The Post Mortem

The Chargers win!

A challenge, that is. You didn�t think they were actually going to win a game, did you? Don't be silly. The Chargers had no prayer in this one. The Jaguars are a well-coached football team. Well, they have a coach anyway. Add a 10 a.m. start and a loss a near certainty.

Hell, you could probably reason that the club overachieved by losing by only seven points. So you have to take the small victories where you can get them and remember where you were when Norv Turner actually got a challenge correct.

You get the idea that this is what A.J. Smith had in mind when the hired Norv, right?

WINDS OF CHANGE
Nobody is going to dispute that the Patriots are the best team in the NFL right now. But is the AFC still the top conference? Sunday�s performances by the AFC were hardly convincing.

The Colts, while battling numerous injuries, looked pathetic against the miserable Chiefs. But Gomer still has weapons like Reggie Wayne, Joseph Addai and Dallas Clark, so they shouldn't have looked that bad.

The Steelers lost to the Jets. And this was the team that was supposed to have a chance against the Patriots? They couldn't even beat Mini-Belichick.

The Chargers are pathetic. People like to pin the 49ers woes on the departure of Turner, but San Francisco ranked near the bottom in passing last season. Has Norv ever helped any quarterback? Good Lord, just how good was Troy Aikman?

The Jaguars might be alright, but you don�t expect David Garrard to win a shootout with Tom Brady do you? They might have a chance.

If you had to pick the second best team in the AFC right now, it would be the Cleveland Browns. That's not a slight on the Browns, but did you think at the beginning of the year that this was going to be the surprise team of the NFL?

The NFC has teams 2a and 2b in a best of the NFL contest with the Packers and Cowboys, with Green Bay probably getting a slight edge because of their defense. A defense that would be a much bigger story this year if Brett Favre was not tearing up the league.

The Cowboys and Packers give hope of a competitive Super Bowl, with the two best teams actually meeting up in the big game. You would be hard pressed to remember the last time that happened in the NFL. The only downside is that you have to wade through the muck of the regular season waiting for the inevitable. Outside of the looming Cowboys vs. Packers game (that you won't see), is there one other game you are waiting to see?

• If you heard that an NFL team had already walked off the field thinking they had won, only to find out that a missed field-goal call was botched by the referees, forcing both teams back on the field to start overtime. Then the team that originally thought they won eventually lost in overtime. You would think that the losing team was the Raiders, right? But it wasn't. Instead, the Raiders folded like just some ordinary team. The Raiders are so bad, they aren�t even sucking as good as some of the other teams in the NFL. The Ravens and Bengals have become much more pathetic. So let�s hope that the Raiders can get their act together and lose more horrifically next week because the bar has been raised.

• Have the Patriots ever lost a challenge?

• The Bills showed an emotional video from Kevin Everett prior to their game against the Patriots. You know Bill Belichick likely felt disrespected that the Bills would do such a thing, and is probably why they kept throwing while after the game was put away. In the first quarter.

• You know that Randy Moss�s four touchdowns were nothing more than an �F-U� to Terrell Owens and the Cowboys. The Patriots are probably feeling disrespected that the media is still fawning over the Dallas Cowboys.
  

• There is no stopping the Kurt Warner Machine. The dude is so good, he even completed a pass with his bum left arm against the Bengals.

• Can somebody explain why Bobby Petrino benched Joey Harrington prior to Sunday�s game against the Buccaneers? Oh that�s right, Harrington blew the Falcons bid for the first pick of the draft by winning his past two starts. Luckily, Byron Leftwich got them back on track.

• Michael Strahan had the overreaction of the year when Jon Kitna correctly pointed out that the Lions gave the game. In particular Kitna, who had a pair of game-killing interceptions in the fourth quarter. But said Strahan, "I honestly thought in the first half that was one of the worst teams we played that was 6-3. I don't quite understand why Jon would say that. Maybe we'll see them down the road and if that's the case, we'll beat that a-- again." Sounds like a little Freudian slip at the end.

• Strahan saying that the Lions were the worst 6-3 team he has ever seen proves that the guy doesn�t watch tape of his own team.

• Gomer and Tony Dungy might have sucked the clutch out of Adam Vinatieri, but not enough to miss that chip-shot game-winner.

• Seriously, Shawne Merriman needs to buy some more tainted supplements because he was abused by Maurice Jones-Drew who delivered a block that allowed Garrard to throw the eventual game-winning touchdown pass. Seriously Shawne, rent The Program. Time to step up.

• Union Bank of California is giving out an autographed Philip Rivers jersey for those who open a new checking account. Be careful, because they will probably lose your money.

SWEET HOME, ALABAMA
Great job there, Alabama. Be sure to send a card to Lloyd Carr and Michigan because your loss to one of the directional Louisiana schools would be the worst in the NCAA if it not for the Wolverines. Sure, you can point to Stanford over USC, but at least the Cardinal are in the Pac-10. The Crimson Tide geared up for the Iron Bowl with one of the most lackluster performances of the college football season.

• Good luck, Kansas, you are going to need it.

• Everybody seems shocked at what one quarterback can do to a college football program, like Dennis Dixon at Oregon, or Sam Bradford at Oklahoma. One indignant radio commentator said that shows that college football is a joke, that one knee injury to Dixon could ruin the Ducks� title hopes. Because yeah, the Patriots would win the Super Bowl if Brady was lost for the year. Of course, the Colts would have won the Super Bowl last year without Gomer, probably by a larger margin if Jim Sorgi was in there.

AND FINALLY
Thankfully the Boston Cell (female dog) have finally lost a game, proving that Boston is mortal after all. But have you ever noticed that Boston fans are oblivious to sports outside of Beantown? That explains why they don�t follow college football or basketball. But you can probably bet that a large percentage of Boston fans probably believe that Kevin Garnett is a rookie. Or that Randy Moss is some retread from the Arena League. And if you polled fans at Fenway Park, at least 95 percent of them would have no idea that David Ortiz once played for the Minnesota Twins.

So thankfully, the Cell (female dogs) lost so that the collective Boston sports fans can go back to ignoring them again.