I was blogless last week. This week is…well, maybe not better, but different.

Sunday was a record-setting day in the NFL. The Denver Broncos had a player, sixth-round draft pick rookie Spencer Larson, start at fullback, middle linebacker, and special teams. This was the first time in the forty-eight year history of the Broncos that they had the same player start on offense and defense ever, let alone in the same game.

The Steelers beat the Chargers 11-10, the first time that was a final score in the history of the NFL, thanks to more botched calls by the zebras. At least the screw up didn’t influence who won or lost, just the final score. The Eagles and the Bengals played to a 13-13 tie, the first in the NFL since 2002. A week or two before some QB (can’t even remember which one, but a young one) was the first to pass for over 300 yards (I think) and rush for over 30 (?) in the same game.

Three weeks ago we had the first time a left-handed punter kicked to a left-handed receiver and then tackled that receiver to save a touchdown in the fourth quarter of a tie game.

Okay, I’m kidding on that last one. But all too soon, we’re going to be getting stats like that.

It used to be that baseball was the stat freaks’ game of choice. Every little nuance of the game could be subjected to some kind of statistical review. The sports nerds could research pitch counts, players that batted righty and threw lefty or vice versa, players’ performances in specific innings with specific counts, men on base, number of outs, ad nauseum.

Football is headed that way. Who the heck knew that an 11-10 score had never happened before, and how did they find out? Where the heck is the source for that kind of thing? The same for yards thrown and yards rushed in the same game by a QB.

Yet, obviously those subtle little tidbits of statistical trivia are out there and accessible. And if they can be seen, they must be shared over television with the largest possible audience. Count on it.

All too soon, while simply trying to watch a good football game (or one involving the Raiders, Chiefs, or Lions) we will be gleefully informed that some play marked the first time that a second-year receiver drafted after the fifth round has caught a first down pass from a quarterback traded three times in two years and playing only because the first and second string QBs were knocked out of the same game on a Thursday night in December in a year ending in an odd number.

Won’t that be grand?

In week 10 there were some fantastic catches and this video will show them to you.  Watch and enjoy.

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Being the NFL sack leader is huge and right now we have several players in the running for the award.  The top 5 players in the sack category are 2 current Pittsburgh Steelers, 1 former Pittsburgh Steeler, a Cowboy, and a Falcon.  Joey porter is the former Pittsburgh Steeler LB who now hunt QB’s for the Miami Dolphins.  Joey Porter was a beast when he played for the Steelers and this year he is earning the big money that lurd him the Miami.  Joey Porter is the current NFL sack leader with 11.5 sacks.  James Harrison, Demarcus Ware, and John Abraham are all tied for 2nd place with 10 sacks.  James Harrison is a LB with the Pittsburgh Steelers and he is part of the reason the Steelers have the NFL’s #1 ranked defense.  DeMarcus Ware is a LB for the Dallas Cowboys who have the 9th ranked defense.   John Abraham is a LB for the Atlanta Falcons who have the 16th ranked defense.  The fact that Abraham plays on a average defense says a lot about his ability and the level of his play.  LaMarr Woodley is in 5th place in the NFL sack leader competition and he helps his teammate James Harrsion harass and destroy quarterbacks every sunday.  LaMarr Woodley is only 1/2 sack behind James Harrison so this will be a fun competition to watch.  Every fan of the NFL knows how damn hard it is to get a sack so our hats are off to these LB studs.  Good luck hunting QB’s during the rest of the NFL season.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that in the case of injuries, it wasn’t how many were injured, but who.

I may have been wro—. I might have been wron—. (Try again) I could have been wr—.

(Ahem!) It’s possible that what I wrote didn’t come out quite as accurately as I intended.

The Broncos have managed to lose both the big name who(s) and the many. Seattle lost most of their wide receivers to injury. The Broncos have really been decked the last few weeks. Champ Bailey out for a month at least. His brother, Boss, lost for the season in the same game. Their starting RB, Selvin Young, has missed 3 games with injury and Tony Scheffler, their primary pass-catching TE likewise. Against Miami, two running backs, Michael Pittman and Andre Hall both sustained injuries to put them on IR. And after losing their starting strong side LB (Bailey) to injury, their starting weak side LB and leading tackler, DJ Williams sustained an MCL injury and is out indefinitely.

In preseason, the Broncos had five running backs on the roster, and that was after they cut Travis Henry. Monday, they had two and both were listed as questionable on the injury report going in to the Miami game.

Denver also lost their veteran backup QB. The backup now, Darrell Hackney, has never played in a regular season game.

Worst of all, the Broncos’ offense looked like crap against Miami. Cutler is throwing interceptions like he wants to catch Brett Farve’s record in, uh, record time. The offensive line has been a bright spot in pass protection, but the run blocking has not been anything to sing about. It used to be that the Broncos’ O-line would open holes Mike Shanahan could stroll through. Lately the holes are pretty much non-existent. Michael Pittman couldn’t even squeeze his helmet through, let alone the rest of him.

So the injuries have mounted up; both the big time starters and the back-ups have been crunched. But the healthy starters haven’t been playing as well as necessary, either. C’mon, Broncos! Suck it up and stomp somebody…or some thing!

Jessica Simpson and the Dallas Cowboy fans sure wish Tony Romo would heal quickly and get back in the damn game.  The Cowboys have been using Brad Johnson to fill in for the injured Tony Romo but is has been an awful experience.  Brad Johnson is playing like a very rusty old veteran who has seen better playing days.  You can’t fault Brad Johnson for his poor play.  He has been riding the bench all season and now he is thrust into the starting quarterback position and he is rusty.  The Cowboys benched Brad Johnson at halftime and they went with Bollinger who went 9/16 for 63 yards with 1 touch down and 1 interception.  Brad Johnson’s stats were 5/11 for 71 yards and 2 interceptions.  The Cowboys lost the game 35-14 and they dropped to 5 and 4.  The Giants are now 7-1 after beating the Cowboys and Steelers last week.  The Giants are rolling and look to be the real deal once again this year.

Hopefully you were able to watch this game on Sunday.  What a game it was.  The game went into overtime with the Titans winning the coin toss and they won the game with a field goal.  The Titans are the real deal.

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It wasn’t all that long ago that Broncos fans, Chargers fans, Chiefs fans, and Raiders fans had one thing in common. Their division, the AFC West, was the strongest and toughest division in the NFL.

There’s probably several ways to figure out exactly which division is the strongest, but I just used to look at win totals for the division. The division with the most wins was the toughest, and the AFC West, regularly, week to week, had the most. All four teams had legitimate shots at the playoffs, and often two of the four were in the playoffs the same year.

Conversely, the division with the fewest wins was obviously the weakest. Welcome, sports fans, to the Mild Mild West. In both conferences, the west division is the weak sister, the bottom feeder, the poor excuse.

Each division has a paltry 10 wins out of 29 games. Of the eight teams, six of them sport net points below the zero line. In contrast, the strongest division in the league, The NFC East, has 21 wins out of 30 games. All four of those teams have a positive number in the net points category.

Just three years ago, at the end of the 2005 season, the West was numero uno in the AFC with 36 wins in 64 games. How the mighty have fallen! And yet, some things haven’t changed much at all. At the end of 2005, the strongest division in the NFC was the East, same as now. And the worst division in the NFC was the West, same as now. Oh, and the Oakland Raiders were pitiful (4-12), same as now.

We fans can take some solace in the fact that this stuff is cyclical. Teams up now might well be down in three years, and vice versa. Personnel changes, injuries, coaching changes, scheduling, and just plain luck can all turn these teams’ fortunes around.

Except, maybe, for Detroit, and Oakland. For those teams, it seems that “cyclical” just means from bad to worse to very worst and back again. I was going to include Cincinnati with those two, but Cincinnati, which looks exceptionally poor this year, won their division in 2005!

There’s an old country song that goes, “I’m goin’ through the big D and I don’t mean Dallas.” That applies for every team that plays the Broncos this season. The big D is for defense, and everybody goes through Denver’s not-so-big D, as General Patton said, like crap through a goose.

But it’s not just Denver’s. Teams are also going through the defenses of Dallas, Houston, St. Louis, San Francisco, Cincinnati, and Detroit (no surprise on those last two). All those teams have given up at least 175 points. Only the forty-niners have given up more points (well, point) than my beloved Broncos. And they just fired their head coach.

There’s another big D: Disappointment. Besides those teams already mentioned, San Diego (3-4), Indianapolis (3-3), Philadelphia (3-3), Minnesota (3-4), New Orleans (3-4), and Seattle (1-5) must be currently huge sources of disappointment to their fans.

The teams that are not a disappointment are the ones that–no surprise–aren’t giving up lots of points: Tennessee, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, New York Giants, Carolina, and Tampa Bay have all allowed less than 120 points. So has New England, but after last year’s record two losses already must be disappointing to some. I suppose that disappointment was eased a little last night with the stomping of my poor pathetic self-destructive defenseless Broncos.

The Baltimore Ravens, as you might expect, have also given up less than 120 points–100 to be exact. But they’ve only scored 105 so they must be a disappointment to the NFL.

In keeping with the theme of this entry, I’d really like to give the Broncos a D grade on their defense…but I can’t. I have to wonder now if the Denver Broncos defense could stop the Boise State Broncos offense.

Denver’s D gets a big fat F…a grade it shares with San Francisco, and a notch below those powerhouse D-minuses, Detroit and Cincinnati.

No matter how bad things gets for fans of the Dallas Cowboys there will still be the cowboy’s cheerleaders to get you excited.  The Dallas Cowboys dropped to 4-3 after sundays 34-14 loss to the rams who had only 1 win under their belt prior to the matchup against the cowboys.  Back up QB Brad Johnson got the start due to Romo’s injury which could keep him out an entire month.  The last time anyone remembers seeing Brad Johnson under center was back in 2002 when he led the Tampa Bay Bucs to a Super Bowl victory.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Brad Johnson and have always thought he was a solid QB but he is 40 years old now and he has not seen any action in some time.  In the game against the Rams, Johnson went 17/34 for 234 yds, 1 td & 3 ints.  Take away the 3 ints and 1 lost fumble and the cowboys probably win the game as expected. 

Romos injury coupled with the Adam “Pac Man” Jones soap opera and the usual Terell Owens B.S. have caused the wheels to fall off the bus.  I firmly believe the cowboys can rebound and put the wheels back on their bus.  They made a move in the right direction by trading for wr Roy Williams who will make their offense even more potent.  The key for Dallas is to get Romo back and put “Pac Man” in the rear view mirror.  Johnson will have a much better outing next week due to the fact that he will have another full week of practice with the 1st team offense.  Jerry Jones needs to learn a lesson from the Pac Man incident and never allow a problem-child player on his team again.  Even in the NFL you get what you pay for!

The 49ers ended the Mike Nolan era by giving him the axe today.  The 49ers under Nolan were 18-37 during his 3 years as headcoach and they never made the playoffs.  It’s hard to believe but Nolan was also in charge of personnel decisions in addition to being the head coach.  Nolan began his coaching career in college football where he was a coach with Stanford, Rice, and Lsu.  Nolan later moved into the NFL where he was defensive coach for the Ravens, Redskins, Giants, and Jets.  Nolan became head coach of the 49ers in 2005 and the rest is history.  The 49ers have announced that assistant coach Mike Singletary will be the interim head coach.  Mike Singletary is the Chicago Bears hall of fame linebacker who just might prove to be a decent head coach.  He has played the game at the highest level and he is an old school type of player who can motivate.  I hope the 49ers give Singletary a chance and sign him to a 2 or 3 year deal.