- What is the over/under on how many Cowboy losses it will take next fall before the "Fire Phillips" bandwagon gets rolling full steam? Three? One? Jason Garrett has completed his whirlwind head coaching interview tour and decided to stay in Dallas as Assistant Head Coach at a salary close to the $3 million a year Wade Phillips makes. Maybe Phillips isn't walking the plank just yet, but he must feel the swords nudging him in the back, at least a little.

- Does Dallas have the best strip clubs of any NFL city, or just the most? Pacman Jones, the man who can't seem to stay out of the fine establishments, or even stay out of trouble when he's in them, has said he would like to leave Tennessee and move on to the Cowboys. This from a guy who isn't even guaranteed a reinstatement to the NFL by Roger Goodell unless he can show he is able to stay out of trouble. His record of six arrests in less than three years says that's not a winning bet.

- Does Peyton Manning go to younger brother Eli now for advice about playing the quarterback position? And will the chairs for Sunday dinner at the Archie Manning residence get moved around at all now that Eli is still in the Super Bowl hunt and Peyton is playing golf? Does Eli get to sit at the adult table and Peyton at the card table with the kiddies?

- Wouldn't it be funny if Anny Grant, the young girl who was booed at the RCA Dome for wearing a Patriots jersey last Sunday, wore a Colts jersey to Gillette Stadium this afternoon? She earned a lot of admirers for her good-natured response to her Indianapolis reception, including Patriots owner Robert Kraft, who invited her and her entire family to be his guest at the AFC Championship game in Foxboro. She reportedly will take part in the pregame coin toss. Imagine the stunned silence if she were to walk out on the field in a Peyton Manning jersey....just a thought.

- Is Roger Clemens regretting his quick boast that he would be happy to testify at a Congressional hearing on the steroids mess? After seeing what happened with Congress and Miguel Tejada, who isn't even in the country right now, you would think the last place Clemens would want to be is Capitol Hill. He can retain all the ex-Clinton lawyers he wants, but they won't be able to protect him much if he perjures himself.

- Will the fact that the Packers practiced this week with frozen footballs give them a leg up on the Giants at frigid Lambeau Field tonight? The temperature will be close to zero by gametime, so you can be sure there will be plenty of frozen balls in Green Bay. And if practicing with frozen footballs results in a win for the Packers, will they use frozen turkeys next time, figuring more is better?

- Will the Atlanta Falcons ever be able to convince anyone to accept their vacant head coaching position? The latest to interview for the job is Vikings defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier. Is the man trying to punish himself for some unknown transgression? Regardless, even the Miami Dolphins now have a head man, and they won only one game last year.

- Are the San Diego Chargers #### if Philip Rivers can't play or goes down against New England? Absolutely not. If you compare career statistics for Rivers and Billy Volek, the Chargers backup, you find they are remarkably similar in many respects, such as the following:

Games played - Rivers 36, Volek 30

Completion percentage - Rivers 60.8%, Volek 59.7%

Touchdown percentage and interception percentage - Rivers 4.6% and 2.6%, Volek 4.9% and 2.6%

Yards per attempt - Rivers 7.0, Volek 6.6

Quarterback rating - Rivers 86.6, Volek 84.9

In short, the Chargers are better off with Rivers thanks to intangibles like his fiery attitude. Plus, it's debatable how much Volek would be affected by the rust of not having played a lot besides the fourth quarter last week - the Patriots have been known to confuse guys with a lot more game experience than Volek.

But if push comes to shove and Rivers is unable to go, San Diego has a guy who is more than capable of running the team, as he proved last weekend in the big comeback against Indianapolis.

As I try to recover from the beating I took from all the comments on yesterday's post roasting me when I had the nerve to posit the theory that a young girl was tougher than Cowboys star Terrell Owens - I still believe it, by the way - the calendar reminds me it's almost Sunday and therefore almost time for the NFL's conference championship games.

Since I made a fool of myself last week, picking wrong on three of the four games, I might just as well go all the way and pick again. Maybe I'll get lucky and avoid looking so bad this week with my picks. I'll tell you one thing, though. If I do really badly with my predictions, I'm pretty sure it will be okay if I cry, as long as I do it on camera and I'm somehow associated with the Dallas Cowboys.

Here are the updated records for the four teams left in the Super Bowl hunt against quality opposition, which I define as any opponent having a record of better than .500:

1) New England Patriots 8-0 (1.000)

2) Green Bay Packers 4-1 (.800)

3) San Diego Chargers 4-3 (.571)

4) New York Giants 3-5 (.375)

These numbers make it appear that both games should be runaway victories for the home teams, the Packers and the Patriots. But in this case I'm not sure it's fair to infer that, since all four teams have proven themselves worthy against tough competition by this point in the year, including the Giants, whose last three games against quality opposition have all been wins.

Another factor to consider are the teams' home and road records, which are as follows:

1) New England Patriots at home: 9-0 (1.000)

2) New York Giants on the road: 9-1 (.900)

3) Green Bay Packers at home: 8-1 (.889)

4) San Diego Chargers on the road: 5-4 (.556)

Those are some interesting numbers right there. Winning on the road in the NFL is almost universally agreed to be one of the toughest things to do, and yet the Giants have gone an incredible 9-1 away from Jersey. In fact, the last time New York lost a road game was way back on September 9, the first game of the season!

Even the Chargers relatively unimpressive road record is a bit deceiving, since they started out 1-4 on the road and have since won their last four road games in a row, including last week's hard-fought win at the RCA Dome. San Diego hasn't lost a game on the road since before Thanksgiving.

So what does it all mean? Obviously, something's got to give, but I don't buy the 14 point spread in the San Diego-New England game, even if neither Philip Rivers nor LaDainian Tomlinson can play, which at this point seems unlikely.

Here's what I see happening:

AFC: Patriots 27, Chargers 21

NFC: Packers 17, Giants 14

Given my laskluster performance in picking the games last week, people in San Diego and New York should be jumping for joy right now. I fully admit to being a Patriots fan, although I've tried not to let it affect my picks. Who's to say whether it has?

Here's the thing, though. Although I have a dog in this fight (Sorry about that, Michael Vick), fans of all four teams should be excited about the games. Remember to have fun watching - fans of 28 other teams would love to be where your team is right now!

The AFC and NFC championship games are looming this weekend in two cities where weather in mid-January could be a huge factor. If you don't think so, just ask the Seattle Seahawks. Those poor guys started the game in Green Bay last weekend in normal, albeit cold, weather and by the time the rout had mercifully ended they looked like Kurt Russell and the cast of The Thing stumbling around lost in Antarctica with some sort of monster chasing them.

Oddly enough, the Packers appeared to be enjoying themselves in the blizzard, which, I suppose is to be expected when you're kicking the other team's butt all over the frozen tundra.

So, the question is, what are the weather conditions going to be like this Sunday, when, in perhaps the only time you will see these two cities on your radar at the same time for any reason, Green Bay and Foxboro take center stage in the sporting world for a few hours.

I looked at the long-range forecast for each city on weather.com and discovered a couple of interesting things. First off, there is more than one Green Bay as well as more than one Foxboro, which I did not know. In addition to Green Bay, Wisconsin, there is also a sister city named Green Bay, Virginia. Even stranger, in addition to Foxboro, Massachusetts, there is a Foxboro, Wisconsin which seems to give the whole thing a weird sort of synchronicity.

Seemingly against all odds, neither stadium will feature a big snowstorm this Sunday, at least not according to the long range forecast. Gillette Stadium in Foxboro will see partly cloudy skies with a high temperature of 23 degrees, but with winds out of the west-northwest at up to 25 miles per hour. If true, that would result in a wind chill factor of about 6 degrees.

That's the good news. In Green Bay, the high temperature is forecasted to be just 4 degrees, with snow flurries and 13 mile per hour winds. This translates into a wind-chill factor of about -13 degrees, without even Philip Rivers' hot air to warm things up.

Just for a point of reference, the temperature in Fairbanks, Alaska Sunday will be 14 degrees. Plus, and this will warm the hearts of everyone planning to attend the game, the NFC Championship doesn't even start until 6:30 p.m., by which time the high temperature will be just a fond memory.

If you happen to have tickets to either game, have fun and make sure you bring plenty of antifreeze. It will be a toasty 72 degrees in my seat, unless I feel a chill, and then I'll bump it up to 75.

Lose your starting quarterback? Lose your starting running back, and the guy who happens to be the NFL rushing champ? Find yourself trailing in the fourth quarter to the defending Super Bowl champs, in their own building, with the aforementioned critical guys sitting on the sideline? Psssht. Who cares?

Certainly not the San Diego Chargers, who waltzed into Indianapolis and closed down the RCA Dome, beating Indy for the second time this year and ending the Colts season in one of the most physical, intense, emotionally charged games of the season. Indianapolis went 0-2 against San Diego this season, 13-2 against everyone else.

You say you like a little offense? How does 857 yards of total offense between the two teams grab you, including 714 through the air? That doesn't even include the 309 return yards the two teams totaled up. If you're keeping score at home, that adds up to 1023 yards of the football moving up and down the field, or well over a half-mile of ground that was covered inside the old building.

Lead changes? This game had all the earmarks of the classic, "Whoever gets the ball last wins" theory of offensive football and even though Indianapolis did get the ball last, they were unable to mount the one final touchdown drive that would have kept their season alive.

A few observations after watching maybe the most entertaining football game of the season:

1) The San Diego backfield during the game-winning fourth quarter drive consisted of Billy Volek under center and Michael Turner at tailback. Who would have imagined the game playing out like that? Furthermore, who would have imagined the Chargers engineering a game-winning drive under those conditions?

2) The Colts lost a few guys to injury during this hard-hitting game, too. In fact, on the last-gasp possession for the Colts as time ran out in the fourth quarter, as Peyton Manning faced a do-or-die fourth and five near midfield, both Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne were standing on the Indy sideline, unable to continue. Manning tried to connect with old reliable, Dallas Clark, but the ball sailed just off his fingertips.

3) After LaDainian Tomlinson had departed wth a knee injury, the announcing crew was bemoaning what a terrible loss it was to the Chargers. At the time, Michael Turner, Tomlinson's replacement, had carried the ball six times for 43 yards, a 7.2 yard average! Turner ended the game with 17 carries for 71 yards and a 4.2 average. Not bad for a backup.

4) Twice the Chargers started a drive without eleven men on the field. The first time, in the first half, they had just ten men on the field and had to burn a precious timeout. The second time, in the second half, they had twelve and got whisted for a penalty. These were not substitution mistakes, they were errors as the offensive unit was taking the field to start a drive. San Diego cannot afford these kinds of mistakes next weekend in New England if they want to have a chance to get to Arizona in three weeks.

5) I don't know if a punter ever gets a game ball, but Mike Scifres may well have saved San Diego's season when he boomed a 68 yard punt from his own end zone late in the fourth quarter. The Chargers were nursing the slim, 28-24 lead and Scifres's punt forced Indianapolis to start their final drive all the way back on their own 32 yard line. An average punt of around 40 yards would have given Manning and the Colts the ball on San Diego's side of the field, where the ending of the game may have been dramatically different.

6) While many people were assuming a Patriots-Colts AFC Championship Game rematch, the Chargers-Pats will be a playoff rematch too. The Pats eliminated the Chargers last season in San Diego in the Divisional Round in a game the Chargers still view as a missed opportunity. Next Sunday's game in Foxboro could be a classic.

As someone said in one of the seemingly thousands of stories I've read since Sunday night about the upcoming NFL Divisional Round playoff games, we are now down to probably the eight best teams in the league for this season.

Since it is a given that any given team can beat any other given team on any given Sunday, provided of course the Dolphins aren't one of those teams, it becomes even more important to look at the numbers if you want to attempt to divine who will be the four teams competing next weekend in the Conference Championship games.

My theory is that by this point in the year, after a sixteen game regular season and one round of playoffs, the record that a team has forged against quality competition, that is, any team with a record over .500 for the season, will be as good an indicator as any of how that team will fare in games against, well, quality opposition, which is what all eight of the remaining teams are.

This theory worked pretty well last week, allowing me to go four for four with picks on the Wild Card Round. Here are the updated numbers for each of the remaining teams in the playoffs, and how they fared against teams with a record of at least 9-8 this season:

1) New England Patriots 7-0 (1.000)

2) Green Bay Packers 3-1 (.750)

3) Dallas Cowboys 4-2 (.667)

4) Jacksonville Jaguars 5-3 (.625)

5) Indianapolis Colts 4-3 (.571)

6) San Diego Chargers 3-3 (.500)

7) Seattle Seahawks 2-2 (.500)

8) New York Giants 2-5 (.286)

If you read my previous "By the Numbers" post, published before last weekend's games, you may remember that these numbers are skewed just a bit by the fact that Indianapolis and Dallas both lost games against quality opposition in the final week of the regular season when the games had no bearing on their playoff scenarios. So if you eliminate those two losses for those teams, the list now looks a little more representative of what I believe to be realistic numbers:

1) New England Patriots 7-0 (1.000)

2) Dallas Cowboys 4-1 (.800)

3) Green Bay Packers 3-1 (.750)

4) Indianapolis Colts 4-2 (.667)

5) Jacksonville Jaguars 5-3 (.625)

6) San Diego Chargers 3-3 (.500)

7) Seattle Seahawks 2-2 (.500)

8) New York Giants 2-5 (.286)

A couple of items stand out right away. The Giants, although many people are picking them to upset Dallas thanks to their impressive road record this season and fine showing last week against Tampa Bay, will fall easily to the Cowboys. Dallas has not played particularly well the last few weeks, but Eli Manning is still too inconsistent to play a second road game in two weeks against a tough defense to advance.

All the other games look tough and close. Based on those numbers and a couple of other observations, here are the results you can expect this weekend:

Saturday, NFC: Seahawks 24, Packers 20
I know I picked Seattle for an early exit, but they showed a lot, especially on defense last week. Plus, Brett Favre, for as great a season as he has had, has been less impressive the last few weeks, protecting the ball with less enthusiasm than he did earlier in the year. I see a big turnover from Favre late in the game.

Saturday, AFC: Patriots 27, Jaguars 14
I like the Jags and I like David Garrard. He might just be the best quarterback nobody really knows in the NFL. But this isn't their year, New England's offense is just too explosive.

Sunday, AFC: Colts 35, Chargers 21
San Diego had one of the best second halves of the season of any team in the NFL, but I'm not sold on Philip Rivers yet in a big game against Peyton Manning and the Colts, in the RCA Dome.

Sunday, NFC: Cowboys 24, Giants 10
Nuff said.

When do you suppose Miami Dolphins ex-head coach Cam Cameron reached the inescapable conclusion that he was going to be fired? The deed was done January 3 by new General Manager Jeff Ireland, who made it his first major move after being hired a couple of days before by new Vice President of Football Operations Bill Parcells, but surely he must have known long before the New Year that his goose was cooked.

Was it when he finally won his first and only game as an NFL head coach, in the middle of December? Or was it when Jason Taylor was asked about his head coach's future and gave a less-than-stirring show of support? Maybe it was when an already thin lineup saw important cogs like Ronnie Brown, Trent Green and Zach Thomas go down with injuries. Perhaps it was when he realized the best hope at running back was Ricky Williams, a guy who had been out of the NFL for years, then got his chance for a comeback and went down with a season-ending injury in his first game back.

Or maybe it was even farther back than that. Maybe Cam Cameron knew he was in trouble the day he walked into the Dolphins headquarters and looked at his choices at quarterback: Trent Green, a capable veteran but also a walking concussion waiting to happen, Cleo Lemon, an unheralded journeyman, and John Beck, a raw rookie.

Do you suppose he sat behind his desk sometime during his first week on the job, waited until everyone had gone home, and then closed his office door and put his head in his hands, wondering why in the hell he had ever left San Diego, where he had spent five seasons as a highly successful offensive coordinator? Did he put in a call to Bobby Petrino to get the ins and outs of abandoning a job that wasn't turning out the way he had planned, or did he just accept the inevitable, and do his best to try to at least achieve one win before being ushered out of town?

If you've ever seen the movie The Princess Bride, no doubt you immediately recognized, as I did, the parallels between poor Coach Cameron's situation in Miami and young Westley, the servant boy in the movie who was captured by the Dread Pirate Roberts on the high seas and forced to go to work on the pirate's ship to try to avoid execution.

Every night poor Westley was sent to bed with the same refrain from the murderous pirate - "Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

Of course, that's where the movie diverges significantly from the real-life tale playing out in Miami. In The Princess Bride, the Dread Pirate Roberts eventually retires from the seafaring life, handing the pirating reigns over to Westley, who steps into Roberts's boots and becomes the new Dread Pirate.

In Miami, a coastal city that's no stranger to piracy in its own right, the role of the Dread Pirate Roberts was filled on December 27 by the Dread Pirate Parcells, who wasted no time executing Cameron as Westley, probably without even the small courtesy of the warning that Westley received in the movie.

Realistically, though, a guy like Cameron has been around the game long enough to know 1-15 wasn't going to cut it in a city with a rich history of football success and a proud tradition in the NFL. As soon as Parcells made a former Dallas crony his first hire as GM, he must have known his head would be the next one lying on the chopping block.

So what happens now for the man who has a career record as a head coach in the NFL of 1-15? It's not known as a league where guys get recycled unless they've been successful somewhere at some point. A coordinator's job is the most likely answer, as that is the role he filled with success in San Diego.

But it's not likely his future will be as bright as that of Westley, who, in addition to becoming the Dread Pirate Roberts, eventually won over the heart of the Princess of the movie's title, living happily ever after and riding off into the sunset, preserved forever on celluloid.

It's finally NFL playoff time. The long, drawn out first act is over and it's time to move on to the speed round, where one bad game can mean months of regret and a team that gets hot at the right time can win it all.

There were plenty of surprises during the regular season, both pleasant ones and disappointments. The Bears, one season removed from a Super Bowl appearance, had their flaws exposed and finished just 7-9, tied with the Lions for last place in the NFC North. Likewise, the Saints, possibly the surprise of the year last year, slipped to 7-9 as well.

On the plus side of the surprise ledger, the Green Bay Packers rode their defense and the aging arm of Brett Favre to an impressive 13-3 mark and the second seed in the NFC, and in the AFC, the Cleveland Browns finished a surprising 10-6, tying Pittsburgh for first place in the North, although they fell victim to a numbers game and missed the playoffs entirely.

Now, though, the time has come to handicap the field of the twelve remaining teams as the annual tournament starts. For my money, the best way to judge a team's potential in a single-elimination format against the best of the best is to review their performance during the season against quality opposition, which I define as any team with a record better than .500, or any team that finished 9-7 or better.

This year, that group includes all the playoff teams plus the hard-luck Cleveland Browns. So, without further ado, here is each playoff team's record against quality opposition in 2007:

1) New England Patriots 7-0 (1.000)

2) Green Bay Packers 3-1 (.750)

3) Dallas Cowboys 4-2 (.667)

4) Pittsburgh Steelers 3-2 (.600)

5) Indianapolis Colts 4-3 (.571)

5) Jacksonville Jaguars 4-3 (.571)

7) San Diego Chargers 2-3 (.400)

7) Tampa Bay Buccaneers 2-3 (.400)

9) Tennessee Titans 2-4 (.333)

10) Seattle Seahawks 1-2 (.333)

11) Washington Redskins 2-5 (.286)

12) New York Giants 1-5 (.167)

A couple of things should be considered when looking at these numbers. The Colts and Cowboys both lost games against quality opponents in Week 17 who were fighting for their playoff lives, while neither team had anything but pride to play for. The value of those losses is questionable when applying the numbers to the playoffs, so if you eliminate them, the Cowboys improve to 4-1 against quality opposition, the second-best mark in the NFL, and the Colts improve to 4-2, moving them up to fourth.

Teams who should be especially concerned looking at those numbers include the Giants, who won only one game all year against a quality opponent, and the Seahawks, who played just three games all season against the best of the best, winning just one, that all the way back on September 9. The Steelers should also be hearing footsteps, as they started out 3-0 against quality opponents, before losing their last two. That, plus the injury bug which has hit Pittsburgh hard, will mean a short playoff run for the Steelers.

The second thing to consider when looking at playoff matchups is the difficulty of each team's schedule. A team that finished 10-6 with a difficult schedule should be better-prepared to face the rigors of the playoffs than a team with an identical record that played a lot of cupcakes.

To determine how tough each playoff contender's schedule was, I ranked every NFL franchise from 1 to 32 based on record. Teams with identical records were sorted by point differential, so the Bucs get ranked just ahead of the Redskins even though they both finished 9-7, by virtue of the fact that they outscored their opponents by a cumulative 64 points as opposed to only 24 for the 'Skins.

Once the teams were ranked 1-32, I went through each playoff contender's schedule game by game and added up the value of each opponent over the course of the season. The higher the final number, the more difficult the overall schedule. The results are surprising in some ways and not in others. Here are the results for each team's strength of schedule:

1) Washington Redskins 300

2) Jacksonville Jaguars 271

3) Indianapolis Colts 268

4) Tennessee Titans 267

5) New York Giants 264

6) Dallas Cowboys 258

7) New England Patriots 254

8) San Diego Chargers 248

9) Green Bay Packers 237

10) Tampa Bay Buccaneers 235

11) Pittsburgh Steelers 229

12) Seattle Seahawks 205

In terms of degree of difficulty, there is a huge difference between the schedule faced by the Washington Redskins and that faced by the Seahawks. In fact, mathematically speaking, the Redskins schedule was almost 10% tougher than any other playoff team.

But what does that mean? In one sense, you could say Washington is battle-hardened. On the other hand, having a difficult schedule isn't necessarily all that beneficial if you only go 2-5 against the best the opposition has to offer, as the 'Skins did.

By the same token, the fact that Seattle played a much easier schedule than anyone else doesn't necessarily mean they won't fare well in the playoffs - it's not their fault their schedule included a lot of cupcakes. The reason the Hawks will fall early has much more to do with the fact they only played three tough teams all year and only won once - on the very first weekend of the season.

It's an imperfect system, I know, but the best I could do, considering NORAD won't let me near their supercomputer any more after I crashed it crunching the numbers for my "What's in a Name" post. Hopefully they help you pick some winners.

Speaking of which, here are the results you can plan on for this weekend:


Saturday, NFC: Seahawks 24, Redskins 13


Saturday, AFC: Jaguars 14, Steelers 13


Sunday, NFC: Giants 27, Buccaneers 17


Sunday, AFC: Chargers 31, Titans 17

It's Top Ten Time!

As we wait breathlessly for the historic battle between New England and the Giants, with a never-before-accomplished 16-0 record on the line, it's time to look back at the ten best nicknames given to NFL teams over the years.

This is a highly scientific list based on several important factors, including: Historical significance, creativity, how much the names appealed to me, and how much each contributed to world peace. Okay, I made that last one up. Just wanted to see if you were paying attention.

I then entered each nickname into a supercomputer which crunched all the variables using an algorithm developed jointly by NASA scientists and the guys who live in the basements of their parents' homes and determine the BCS standings. I can't go into any more detail than that; in fact, I fear I may have said too much already.

Interestingly, seven of the top ten nicknames refer specifically to outstanding defensive units, showing the importance attached to a strong defense in NFL circles.

In any event, the top-secret supercomputer spit out the following. Without further ado, allow me to present the Top Ten NFL Team Nicknames Ever:


10) Greatest Show on Turf

This nickname was given to the explosive offense developed by Mike Martz and executed by the St. Louis Rams between 1999 and 2001. The 2000 Rams set NFL records both for total offensive yards and for passing yards, and the Rams reached the Super Bowl twice in that three year span, winning once and losing once in the biggest Super Bowl upset since the Jets won Super Bowl II.


9) Electric Company

This was the nickname bestowed on the Buffalo Bills offensive line of the 1970's, the group which opened holes for "The Juice," as O.J. Simpson was known at the time. Before getting away with murder, Simpson had a tremendous rushing career in Buffalo, and his offensive line turned on The Juice, resulting in the ninth-best nickname ever.


8) Air Coryell

In the early 1980's, the San Diego Chargers defied conventional NFL wisdom, which said keeping the ball on the ground and controlling the clock was the way to win games. The Chargers used quarterback Dan Fouts's arm and passing skills to rack up yardage through the air. Coryell's philosophies would later go on to become the basis for Mike Martz's "Greatest Show on Turf" in the late 1990's and early 2000's.


7) New York Sack Exchange

This nickname was given the ferocious defense of the early-1980's New York Jets, led by defensive end Mark Gastineau, who set a then-NFL record for sacks in a season in 1984, with 22, and racked up 100.5 sacks in just the first 100 starts of his career.


6) Gang Green

The nickname given the Philadelphia Eagles defense of the late-1980's, coached by Defensive Coordinator Buddy Ryan. Reggie White, Jerome Brown, Seth Joiner, and Andre Waters led the defense. The nickname was later co-opted by the New York Jets.


5) Doomsday Defense

Two different Dallas Cowboy defensive units have earned this nickname. The 1972 Super Bowl VI-winning team was led by Herb Adderley, Bob Lilly and Mel Renfro. The 1978 Super Bowl XII-winning team was led by Randy White, Harvey Martin and Ed "Too Tall" Jones.


4) Purple People Eaters

From the late-1960's through the late-1970's the Minnesota Vikings played in four Super Bowls, anchored by their defense, which featured defensive linemen Alan Page, Carl Eller, Jim Marshall and Gary Larsen. Their motto? "Meet at the quarterback."


3) Orange Crush

The 1970's Denver Broncos featured this run-stopping defense, led by linebackers Randy Gradishar and Tom Jackson, as well as defensive linemen Lyle Alzado and Rubin Carter.


2) Steel Curtain

The nickname given the anchors of the four-time Super Bowl winning defense of the 1970's. Steel Curtain members included Mean Joe Greene, L.C. Greenwood, Ernie Homes. Dwight White, Jack Lambert, Jack Ham, Mel Blount and Andy Russell. This suffocating defense led the 1976 team to a Super Bowl win despite the loss of quarterback Tery Bradshaw partway through the season. The Steel Curtain boasted five shutouts that year, including three in a row.


1) Monsters of the Midway

Maybe the most descriptive, longest-running nickname in football. The early-1940's Chicago Bears, a team that dominated the NFL in those years, gave rise to this descriptive title, which was resurrected in the mid-1980's for another edition of a dominating Bears squad. Any NFL fan who hears the phrase "Monsters of the Midway" immediately pictures the distinctive Bears old-style uniforms and long tradition, including a 73-0 victory over Washington Redskins in the 1940 NFL Championship Game.

With the playoff picture beginning to take shape, it seemed a good time to take a look at some of the teams who will be in the "tournament," as Bill Parcells used to call it, fighting for a shot at a Super Bowl title.

Conventional wisdom seems to be that the Patriots will represent the AFC and either the Cowboys or possibly Green Bay will be the NFC team to make the trip to Glendale. But is that opinion based solely on won-lost records? The Pats have the best record in the AFC and the Cowboys have the best in the NFC, followed by the Packers.

But wins and losses can only tell you so much. If you're piling up wins against bad teams while struggling against good ones, that would seem to indicate a good possibility for an early exit from the playoffs. On the other hand,if you play a tough schedule against a lot of good teams, doesn't that seem to indicate a readiness to face the rigors of the playoffs, where by definition only the best teams participate?

To separate the wheat from the chaff, I broke down the schedules of each team that would be in the playoffs if they were to start this weekend. Obviously, things could change in the next three weeks, but I wanted to start now because, frankly, my curiosity got the best of me.

I looked at two factors for each team: strength of schedule, and record against quality opposition, which I defined as any opponent with a winning record to this point in the season - in other words, any opponent wth a 7-6 record or better. Some of the results are predictable, others are a little surprising.


Strength of Schedule - The combined record of all opponents for each team:



1 - San Diego Chargers - 91-78 (.539)

2 - Jacksonville Jaguars - 89-80 (.527)

3 - Indianapolis Colts - 88-81 (.521)

4 - Minnesota Vikings - 87-82 (.515)

5 - New Engand Patriots - 85-84 (.503)

6 - Dallas Cowboys - 84-85 (.497)

Green Bay Packers - 84-85 (.497)

8 - Tampa Bay Buccaneers - 83-86 (.491)

9 - New York Giants - 78-91 (.462)

10 - Pittsburgh Steelers - 77-92 (.456)

11 - Cleveland Browns - 75-94 (.444)

12 - Seattle Seahawks - 70-99 (.414)

If you look at strength of schedule, there appear to be three levels. The top four teams, San Diego, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, and Minnesota, played a slate of teams with a combined record well over .500. The next four, New England, Dallas, Green Bay, and Tampa Bay, all played opponents whose records combined to be just about .500. The final four, the New York Giants, Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Seattle, have played a schedule considerably easier.

How will that affect a team's readiness for the playoffs? It would seem that a team with a relatively easy schedule should be able to build a winning record much easier, while a team with a difficult schedule has been battle-tested and logic would suggest should perform better in the playoffs.

But even within each team's schedule, there are very good opponents and very bad ones. The best indicator against future success against good teams, I believe, is how a team has performed over the course of the season against quality opponents. With that in mind, here is how each team has fared aganst quality opposition this season.


Record Against Quality Opponents:



1 - New England Patriots - 7-0 (1.000)

2 - Dallas Cowboys - 5-1 (.833)

3 - Green Bay Packers - 4-1 (.800)

Pittsburgh Steelers - 4-1 (.800)

5 - Indianapolis Colts - 5-2 (.714)

6 - Jacksonville Jaguars - 4-3 (.571)

7 - Minnesota Vikings - 3-4 (.429)

8 - San Diego Chargers - 2-4 (.333)

9 - Seattle Seahawks - 1-2 (.333)

10 - Cleveland Browns - 1-3 (.250)

Tampa Bay Buccaneers - 1-3 (.250)

12 - New York Giants - 0-4 (.000)

This set of numbers, I believe, tells a lot about some of the teams if you study it. Four teams, the Patriots, Colts, Jaguars, and Vikings, have played more than half their games thus far against quality opponents, telling me those teams may be more prepared for a playoff atmosphere than, say, the Seahawks, Browns, Bucs, or Giants, who have played four or less against quality opposition.

The teams in the bottom half of the above chart have built their records against largely inferior competition, leading me to believe each will suffer a quick exit, with the possible exception of the Vikings, who have played seven games against quality opposition, and who have been playing much better of late than they did early in the season.

Giants fans, in particular, should be terrified. The New York Football Giants have been perfect against the bad teams they have played, going 9-0, but they've also been Miami Dolphin perfect against quality opposition,going 0-4. There arent many sub-.500 teams in the playoffs, so look for an early exit for New York.

The biggest mystery teams to me are San Diego and Jacksonville. They are the two teams that have played the toughest overall schedule, but have both struggled against quality individual opponents, especially San Diego. How that will shake out in the playoffs is anyone's guess, but my opinion is it will probably add up to a relatively early exit for each.

There you go. Numbers can tell you whatever you want them to, I suppose,so what do they mean for your team? As a Patriots fan, I like what I see when I look at New England's numbers, but there are a hal####ozen teams with numbers that tell me they are legitimate threats to win it all. What do you think?

I would have liked to get this post out a little sooner, but the big ice storm wending its way across the country finally made it to little ol' New Hampshire, and I was without power from noontime Monday until 11:30 a.m Tuesday. This meant no telephone, no heat (trying to sleep in a house when the temperature inside is dropping about one degree per hour is not half as much fun as you would think it would be), and worst of all, no internet access. It was positively barbaric.

Anyway, a couple of notes from the NFL playoffs this past weekend:


1) If you're a fan, you had to have enjoyed this past weekend's divisional round of playoff games. Whether you root for any of the eight teams left in the hunt going into the weekend or not, the football played was passionate and wild. Not necessarily clean or well-played in all cases, but exciting.

Even the Colts/Ravens game, which came down to a battle of field-goal kickers, was interesting and exciting. Note to Baltimore: Don't get in a field goal battle with the team whose placekicker is the most clutch guy in history.

2) If it seems like all four games were the closest and most exciting you can remember, that's because they were. The total point differential in the four divisional round games was 18: Colts over the Ravens by 9, and the Patriots over the Chargers, the Saints over the Eagles, and the Bears over the Seahawks, all by three points.

This makes the average margin of victory 4.5 points, the closest ever for the divisional round since the AFL-NFL merger.

3) Deion Sanders said something that made sense to me, which makes me question my sanity, if not my very existence. After the coverage of LaDainian Tomlinson's press conference following the Chargers loss to New England Sunday night, Sanders made a couple of lucid and sensible points. He said, first, that if you're a classy guy, you don't need to tell everyone that you're a classy guy, they just know. (Yeah, I know, what does Deion Sanders know about class?)

The other point Deion made is that LT was upset and frustrated about San Diego losing a game they should have won, or about being basically cut out of the offense in the second half o####ame San Diego should have won, or about certain coaching decisions causing San Diego to lose a game they should have won.

The bottom line is that the team in the AFC with the best regular-season record is now home for the winter, and the man who probably had the most to do with that success was upset and frustrated. Who can blame him?

4) I don't mean to pile on, especially after Chicago won Sunday, but Rex Grossman is an accident waiting to happen. If the psyche of the quarterback is so fragile that an early turnover would have destroyed him, as the commentators seemed to be implying in the Bears win, what does that say about their chances in the NFC Championship next week, or the Super Bowl two weeks later, if they make it? The pressure will be that much greater with each step along the way.

Lovie Smith seems to realize that it's probably too late for a change now, but Rex Grossman, in my opinion, is far too inconsistent to be reliable enough to take Chicago to the promised land.

Even though the NFC Championship is being played in frigid Chicago, that might be a detriment to Grossman if he starts off playing poorly and the fans get on him. For my money, if the Bears don't get off to a good start Sunday, look for New Orleans to ride their fairy-tale season right to Miami.

*****Colts quarterback Peyton Manning to little brother Eli: "So, li'l bro, where should we play golf this Monday?"

*****Chargers Head Coach Marty Schottenheimer to Offensive Coordinator Cam Cameron: "I promise, you won't get any interference from me. So, what's the game plan for Sunday, three yards and a cloud of dust?"

*****University of Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban (from inside his office): "Hey, this door's stuck, I seem to be locked in. I'm trapped, I can't leave. Hello, is anybody out there? Anybody? I promise I won't take off if you'll just let me out! Hello?"

*****Fired Atlanta Falcons Head Coach Jim Mora to University of Washington Head Coach Ty Willingham (on the telephone): "Hey, Ty, buddy, how are ya? Don't suppose you have any openings on your staff for a guy who needs a break....hello? Pal? Are you there? ####, I think I got cut off."

*****New York Giants Head Coach Tom Coughlin: "At least I'm not Jim Mora."

*****Mark McGwire: " [sound of crickets chirping]"

*****David Beckham: "I say old chap, I know the contract is for $250 million, but nobody told me I'd have to play in the States, where they play some sort of strange football where men fall all over each other. Actually, just talking about it is making me feel all, oooh, tingly!"

*****San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds: "Amphetamines? How was I supposed to know those were amphetamines? I already told you people I don't pay any attention to what I put into my body. Weren't you listening?"

*****Michelle Wie, after shooting 78 in the first round of this week's PGA Sony Open: "I think I can definitely tear this golf course up." *Editor's note: In the interest of full disclosure, this is an actual comment from the golfer, not a made-up quote.

*****Tony Romo, after being told "Undress me, baby," by Carrie Underwood: "I'm trying, I'm trying, but the buttons on your blouse, they're so slippery. I, I just can't get a grip..."