Peter King: Monday Morning Ramblings of a Mindless Idiot
The Fine Fifteen
2. Tennessee (9-0). So who's going to beat the Titans now? The remaining sked: at Jacksonville, Jets, at Detroit, Cleveland, at Houston, Pittsburgh, at Indianapolis. Imagine if the Titans are 15-0 heading into Indianapolis. I don't care if the Colts are in it, out of it or have a playoff seed wrapped up, Dungy will play his guys. As will Jeff Fisher. He told me after the game Sunday, "We'll play our players'' for 16 games. No rest for the Titans.
Awesome, now we know what the Titans will do IF they win their next 6 games. Thank god, now I can sleep at night.
3. Baltimore (6-3). His name is Joe Flacco, not Joe Flucco.
Expert explanation of a complete non-problem, while not at all explaining why you have them ranked 3rd. Journalism!
4. Indianapolis (5-4). Not too long ago, the Colts were coming off bad losses to Green Bay and Tennessee. They were 3-4. They were on the verge of ... well, on the verge of nothing good. So they scratched and clawed and beat the Patriots 18-15. They took advantage of two ridiculously fluky tipped balls by Ike Taylor that fell into Reggie Wayne's hands, and Peyton Manning did the rest. A great, gallant win. Colts 24, Steelers 20, at the Ketchup Bottle.
Two weeks ago, The Colts were 3-4; then they won two games. Somehow they're at 5-4. Don't know how it happened.
7. Carolina (7-2). Ever seen a team play worse and win by double digits? Carolina 17, Oakland 6. Jake Delhomme: 7-of-27, a 12.3 rating. Yecch.
Everyone knows that you need to hit the requisite 52.0 QB rating for a well played game.
8. Tampa Bay (6-3). In the time between last week's column and this one, the Bucs did not practice. Not once. Jon Gruden didn't give his players a bye week. He gave them a bye-bye week. Smart move. You think his players won't come back hungry to play hard for him the last seven weeks?
1. It's fairly common for coaches to give their teams the whole week off.
2. "Bye-bye week?" Are you fucking serious? How much does anyone want to bet that Peter King walks around the office saying "Sounds like someone's got a case of the Mundays!"
11. New York Jets (6-3). The final of 47-3 doesn't really matter. It could have been 67-3. What matters is Thomas Jones and Brett Favre are making beautiful music together, and Kris Jenkins has changed the run defense for the better, and a bunch of guys in the secondary America's never heard of (Abram Elam, Dwight Lowery, etc.) are playing great football the past two weeks.
The AFC East gets to play the NFC West and AFC West this year. Every single team in that division is over .500 for that reason (No AFC East is in Football-Outsider's top 10 in weighted DVOA). So let's not start having to clean the cum out of our pants just because the Jets beat up on the Rams.
p.s. The Jets lost to the Raiders.
12. Washington (6-3). I bet a lot of money Jim Zorn, Coach Well-Rounded, did not spend his bye Sunday in the den watching Ravens-Texans. My guess is he took a long bike ride. Or hiked in the Shenandoahs. Maybe sailed in the Chesapeake Bay.
I bet a lot of money Peter King was easting a box of donuts while writing this column.
15. (tie) Miami (5-4). "The people outside this locker room might be surprised we're over .500,'' defensive lineman Vonnie Holliday said from Miami afterward. "The guys in this locker room aren't surprised at all.''
Did Holliday actually say that, or did King just copy and paste it out of the book "Most Painfully Generic Sports Quotes Ever."
