Super Bowl XLII Play-by-Playlooza

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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%)

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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

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

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

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%)

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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

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%)

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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

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%)

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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.