Quick Slants - Week 3

Rex Grossman sucks.

There, my grip on the obvious is as firm as ever.

On Sunday night, in front of God and three other white men, Rex Grossman puked on his jersey.

(For Bill and Marin, that was what we in the English department like to call a metaphor. See, Rex didn't really puke on his jersey, but he played really horribly, AS THOUGH he'd puked on his jersey. Get it?)

And, truth be told, if he'd puked on his jersey it might have taken the attention away from that vomit-inducing stat line of his.

How bad? Joey Harrington (!!) outperformed him. By a mile. Harrington completed 70% of his passes in a real football game against men who were trying to knock the fashion sense out of him.

Grossman, on the other hand, couldn't complete 70% of his passes in a drill.

Speaking of drills and getting drilled, that thud you heard was the Lions falling back to earth in Philly. Maybe it was Donovan McNabb doing what the great ones do, responding to criticism by playing lights-out, or (more likely) it was the blindingly-ugly throwups, er, throwbacks that the Eagles were wearing, but boy-oh-boy the Eagles got well in a hurry.

So, uh, how's that whole Norv Turner thing working out in San Diego?

The guy is a disaster as a head coach...we get that. What we don't get is that this guy is way more than competent as an offensive coordinator, and he gets God's own running back in LaDainian Tomlinson, and yet arch-conservative Marty Schottenheimer was a LOT better at getting LT pointed north-and-south than Ol' Norv is...

The Belicheat has gotten Tom Brady and Randy Moss on the same page...sheeesh...the way those two are playing right now, The Belicheat could fax his game plan to the other team's defense and it would still be like the Coyote's parasol under an avalanche.

This just in - the feds are on the steroid case. Big time. As I write this, news is breaking of a major drug bust that encompassed several different countries, including the good ol' U.S. of A., and resulted in the seizure of millions of dollars of 'roids and HGH and the like...and names.

Lots and lots of names.

Hundreds of thousands of names, the reports kept saying. Hundreds of thousands.

One civic-minded district attorney in New York State found a handful of big-name pro athletes when he aggressively investigated one crooked doctor's office in Florida.

How many athletes in how many sports are about to get outed now?

Paraphrasing Morpheus, we're about to find out how deep the rabbit hole goes.

Kansas City sleepwalked to victory over Minnesota thanks to a really bad replay call. In other news, pocket lint will have as much effect on this season as the result of this game.

Say this much for Houston: yes, they really miss Andre Johnson, but no, they didn't quite roll over and die for the undefeated Super Bowl champs.

And say this much for Indy: The Only Colt Who Really Matters wasn't too pleased with the victory. And that's a good thing if you're a Colt fan...heck, it's a good thing if you like good football, because the truly great ones are never satisfied with merely winning, but with total domination. The Colts didn't dominate, and Peyton Manning wasn't happy about it.

AFC Championship Game, Round 1: November 4, New England at Indianapolis.

AFC Championship Game, Round 2: Whoever wins Round 1 will likely host Round 2 in the playoffs.

And if it weren't for the fact that Indy and New England play each other in the regular season, we might have had two undefeated teams this season.

As it is, these two won't be chasing the ghosts of the '72 Dolphins as much as home field advantage throughout the playoffs...and it might take running the table to get it done this season.

On the other end of the spectrum, Jacksonville finally won a game. Now there are only five teams left in the 0-16 derby, with the winless Saints yet to play the Tennessee Titans. As difficult as it is to go undefeated, it may be even more difficult to go winless. In the Super Bowl era (not counting the strike season of 1982), only the legendary Tampa Bay Suckaneers managed to keep their zero unblemished for an entire season.

In the same era, 14 other teams, most recently Carolina in 2001, have managed to win only 1 game all season.

It sez so right here that the Falcons go the distance without a win. They got a great game from Joey Harrington and they still lost. If the Falcons can't win when Joey Ballgame is having Joe Montana flashbacks, they have a snowflake's chance in Satan's zip code of winning when he's playing to his historical (read: bad) form.

There's been a Ronnie Brown sighting in Miami, which means we can take the roadblocks down now...

Before the season started, I liked the Bears to go 13-3. At this rate, they'll go 3-13...

But I can take some solace in the fact that Bronco fans are contemplating jumping off ski lifts after their beloved Orange got Crushed by Jacksonville (snicker).

Hey, don't think I'm done flagellating myself over that sickening Bears loss, especially when I haven't even addressed the running back debacle. See, the current guy, Cedric Benson, is soft. SOFT. Johnny Mathis soft. NASA-approved foam cushioning for mattresses soft. Jell-O Pudding soft.

The guy the Bears traded, Thomas Jones, is not soft. He ran like a man looking to start trouble in the Jets victory this weekend; wherever the biggest guys were, Jones ran right at them and knocked them over.

Benson, on the other hand, ran like a co-ed in a panty raid, all screaming and giggly and in circles hoping someone might catch him, which they did all afternoon.

Between Grossman completing more passes to the other team than to one of his starting wideouts (or tight ends, for that matter) and Benson running like a block of quartz in a box, the Bears offense is truly offensive.

...and I'm OUT like half the Bears defense...gaaaaaah...