay 31, Carolina 17
The score was only this close because the Packers, with another game in just four days, put it in neutral early on.

Houston 23, New Orleans 10
Regardless of how poorly Reggie Bush played (very), it would be a stretch to say that this game demonstrated why the Texans were right to choose Mario Williams with the top draft pick in 2006 rather than Bush. But what the hell. Williams is a nice guy; if it makes him feel better, I've got not problem.

Indianapolis 13, Kansas City 10
The Colts need a lot more than just getting Dallas Clark back.

Jacksonville 24, San Diego 17
Two teams moving in opposite directions. I think everyone is willing to admit they were wrong about David Garrard. Will we soon be saying the same about Philip Rivers? We might, unless Norv Turner starts working his QB magic. Or maybe stops working it.

Minnesota 29, Oakland 22
With Adrian Peterson injured, Chester Taylor puts on a rushing clinic. Imagine how good this team will be next year with Derek Anderson at quarterback.

Philadelphia 17, Miami 7
Miami's only points came on an 87-yard punt return by Ted Ginn Jr. Look, it's not Ginn's fault that the Dolphins wasted a first-round pick to acquire his third-round talent, but even when he does something good, it just underscores the fact that the Dolphins had -- and still have -- needs far greater than a kick returner.

N.Y. Giants 16, Detroit 10
Seemed like it was gonna be a good game. Wasn't.

Dallas 28, Washington 23
The Redskins always play Dallas pretty close. Unfortunately, on Sunday the only Cowboy they didn't play close was Terrell Owens. Um, you know that when he sprints past the safeties, there's no one else back there, right?

St. Louis 13, San Francisco 9.
Down by 7 with less than five minutes left, the 49ers needed a touchdown but kicked a field goal rather than go for it on fourth down. That left them down by 4, which means they still needed to score a touchdown. Now you know why they've lost eight straight.

Seattle 30, Chicago 23
Could these really be the past two NFC champions?

New England 56, Buffalo 10
There's very little left to say. From the final score, it looks like the Pats ran it up on the Bills, but they didn't. They could have easily scored 90 points. Easily. Buffalo didn't even play a bad game. This is just ridiculous.

INCORRECT PICKS

Arizona 35, Cincinnati 27
The Bengals have now come full circle: from shitty to plucky to dangerous to disappointing to shitty again. And the Cardinals? In two weeks, they host the Browns. If you had predicted before the season that Cleveland-Arizona could be a good game, they'd have put you on some kind of watch list.

N.Y. Jets 19, Pittsburgh 16 (OT)
The press loves Mike Tomlin, so you're probably not going to hear them say this, but: He's not doing a very good job getting his team ready for road games. Three times the Steelers have lost on the road to teams they should have beaten: the Cardinals, the Broncos and now the Jets.

Denver 34, Tennessee 20
So the word has gotten around the league that the best way to play the Titans is to make Vince Young beat you with his arm. Unfortunately for Tennessee on Monday night, Young's arm was just fine, but his receivers were beating themselves with their hot, buttered fingers. Tony Kornheiser wasn't as bad as usual this week, though there was an interminable shaggy-dog story about a Broncos players-only meeting that seemed to take up the bulk of the first quarter. Learn the conventions of television, Tony: If you're telling a story and have to pause while a play is run, just start right back in on the story. You don't have to recap the whole damn thing every time you get interrupted. We were all here 15 seconds ago. We remember what you were saying.

PICKS
THIS WEEK: 13-3
SEASON: 107-53 (66.9%)
(2006 through Week 11: 96-64, 60.0%)
(2005 through Week 11: 105-55, 65.6%)

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 11
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: W11 = This week's ranking. W10 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

W11	W10	TEAM	POW	W11	W10	TEAM	POW
1	1	Patriots	100.00	17	19	Vikings	37.48
2	2	Steelers	80.94	18	16	Redskins	35.83
3	3	Colts	77.42	19	17	Saints	32.68
4	4	Packers	73.15	20	20	Bengals	32.56
5	5	Cowboys	67.52	21	22	Bears	31.64
6	6	Seahawks	61.38	22	24	Raiders	28.49
7	10	Bucs	58.68	23	26	Ravens	27.62
8	8	Giants	52.93	24	23	Panthers	26.94
9	11	Jaguars	50.92	25	25	Chiefs	26.27
10	12	Eagles	48.51	26	28	Jets	22.07
11	9	Chargers	48.16	27	30	Broncos	21.67
12	7	Titans	46.30	28	21	Bills	18.51
13	15	Cardinals	42.56	29	29	Dolphins	16.56
14	13	Lions	41.99	30	27	Falcons	16.45
15	14	Browns	40.94	31	31	Rams	7.92
16	18	Texans	39.47	32	32	49ers	0.00

Teams eliminated this week from Super Bowl championship consideration (what?): Bills, Chargers, Redskins. Teams previously eliminated: Dolphins, Rams, Jets, Falcons, Bengals, Texans, Raiders, Bears, Vikings, 49ers, Broncos, Cardinals, Eagles, Ravens, Chiefs, Panthers, Saints.

Week 10: Can Jim Sorgi play left tackle?

2007-11-11T23:53:00.000-06:00

After two astounding weeks in which we went 23-4 in the picks league, Down and Distance crashed back to earth with a 6-8 showing, missing twice as many games this week as we had in the previous two weeks combined. Yowza. I find consolation in the fact that everybody else at the top of the standings did pretty poorly, and we remain just two games out of the lead.

CORRECT PICKS

Philadelphia 33, Washington 25
Just about every week I make some crack about the Redskins' inability to score more than 20 points, but it's a real problem, and it's been one since Steve Spurrier was the coach. Numer of games that Washington has scored the following point totals (numbers for 2007 are projected based on 9 games):

YEAR	0-21 PTS	22-29 PTS	30+ PTS
2007	10	4	2
2006	9	4	3
2005	10	1	5
2004	14	1	1
2003	11	4	1
2002	11	3	2

You're not going to win Super Bowls playing like that. You may make the playoffs, as was the case in 2005, but to do so you need a better defense than the Redskins have now -- and the Redskins have a good defense now. When you take into account this mental block that exists at three touchdowns, the events in the latter portion of Sunday's game make a lot of sense. Leading 22-20, the Redskins sacked Donovan McNabb deep in his own territory and forced a fumble. Two plays later -- Clinton Portis rushes of 9 and 8 yards -- they were on the Eagles' 7. Thanks to a Philadelphia penalty, they would have six chances at the end zone. Results: 1-yard run; 1-yard run, incomplete pass, with a defensive-holding penalty that gave them a new set of downs at the 3; 2-yard run; 1-yard loss; false start that pushed them back to the 7; 4-yard run; field goal. Fittingly, the 'Skins are averaging 19.7 points a game. Once upon a time, Joe Gibbs-coached teams averaged 30. One last thing about this game: Why did I not hear the broadcast crew -- or anyone on ESPN -- elaborate upon the fact that when the Redskins were trailing 26-25 with two and a half minutes left, they clearly let Brian Westbrook score a touchdown untouched? It was certainly the right call, I believe, because it got them the ball back in what was still a one-possession game, but it certainly would have been nice for the crew to point out. Kenny Albert made an opaque reference to the Denver-Green Bay Super Bowl, in which Mike Holmgren ordered the Packers' defense to let the Broncos score a TD to keep them from running out the clock and kicking the FG, but that was 10 years ago. I'm assuming people talked about it in D.C., but those people live to rehash every last second of every Redskins game.

Pittsburgh 31, Cleveland 28
This game showed the difference between a team that's "there" and one that's not quite "there" yet. Even after playing a miserable first half, the Steelers didn't believe they were out of it -- and the Browns didn't believe it either. Cleveland has a really good thing percolating here. The questions is whether a quality loss like this -- and the likely 8-8 or 9-7 record with which they'll finish the season -- spurs them to rededicate themselves to "taking it to the next level," or lulls them into thinking that everything's fine and that they're going to kick ass next year. Which way will they go? Romeo Crennel should watch Marvin Lewis carefully, then not do whatever it is that Lewis is doing.

Buffalo 13, Miami 10
I've made it perfectly clear what I think about games that end 16-13 or 13-10. Such a score, almost by rule, indicates that the game was unwatchable. Only two good things came out of this turkey: 1) The game had the coolest score of the day -- Miami 3, Buffalo 2 -- for eleven minutes in the third quarter. 2) In the fourth quarter, with the game on the line, Dolphins quarterback Cleo Lemon found Marty Booker open over the middle and put the ball right on his hands. Booker dropped the pass, and his momentum carried him onto the Buffalo sideline. Sitting on the bench (like always) was Bills receiver Sam Aiken, who looked up at Booker, smiled broadly and held his hands out, pantomiming the act of catching and holding onto a football. No one commented on it, but it was hilarious.

Green Bay 34, Minnesota 0
The world has truly flipped upside down when a team's fans can look onto the field, see Brooks Bollinger playing QB, and say, "Oh, thank goodness." Unlike, say, the Chargers, the Packers appeared to understand that there's just one way the Vikings can beat you, and if you key on No. 28 for the whole game (or for as long as he plays), Minnesota won't score a damn point.

Chicago 17, Oakland 6
Rex Grossman doing his little victory strut after beating the Raiders was the saddest thing I've seen in a while.

Seattle 24, San Francisco 0
I just get depressed when I see Alex Smith getting abused back there in the pocket. At one point, a Seattle defender grabbed his jersey and spun him around so hard that you could see his bare skin underneath. It was like when Charlie Brown gets hit by the line drive and all his clothes fly off. As this was the Monday night game, here are a few of the dead horses beaten by Tony Kornheiser: Seattle lost Super Bowl XL; Mike Nolan had to fight the NFL for the right to wear suits on the sidelines in honor of his pop, who just passed away; Shaun Alexander isn't playing well. On that last point, TK showed just how clueless he's become when Ron Jaworski expressed surprise that Mike Holmgren told them in the production meeting that, because of Alexander's struggles, he was switching to a pass-first offense -- then actually went to a pass-first offense. What Jaworski was saying was that Holmgren rarely reveals what he's really going to do. He'll throw up a smoke screen even in those off-the-record-until-game-time meetings. Kornheiser, of course, totally missed the point and started haranguing Jaworski: You're sur-PRISED that they're passing so much? What, did you ex-PECT them to keep giving the bawl to Alex-ZAN-der? Shut the fuck up.

INCORRECT PICKS

St. Louis 37, New Orleans 29
Even when you know it's a trap game, it's still a trap game.

Denver 27, Kansas City 11
Every week, I try to check in with as many games as possible, even if it's just for one series or one red-zone possession. But every week, there's always one game that falls through the cracks entirely, either because nothing interesting seems to be happening (as can be determined from in-game updates, and the NFL Snap channel on DirecTV) or because the matchup itself just seems ugly. Denver-Kansas City, once such an attractive game that it was a perennial prime-time contender, is now one of those ugly games. Which is why I know nothing about it ... except that for about five minutes of the second quarter it had the second-coolest NFL score of the day: Kansas City 5, Denver 3.

Atlanta 20, Carolina 13
Joey Harrington can play John McClane in the next Die Hard. That little bastard bleeds slow. You can't kill him.

Jacksonville 28, Tennessee 13
As Vince Young regresses at the speed of light, maybe someone could enlighten me: Are we ever going to see a QB come out of college with a reputation as a runner, then, when he gets to the NFL, keep running -- but also work hard to develop the right throwing mechanics? Is it even possible? That was Michael Vick's problem. He could really run, and he could really sling the ball, but he flat-out refused to try to merge the two skill sets into an unstoppable package. As a result, teams playing the Falcons said, "We're going to make Vick beat us with his arm." And he couldn't do it. Just like Young can't do it now.

Cincinnati 21, Baltimore 7
Cincinnati's Shayne Graham kicked seven field goals in this game to provide all of the Bengals' scoring. Here's how the team said thanks: At game's end, with the Bengals inside FG range at the Baltimore 31, they chose to run out the clock rather than give Graham a shot at an eighth, and record-tying, kick. Nice. Something tells me that if Chad Johnson had needed 10 more receiving yards on the final drive to reach some kind of milestone, the team would have figured out a way to make it happen. As for the Ravens, here's an essay question: Who is more finished in Baltimore -- Steve McNair, or Brian Billick? Provide examples.

Arizona 31, Detroit 21
I finally come around on Detroit, and I get burned just one week later. I should have known: The Lions pounded the living shit out of Denver? Oh, that's not going to go right to their heads. No way.

Dallas 31, N.Y. Giants 20
This pick is, I think, the result of a mental block on my part. Entering 2007, the Cowboys had been bad-to-mediocre for so long that it has taken a long time to tame that part of my brain that whispers "not for real ... not for real ..." about the 7-1 (and now 8-1) Cowboys. Of course, that very same part of my brain was whispering the very same thing about the Giants and their six-game winning streak. But the game was in the Meadowlands, so I figured I'd go with the home team.

San Diego 23, Indianapolis 21
By the end of the first quarter, it appeared that Indy's season was just about done. It still looks that way, but the final three quarters indicated that San Diego's season is also done. Think about it. The Colts came into Qualcomm Stadium without their No. 1 and No. 3 wide receivers, their No. 1 tight end/slot receiver/H-back, their starting left tackle, and two out of three starting linebackers. Over the course of the game they also lost their backup left tackle and their top pass rusher. They spotted the Chargers an early 23-point lead as the kick-coverage teams shat themselves and Peyton Manning threw four interceptions in, essentially, the first quarter. With all of that on their side, plus a downpour that turned the field into a swamp, the Chargers still would have lost had Adam Vinatieri not missed two field goals, including a chip shot in the final two minutes. (Mr. Clutch, my ass.) Both teams will likely still make the playoffs, but don't expect them to go deep, because the Colts are dealing with catastrophic injuries for the first time since Edgerrin James blew out his knee in 2001, while the Chargers are ... coached by Norv Turner rather than Wade Phillips (bet you thought I was going to say Marty). As the game neared its end, the broadcast-network star-fucking machine was all greased up, and NBC urged us to stay tuned to see Andrea Kremer interview LaDanian Tomlinson and Shawne Merriman. Of course she'd interview them. I mean, LT carried the ball 21 times for 76 yards! And Merriman had three tackles! Who else would she talk to? Darren Sproles? All he did was run back two kicks for touchdowns. Antonio Cromartie? He only intercepted a Hall-of-Fame quarterback three times.
PICKS
THIS WEEK: 6-8
SEASON: 94-50 (65.3%)
(2006 through Week 10: 86-58, 59.7%)
(2005 through Week 10: 94-50, 65.3%)

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 10
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: W10 = This week's ranking. WK9 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

W10	WK9	TEAM	POW	W10	WK9	TEAM	POW
1	1	Patriots	100.00	17	17	Saints	38.32
2	2	Steelers	89.46	18	19	Texans	37.77
3	3	Colts	82.16	19	12	Vikings	36.63
4	5	Packers	75.81	20	25	Bengals	35.84
5	4	Cowboys	72.25	21	24	Bills	35.00
6	8	Seahawks	64.92	22	26	Bears	34.96
7	6	Titans	55.37	23	21	Panthers	32.44
8	7	Giants	54.63	24	20	Raiders	31.29
9	9	Chargers	53.94	25	22	Chiefs	28.49
10	10	Bucs	53.53	26	23	Ravens	28.06
11	13	Jaguars	52.18	27	28	Falcons	25.18
12	14	Eagles	48.14	28	27	Jets	21.18
13	11	Lions	46.42	29	29	Dolphins	20.02
14	15	Browns	42.59	30	31	Broncos	15.98
15	18	Cardinals	42.46	31	32	Rams	6.11
16	16	Redskins	39.14	32	30	49ers	0.00

Teams eliminated this week from Super Bowl championship consideration (what?): Ravens, Chiefs, Panthers, Saints. Teams previously eliminated: Dolphins, Rams, Jets, Falcons, Bengals, Texans, Raiders, Bears, Vikings, 49ers, Broncos, Cardinals, Eagles.

Week 9: Glad that's over

2007-11-07T08:30:00.000-06:00

I didn't think we could do better than last week's 11-2 showing. Lo and behold, Down and Distance went 12-2 in this week's picks. At 88-42 on the season, we're just two games back of the leader in the picks league, our old buddy Eric Mirlis of TheMirl.com.

CORRECT PICKS

New England 24, Indianapolis 20
I am not overstating matters one bit when I declare, in all seriousness, that there is absolutely nothing left to say about this game.

Tennessee 20, Carolina 7
Vince Young: 14-of-23 for 110 yards and 2 interceptions. Sometimes the Madden cover jinx is about a player getting injured. Sometimes it's about a player's development coming to a halt.

New Orleans 41, Jacksonville 24
Despite shitting their pants for the first four weeks of the season, the Saints are now one game out of first place in the NFC South. Considering how the Buccaneers are barely squeaking out wins over teams with mideason free-agent pickups at quarterbacks, and how the Panthers and Falcons have had to start midseason free-agent pickups at quarterback, it's not too much of a stretch to call them the favorites in the division. Meanwhile, the Jaguars move a step closer to oblivion. And to Los Angeles.

Buffalo 33, Cincinnati 21
We're all glad that Chad Johnson is OK, that he was taken off the field on a backboard only as a precaution. But maybe a brush with mortality will shut his goddam mouth, at least until the Bengals win another game.

Tampa Bay 17, Arizona 10
Ugly all around.

Detroit 44, Denver 7
Every once in a while, I find myself watching a game for no particular reason and can't pull away. This was the one for Week 9. I kept coming back to it. It was hypnotic. I'm not about to declare the Lions good or anything, but boy did they lay an ass-whipping on the Broncos. I don't care that Jay Cutler got hurt. Denver's strength is supposed to be the running game, right? And their billion-dollar secondary got torched, again. Which reminds me: Last year, it was a joy to see Joey Harrington, then with the Dolphins, come back to Detroit on Thanksgiving and beat the Lions -- specifically cornerback Dre Bly, who'd blamed Harrington for everything that was wrong with the team the year before. Sunday, Bly, now with the Broncos, came back to Detroit and ... got his ass kicked by the Lions. Sometimes karma is gentle, and sometimes it carries a monkey wrench.

Washington 23, N.Y. Jets 20
A question frequently heard around Washington the past five years: What's it gonna take for the Redskins to score more than 20 points? Eight extra minutes of clock time, apparently.

Green Bay 33, Kansas City 22
Early in this game, the Packers did something good, and a cheer rose up from the crowd, and either Joe Buck or Troy Aikman referred to all the Packer fans who had traveled to Kansas City to see their team. What, is this college football? Do the Green Bay Packers "travel well"? Those aren't people who came down from Wisconsin for the game. By and large, those are Packer fans who left Wisconsin a long time ago (or never lived there in the first place) and now live in and around the K.C. area. Wherever the Packers play, there's usually a healthy contingent of green-clad fans in the stands. The Bears enjoy the same sort of thing, as do the Cowboys and, especially, the Steelers.

Atlanta 20, San Francisco 16
About eight months ago, this looked like it was going to be good.

Cleveland 33, Seattle 30 (OT)
Last week, people were just saying it in jest because the Browns were playing St. Louis. But now it's for real: The Browns really have become the Rams. They're even beating the Seahawks!

Dallas 38, Philadelphia 17
We Americans like our side shows, but we only like them for so long. Which is why Paris Hilton walked out of jail and off the face the earth. And why no one cares what O.J. Simpson did in Vegas, despite the valiant efforts of Larry King and the rest of the bottom-feeders. (Larry King. He's still alive? I thought he'd died ... or at least retired to Texas to do circle jerks in a cave with Ross Perot.) And it's why no one outside Dallas or Philadelphia could have possibly cared less that Terrell Owens was returning to Lincoln Financial Field. Few stories in sports are more over than T.O. The guy is a fantastic talent, no doubt. If his teammates have patience for his bullshit, then great, because the rest of us ran out more than a year ago. Should he act up again, our response will be a shrug and a "what else is new?" And yet ESPN will still be camped out at Valley Ranch.

Pittsburgh 38, Baltimore 7
This week's dead horses flogged by Tony Kornheiser: Ben Roethlisberger had a motorcycle accident and an appendectomy last year. Steelers coach Mike Tomlin is young. Steelers coach Mike Tomlin is black. Ravens coach Brian Billick is supposedly a quarterback guru but has yet to develop a QB in Baltimore. Here's what's really interesting: The night before, during the Cowboys-Eagles game, Al Michaels recited a very Kornheiseresque litany about the tribulations of the Dallas franchise over the past decade -- the rotating quarterbacks, last year's heartbreaking playoff loss, Bill Parcells' retirement, the hirings of Jason Garrett and Wade Phillips, etc. And yet it wasn't annoying. That's because when Michaels tells these stories, he assumes we already know them. He's reminding us of things like the botched snap in Seattle that ended Dallas' 2006 season, or the sad Ryan Leaf experiment of 2001. Kornheiser tells stories like he just discovered them through research at the Library of Congress. Bleah. To make matters worse, Kornheiser missed the one big story of Monday night's game, which was the emergence of Steelers linebacker James Harrison as a much-more-than-adequate replacement for overpaid, overrated, overexposed asshole Joey Porter, who took the money and ran to Miami, where he's working his magic for the 0-8 Dolphins. It was left to Ron Jaworski to go on and on about Harrison, because Kornheiser doesn't do linebackers. He only does quarterbacks and head coaches and maybe flashy receivers. Which is fine if you're just a dumbshit blogger but unacceptable if you're sitting in the MNF booth.

INCORRECT PICKS

Minnesota 35, San Diego 17
Thus far this season the Vikings have demonstrated that they have one, and only one, weapon: Adrian Peterson. So at this point, for a team not to stack eight, maybe nine guys in the box against Minnesota, with one of them a full-time spy on Peterson, is just gross negligence. What, do you think the Vikings are going to beat you through the air? The dumbest thing the Chargers did on Sunday was knock Tarvaris Jackson out of the game. IT's not like anyone's afraid of Brooks Bollinger, but next to Jackson, he's like Fran fuckin' Tarkenton back there. Anyway, there are a number of reasons to celebrate Peterson setting the all-time single-game NFL rushing record with 296 yards against San Diego. Here's one: Back in January 1983, I watched on Monday Night Football as Tony Dorsett of the Dallas Cowboys ripped off a 99-yard run against the Vikings. It set the NFL record for the longest run from scrimmage, a record that can be matched but will never be broken. So much attention was paid to the run -- the highlight still shows up on TV from time to time -- that it overshadowed the fact that the Vikings won the game, 31-27. In Sunday's game, San Diego's Antonio Cromartie set a similarly unbreakable record with a 109-yard return of a missed field goal. Missed field goal returns are flukes, events that say more about the mental lapses of the kicking team than about the skill of the returner. Nevertheless, this play might have established a Dorsett-like performance, had Peterson not set a bigger, better record and ensured that if anyone ever talks about Cromartie, they'll also have to talk about Peterson -- and point out that the Vikings won. There's still enough residual Minnesota fanhood in my soul for that to make me happy.

Houston 24, Oakland 17
An indefensible pick, considering that I sleep next to the biggest Sage Rosenfels booster this side of Maquoketa, Iowa.

PICKS
THIS WEEK: 12-2
SEASON: 88-42 (67.7%)
(2006 through Week 9: 76-52, 59.4%)
(2005 through Week 9: 86-44, 66.2%)

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 9
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: WK5 = This week's ranking. WK4 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

WK5	WK4	TEAM	POW	WK5	WK4	TEAM	POW
1	1	Patriots	100.00	17	24	Saints	43.09
2	3	Steelers	96.61	18	16	Cardinals	41.18
3	2	Colts	87.95	19	22	Texans	40.89
4	4	Cowboys	73.50	20	20	Raiders	38.07
5	5	Packers	67.21	21	17	Panthers	37.49
6	10	Titans	65.58	22	19	Chiefs	37.37
7	8	Giants	62.09	23	13	Ravens	36.26
8	7	Seahawks	58.33	24	26	Bills	36.18
9	6	Chargers	56.61	25	23	Bengals	34.52
10	12	Bucs	55.87	26	25	Bears	33.28
11	21	Lions	52.59	27	28	Jets	25.14
12	14	Vikings	52.40	28	30	Falcons	23.65
13	9	Jaguars	49.32	29	27	Dolphins	23.63
14	11	Eagles	48.07	30	31	49ers	11.95
15	15	Browns	46.02	31	29	Broncos	11.52
16	18	Redskins	44.43	32	32	Rams	0.00

Teams eliminated this week from Super Bowl championship consideration (what?): Broncos, Cardinals, Eagles. Teams previously eliminated: Dolphins, Rams, Jets, Falcons, Bengals, Texans, Raiders, Bears, Vikings, 49ers.

Week 8: The sins of Spurrier, repaid

2007-10-30T10:13:00.001-05:00

This makes me feel a little better: 11-2 in this week's picks. Things are really tightening up, as there are nine of us within three wins of the lead. Neato.

CORRECT PICKS

Indianapolis 31, Carolina 7
The Colts start slow again and pull away late. Sure, it works against the NFC South, whose teams start slow and finish slow. For the Patriots, however, "starting slow" means scoring a field goal on the opening drive before reeling off three unanswered touchdowns by the time the first quarter is out. Thirty-one points ain't going to cut it.

Pittsburgh 24, Cincinnati 13
Wasn't it cool how Steelers-Bengals games briefly meant something again, because both teams were good at the same time for the first time since, like, the early '80s? Good times.

N.Y. Giants 13, Miami 10
When the commissioner dreamed up the idea of sending two NFL teams to play a real game in London, I don't suppose he envisioned jet-lagged players slopping their way to a 13-10 finish, in the rain, on a soccer pitch that was coming apart less than five minutes into the game. Neat robot, though.

San Diego 35, Houston 10
Last week, Texans backup QB Sage Rosenfels came in for the injured Matt Schaub and brought Houston back from a four-touchdown deficit to take the lead. This week, Texans backup QB Sage Rosenfels came in for the injured Matt Schaub and brought Houston back from a five-touchdown deficit to ... a four-touchdown deficit. And on the last weekend of October -- what a perfect time to turn back into a pumpkin!

New England 52, Washington 7
Signs of excessive violence, literally overkill, on the body of a murder victim indicate that the killing was highly personal -- that is, not a random or cold-blooded act. This may help us explain what happened to the Washington Redskins on Sunday. I hope to God it does, because if this sort of carnage were inflicted cavalierly, it would suggest that there's a madman on the loose. At this point, it's becoming scary what the Patriots are capable of. Washington had a top-10 defense, and New England just kept stabbing it, pushing the knife in all the way to the handle, twisting it, ripping out little chunks of soul. What explains it? Well, remember how before the game we heard about how Tom Brady had beaten every team in the NFL except the Redskins? He's only played them once before, in 2003, and the result was a 20-17 loss in which Brady threw three interceptions. The Patriots wouldn't lose another game for a full calendar year, but for that year, they heard over and over that the last coach to beat the Patriots was Steve Spurrier. That's the kind of humiliation that drives you not only to kill a man, but to rape his ear canals beforehand and take a hammer to his body afterward with such ferocity as to leave no piece larger than a deck of cards. If you prefer, here's a stat: The Patriots have outscored their opponents by 204 points. Only two other teams in the league have scored more than 204 points total, and just barely (Dallas with 227 and Indy with 224).

New Orleans 31, San Francisco 10
After three straight wins, it's tempting to say the Saints are back to their 2006 form. I prefer to think they're back to their 2000-2004 form: beating bad teams, losing to good teams, and splitting the difference with the teams in the middle.

Green Bay 19, Denver 13 (OT)
I'll take it, but let's just say that Green Bay can't count on another team fumbling a snap on the 1-foot line (other teams' unforced errors are non-predictable), while it probably can count on its own players taking more stupid penalties at the 1-foot line (lack of discipline is predictable).

Philadelphia 23, Minnesota 16
Cleveland 27, St. Louis 20
Tennessee 13, Oakland 9
Buffalo 13, N.Y. Jets 3

INCORRECT PICKS

Jacksonville 24, Tampa Bay 23
This close to giving up on the Buccaneers.

Detroit 16, Chicago 7
A quarterback wins two games in three weeks by leading his team on game-winning drives in the final minutes. Then he goes out and throws three interceptions in the end zone, costing his team the game. If you're Brett Favre, a 17-year veteran with a history of winning games with guile, they call that "the risks you have to accept when you have a gunslinger out there." If you're Tony Romo, a relative newcomer with a history of winning games with guile, they call that "evidence of the confidence that could make this kid great with a little more experience." If you're Brian Griese, a 10-year veteran with a history of losing his job to assorted flavors of the month, they call that regression to the mean. Actually, that's what they call it for any Chicago quarterback. Somewhere, Rex Grossman is laughing. Oh, wait, he's right there behind Griese. And Kyle Orton's next to him, also laughing.

PICKS
THIS WEEK: 11-2
SEASON: 76-40 (65.5%)
(2006 through Week 8: 70-44, 61.4%)
(2005 through Week 8: 74-42, 63.8%)

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 8
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: WK8 = This week's ranking. WK7 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

WK8	WK7	TEAM	POW	WK8	WK7	TEAM	POW
1	1	Patriots	100.00	17	14	Panthers	40.93
2	3	Colts	91.35	18	5	Redskins	40.89
3	2	Steelers	86.97	19	20	Chiefs	39.65
4	4	Cowboys	67.65	20	21	Raiders	38.27
5	6	Packers	63.60	21	24	Lions	37.86
6	11	Chargers	63.23	22	17	Texans	36.47
7	7	Seahawks	60.25	23	22	Bengals	35.21
8	8	Giants	59.74	24	27	Saints	33.46
9	10	Titans	58.85	25	23	Bears	32.03
10	9	Jaguars	56.45	26	29	Bills	25.96
11	12	Eagles	56.31	27	26	Dolphins	22.74
12	13	Bucs	51.49	28	25	Jets	22.55
13	15	Ravens	48.36	29	28	Broncos	20.11
14	16	Vikings	43.14	30	30	Falcons	17.44
15	19	Browns	43.11	31	31	49ers	8.54
16	18	Cardinals	41.87	32	32	Rams	0.00

Teams eliminated this week from Super Bowl championship consideration (what?): Bengals, Texans, Raiders, Bears, Vikings, 49ers. Teams previously eliminated: Dolphins, Rams, Jets, Falcons.

Speaking of college football ...

2007-10-25T16:24:00.000-05:00

Dissertation title: "Tyrone Willingham vs. Charlie Weis: A Study in the Social Dynamics of Coaching the Notre Dame Fighting Irish"

By PCS, Ph.D. candidate

Down and Distance Kollege of Football Knowledge

TENURE
Willingham: 2002-2004
Weis: 2005-present

YEAR 1
Willingham: 10-3 with players recruited by someone else.
Weis: 9-3 with players recruited by someone else.

REWARD AFTER YEAR 1
Willingham: Pat on the back.
Weis: Contract extension.

YEAR 2
Willingham: 5-7, no bowl berth.
Weis: 10-3, bowl berth.

YEAR 3
Willingham: 6-5, bowl berth.
Weis: 1-7, no bowl berth.

PERSON BLAMED FOR YEAR 3 DEBACLE
Willingham: Willingham.
Weis: Willingham.

RECORD AFTER 33 REGULAR SEASON GAMES
Willingham: 20-13.
Weis: 20-13.

ACTION TAKEN AFTER YEAR 3
Willingham: Fired, despite three years left on contract. First Notre Dame coach ever fired with time remaining on his contract.
Weis: We can't fire him! He's got seven years left on his contract!

FOOTNOTES

Nebraska as leading indicator

2007-10-25T13:52:00.000-05:00

Let's talk about college football for a second. The story of the year has been upsets. Top-10 teams are falling left and right, and not just to each other. Southern Cal lost to Stanford, LSU to Kentucky, Michigan to Appalachian State and everyody else. South Florida, an enormous commuter school that didn't even have a football program until a decade ago, arrived in the top 5 with much gnashing of teeth by the purists, but the Bulls didn't even have time to take a dump before losing to Rutgers.

Meanwhile, out here on the Plains, the story of the year has been the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the way their slow decline has accelerated into free-fall. In the wake of a blowout loss to Texas Tech, the university fired the athletic director (what, is the AD calling plays in Lincoln now?), and it's only a matter of time before coach Bill Callahan gets his walking papers. Former coach Tom Osborne is back as interim AD, and it's his job to make everythig right again.

Yeah, good luck with that.

The Cornhuskers aren't coming back -- not in the way Nebraskans are accustomed to, in which they contend for the national title every single year. Those days are over, just as they are for the likes of Florida State, Penn State, Notre Dame and all the other big-conference football factories that monopolized talent and exposure for decades. A team may still get on a good run for several years -- witness Ohio State and Southern Cal of late -- but it will eventually get reeled back to the pack. Why? One word: Television.

Time was, the NCAA had monopoly control over all college football on television. The NCAA decided which schools played on TV and which didn't, and what schools played on what networks. It made sure that the Big Ten and Pac-10 played on ABC, that the SEC played on CBS, that Texas, Notre Dame and the "Big 8" got a game here and there, and that everybody else -- if they were lucky -- played on local TV or on those sad little regional "networks" like Raycom and Jefferson Pilot. Why would the NCAA do something like that? Because it was controlled by the power conferences. Duh.

Eventually, in 1984, the Supreme Court called bullshit on the whole setup (thanks to a lawsuit filed by the universities of Oklahoma and Georgia), and schools and conferences were freed to negotiate their own television contracts. (The power conferences immediately tried to stuff the genie back into the bottle by banding together in the "College Football Association," but that effort fell apart after Notre Dame bolted to sign an exclusive deal with NBC.)

Before the court swept away NCAA control of TV, only power schools in power conferences got to appear on television, and that gave those schools an immense and entrenched recruiting advantage. If a high school kid got scholarship offers from both Ohio State and Kent State, there was no doubt where he'd go: Ohio State, because he'd seen them play on TV. Kent State, if he'd heard about it at all, was just that place where those soldiers shot those hippies. It's all different now. Smaller schools from the Mid-American Conference, Conference USA, the Mountain West and the Big East are on the ESPN networks every week -- every night for some stretches of the year. More kids see more schools, and are therefore willing to consider playing for more schools.

The changes in the TV system didn't reshape the college football landscape overnight, obviously. What we have today is the result of cascading effects in the two decades since the court ruling. When more schools got on television, it didn't just increase exposure for the teams; it increased exposure for the players on those teams. In 1970, if the quarterback at Miami of Ohio put up impressive numbers, he'd be a big star on campus, and maybe some NFL team would take a flier on him with an eighth-round pick in the draft. Nowadays, he's a first-round pick. With that in mind, high school players today ask themselves: Do I want to go to a huge football factory, where I'll ride the bench for at least two years, probably three, before getting a chance to compete for a starting job? Or do I want to go to a smaller school, where I'll have a chance to win the job as a sophomore -- maybe even a freshman? Coupled with restrictions on scholarships, this equality of exposure has all but killed the ability of the power schools to stockpile players. Kids today want to play more than they want to play for Nebraska or Florida or Georgia Tech or whoever. The power conferences are trying their best to unring that bell -- witness the rigged BCS system -- but they'll fail.

So that's the handwriting on the wall for Nebraska fans. Osborne could come down from the AD's suite and coach the team himself -- and coaches do retain a certain amount of recruiting pull -- but he can't turn back time. In his day, he had starting-quality players three deep on the roster. Today it's just starters and scrubs, because the kinds of kids he used to stash away as backups are now starting for East Carolina or Connecticut or Nevada on Thursday night on ESPN2.

Week 7: Heard about this Manning guy?

2007-10-24T01:01:00.000-05:00

For a minute there, I thought I'd feel good about myself for going 9-5 in this week's picks. Then I looked more closely and determined that with the exception of one person, everybody went 9-5 or better ... and 11 out of 17 did better. I'd have done better, too, if I could figure out why I picked the Raiders. I meant to pick the Chiefs. Really.

CORRECT PICKS

Indianapolis 29, Jacksonville 7
One nice thing about the Colts winning the Super Bowl last year was that it took the remaining air out of the long-running Manning-vs.-Brady debate. At this point, all but the most pathetically ego-invested fans are willing to acknowledge that both Peyton Manning and Tom Brady can win the Super Bowl, and that both guys can put up phenomenal regular season numbers. That means we can finally move on to something else, right? Not just yet, it seems, because Tony Kornheiser has a whole sheaf of Manning-vs.-Brady monologues prepared, and he's not going to let them go to waste. Which is why, early in Monday night's Colts-Jaguars game, Kornheiser advanced the absolutely preposterous assertion that Peyton Manning was going to use this nationally televised occasion to say, "Here I am." Because if there's one guy in the NFL who's got something to prove -- who at this point really needs a "statement game" to be taken seriously as an elite player -- it's Peyton Manning. Among the other dead horses severely beaten by Kornheiser this week: The Colts lost a lot of players in free agency; "everybody" is talking about the Pats but "no one" is talking about the Colts; Jack Del Rio not only benched Byron Leftwich but cut him. Next week: That passer rating stat sure is hard to understand! Bonus dumbass know-it-all comment of the week: Mike Tirico asserting that the Colts made it to the AFC Championship Game in 2005, when in fact they lost to the Steelers in the divisional round.

Dallas 24, Minnesota 14
I hope other viewers were as horrified as I was by the play in the second quarter in which Tony Romo fumbled on a sack, and Minnesota's Kevin Williams returned the ball 84 yards for an apparent touchdown (though it was called back on a penalty). Once he reached the end zone, Williams dropped to one knee and removed his helmet. Ordinarily, taking off your lid after scoring is grounds for a 15-yard unsportsmanlike-conduct penalty. But Williams wasn't mugging for the cameras. He was overheated and suffering respiratory distress. A Vikings assistant came onto the field and began pouring warer over Williams' head. The player was eventually helped to the sidelines, where he received supplementary oxygen, and then was taken to the locker room before halftime, presumably to get an IV. Keep in mind that Williams is a professional athlete. It doesn't matter that as a defensive tackle, his job description doesn't include breaking 80-yard runs. It doesn't matter that the temperature was in the 80s. The man is a professional athlete. If his conditioning is such that an 80-yard run nearly kills him -- literally -- then the Vikings should be very, very concerned. It's not like they aren't aware of the danger.

N.Y. Giants 33, San Francisco 15
In this game, we saw Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora strip the ball from Trent Dilfer, recover the fumble, and run 75 yards downfield at top speed for the touchdown. Yes, Umenyiora is listed as 50 pounds lighter than Kevin Williams. And yes, the play came on the first series after the halftime break rather than at the end of the first half. And yes, Umenyiora is primarily a pass-rusher while Williams is a run-stuffer. But still it should be noted that Umenyiora sprinted the whole way and didn't need medical attention afterward.

Tennessee 38, Houston 36
New England 49, Miami 28
Washington 21, Arizona 19
The fourth quarter of Sunday's Titans-Texans game should be required viewing for all sportsmanship fundamentalists, as it illustrated once again Down and Distance's long-held contention that in the NFL, there is no such thing as running up the score. Tennessee led 32-7 going into the fourth quarter. According to Gregg Easterbrook and his ilk, the Titans should have pulled their starters at that point, put in their reserves and coasted. Fine -- but only if the team on the short end of the score agrees to quit trying, too. Houston didn't quit, however, and Sage Rosenfels, the big-hearted Iowa State alumnus and official favorite QB of Mrs. Down and Distance, led touchdown drives of 70, 98, 75 and 66 yards to give the Texans the lead. The Titans were able to get their act together in the final two minutes to win on Rob Bironas's record-setting eighth field goal, but the episode demonstrates the folly of ever assuming that an NFL game has been won before the final gun. (Bironas's eighth FG, by the way, broke the record of seven shared by five kickers, most recently Billy Cundiff, the only Drake University graduate in the NFL.) With the Titans-Texans game in mind, perhaps we shouldn't be too hasty to condemn the New England Patriots for putting Tom Brady back into the game after they saw their lead over Miami trimmed from 42-7 to 42-21 in less than a minute, thanks to an interception thrown by backup Matt Cassel that was returned for a touchdown. I mean, someone has to remember that game in 2004, when the unstoppable Pats took their foot off the throat of the crummy Dolphins and wound up losing an 11-point lead in the last four minutes. Right? Bill Belichick remembers it. Joe Gibbs apparently does not, because the Redskins packed up their offense after the third quarter and decided that the surest course to victory was to try to nurse a 21-13 lead for 15 minutes against a Cardinals offense with big-play capability, albeit one with a one-armed quarterback. They succeeded only because Arizona ran a stupid, no-hope gadget play on a two-point conversion that could have tied it, then Cardinals kicker Neil Rackers pushed the potential game-winning field goal wide. These three games make it crystal clear that once you shut down the afterburners, it's not always easy to get them fired up again. Tom Brady usually can do it. Kerry Collins usually can not. (One other thing that the Titans-Texans and Redskins-Cardinals games had in common was that each game featured a successful onside kick by the comeback team in the final two minutes. In the Tennessee-Houston game, the Texans recovered their kickoff after the requisite 10 yards, but they were flagged for being offsides and for an illegal formation, so they were pushed back 5 yards and had to rekick. Can someone explain to me why that second kick also had to go only 10 yards before the Texans could recover? Why not 15? In every other situation in football, when you are penalized a certain number of yards, you have to make up those yards in order to keep the ball.

Seattle 33, St. Louis 6
It isn't even funny any more. The Rams have scored more than 16 points only once in seven games, and have been held to touchdown or less four times. This is the last time I will say this: The St. Louis offense is not "explosive."

Cincinnati 38, N.Y. Jets 31
Big whoop.

New Orleans 22, Atlanta 16
There's some great irony, or poetic justice, or something in here somewhere, but you have to kind of dig it out. Byron Leftwich gets cut by Jacksonville after coach Jack Del Rio gets fed up with his constant ankle injuries. He comes to Atlanta, where Joey Harrington is (as usual) being blamed as much for things that aren't his fault as for things that are. Bobby Petrino eventually benches Harrington and names Leftwich his starter. And Leftwich promptly injures his ankle. Meanwhile, in Jacksonville, Leftwich's replacement, David Garrard, injures his ankle. The Falcons and Jaguars both lose.

INCORRECT PICKS

Chicago 19, Philadelphia 16
The fact that these two teams looked so awful for so much of Sunday's game speaks volumes about the NFC. The Eagles and Bears are a combined 5-8, and yet it's not at all preposterous to say it's possible that they could meet in the NFL Championship Game. I'm sure Bears fans, at least, are ready to punch their tickets. Random thought: If teams refuse to punt the ball to Bears return man Devin Hester, if they're willing to give up 20, 30, 40 yards of field position on punts rather than run the risk of Hester taking the kick all the way back for six, why don't teams just punt it through the end zone every chance they get? Or, better yet, why don't they just go for it on fourth down every time they're beyond their own 40 yard line? It's not like the Bears defense is scaring the crap out of anyone this season. You run a play on fourth-and-5 ten times, you'll probably convert half the time. Even if you fail and turn the ball over, it's just the Bears offense. What are they going to do?

Kansas City 12, Oakland 10
You could look at the fact that the Chiefs are now leading the AFC West and make a joke about signs of the apocalypse, except that there are actual signs of the apocalypse in San Diego, and it's not so funny.

Denver 31, Pittsburgh 28
This, just when I started obnoxiously referring to the Steelers as my sleeper team for 2007.

Detroit 23, Tampa Bay 16
Buffalo 19, Baltimore 14
Sometimes all you can do is shrug your shoulders and conclude that the Buccaneers might not be as good as they looked last month and that the Ravens are definitely not as good as they looked last year.

PICKS
THIS WEEK: 9-5
SEASON: 65-38 (63.1%)
(2006 through Week 7: 64-36, 64.0%)
(2005 through Week 7: 64-38, 62.7%)

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 7
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: WK7 = This week's ranking. WK6 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

WK7	WK6	TEAM	POW	WK7	WK6	TEAM	POW
1	2	Patriots	100.00	17	17	Texans	49.35
2	1	Steelers	93.38	18	18	Cardinals	47.10
3	3	Colts	92.86	19	19	Browns	45.53
4	6	Cowboys	73.11	20	21	Chiefs	44.86
5	5	Redskins	70.99	21	20	Raiders	44.68
6	7	Packers	68.37	22	22	Bengals	43.10
7	16	Seahawks	65.65	23	23	Bears	39.76
8	12	Giants	65.00	24	24	Lions	38.91
9	4	Jaguars	63.78	25	26	Jets	30.20
10	8	Titans	63.40	26	25	Dolphins	27.37
11	11	Chargers	59.76	27	29	Saints	26.41
12	10	Eagles	59.61	28	30	Broncos	24.79
13	9	Bucs	58.47	29	31	Bills	23.88
14	14	Panthers	57.97	30	28	Falcons	22.45
15	15	Ravens	53.66	31	27	49ers	18.32
16	13	Vikings	51.67	32	32	Rams	0.00

Teams eliminated this week from Super Bowl championship consideration (what?): None. Teams previously eliminated: Dolphins, Rams, Jets, Falcons.

Cause and effect

2007-10-18T10:06:00.000-05:00

A couple days ago, during Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, Fox color man Tim McCarver fell into a sports-commentary fallacy that's been annoying me for some time. McCarver was discussing the bottom of the fifth inning, in which the Indians scored seven runs. The 7-0 lead they built was more than enough to withstand the back-to-back-to-back home runs that the Red Sox would hit in the top of the sixth. The bottom of the fifth went down like this:

Casey Blake homers. CLE 1, BOS 0. Outs: 0.
Franklin Gutierrez singles.
Kelly Shoppach is hit by a pitch; Gutierrez advances to second
Grady Sizemore hits into a fielder's choice. Shoppach is out at second. Gutierrez advances to third. Sizemore is safe at first. CLE 1, BOS 0. Outs: 1.
With runners at the corners, Asdrubal Cabrera hits a shot up the middle. Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield knocks the ball down with his glove but can't catch it. Had Wakefield caught it, or let it gone through to the second baseman, there would have been an easy double play, and the inning would have been over. Instead, Cabrera legs it out for an infield single. Sizemore advances to second, and Gutierrez scores.CLE 2, BOS 0. Outs: 1.
Travis Hafner strikes out. CLE 2, BOS 0. Outs: 2.
Victor Martinez singles. Sizemore scores, Cabrera advances to second. CLE 3, BOS 0. Outs: 2.
Jhonny Peralta hits a three-run home run. CLE 6, BOS 0. Outs: 2.
Kenny Lofton singles, then steals second.
Blake singles. Lofton scores. CLE 7, BOS 0. Outs: 2.
Gutierrez walks. Blake goes to second.
Shoppach strikes out. CLE 7, BOS 0. Outs: 3.

Later, after the Sox scored three runs in the sixth, McCarver looked back on the ball that Cabrera hit. If Wakefield doesn't knock the ball down, he said, Cleveland would have been out of the inning with only one run instead of seven, and the Red Sox would have ended up leading 3-1.

Or maybe not. While the Indians were putting together that seven-run inning -- which also included a time-consuming pitching change by Boston -- Cleveland starting pitcher Paul Byrd had to sit in the dugout for more than a half-hour, his arm getting cold and his rhythm deteriorating. When Byrd finally came out in the top of the sixth, he didn't have any of the stuff that had blanked the Sox for five innings, and he served up home runs to Kevin Youkilis and David Ortiz. He was pulled for reliever Jensen Lewis, who then gave up the third home run to Manny Ramirez (who, after he hit the ball, threw up his arms in triumph, having ... pulled his team to ... within four; quite the cause for celebration).

Had the Indians' fifth inning ended on Cabrera's at-bat, Byrd's arm never would have grown cold. Further, if he'd been working with only a 1-0 lead rather than a seven-run cushion, he would have approached Youkilis and Ortiz entirely differently, less reluctant to challenge them with heat right over the plate and more willing to nibble at the edges. Boston may have never hit those home runs. And as the game progressed, the Indians would have played entirely differently -- focusing on grinding out insurance runs rather than eating up outs.

I don't want to pick on McCarver -- am I the only one who doesn't mind him? -- because all announcers do this: They assume that the game flows in an entirely linear fashion, that events in the ninth inning or fourth quarter are somehow independent of events in the first inning or first quarter. How many times have you been watching a football game, and it's tied at the two-minute warning, and one team is trying to score, and the announcer (think Dan Dierdorf) says, "How BIG is that missed field goal in the second quarter NOW?" Sure, it's big. Missed scoring chances always are. But there is absolutely no way of knowing how the game would have unfolded had the field goal been successful. So much of sports -- particularly football -- is situational. Play-calling, defensve schemes, clock management -- they're all heavily influenced by the score.

It's funny, because announcers love to bag on coaches when they go for a two-point conversion too early in the game. "You never know what's going to happen between now and the end of the fourth quarter," they say, and they're usually right. And yet those same announcers will look back at the end of a game and assume that the previous 30 minutes of clock time would have played out precisely the same regardless of the score. In other words, they assume that effect is entirely independent of cause.

Announcers, of course, aren't the only ones to fall into this trap. Fans do it all the time, as do franchises. Show me a football team that hangs goat horns on its kicker for missing one field goal, and I'll show you a team that's going nowhere. Because good teams have the mindset that if everyone was doing his job, the game wouldn't have been close enough that the entire thing was riding on one guy's foot -- whether the kick came in the first tem minutes or the last two. (Now, if the guy misses kick after kick ... then, yeah, get rid of him. Remember how the Colts got rid of Mike Vanderjagt? It wasn't because he missed the tying field goal against the Steelers in the playoffs. It's because they had lost faith in him to perform in the clutch, and that lack of faith affected the way the team played the entire game. So the Colts went out and got Adam Vinatieri. He's not perfect -- he has missed three field goals in Super Bowls -- but he instills enough faith in his teammates that they can play their game without worrying about him letting them down.)

Sports fans can be disappointed when their teams fail early, late or somewhere in the middle. But if the game is tied in the fourth quarter, then that's when they'll lose it, not in the first.

Week 6: I'm out of popcorn

2007-10-17T00:29:00.001-05:00

At 8-5 in the picks, we had a so-so week. I just wish there had been some hype leading up to the weekend's games.

CORRECT PICKS
Cleveland 41, Miami 31
Another stellar game for Derek Anderson against another awful team. You can see it coming: At some point the Browns are going to have to commit to either Anderson or Brady Quinn. As soon as they do, the QB they don't choose will become a "distraction," his name chanted by the fans whenever Cleveland falls behind by more than a touchdown. Eventually the team trades him away for a draft pick (if it's Quinn, a second-rounder; if Anderson, a third). As soon as he's gone, the QB who remains goes down with a knee injury. Or just starts sucking.

N.Y. Giants 31, Atlanta 10
Remember our standing feature "The 5 Dumbest Things Peter King Said This Week"? It might make sense to resurrect it as The 5 Dumbest Things Tony Kornheiser Said This Week. Kornheiser has now crossed over from merely annoying to utterly aggravating, and it seems Ron Jaworski is as fed up as I. On at least two occasions during Monday night's game, Jaworski interrupted a Kornheiser dissertation to tell him to shut his fool ass up. The first came early in the game, after Eli Manning had put together two fairly decent drives. Kornheiser began unspooling a (clearly rehearsed) monologue in which he asked whether this would be the game that will prove that Manning is worthy of sharing his brother's last name. Shut the fuck up, Tony. He's playing the Falcons. There's nothing to prove when you play the 2007 Falcons. Then, later, Kornheiser began throwing dirt on Bobby Petrino's tenure as Atlanta's coach. Jaworski, incredulous, tried to point out that it's only the sixth week of the season, and that the one player around whom the entire Falcons franchise was built is unavailable because he's going to prison, so it's way, way too early to declare Petrino either a success or a failure. Kornheiser was having none of it. Of course he wasn't. See, Kornheiser is a talking head. That means that when he asks a question like "Is Petrino finished?" he doesn't actually want to know the answer. The point is to throw open a controversy that can be discussed ad nauseam. Not only is the question more important than the answer; the answer is absolutely meaningless. Poor Jaworski. All he knows is the correct answer.

New England 48, Dallas 27
Remember back in 2004, when Peyton Manning was pursuing Dan Marino's touchdown passes record, and every time he threw a short TD -- like, 1 to 5 yards -- he was accused by Tom Brady partisans of just padding his stats? Well, Brady had a 1-yard TD pass Sunday. Just sayin'. After the game, Terrell Owens declared that the Patriots are not, in fact, the best team in the NFL. The Steelers and Colts are pleased that T.O. has their back.

Green Bay 17, Washington 14
Tampa Bay 13, Tennessee 10
Jacksonville 37, Houston 17
Baltimore 22, St. Louis 3
San Diego 28, Oakland 14

INCORRECT PICKS
Minnesota 34, Chicago 31
Here's what I'm so tired of hearing: "When will teams learn that they should never kick to Devin Hester?" Hell, if the rest of the Bears keep playing like this, there's really no harm in letting Hester score a TD or two. What was funny about this game was that just six days after the Bears came from behind in the fourth quarter to beat the Packers, about half the crowd at Soldier Field just gave up and left when the Bears were down by 14 to the Vikings with four minutes left. Front-runners. Sure enough, the Bears came back to tie, greatly assisted by a Vikings secondary that must have thought they saw a naked lady in the Bears backfield, because they were standing around staring as Hester blew right past them for the tying touchdown.

Kansas City 27, Cincinnati 20
It's been a few years, but these are the Cincinnati Bengals we all remember. It's interesting how, when a team isn't winning anymore, wide receivers' colorful antics suddenly aren't do funny anymore.

Philadelphia 16, N.Y. Jets 9
I don't know. I just had a gut feeling.

New Orleans 28, Seattle 17
The lesson we should take from this is not that the Saints are "back" to their 2006 form, but that the Seahawks are "back" to their form from just about every year except 2005 (and maybe that year, too). Still, this is the NFC we're talking about, so whose to say these two might not see each other again in January?

Carolina 25, Arizona 10
Sure enough: Kurt Warner had the Cardinals' starting job less than seven minutes before suffering one of his patented hand/wrist/arm injuries that might not end his season but will probably end his team's. I hate to say I told you so. Arizona should have signed Vinny Testaverde. I hear he was available.

PICKS
THIS WEEK: 8-5
SEASON: 56-33 (62.9%)
(2006 through Week 6: 58-29, 66.2%)
(2005 through Week 6: 56-32, 63.6%)

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 6
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: WK6 = This week's ranking. WK5 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

WK6	WK5	TEAM	POW	WK6	WK5	TEAM	POW
1	1	Steelers	100.00	17	11	Texans	42.52
2	2	Patriots	94.53	18	14	Cardinals	40.26
3	3	Colts	79.51	19	20	Browns	38.43
4	6	Jaguars	75.28	20	16	Raiders	38.02
5	5	Redskins	66.10	21	22	Chiefs	35.87
6	4	Cowboys	63.95	22	21	Bengals	31.26
7	8	Packers	60.46	23	23	Bears	30.11
8	7	Titans	59.51	24	24	Lions	27.32
9	9	Bucs	56.58	25	27	Dolphins	23.24
10	12	Eagles	55.54	26	25	Jets	21.47
11	15	Chargers	52.16	27	28	49ers	15.89
12	17	Giants	52.05	28	26	Falcons	14.56
13	13	Vikings	50.65	29	32	Saints	12.49
14	18	Panthers	50.44	30	29	Broncos	9.65
15	19	Ravens	49.47	31	30	Bills	9.59
16	10	Seahawks	44.99	32	31	Rams	0.00

Teams eliminated this week from Super Bowl championship consideration (what?): Jets. Teams previously eliminated: Dolphins, Rams.

Monday night mea culpa

2007-10-11T11:41:00.000-05:00

Down and Distance has made no secret of it's disdain for Joe Theismann, the quarterback-turned-analyst who spent close to two decades making NFL games all but unwatchable on Sunday nights and, for one season, Monday nights. I stand by all that criticism and will continue to do so: Theismann was an average quarterback who parlayed his good fortune -- playing alongside John Riggins, behind a legendary offensive line, in an organization that won Super Bowls regardless of who was the quarterback -- into a reputation as a savvy football expert. But I fear now that my white-hot hatred for all things Joe-T blinded me to other problems with the ESPN version of Monday Night Football. Specifically, Tony Kornheiser.

Last season, I complained that Theismann was talking all over Kornheiser. Every time Tony opened his mouth, Joe jumped on him, dismissing his questions and observations out of hand, always with an I-played-this-game-and-you-didn't arrogance that made me want to hurt his family, bad, and make him watch. This season, however, Theismann has been replaced by Ron Jaworski, hands-down the most insightful and thoughtful game analyst working NFL broadcasts -- a guy whose authority in the booth stems not from simply having played the game, not even from having played in the Super Bowl, but rather from having spent years breaking down game tape and explaining what he sees to the lay audience on NFL Matchup. I thought having him as part of the Monday Night Football crew would elevate the level of discussion significantly.

Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, and the MNF booth remains a place where one personality seeks to dominate another by belittling his contributions and patronizing him personally. The twist in 2007, however, is that the asshole is Kornheiser. Like a high school student who was harassed and bullied as a freshman, or a rookie who was hazed at training camp, Kornheiser is using his newfound seniority to make things tough for the newcomer, Jaworski. Jaws, of course, is a good-natured guy and certainly man enough to take some ribbing. That's not the problem. The problem is that we have to watch this pathetic display week after week.

I hesitate to say that the act has reached its nadir, considering we're only five weeks into the season, but it's safe to say it found a new low Monday night in Buffalo. From his moronic opening essay (Trent Edwards has the same first name as Trent Dilfer and Trent Green!) to his relentless carping on the one thing he knows about Buffalo (it's near Niagara Falls, and people go over Niagara Falls in barrels!), Kornheiser was more than annoying. He was utterly infuriating. I am neither kidding nor exaggerating when I say that more than once, I instructed the television: "Oh God, shut the fuck up!" Kornheiser on MNF is an embarrassment. He was supposedly brought in for his wit and his worldview, yet he isn't funny, and he isn't incisive.

Kornheiser absolutely obsesses over old news. During Mondays Cowboys-Bills game, he returned over and over to last season's wildcard playoff round, in which Tony Romo cost Dallas the game against Seattle by botching the hold on the go-ahead field goal. Sure, that was a big story -- in the offseason. But Romo's phenomenal performance in the first four games of the season made clear that the mistake doesn't haunt him and hasn't affected his confidence. If it doesn't affect him, it's just not a story anymore. And yet here we have Kornheiser, blah blah blah botched snap blah blah blah. Romo had an awful game Monday, turning the ball over six times, and seemingly every time he did, it was another chance for Kornheiser to bring up the screwup in Seattle. Let it go already. Similarly, Kornheiser couldn't let go of the Tony-Romo-is-like-Brett-Favre meme. This storyline got a boost in Week 4 against the Rams when Romo's scrambling turned what should have been a 30-yard loss on a fumble into a 4-yard gain. But by week's end the Romo-Favre story wasn't just tired -- it was exhausted. On NBC's Sunday night game between the Bears and Packers, Al Michaels recounted how Brian Urlacher had described Favre as an "old Tony Romo," clearly a reference to the inane chatter of the preceding week. That signaled as well as anything that there was nothing left to say on the subject, and yet Kornheiser said it anyway. Oh, and did you know that these teams played in the Super Bowl in the 1990s? Not once but twice! And Dallas won one of those games 52-17! That is a lot of points for a team to score!

When Kornheiser does this, he is adding nothing to the broadcast. All of us at home are aware of what happened in Seattle. We've all heard the comparisons to Favre. There is nothing Kornheiser is saying that we couldn't say ourselves -- that we haven't already said ourselves. So why do we need this clown to say it? He's wasting our time.

And the way he responds to Jaworski ... just nauseating. Jaworski is from the Buffalo area (born in Lackawanna) and was understandably excited to be there covering a game. He wasn't over-the-top -- not gushing or anything, and certainly not fawning over the Bills. He was just pumped up to be back home. But every time he said something positive about the team, the city, the ownership, whatever, there was Kornheiser, riding him like a little shit, teasing him about being in the bag for Buffalo. And God forbid that Jaworski, who is actually an effective speaker, should ever garble his words or get his names mixed up. Kornheiser, remember, used to be a writer, and he displays his wordsmithery every week with trite commentaries in the MNF introduction. So when Jaworski calls a guy "Jim" rather than "John," you can be dead sure that Tony is going to point it out -- not by simply correcting him, but by spinning the mistake into a big production: "What did you call him!?! MARSHA Lynch!?! Not 'Marshawn'!?! MARSHA? Is that like Marcia Brady!?! is he married to Tom Brady!?!" (The dialogue is hypothetical, but you get the gist. Also, he'd have pronounced "Tom" as tawm.)

While all of this is going on in the booth, we're seeing stuff happening on the field that we'd really like explained. You have a guy like Jaworski do the broadcast so he can explain to the viewers why something is remarkable (by definition: worthy of a remark). Everyone knows that a circus catch is a great catch; we need Jaworski to show us why a seemingly pedestrian catch is great, too. But he can't do that if Kornheiser is yammering about the Ringling Brothers and their circus. We need Jaworski to show us a quarterback's footwork and tell us how that footwork translates into the ball being on- or off-target 50 yards downfield. He can't do that if Kornheiser is dusting off his Arthur Murray jokes.

I had high hopes when they added Kornheiser to Monday Night Football in 2006. I loved his radio show when I lived in Washington, D.C. He was on local television there, too, and was great. And he's fantastic on Pardon the Interruption, where he plays the foil to the guy, Michael Wilbon, who really should be sitting in the MNF booth. But in all of those forums, he has great control over the subject matter. That means he can prepare his thoughts and arguments in advance, and they don't sound out of place. As part of a broadcast team, however, he has to react to the events on the field. His canned comments fall flat because they're almost always situationally inappropriate. And he's not getting better.

So I was right about Theismann but wrong about Kornheiser. Dump him. Dump Mike Tirico, too. Keep Jaworski. Lure Chris Meyers back from Fox, and you'd have a team that could be the next Michaels and Madden. Or just put Stuart Scott in the booth; at least then we'd know for sure that ESPN didn't give a shit about the viewers.

That's not old

2007-10-10T16:56:00.001-05:00

I snapped this photo during last week's Giants-Eagles game, then promptly forgot about it:

Turns out that screw-ups by the research staff aren't limited to the preseason after all. Not only was Jeff Feagles not the oldest player in the NFL as of last week, he's more than five years younger than the actual oldest player, Falcons kicker Morten Anderson, who just turned 47.

Assuming Feagles was in fact the second-oldest NFL player last week, now he's the third-oldest, as the Carolina Panthers, hoping to prop up the wreckage of their season, found themselves a well-aged 2-by-4 in Vinny Testaverde, who turns 44 next month and will be the oldest non-specialist in the league.

Coach John Fox says Testaverde could end up starting at quarterback against the Cardinals this Sunday, as first-stringer Jake Delhomme is out for the season with an injury, second-stringer David Carr is ailing (and is David Carr), and third-stringer Matt Moore appears to have made the roster by winning a contest. Says Fox: “Both mentally and physically, he's a guy we were fortunate enough to find at this point in the season.”

Notice how "mentally" came first. No Alzheimer's. Yet.

Week 5: Redemption

2007-10-09T09:47:00.000-05:00

Well, that's a little more like it. After last week's history-making plunge to that dark hole at the bottom of the toilet bowl, Down and Distance made a 180-degree turn and went 10-4 in this week's picks. Not great, of course, but better than even and much better than 7-7. Not that anyone went 7-7. And even after last week's disaster, we're still doing only four games worse than the best of them.

CORRECT PICKS

Dallas 25, Buffalo 24
How badly does your team have to suck to lose a game in which the opposing quarterback turned the ball over six times, in which the other team hand-delivered two touchdowns and graciously stepped aside and held the door open while you took care of a third one yourself?

Pittsburgh 21, Seattle 0
What did the Steelers show us in this game, ridiculously presented as a "rematch" of Super Bowl XL? They showed us that their early-season dominance (before the hiccup in Arizona) was not solely the effects of the ever-popular Cupcake Diet (Cleveland, Buffalo and San Francisco). I mean, Seattle is supposed to be good, right? Or, at least, "good enough" to win the NFC West year after year ... which might not be so good after all. Still, with all the Steelers starters who were injured, Pittsburgh showed us that they can still go out and kick more ass than a team of ass-kicking ass-kickers. What did the Seahawks show us? Nothing we wanted to see. Nothing at all.

Baltimore 9, San Francisco 7
A couple weeks back, I sputtered and stammered and couldn't come up with the words to describe how unattractive I found the matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and the Arizona Cardinals. Ravens-49ers was only marginally better looking forward, and even worse looking back. Would the 49ers have won had Alex Smith been playing rather than Trent Dilfer? Maybe, but probably not. By the way, I think I've nailed down the problem with Smith. It's not that he's an awful quarterback. He's getting better every year. It's that they're not getting anything close to value for what they're paying him. When the crummy Colts had to pay No. 1 draft pick money to Peyton Manning in 1998, they at least got a sure-fire superstar QB. When the crummy Bengals had to pay No. 1 draft pick money to Carson Palmer in 2003, they, too, at least got a sure-fire superstar QB. But when the crummy 49ers had to pay No. 1 draft pick money to Alex Smith, they got an average quarterback. A young Gus Frerotte.

New England 34, Cleveland 17
My wife has been pleading with me to mention something about "Deadbeat Dad Tom Brady." It all has to do with his relationship with baby-mama Bridget Moynahan and the "confusion" over whether their son was named Jonathan Brady or Jonathan Moynahan. Since I don't have anything original to say about Sunday's slow-starting but ultimately predictable beatdown of the Browns by Brady's Patriots, I thought I'd try out some SportsCenter-esque play calls that integrate the Brady-Moynahan saga:

"Brady's under pressure, and he throws the ball away like a pregnant starlet!"
"The pocket collapses, here comes the rush, and Brady runs from it like it's responsibility!"
"There's a lot of motion by the defense. Brady looks like he's changing the play at the line of scrimmage, much as he's changing his story about being an involved father ..."
"The Patriots are huddling up now. Brady's giving them the play, his teammates gathering around like spectators in family court."
"Brady's going downfield! ... Moss is wide open! ... He hits him for the touchdown! And there's pandemonium on the field! There's no fucking way I'm giving you any more money!"

Arizona 34, St. Louis 31
Obviously, you know what happens next. Now that the quarterback-rotation experiment has ended with Matt Leinart's broken collarbone, and the Cardinals have no choice, the Kurt Warner who got himself booed out of St. Louis and New York will surely make an appearance. Or maybe he's already here: two fumbled snaps in as many weeks.

Washington 34, Detroit 3
N.Y. Giants 35, N.Y. Jets 24
Houston 22, Miami 19
Tennessee 20, Atlanta 13
Indianapolis 33, Tampa Bay 14

INCORRECT PICKS

Carolina 16, New Orleans 13
Carolina fans, I'm afraid I have good news and bad news. The good news is that your Panthers are 3-2 and are keeping pace with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for first place in the NFC South. The bad news is that the three teams they have beaten are a combined 1-13. New Orleans fans, I have good news and bad news for you, too. I'll start with the bad news. Actually, you already know the bad news, right? So, I'll go to the good news. OK, I lied. There is no good news. Back to the Panthers: If you really are a fan of this team, then the worst part about Jake Delhomme's season-ending injury is not that it means the Panthers won't go anywhere this year. It's that it means the Panthers will once again have injuries to blame for not getting it done on the field. In the past three years, no team in the NFL has shown as wide a disparity between expectations and performance as Carolina. Not to say the Panthers are a bad team; they certainly aren't -- they were in the NFC Championship Game just two years ago. (Then again, the Saints were in the NFC Championship Game last year.) It's just that ever since their surprise run to the Super Bowl in 2003, Carolina has been the fashionable pick to go all the way, and every year they fall short of the mark, and every year they say, "If we just could have avoided injuries ... " It's the NFL, ladies. No one avoids injuries.

Chicago 27, Green Bay 20
You're not a big, sophisticated football analyst like me, so I expect you to miss hidden indicators like this: If you thoroughly dominate the first half of a game, but are leading by only 10 at the break because you can't hold onto the ball and because you give the other team first downs in the red zone with dumbass penalties, then you will not win. (Listening, Buffalo?) If I were a Packer fan, what would have me climbing the walls is not that James Jones allowed Charles Tillman to strip the ball away in Bears territory. It's that on the very next drive, James Jones allowed Charles Tillman to strip the ball away in Bears territory.

Jacksonville 17, Kansas City 7
I don't know what I was thinking with this pick. I was feeling like I'd been too hard on the Chiefs, expecially after their convincing win over the Chargers last week. And, as usual, you can never trust the Jaguars to beat anybody bad or lose to anyone good, so I rolled the dice. Snake eyes.

San Diego 41, Denver 3
I don't know that there's anything to say about the AFC West, except that Oakland is now in first place with a 2-2 record. This game may signal that the Chargers are ready to pull out of their early-season funk. Or it may just signal that the Broncos are falling apart.

THIS WEEK: 10-4
SEASON: 48-28 (63.2%)
(2006 through Week 5: 49-25, 66.2%)
(2005 through Week 5: 46-28, 62.2%)

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 5
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: WK5 = This week's ranking. WK4 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

WK5	WK4	TEAM	POW	WK5	WK4	TEAM	POW
1	2	Steelers	100.00	17	19	Giants	45.26
2	1	Patriots	99.87	18	16	Panthers	44.57
3	5	Colts	80.19	19	20	Ravens	40.16
4	3	Cowboys	79.34	20	18	Browns	35.03
5	13	Redskins	74.50	21	22	Bengals	34.53
6	9	Jaguars	69.90	22	21	Chiefs	30.06
7	8	Titans	65.70	23	28	Bears	29.88
8	7	Packers	62.50	24	17	Lions	29.75
9	4	Bucs	57.68	25	25	Jets	25.21
10	6	Seahawks	54.95	26	24	Falcons	24.75
11	10	Texans	54.76	27	27	Dolphins	24.59
12	11	Eagles	53.73	28	29	49ers	18.70
13	12	Vikings	52.98	29	23	Broncos	12.68
14	14	Cardinals	49.22	30	30	Bills	12.62
15	26	Chargers	47.86	31	31	Rams	8.72
16	15	Raiders	46.85	32	32	Saints	0.00

Teams eliminated this week from Super Bowl championship consideration (what?): Dolphins, Rams.

Perverted fantasy

2007-10-08T08:37:00.000-05:00

I'm not playing the fantasy football this year. After trying it last season, I discovered that it requires a commitment of time and energy that I just don't have, what with a baby to take care of and my self-employed status, which means I don't get paid if I'm not actually working (as opposed to a regular job, where you get paid for down time, assuming you have any).

Though I'm not a big fantasy-head, I understand the system pretty well -- well enough to realize that the TV networks that broadcast NFL games don't really have a grasp on how fantasy football works. The most obvious effect of the fantasy game on NFL telecasts is the "real-time" stats that clutter the screen after every play. In Sunday's Panthers-Saints game, we were given instant updates as second- and third-string Carolina quarterbacks David Carr and Matt Moore ground their way to 119 and 43 yards passing, respectively. Does anybody have David Carr on their fantasy team? Well, then, does anybody have Matt Moore on their fantasy team? Is it even possible to have Matt Moore on your fantasy team? Similarly, midway through every game, we often get some kind of "fantasy tracker," which compares the performance of the QBs. It's not a terrible idea, but it often leads to ludicrous visuals that assume that at this point anyone is starting Joey Harrington or Damon Huard or Tarvaris Jackson (or Kelly Holcomb).

According to people who frequent sports bars, however, the worst thing about these on-screen graphics is that they provide nonstop bitching fodder for the yammering fantasy hordes who are determined to pound every last ounce of spectator joy out of football by announcing after each play that they need Desmond Clark to just catch one more pass, or who scream in pathetic, impotent rage when a team runs one more play to get closer for a field goal, turning a 52-yard kick (worth 5 points in some leagues) into a 39-yarder (worth only 3), or who cheer when a player who breaks off a punt return for 90 yards gets tackled at the 1 yard line, because it means the running back on their team will now come in and get that last yard and the TD.

Indeed, one of the most legitimate criticisms of fantasy football is that it distorts fans' understanding of the real game. It tells people that the most important player on the field is the running back who scores a lot of touchdowns, as opposed to the other 10 guys who move the ball up and down the field. And it rewards quarterbacks on crummy teams who put up big numbers against prevent defenses in the fourth quarter, when they're down by four touchdowns. This is all true, but I tend to believe that people who allow fantasy football to shape their understanding of real football aren't real fans anyway.

The TV networks, though, take this criticism one step further by actually distorting fans' understanding of fantasy football. As Sunday's late games were getting underway, CBS gave over a corner of the screen to its "FANTASY UPDATE." Here's what we saw:

PASSING LEADERS	TEAM	YARDS	TD	INT
M. Schaub	HOU	294	0	1
D. Anderson	CLE	287	2	3
T. Brady	NE	265	3	0
G. Frerotte	STL	262	3	3
D. Brees	NO	252	0	2

So these, supposedly, were the best passers in fantasy football in Sunday's early games? Ranked by what? By passing yards, clearly. But as any fantasy-head can tell you (and will tell you, repeatedly), yardage is just part of the equation. The real money comes from maximizing touchdowns and minimizing interceptions. Under a typical fantasy scoring system -- 1 point for each 20 passing yards, 4 points per passing TD, -2 points per interception -- here's how these five quarterbacks actually performed:

QB	POINTS
M. Schaub	10.70
D. Anderson	16.35
T. Brady	25.25
G. Frerotte	19.10
D. Brees	8.60

So Matt Schaub, supposedly the best fantasy quarterback of the early games, was actually a middle-of-the-pack special. All those yards don't mean a thing if you can't get your team in the end zone (one point on which fantasy and real football are somewhat in agreement). Once we adjust for the fantasy effect of touchdowns and interceptions, here are the fantasy passing numbers for the primary quarterbacks in Week 5's early games. (For the sake of simplicity, we're only counting passing stats, not rushing stats or fumbles. Jon "Two-Lost-Fumbles" Kitna should be glad.)

QUARTERBACK	TEAM	POINTS
T. Brady	NE	25.25
J. Campbell	WSH	20.40
G. Frerotte	STL	19.10
D. Anderson	CLE	16.35
E. Manning	NYG	15.30
D. Garrard	JAX	14.90
B. Roethlisberger	PIT	14.30
K. Warner	ARZ	11.50
M. Schaub	HOU	10.70
C. Pennington	NYJ	9.45
D. Brees	NO	8.60
D. Carr	CAR	7.95
D. Huard	KC	7.80
C. Lemon	MIA	5.55
M. Hasselbeck	SEA	3.80
J. Harrington	ATL	2.35
V. Young	TEN	1.85
J. Kitna	DET	1.30

According to CBS's graphic, Matt Schaub was the best passer in the early games. And yet, if you'd started Tom Brady, Jason Campbell, Gus Frerotte, Derek Anderson, Eli Manning, David Garrard, Ben Roethlisberger or Kurt Warner, you'd have done better than Schaub. Five of those guys didn't even make the CBS chart, including Campbell, who had a better day than all except Brady (whom CBS listed third). Those players didn't make the CBS chart because they didn't have as many passing yards. Campbell, with 248 yards, was 4 yards shy of Brees and thus didn't make it, even though he threw 2 touchdowns and had no interceptions.

It comes down to this: If you're going to clog up my Sunday afternoon viewing with this attempt to pander to the fantasy crowd (most of whom are using the Web, not TV, to check their progress anyway), then get it right. If I -- someone who doesn't play fantasy football -- can tell at a glance that the fantasy information you're putting on the screen is bullshit, then what do you think a regular fantasy player is thinking?

Week 4: Wipeout!

2007-10-01T19:12:00.000-05:00

In the three years that I've been picking games in competition with other websites, rarely have I had a weekend in which I didn't pick more winners than losers. The worst I had ever done was 6-8. But this weekend, I didn't just beat that mark; I utterly blew it away, going an astounding 4-10 as one underdog after another rose up to topple their insect overlords. Detroit over Chicago. Kansas City over San Diego. Cleveland over Baltimore. Arizona over Pittsburgh. When I wasn't finding myself on the wrong side of an upset, I was ruing the picks that I had made in haste without thinking them through. Now, exactly why did I pick the David Carr-led Panthers over the Buccaneers? Or the Trent Green-led Dolphins over the Raiders? All in all, it was an ugly, ugly weekend that made me quite glad I'm not a betting man.

(Actually, if I were a betting man, I'd have cleaned up this weekend, because college football offered the surest thing I'd seen in quite some time: the Tulane Green Wave, playing at home in New Orleans against the No. 2-ranked Louisiana State Tigers. LSU came into the game as a 40-point favorite, and even Tulane coach Bob Toledo all but conceded that the Tigers were going to roll to victory. But there was no way that Louisiana State -- Louisiana state -- was going to run up the score on Tulane -- New Orleans-based Tulane -- to that extent. Not with all the Tulane students who wound up on the LSU campus after Katrina. Not with the Tulane campus still struggling to recover two years later. To go out and lay 50 points on a clearly inferior team from within your own state that had suffered so much would have been beyond the pale. The final score indicated a rout -- LSU 34, Tulane 7 -- but it could have been much worse. LSU didn't take a dive. No, not at all. It just followed a game plan that ensured decisive victory without unnecessarily humiliating an opponent.)

CORRECT PICKS

Green Bay 23, Minnesota 16
You may think you know what's killing newspapers -- and, to an extent, magazines, television news and other "old media" -- but you don't. It isn't the Internet. Really. Rather, it's the old media's continued adherence to the concept of the "news cycle." They believe that news occurs, and therefore can be reported, in discrete chunks. For newspapers, those chunks are one day long. For most magazines, one week. For TV news operations, maybe one hour. When a news event happens -- say, Brett Favre setting the career record for touchdown passes -- media outlets pursue it and report it on their various cycles. Thus, CBS and Fox cut into their games to show the record-setting TD pass almost as soon as it happened. Then they showed it on their halftime reports. Then they showed it on their postgame reports. Then NBC showed it on Football Night in America. Then ESPN led every hour of SportsCenter with it. Then your local news did the same. Then it was the lead segment on SportsCenter's NFL "Blitz." By bedtime Sunday, every football fan in America had seen the pass a dozen times, watched Favre be interviewed a dozen times, and heard a dozen commentators run down how much Favre means to us all with his longevity and childlike enthusiasm and blah blah blah. (Chris Berman topped them all with his nausea-inducing opinion that "rooting for Brett Favre is like rooting for America." So, if you think Berman is an ass-kissing blowhard whose act grew stale more than twenty years ago, I guess you just hate America.) And then, on top of all that, you get your morning paper, and the headline is some crappy pun informing you that yesterday Brett Favre set the career record for touchdown passes. And a few days later, Sports Illustrated shows up, and Peter King has gotten his lipstick smeared all over Brett's pole.

This all helps explain why, no matter how much you admire Favre and respect his accomplishments, you are so sick of hearing from him and about him that you are ready to scream. At some point, the media would be well-served to understand that everybody -- everybody -- had seen the touchdown and that the audience would like to see, hear or read about something else. And it's not like there weren't angles that could have been covered. Like, how long will it be before Peyton Manning breaks the record? Or, who else (Carson Palmer) might threaten the record? You don't see too much of that kind of stuff because it's hard to produce. Well, not really, but it's certainly harder that just rerunning the video of the TD for the umptwelfth time and throwing yourself to the floor in front of Holy Brett Father of God.

The worst part, however, was that amid all the celebration, what went totally unrecognized was that the Minnesota Vikings were wearing "throwback" uniforms. After less than a season and a half in their stupid new uniforms, the Vikings put on the beautiful duds of their glory years in honor of running back Chuck Foreman, whom the team was inducting into its hall of fame, or ring of honor, or whatever they call it. Oh, and the Packers are 4-0! I bet that if you asked Favre, he'd tell you that that's more important than the record!

Dallas 35, St. Louis 7
Speaking of "having heard more than enough about Brett Favre," I'll take this opportunity to say that I've heard more than enough about how Tony Romo is the new Brett Favre. It seems Romo grew up in Wisconsin idolizing Favre. Well, there's one thing Favre didn't do. Yes, Romo is a playmaker, a QB with incredible pocket presence, and a whole lot of fun to watch. The botched snap on which he turned a 35-yard loss into a four-yard gain and a first down was the second-most-replayed moment of the weekend, and probably will be of the 2007 season. But Romo just isn't the "new Favre" -- can't be the new Favre -- and it has less to do with how he plays than where he plays.

Favre plays in Green Bay, which is ostensibly the league's smallest market but, when you consider that the team represents all of Wisconsin, is really somewhere in the middle. (Now, Jacksonville? There's a tiny market unable to support a team.) However, that perception of "tiny Green Bay" allows the Packers, no matter how good they are or how much they're paid, to project the image of scrappy underdogs. The fact that the team is "publicly owned," as opposed to the property of a rapacious billionaire like Dan Snyder or Jerry Jones, only reinforces the little-guy image, even though that public ownership means the team is under no pressure to return anything like a profit and can therefore pour all revenue back into operations. I'm not saying the ownership structure gives the Packers a leg up on the rest of the NFL, but it does provide an advantage over teams in similar-size markets. (Think about how cheaply the Vikings were run under Red McCombs.)

What does this have to do with Favre? He stars for a franchise whose entire media-generated ethos is that of the scrappy Little Team That Could. When Favre does good things, he's praised because he's David taking on Goliath. When he makes poor decisions, he's excused because he's David taking on Goliath. Romo, meanwhile, plays for the Dallas Cowboys, aka Goliath. Had Sunday's botched snap turned out badly for the Cowboys, Romo would have been roasted for not just falling on the ball. Plus, he doesn't have 15 years' worth of things-like-that-working-out-OK that would silence his critics. Of course, Favre has learned that being David rather than Goliath cuts both ways. Favre's work ethic -- be it offseason conditioning, film study, or just the way he pushes his teammates -- also gets short shrift because that's not the sort of thing a "gunslinger" is supposed to require. (On this score, Romo and Favre do have something in common.)

Then there's the legacy factor. Favre was instrumental in reviving the Packers after a quarter-century in the toilet. (Well ... Favre and Mike Holmgren and free agency and the salary cap and revenue sharing.) For this he is beloved, not only by the people of Wisconsin but also by Berman and King and others in the sports media who pine for the days when Lombardi roamed the earth and no one wore their hair long or had cornrows. Romo plays for a storied franchise, too, but the Cowboys' time in the wilderness in the late 1990s is nothing like what the Packers endured. And while there's a huge gap between Bart Starr and Favre on the continuum of Packers QBs, Romo is just the latest in a line that extends, with only brief breaks, from Don Meredith to Craig Morton to Roger Staubach to Danny White to Troy Aikman -- not all superstars, of course, but all of whom were capable of carrying the team to 10-win seasons and into the playoffs.

The point is not to denigrate Romo. Like I said, he's a joy to watch, and it's clear that his teammates admire and respect him -- even Terrell Owens(!) says he's happy to just clear out coverage for other receivers if it means the Cowboys will keep winning. The point is that in their frantic rush to find the next Good Ol' Gunslinger before the current one hangs it up for good, the sports media is determined to pound a Romo-shaped peg into a Favre-shaped hole. That's not fair to Romo.

Oh yeah, the Rams. They suck. Any team whose coach refuses to sit his starting quarterback, even though that quarterback has broken ribs that are obviously hurting his game, pretty much sucks by definition. Coach Scott Linehan, in explaining why Marc Bulger will start next Sunday despite those broken ribs, said, "He's won a lot of games for us. He played extremely well for us last year, and we haven't got him off and running yet this year. I take responsibility for that." Off and running? He can't run. He has broken ribs! At this point, I pray for the Rams to finish 3-13 so we can finally stop hearing about that high-powered Rams offense that isn't.

Indianapolis 38, Denver 20
After two humiliating playoff losses to the Colts earlier this decade, the Broncos invested heavily in their secondary, to the point that today they have the best cornerback tandem in the league -- and maybe the best ever -- in Champ Bailey and Dre' Bly. Sunday, it all paid off as the Broncos, who surrendered 41 points to the Colts in the 2003 playoffs and 49 in the 2004 playoffs, held the high-powered Indianapolis offense to just 38. Excellent work!

New England 34, Cincinnati 13
I'm back to feeling sorry for Carson Palmer again. That such a fine quarterback has to wear such stupid clothing and play for an organization that appears to have lost its way is a damn shame. But this game wasn't about the Bengals, who somehow held New England to 17 fewer points than they gave up to Browns. It was about the Patriots. For all the ink spilled over the fact that the Cowboys are averaging 37.75 points a game, the Pats are averaging an even 37 -- and have surrendered just 48 points compared with 72 for the Cowboys. The real highlight of this game came when Matt Light was called on to "introduce" the Patriots offense for the ESPN broadcast. Aside from anything Kornheiser says, these intros are among the most annoying elements of the new Monday Night Football, as players stumble their way through a bunch of stupid nicknames ("And playing sheriff on the end is Javon Kearse, aka the Stone Cold Freak"). Light didn't even bother; he just described what the offense thought it was going to have to accomplish to beat the Bengals. It was awesome, and I was totally disappointed a little later when Adalius Thomas, introducing the Pats defense, pulled out the same old "aka" shit. I'd hoped this was another subversive Belichick maneuver, like having the Patriots introduced as a team at the Super Bowl, rather than one by one.

INCORRECT PICKS

Oakland 35, Miami 17
Remember last year, when the Dolphins visited Detroit on Thanksgiving, and quarterback Joey Harrington, who had been unfairly blamed for the Lions' chronic problems, led Miami to a convingcing victory? Vindication! This week it was Miami's turn in the barrel as one of their own maligned former quarterbacks, Daunte Culpepper, led his new team, the Oakland Raiders, into Dolphins Stadium. Culpepper, in case you hadn't heard "had a hand in five touchdowns," two passing and three rushing, on Sunday. What you didn't hear is that he was 5-of-12 passing for only 75 yards. What you didn't hear is that Justin Fargas did all the work. What you didn't hear is how those five touchdowns came about:

1. After an interception, Raiders begin drive on the Miami 11 yard line. Culpepper throws 7-yard TD pass.
2. Raiders begin drive on their own 42. Culpepper attempts only one pass on the drive (incomplete) and gains 4 yards on a scramble. Running backs gain the other 52 yards before Culpepper scores on a 2-yard run.
3. Raiders begin drive on their own 30. Culpepper attempts only one pass on the drive (incomplete). Fargas gains 65 yards, including a 48-yard run with a 9-yard, half-the-distance penalty tacked-on, before Culpepper scores on a 5-yard run.
4. Raiders begin drive on their own 27. Culpepper gains 11 yards on two runs. Running backs gain all the other yardage before Culpepper throws 27-yard TD pass.
5. Raiders begin drive on their own 18. Fargas gains every single inch as Oakland goes 79 yards before Culpepper scores on a 3-yard run.

It must have felt good for Culpepper to stick it to the Dolphins, but what really killed Miami was its own run defense. With perhaps the exception of the fourth TD, there isn't anything here that Josh McNown couldn't have done. Or Marques Tuiasosopo or Andrew Walter, for that matter. Or JaMarcus Russell. Culpepper should pay special attention to that last one, because that's who'll be starting for the Raiders by the end of the year, and Culpepper will be on the pavement, again, looking for a new team, preferably one with Oakland on the schedule in 2008.

Atlanta 26, Houston 16
Interesting that we just talked about Harrington in regard to "revenge games," because Culpepper wasn't the only QB the Dolphins tossed over the side last offseason in order to appeal to Florida's immense senior population by bringing in Trent Green. Harrington, despite that fine revenge-game showing in Detroit, was also cut loose, winding up the accidental starter in Atlanta because of some unpleasantness with dogs and "rape stands." Falcons fans, I gather, would have preferred that the team had held onto Matt Schaub for one more year rather than trade him to the Texans, but there he was on Sunday, playing in the Georgia Dome in a Houston uniform. There was some talk in the press that this might turn out to be a revenge game for Schaub, though I can't image what for. Surely not because the Falcons traded him; that's what allowed him to finally become a starter. Maybe because they didn't trade him sooner. Whatever. Anyway, Harrington looked Georgia peachy against the Texans, while Schaub soiled his own otherwise fine numbers by fumbling twice inside his team's 25 yard line. So, are the Falcons now Joey's team? Don't look now, but that's Byron Leftwich sitting behind him on the bench. At least Atlanta has already played the Jaguars this season.

Detroit 37, Chicago 27
I'm pretty sure that's not what the fans had in mind when they were calling for the Bears to replace Rex Grossman with Brian Griese. Chicago could have gotten three interceptions, including one that came back for a touchdown, even without the switch. And what's beautiful is, if they go with Kyle Orton next week, they can still get it! I was rather surprised to see more than one football commentator say, rightly, that this bad outing by Griese isn't necessarily indicative of his ability. First of all, it's been a couple years since the guy played at game speed. Second, the Chicago Bears, regardless of who's at quarterback, have no business throwing the ball 52 times. Third, they had to throw so much because their defense and their running game, supposedly strengths, are getting worse by the week. I expect Griese to improve, but unless the rest of the team does, too, it won't really matter.

Cleveland 27, Baltimore 13
Buffalo 17, N.Y. Jets 14
Seattle 23, San Francisco 3
Tampa Bay 20, Carolina 7
Kansas City 30, San Diego 16
Arizona 21, Pittsburgh 14
N.Y. Giants 16, Philadelphia 3

PICKS
THIS WEEK: 4-10
SEASON: 38-24 (61.3%)
(2006 through Week 4: 37-23, 61.7%)
(2005 through Week 4: 38-22, 63.3%)

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 4
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: WK4 = This week's ranking. WK3 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

WK4	WK3	TEAM	POW	WK4	WK3	TEAM	POW
1	2	Patriots	100.00	17	19	Lions	44.40
2	1	Steelers	89.17	18	21	Browns	43.38
3	3	Cowboys	83.94	19	23	Giants	40.89
4	5	Bucs	77.94	20	15	Ravens	40.76
5	4	Colts	76.10	21	28	Chiefs	39.03
6	12	Seahawks	72.47	22	16	Bengals	37.39
7	6	Packers	70.95	23	18	Broncos	33.29
8	10	Titans	64.32	24	30	Falcons	29.30
9	11	Jaguars	62.91	25	26	Jets	29.23
10	7	Texans	55.75	26	25	Chargers	26.87
11	8	Eagles	54.68	27	24	Dolphins	26.04
12	9	Vikings	54.00	28	27	Bears	24.22
13	14	Redskins	51.50	29	22	49ers	21.90
14	17	Cardinals	49.98	30	32	Billls	7.51
15	20	Raiders	48.49	31	29	Rams	1.06
16	13	Panthers	44.42	32	31	Saints	0.00

KingWatch: Enough!

2007-09-25T16:48:00.000-05:00

Fortunately for Peter King, the big NFL news this week took place on the field. So after a good month of soiling the back of his pants over Michael Vick's dogfighting and Bill Belichick's videotaping, he could once again soil the front of his pants over that dreamy Brett Favre. On NBC's studio show Sunday, King rather creepily boasted of having Favre's cellphone number. But that didn't even make our list of The 5 Dumbest Things Peter King Said This Week. (See the latest Monday Morning Quarterback column here.)

1. Donovan McNabb made news this past week with his comments that black quarterbacks receive more criticism than white ones. Frankly, I see his point, but even if I didn't, I'm not going to pretend that I know anything about his experience as a black man playing quarterback in the NFL. I mean, no one ever went on national TV and said that I was only considered talented because of my race. (And on that topic: You know who was to blame for Rush Limbaugh's racial comments about McNabb on ESPN a few years back? It wasn't Limbaugh. He was just doing "his thing." No, it was ESPN. They brought Limbaugh on their pregame show and assumed that, once they let him out of his talk-radio cage, he'd act like a football commentator rather than an ape on a rope. But Limbaugh lives in an echo chamber. All day, he speaks only to -- and hears only from -- people who either agree with him already or are waiting for him to tell them what to think. Is it any wonder, then, that a radio host whose racist cracks were notorious would cross the line almost immediately when placed before a general audience?)

Anyway, in a blog entry this week, McNabb made the point that when he talks about criticism of black quarterbacks, he's not just talking about criticism from whites. Other blacks can be just as harsh. McNabb wrote: "I bet Fran Tarkenton, Steve Young, Jake Plummer and Doug Flutie have never been told by a member of a racial consciousness organization that they don't play the quarterback position white enough." This is an interesting point. As McNabb developed as a quarterback, he became more of a pocket passer. Where he once would scramble at the first sign of trouble, he now tucks the ball away and runs only as a last resort. It's called self-preservation: Quarterbacks who run a lot get hurt a lot. And yet, as McNabb ran less, he was indeed criticized by blacks who said he wasn't playing "black enough." Tarkenton, Young, Flutie and Plummer were white guys who ran a lot. McNabb is pointing to them and saying it would be absurd to accuse them of not playing "white enough," so why does he get accused of the reverse? And of course, the pea-brains out there thought he was attacking Tarkenton, et al.

This speaks to something that so many people have missed -- or are simply unable to grasp -- about McNabb's comments. McNabb isn't saying that white quarterbacks don't get criticized. And he's not saying that he gets criticized simply because he's black. He's saying that criticism of black quarterbacks -- even from other blacks -- often comes with a ugly, dehumanizing racial component that white QBs not only don't have to deal with, but probably couldn't even understand.

So here's what King has to say about McNabb's comments: "One point, and one point only: Enough."

So here's one point, and one point only for King: Fuck you, cracker. You can either agree with McNabb, or you can dispute his assertions, or you can say you have no idea whether he's correct. That's called debate, and it used to be a fundamental feature of our democracy. But to tell him that you've decided that you don't want to hear any more, and therefore he should just shut his mouth? How dare you? Jesus, how many times have the Peter Kings of the world peed all over black athletes (Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Tiger Woods, etc.) for declining to take a position on this issue or that? And here a guy comes out and says, look, racism exists in our society, and you shout, "Enough!"

Every time McNabb takes the field, he hears the epithet the media coyly refers to as the "N-word." And he hears it because he's a black guy playing quarterback. That's a dimension that no white quarterback ever has to deal with. And it's sure as shit a dimension that Peter King ever has to deal with.

Frankly, I think King resents the idea that players can start blogs to talk directly to the fans without having to wait for a reporter to call on their secret cellphone number.

2. In just the third installment of "The Fine Fifteen," King is unable to pare down his list enough to fit his own phony category, and he therefore declares that Carolina and Seattle are "tied" for 15th. Also, he has Houston at No. 14 and observes about the upcoming Texans-Falcons game: "Pretty eerie that the first meeting ever in Atlanta between the teams comes this week, in the fourth game of transplanted ex-Falc Matt Schaub's Houston career." Yes, that's positively spooky. Are we sure that next sunday isn't Halloween?

3. After some introductory chatter about the five biggest storylines of the young season -- Packers play good, McNabb play good, Chargers no play so good, Steelers play real good, Randy Moss play real real good -- King wraps up with a stupid throwaway line: "Strange but true. Just like this season so far." Uh, what's so strange about it? Some teams are better than expected. Some teams are worse than expected. Some players are playing above expectations, and others are below expectations. It's just like every other season at the three-week mark. Nothing is strange. So why did he say it? Because he doesn't have anything else to say. In a column specifically set up so that you don't have to write transitions, here we have a flabby, lazy transition.

4. King's "special teams player of the week" is punter Brian Moorman of Buffalo. You know, the Bills, whom the Patriots crushed 38-7? Moorman punted seven times for an average of 49 yards and on two kicks pinned the Pats at their own 2 and their own 11. In the second quarter, punting from the back of his end zone, he got off a kick that traveled 86 yards in the air, pushing New England's return man all the way back to the 24 yard line. That's indeed a hell of a kick -- and I agree that Moorman is a hell of a punter -- but that's his qualification for special teams player of the week? Here's what happened after each of Moorman's seven punts:

1. Patriots drive the length of the field, but fumble on the goal line.
2. Patriots drive the length of the field for a touchdown.
3. Patriots drive the length of the field for a touchdown.
4. Patriots drive the length of the field for a touchdown.
5. Patriots drive the length of the field for a touchdown.
6. Patriots drive the length of the field for a touchdown.
7. Patriots, with their backup QB now in the game, go 3-and-out.

Shouldn't one of the qualifications for a "player of the week" be that he had some sort of measurable impact on the game? Moorman could have been pinning the Patriots in the Berkshires, and they still would have scored on every drive.

5. This is just weird: "Jeff Garcia may not put up Kitnaesque numbers, but he wins." Well, the Buccaneers are 2-1. So are Kitna and the Lions. I have no idea what he's trying to say here. Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, McNabb, Vince Young, Matt Hasselbeck, Chad Pennington -- none of them put up Kitnaeqsue numbers, and thank God, but they win, too. At least, they do three weeks into the season. Even Schaub.

Week 3: I can't watch

2007-09-24T23:58:00.000-05:00

With the exception of Chargers-Packers and Cowboys-Bears, the slate of games the NFL offered for Week 3 of the 2007 season was the weakest and least-entertaining selection in the three years I've been writing Down and Distance. From Sunday at noon all the way through to Monday night, it was a parade of listless divisional games, throwaway interconference matchups, and assorted odds and ends. The amazing thing is that nine of Sunday afternoon's 14 games were decided by a touchdown or less, and yet, I couldn't have cared less. How many of you sat through Arizona at Baltimore? How about Cleveland at Oakland? Carolina at Atlanta? Indianapolis at Houston? Do you even remember who won the Jets-Dolphins game? I, for one, couldn't remember who I picked 10 minutes after I picked them. And be honest: If Tennessee at New Orleans had not been on Monday Night Football, would you have even watched?

Sunday's late games were the worst, so bad that I actually shut off the TV while the last game -- Giants at Redskins -- was still undecided. Mind you, I pay 50 bucks a month for the Sunday Ticket, so turning off football is like throwing money away. But then I watched the highlights and saw that in the closing moments of that last game, the Redskins, needing a touchdown to tie, had fourth and goal and didn't even have Clinton Portis on the field, and I was glad that I had done the right thing.

When all the dust had settled, I had gone 10-6 for the week in our picks league. Not as good as last week's 11-5 -- or the 13-3 from the opening week -- but still OK, considering that this is the most maddening part of the season. It's so maddening because this is when you come face to face with your presumptions. I picked New Orleans over Tennessee, for example, because I just couldn't believe the Saints are that bad (they are, it seems). I picked San Diego over Green Bay because I just couldn't believe the Packers are that good (they are, it seems). Picking games in Weeks 2-5 is tough because you're still adjusting your idea of who's "good" and who's "bad." It takes a while to shake out.

CORRECT PICKS
Baltimore 26, Arizona 23
Tampa Bay 24, St. Louis 3
Pittsburgh 37, San Francisco 16
Philadelphia 56, Detroit 21
N.Y. Jets 31, Miami 28
New England 38, Buffalo 7
Indianapolis 30, Houston 24
Seattle 24, Cincinnati 21
Oakland 26, Cleveland 24
Carolina 27, Atlanta 20

INCORRECT PICKS
Green Bay 31, San Diego 24
Kansas City 13, Minnesota 10
Jacksonville 23, Denver 14
N.Y. Giants 24, Washington 17
Dallas 34, Chicago 10
Tennessee 31, New Orleans 14

THE WEEK'S HIGHLIGHTS

For the second week in a row, Sunday night really was football night in America, as NBC once again landed the week's marquee matchup, Dallas at Chicago. However, because the Bears were involved, I resolved not to watch any of the pregame festivities because I couldn't bear to hear anything else about Rex Grossman. I'm sick and tired of Rex Fucking Grossman. OK, gang, I get it: He's an inconsistent quarterback. "Good Rex," "Bad Rex," all that. Can we move on now?

And then the game starts, and Rex F. Grossman stumbles out onto the field and, by dint of his nasty play, guarantees that all we're going to hear about for the next week is Rex F. Grossman. The guy really is that bad. What's especially fascinating, though, is that he's moved beyond just sabotaging the Bears' offense. He's starting to destroy their defense and special teams, too. Let me explain: With about a minute left in the first quarter and Chicago up 3-0, Bears safety Adam Archuleta intercepted a Tony Romo pass at midfield. Three plays later, Grossman heaved the ball downfield into coverage and was intercepted. Thanks for your hard work, Adam! The Cowboys didn't do anything with that opportunity and were forced to punt. Devin Hester, perhaps feeling pressure to score another return TD because God knows Grossman ain't putting any points on the board, muffed the punt, but fell on it. (Hester would later fumble a kickoff return. The Bears recovered, and on the first play from scrimmage, Grossman threw an interecption that Anthony Henry brought back for a touchdown.) Then, with about two minutes left in the first half, the Bears blocked a field goal, and Archuleta scooped up the ball and ran it to midfield. Thanks again, Adam! Grossman proceeded to throw a bunch of incomplete passes before the Bears botched a field goal try of their own. Is it any wonder, then, that later in the game Archuleta was missing tackles and getting beaten in coverage? I know these players are pros and all, but I wouldn't condemn guys like Archuleta and Hester for wondering why the hell they're knocking themselves out making plays when Grossman is just going to give the ball right back.

There's a drinking game to be made out of Lovie Smith's press conferences: Drink every time Smith says "Rex Grossman is our quarterback"; drink twice when he mentions the team's record "with Rex Grossman as our quarterback." Drink the whole thing if he ever mentions Brian Griese's name. After Sunday night's game, Smith started in with "Rex Grossman is our quarterback" before he was even asked, probably because the crowd at Soldier Field began chanting Griese's name in the first quarter and got louder with each of Grossman's three interceptions. As the chants continued, Al Michaels and John Madden were up in the booth explaining why switching to Griese might not be such a great idea: because Griese, a 10-year veteran, would be at best a stopgap measure. It wouldn't be like the Broncos deciding last year to bench Jake Plummer for Jay Cutler, or the Bengals going with de facto rookie Carson Palmer in 2004, even though Jon Kitna had just had a career year. Cutler and Palmer were the future of their franchises, and the sooner they got on the field, the sooner they could get over their growing pains and start putting up W's. Grossman, however, is supposed to be the future of the Bears franchise. Pulling him would mean conceding failure and starting over at the quarterback position.

To which I (and all of Chicagoland) say: So what? This is the third straight season in which the only thing standing between the Bears and immortality is crappy play at quarterback. Two years ago, the defense played lights-out football -- and had to, because Kyle Orton was a disaster under center. Last year, not only did the defense play lights-out football, so did the special teams -- and, again, they had to, because Grossman started the season solid, then developed a slow leak, then imploded entirely. Defensive dominance like that demonstrated by the Bears the past few years is not as easy to maintain as offensive dominance; teams eventually find your weaknesses and exploit them. As young as the Bears may be, their window is getting narrower by the week, and they need a QB who can get the ball through that window without smashing the glass and buckling the siding.

Rex Grossman is a lot of goddam things, but what he isn't is a game manager, and that's what the Bears need right now: Someone who can take the good field position he's consistently given by the defense and the kick-return teams, and turn that field position into 20-24 points a game. Trent Dilfer filled that role for the 2000 Ravens. Brad Johnson did so for the 2002 Buccaneers. On the 2007 Bears, Griese's more likely to fill the role than Grossman is. Hell, I'm more likely to fill the role than Grossman is. The Bears need to knock off the Grossman experiment, because the future really is now.

(All this focus on Grossman, though, is terribly unfair to the Cowboys, who played an excellent game Sunday night. I'm willing to admit it if I was wrong about Wade Phillips as a head coach, but I'm not ready to go there yet.)

One team that has never been afraid to bench its quarterback of the future -- or of the present or past -- is the Arizona Cardinals, and that willingness to play musical QBs appears to be the one thing that survived the transition from the Dennis Green era to the Ken Whisenhunt era. Perhaps that's why the Cardinals are the one team for whom the future will never arrive.

Failing to get any kind of push against the Ravens on Sunday, Whisenhunt sat Matt Leinart's Hollywood ass on the bench and called over the intercom, "Cleanup on Aisle 4!" That was the cue for the Arizona backup QB, former stockboy-turned-wunderkind-turned-stockboy Kurt Warner. I'm tempted to put Warner's name in italics because I wonder how many people outside of Iowa were even aware that he was still in the league. Warner, of course, was a Super Bowl-winning quarterback and a two-time league MVP, but that was 45 dog years ago. Since 2001, he's resembled Joe Montana only in that he gets hurt all the time and that he has been benched three times for QBs of the future (Marc Bulger in St. Louis, Eli Manning in New York, Leinart and others in Arizony). Anyway, Warner came in and played extremely well against the Ravens, tying the game with a 17-point fourth quarter before Baltimore pulled out the victory with a field goal on the final play.

And now the Cardinals have a full-blown quarterback controversy on their hands. Unlike Lovie Smith, who has stuck to his guns on Grossman because he knows that once he makes the switch there's no going back, rookie head coach Whisenhunt thinks he can trot Warner out there for a few plays without destroying Leinart's confidence (and wasting all that money the team has committed to him). Whisenhunt explained afterwards that the team has a "Kurt Warner package" of hurry-up plays that the backup is more suited to run. Leinart remains the starter, the coach said, while Warner will be the no-huddle specialist. All of which is bullshit. Many teams will bring in their backups in specialty situations -- the 300-pound Jared Lorenzen on short yardage for the Giants, or a Slash-style QB like Seneca Wallace to run the option -- but they do so because the starter is ill-suited to those specific roles. But Leinart is a classic drop-back passer, and Warner is also a classic drop-back passer. The Cardinals want Warner to run the no-huddle because they have no confidence that Leinart can do it, and, more important, they don't want to let him learn.

The future is not now in Arizona. This team is still at least a year or two away. But destroying Leinart's confidence for short-term gain may well guarantee that the future will continue to never arrive. If that makes any sense.

The Ravens might have a QB controversy themselves, if the team and the city hadn't already given up on Kyle Boller long ago. Despite looking sharp toward the end of the 2005 season, Boller lost his starting job the next year when Baltimore brought in Steve McNair. However, McNair, as has been his wont, gets hurt a lot, and Boller has filled in admirably so far this season. He nearly led the Ravens to victory against the Bengals, only to have the game-tying TD taken away by a bogus penalty; he beat the Jets last week; and he engineered the game-winning drive on Sunday (well, he and Cardinals safety Adrian Wilson, whose cheap shot on Todd Heap gave the Ravens 15 free yards). Ravens coach Brian Billick says McNair remains the team's starter, but Boller will be ready to come in if McNair's groin gives him trouble (gives McNair trouble, that is).

Baltimore has had QB controversies pre-loaded ever since Billick canned Dilfer right after the Super Bowl, but this time around the coach appears to be playing it pretty well. Any time he benches McNair, he can just say it was because he pulled his groin (McNair pulled his groin, that is). Then, if Boller screws the pooch (no, not that one), Billick can just say McNair's groin is better and put him back in. Quite Easily Done!

Even if I'd known that this game was going to have all sorts of QB intrigue, a Super Bowl XXXIV rematch -- Warner vs. McNair! -- and a down-to-the-wire finish, I highly doubt I'd have found time in my empty schedule to watch. Some interconference games you just know are going to be good, or at least rich with tradition or symbolism. Others are just so uninviting as to be distasteful. Those are the ones they play because they have to. Every team has to play every other team at least once every four years. In the case of the Arizona Cardinals and the Baltimore Ravens, even that may be too often. There's no reason for these teams to play. Ever.

Speaking of desultory, unattractive interconference matchups, here's another: Cincinnati at Seattle. Ugly, ugly game -- and that was just the uniforms. Oh sure, it went down to the last minute -- what didn't this week? -- but color me blah. If you had to pick one team in each conference for whom the expectations will always outstrip the performance, you could do worse than to pick the Cincinnati Bengals and the Seattle Seahawks. And the Seahawks were in the Super Bowl just two years ago. Both teams are filled with talented players, and yet the whole is usually considerably less than the sum of the parts.

With the Bengals, the problem this year is fairly simple. The team's third receiving option, Chris Henry, is sitting out half the season on suspension, so Carson Palmer is forcing everything to Chad Johnson and T.J. Houshmandzadeh in double coverage. And "forcing" is the operative word, because his mechanics look all winky-wonky. He's throwing a half-step behind or a half-step ahead of the receivers, and his fade passes go too far. Meanwhile, Rudi Johnson is going nowhere. With the Cincinnati defense so awful, the Bengals are pressing to score on every drive. When you press, you make mistakes.

As for the Seahawks, well, 2007 has got 9-7 written all over it. Once again, that may be good enough to win the NFC West, because the Rams are awful, the 49ers are bogus and the Cardinals are playing patty-cake with quarterbacks.

With the Vikings playing the Chiefs, there was no question which game was going to be selected for the KDSM Central Iowa Crap Matchup of the Week, though it's not like Fox had much to choose from in the early slot. I've already dealt with Arizona-Baltimore. Two of the three other options were San Francisco at Pittsburgh and St. Louis at Tampa Bay. Feel free to write your own impressions of any of those games and post them in the comments (ha), because I've got nothing that hasn't already been said.

The final Fox early game was Detroit at Philadelphia, which turned out to be quite the barn-burner, but who would have expected the Eagles to put up 56 points with the way they'd been playing? As a sign of how my Sunday went, I started following this game in the second half, after the teams had put up a combined 63 points in 28 minutes. Naturally, they scored a total of 14 the rest of the way. There's nothing I can say about this game that hasn't already been said. Donovan McNabb had a great game when he needed it most, Jon Kitna threw for a lot of meaningless yards, and the Eagles' throwback uniforms were the ugliest yet. Yesterday on the local sports radio station (which, regrettably, is Fox rather than ESPN), some asswipe was making a huge deal about the uniforms. "Get 'em off my high-def TV!" he shouted, in what may go down in history as the most pathetic, trying-too-hard, faux-macho, pretentious statement ever uttered on sports radio. Oh, you have a high-def TV, do you? How often do you suppose he casually mentions that he drives a Hummer or Lexus or whatever piece-of-shit-mobile he's paying too much for? Don't tap your feet too hard in the News Corp. restroom, dude.

The good games were all on CBS, including the best of the lot, San Diego at Green Bay, which miraculously aired in Iowa, even though Cleveland at Oakland was available! While everyone focused on the resurgence of Brett Favre and the Packers, I was intrigued by the continued NorvTurnerization of the Chargers. There was a point in the game where Philip Rivers and LaDanian Tomlinson appeared to be getting into it on the sideline. That's not a big deal --- "It's an emotional game," as the players and coaches like to say -- and the two kissed and made up afterwards. Such conflict can be healthy if a franchise is moving in the right direction. You think Peyton Manning hasn't argued with teammates during a game? Tom Brady? McNabb? Of course they have. The good teams, the ones with strong leaderhsip, take those tensions and direct them outward, toward the opponents. But on teams with weak leadership, those kinds of problems remain focused inward, and the negative energy builds and builds until it bleeds out in the media, around the practice field and eventually on game day.

Bill Parcells can tell two feuding players to shut the fuck up and sit down. So can Bill Belichick. Tony Dungy would do it, if His Holiness could even bring himself to say "fuck." I bet Mike Tomlin's got no problem with doing so. But not Norv Turner. Norv is the teacher who gets assigned to monitor study hall, and when the two kids who wear leather jackets to school start fighting, he stands there impotently, shouting, "Come on guys! Come on! Break it up! I'm gonna have to call the principal!" Dissension tears teams apart -- and the more-talented teams are more vulnerable than the less-talented ones, because they have more guys who think that if they just got the ball more, everything would be fine. San Diego is 1-2 -- although, considering their schedule, it's a much better 1-2 than the one the Vikings are sitting on. If things spin out of control the way they tend to when Norv Turner's name is on top of the flowchart, the only way this team is going to the playoffs is if it backs in by winning a crappy division. (And hey, this just in: The Denver Broncos, having just beaten two awful, awful teams by the skin of their teeth, got rolled at home by Jacksonville. So it's not like anyone else is looking to step up in the AFC West.)

Despite the jawboning by Rivers and Tomlinson, the Chargers' offense actually played pretty well against the strong Green Bay defense. On the other side of the ball, however, there was trouble. Much has been made in this space about the Chargers' decision to fire Marty Schottenheimer and go outside the organization for his replacement, Turner. Over the past two weeks, though, it looks like the coach San Diego will really be missing is Wade Phillips. Whatever you think of Phillips' suitability as a head coach (and in my case, that isn't much), he's a hell of a defensive coordinator. With Phillips gone to Dallas, the Chargers, who last year were flying around making things happen, are now flying around watching things happen.

Since we're on the subject of teams falling apart, we might as well close with Monday Night Football, in which the Tennessee Titans proved that they are a team to be reckoned with, and the New Orleans Saints proved that they are not.

This game finally forced me to confront my feelings about Vince Young. I've never liked him, for reasons that have very little to do with Vince Young himself. Mostly they have to do with his coach at the University of Texas, Mack Brown. It goes back to the 2004 season, when Texas was on the BCS bubble. Undefeated Utah had wrapped up one of the two available at-large bids, meaning that Cal and Texas -- both with one loss -- were competing for the other bid. Poll voters had been ranking Cal higher all season, and it looked like the Bears were going to the Rose Bowl while Texas went to the Cotton Bowl or Capital One Bowl or some other hellhole. So Mack Brown, in true, manly, rugged, individualistic Texas form, cried like a big pussy and begged the voters to rank the Longhorns higher. They did, and Texas got in. I was so offended by this -- if you want a BCS bid so bad, why don't you just win your fucking games, Mack? -- that I began actively rooting against Texas. A year later, when the Longhorns met Southern Cal in the BCS title game, I pulled hard and was crestfallen when Young almost singlehandedly pulled out the win for Texas.

Later, when it came out that Young may be dumb as a board, I felt pathetically vindicated. When he made a fool out of himself by showing up at the White House in jeans and a sweatshirt when all his teammates wore jackets and ties, I smiled. I am a small, small person.

But that big, dumb, sloppy dressing bastard is one hell of a football player. Despite his bizarre, (literally) half-cocked throwing motion, he was shooting lasers to his receivers in the Superdome on Monday night. Further, he ran only when necessary. You can't overstate how remarkable it is for a young, excessively hyped "athletic" quarterback with the kind of mobility that Vince Young has to stay at home in the pocket and go through his reads before taking off running. The late Michael Vick, for example, would pull the ball down and run if his first receiver was covered.

It took me a long time to come around on Tom Brady, whom I petulantly held responsible for the Bill Belichick jobbed Drew Bledsoe. Hopefully it won't take as long with Young, because he seems like a good kid and a fantastic athlete.

OK, now for the team that's falling apart: The New Orleans Saints. Holy Shiite, do these guys look bad. The offense that stretched the field so well in 2006 now appears to subsist entirely on 1-yard flare passes and Reggie Bush plunges into a stacked line. Anytime Drew Brees went more than 5 yards downfield, the ball was picked off. I suppose some of New Orleans' impotence was attributable to the dogged Titans defenders, who chased down Saints ballcarriers with ruthless abandon, but not all of it. And on defense, New Orleans is just as bad. They can't -- or, at least, don't -- wrap anybody up. Young, LenDale White and Chris Brown had guys in black jerseys bouncing off them all game, like bugs off a windshield. It was ridiculous.

As bad as they looked, however, it was still ridiculous for Tony Kornheiser to start talking about the New Orleans Aints of yore before the first quarter was even out. I thought the MNF problems would be solved with Joe Theismann out of the booth, but I think Kornheiser is going to have to go, too. It's not just that he isn't original; it's that he says things so obvious that most of us at home wouldn't dare say them because we'd look stupid.

KA-POWER RANKINGS AFTER WEEK 3
Down and Distance's exclusive KA-POWER RANKINGS are back for their third year. The product of a simple formula, the rankings have predicted 10 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners. Further, 14 of the last 17 Super Bowl winners finished the regular season No. 1 or No. 2 in the KA-POWER RANKINGS system. Unlike with other, lesser rating systems, no opinion is involved in formulating these rankings. None. Teams are ranked on a centigrade scale, with 100 representing the NFL's strongest team and 0 its weakest. Don't like where your team is ranked? Blame science. (Key: WK3 = This week's ranking. WK2 = Last week's ranking. POW = KA-POWER centigrade score)

WK3	WK2	TEAM	POW	WK3	WK2	TEAM	POW
1	1	Steelers	100.00	17	18t	Cardinals	45.96
2	2	Patriots	95.77	18	13	Broncos	43.93
3	7	Cowboys	73.41	19	8	Lions	39.11
4	4	Colts	71.93	20	22	Raiders	38.45
5	14	Bucs	70.09	21	21	Browns	36.99
6	5	Packers	69.87	22	12	49ers	35.62
7	3	Texans	64.42	23	27	Giants	34.74
8	23	Eagles	63.70	24	26	Dolphins	33.78
9	6	Vikings	63.57	25	24	Chargers	33.54
10	15	Titans	62.78	26	28	Jets	30.56
11	11	Jaguars	61.55	27	20	Bears	23.33
12	10	Seahawks	59.11	28	31	Chiefs	19.64
13	16	Panthers	53.12	29	25	Rams	15.66
14	9	Redskins	51.58	30	32	Falcons	15.50
15	18t	Ravens	50.15	31	30	Saints	6.57
16	17	Bengals	47.10	32	29	Bills	0.00

PICKS
THIS WEEK: 10-6
SEASON: 34-14 (70.8%)
(2006 through Week 3: 29-17, 63.0%)
(2005 through Week 3: 27-19, 58.7%)

Stop The Rock

2007-09-21T09:31:00.000-05:00

Running through the TV listings yesterday morning, I saw that ESPN Classic was running a Miami-at-San Diego State football game from November 28, 1992. I figured that the only reason they'd be showing something like was because it was Marshall Faulk's senior season, and he must have gone absolutely crazy in this game -- like, 300 yards or something. So I flipped over to Channel 208.

Once there, I discovered that the rerun of the 1992 game was part of something called "The Rock's Game Plan," another vile cross-promotion in which wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was given the keys to (Disney-owned) ESPN Classic for a day to hype his new (Disney-released) film, The Game Plan, which I have not seen but which I presume is both unwatchable and indistinguishable from a half-dozen Vin Diesel titles.

Anyway, once I locked on ESPN Classic, there was The Rock with his big dumb bald head talking about why he chose to show Miami vs. San Diego State. See, Dwayne Johnson was a defensive lineman for the Miami Hurricanes in the early 1990s before suffering a knee injury and being replaced in the lineup by Warren Sapp. The Rock explained that this particular game had been hyped at the time as the final showdown for the 1992 Heisman Trophy, pitting as it did Faulk, the eventual Heisman runner-up, against Miami quarterback Gino Toretta, the eventual winner and proof of the award's irrelevance at the NFL level. However, The Rock said, contrary to the very reason I tuned in, Faulk didn't actually play in this game because of an injury. (The Rock made some comment to the effect that Faulk was a pussy.) Soooooo ... we're going to watch ... Gino Toretta go crazy?

Well, no. The Rock explained that he chose this game because it featured not one but two bench-clearing brawls, and he was right in the middle of both of them. That's the reason. Were I a Disney executive, I would be so very pleased. To promote our new PG-rated, football-star-becomes-daddy movie -- a movie in which the hero, according to Disney, "discovers thats theres more to life than money, endorsements and thousands of adoring fans" -- The Rock has chosen to show a game in which the gunmen, rapists and thugs of the University of Miami go on two steroid-fueled rampages.

Whatever. I didn't watch because I could think of a few thousand better ways to spend a morning than to sit through two hours of Gino Toretta's greatest hits while waiting for the Miami players to start tweaking on the sidelines and charge the field. Not when I could just go over to YouTube and watch the latest incarnation of the Jailicanes brawl with Florida International (to be fair, FIU was spoiling for a fight), or the 1993 version pick a fight with Colorado on the opening kickoff, or -- if you want to really go old school -- the 1987 Hurricanes inciting a riot against South Carolina with a cheap shot after the whistle. I don't need no Dwayne Johnson.

O.J. was set up! Heh. Gotcha.

2007-09-19T14:23:00.000-05:00

Whether you believe it or not -- and whether it's even true or not -- you're going to hear it in the coming days, weeks and months: "O.J. Simpson was set up in Vegas." Trust me. It happened before, and it's going to happen again. Conspiracy theories follow the guy around like ... well, like Fred Goldman's lawyer. And here's what people making the case for a set-up are going to jump on:

The scene: Set-ups always happen in hotel rooms. It's neutral territory. Those in on the operation won't bring the target to their own property for the takedown, because it heightens their exposure. No one wants criminal or near-criminal activity going on in their own living rooms, especially when they're going to tape it. And they sure as hell won't try to pull the sting on the target's turf, because they can't control the variables. A neutral site like a hotel room allows them to control the environment. Plus, hotel rooms allow you to park extra manpower, surveillance equipment, etc. "right next door" -- one room over -- but totally out of sight. Remember what happened to Marion Barry: "Bitch" set him up in a hotel room.

The tape: Someone made an audiotape of the confrontation going down, which he quickly sold to TMZ.com. You don't have tape running in a situation like that unless you want it for evidence. The sale, however, makes the tape all but useless at trial. You can't just play an audiotape -- or show a picture or a video -- in a court of law. Whoever made the tape has to testify, which means they have to be open to cross-ex about their motives. The question will be asked outside of court, though (and probably already is): How much did he get? And would he be willing to set someone up for that kind of cash?

The loot: Alfred Beardsley, one of the dudes whom Simpson allegedly threatened, was on the Today show this morning to get the clock rolling on his 15 minutes. Matt Lauer asked him: This stuff that you were trying to sell -- sports memorabilia that O.J. claims was stolen from him -- who is the rightful owner? The guy went all legalistic, saying, "That's for the courts to determine."* Lauer then pointed out that he'd just admitted on national television that he was trying to sell stuff that he didn't have clear title to. At that point, he backtracked and said, "Yeah, it's my stuff after all."* Vast conspiracy theories have been spun out of a lot less. Beardsley also said the tape had been doctored, which will be interesting when and if he ever gets to the stand. (*=paraphrase)

The Goldmans: Before Simpson's bail had even been set, the Goldman family was angling to seize whatever money he came up with to post bond before he could post it. The family also wants the courts to sort out what part of the loot actually belongs to Simpson, so they can take it and sell it, and they have already had a judge award them a Rolex watch that Simpson was seen wearing on TMZ.com. A family lawyer told USA Today about the watch: "We pray it's not a fake. We pray it says 'Made in Switzerland,' not in Bangkok." Earlier this year, the Goldmans were able to confiscate the rights to Simpson's confessional book If I Did It -- but rather than burn it as the abomination it is, they released it. Simpson's arrest has reportedly goosed sales, which means more money for the Goldman family. About the book, the lawyer said: "We struck gold. ... It's selling well." Someone looking for evidence of a set-up could allege that the incident was stage-managed to flush Simpson out and steer more money to the Goldmans.

So was he set up? Oh, God, don't ask me. This is just an intellectual exercise.

KingWatch: Those awesome Browns

2007-09-18T10:18:00.000-05:00

Peter King spends about half of this week's Monday Morning Quarterback column dissecting, trisecting and quadrisecting the scandal he refers to, incessantly, as "Spygate," even though we've made it abundantly clear that "Tapegate" would be a far more appropriate name, assuming you're creatively bankrupt enough to still be leaning on the "-gate" crutch at this late date. It's not worth it to go into everything PK writes about the matter, so we'll say only this: Dude is taking this whole thing awfully personally. King all but declares that he's going to use his clout on the Hall of Fame selection committee to keep Bill Belichick out of Canton for a while. He quotes a tsk-tsk column from the New York Times (imagine that: New York media pissing all over the New England Patriots). And he flat-out demands that Belichick rend his garments in public: "He owes the public an explanation for why he did what he did." Oh, come off it, Pete. What you're saying is he owes you an explanation, because you've been holding him up for years as the messianic genius love child of Al Einstein and Tom Edison's civil union. And now it turns out that Belichick is not beneath breaking the rules if he thinks it'll help him -- in other words, he's a 21st-century American -- and it's eating you up inside. Yawn. How's this for an explanation: He thought it would give him a competitive advantage. What the hell else needs to be said? Well, enough things to fill out The 5 Dumbest Things King Said This Week:

1. I usually have no desire to quibble with the way King chooses to rank the teams that make up his "Fine Fifteen." The rankings are just his personal opinions. But I was a little intrigued by his decision to put the Pittsburgh Steelers at No. 5. King notes that the Steelers have outscored their opponents 60-10. And although those opponents have been the Bills and Browns, he says, "don't concentrate on that. Concentrate on the fact the Steelers are playing terrific, bone-crunching, Bear-like football." So if we leave opponents out of it, why do we have the 2-0 Steelers below the Bears and Chargers, both 1-1? The Bears' incompetent offense cost them the game against San Diego in the opener and struggled against the flaccid Chiefs on Sunday. The Chargers won that opener only because they made fewer mistakes than the Bears, and they followed that up with Sunday's night's disaster, in which the Pats yanked down the Chargers' pants and pointed out their tiny little pee-pees to a national TV audience. The Steelers have utterly destroyed both their opponents, while the Bears and Chargers have struggled mightily against theirs. Me no get it.

2. When King isn't screaming "Where's the outrage?" over Tapegate (see?), he's slobbering all over the Cleveland Browns' pole. The Browns' 51-45 victory over the Bengals was quite a game, all right, and King really goes to town. King quotes Browns quarterback Derek Anderson, he of the 13 minutes of fame and counting, as saying that coach Romeo Crennel "thought we'd go out and play really well today." King follows up with: "But this well? In the long NFL history of the Browns, which dates to 1950, they'd never had a game in which (blah blah blah stats blah blah)." As his "Goat of the Week," King chooses "the entire Cincinnati defense." And he strokes Braylon Edwards a little for his highlight-reel TD catch: "That's what a high first-round draft pick does, make diving catches with the game on the line." (I'm not sure the game qualifies as "on the line" when you're already leading a shootout 41-38 with 10 minutes left, but we'll let that pass.)

The problem with all these laurels, if you haven't yet detected it, is this: The Browns gave up 45 points. King says it's unbelievable how "well" the Browns played ... but they gave up 45 points! Further, by tabbing the Bengals defense as the goat, he's really saying the Browns didn't play well at all. They just went through the motions while Cincy sat around playing with their dongs. (How many penis references can we cram into this item?) You can't at once praise Jamal Lewis for running roughshod all over the Bengals while condemning the Bengals for not even laying a finger on Lewis. Get it?

3. King is supposed to know football. He's not supposed to buy into the QB-on-QB bullshit that so much of the media tries to reduce NFL games to. Yet he chides Titans quarterback Vince Young, "You'll need to be more accurate than that to beat Peyton Manning." Young isn't out there trying to get the ball past Manning; he's trying to get it past a Colts defense that might not be as good as it appeared in Week 1 against the suddenly suspect Saints. King mentions a ball that Young badly overthrew to Bo Scaife in the second quarter, but ignores that on the final drive in the fourth quarter, when the Titans were down by just 2 points, Young put a pass on the hands of Brandon Jones, who dropped it. If Jones makes that catch, the Titans probably get into position to kick the winning field goal. Yes, Young has accuracy problems (and attitude problems; grow up already, ya baby) -- but he could have beaten the Colts (er, I mean Manning) even with those problems. He did so just last year, remember?

4. Ever notice that the anti-union movement never actually goes after the members of a union? They're always saying that their real problem is with the corrupt and selfish "union bosses." They know that there's no way in hell that people would stand for politicians and others attacking teachers, cops and firemen -- so they create these Hoffa-esque caricatures of "bosses" and attack them instead. I mention this because it's exactly what retired NFL players have been doing in their push to get better pension benefits out of the players' union. (That push is entirely justified, if you ask me.) Who are these retirees going after? You guessed it: Union "boss" Gene Upshaw, himself a retired player. King gives over a big chunk of his column to Hall-of-Famer Bart Starr's anti-Upshaw rant:

"It's disgraceful. I'm embarrassed. It's shameful. If I told you guys some of the players from past eras, their retirement package is below the poverty level. Gentlemen, that is absolutely unacceptable and in my opinion shameful and all of us should be ashamed of that, and it's a disgrace. ... I'm surprised and disappointed that some time ago the National Football League Players Association didn't step up ... When you have someone [NFLPA executive director Gene Upshaw] making the kind of money, $6 or $7 million a year, to me that's just despicable ... They need to step up and change this."

Fine and dandy, but remember who Upshaw works for: the current members of the union, and only the current members of the union. If the union reps from the individual teams came to Upshaw and said something like, "Chief, we want to start assessing members 5% of their net salaries to fund better benefits for current retirees," you can bet he'd go for it. He'd have no choice but to go for it, because the reps are his bosses. So why doesn't Starr call out the current players? Why doesn't he say, "You guys are making millions of dollars, and it's a result of the sacrifices we made to build the game. You owe it to us." I'll tell you why: Because current players are popular, and the retirees don't want to get in a fight with them. So the retirees pretend like it's Upshaw's call, and his alone, and King and other lazy idiots in the media just go along with that. And why doesn't Upshaw just make this very point? Why doesn't he say publicly, "If the current players want me to increase benefits, I'll do it?" Because they pay him that despicable "$6 or $7 million a year" not to. He takes the heat so they don't have to. Sorry, Bart. Better get some more ice for those knees.

5. Last week King declared that "Fashion Week" made no sense to him. As if anyone gives a fuck. This week he asks, "How does James Spader beat Gandolfini for best actor at the Emmy's?" Uh, by getting more votes? Look, we know you're obsessed with The Sopranos, and that every time it comes on the TV, so do you. But just because you thnk James Gandolfini is just so dreamy doesn't mean that everyone else has to. I don't know if Spader is the best actor. Frankly, I don't care. (However, I'm sure that PK has never seen Boston Legal and is therefore no more qualified to judge than I am.) But whoever makes those decisions seems to think he is. That's the trouble with awards. If you use them to establish your credibility -- which HBO has done non-stop with The Sopranos for eight fucking years -- then you have to smile and deal with it when those same awards eventually go to someone else. That's the way it works.