Heading into Week 17

- This will be McNabb's first year without a missed start due to injury since 2004. He's also within 134 of his career high in passing yards.

- Can we please halt all the "LT is done for" talk, and stop associating his name with Priest Holmes and Shaun Alexander until we see what happens next year when he's healthy? People are blinded by his awe-inspiring 2006 season and the recent spate of RB careers falling off a cliff. In case you haven't heard he's playing with turf toe. Let Deion and James Andrews educate you on how painful and debilitating it can be. Yes you have to get beyond the 30th leading rusher to find someone with a worse YPC than LT, but sometimes a dip is just a dip. Witness similar YPC drops and subsequent rebounds in Payton's and Emmitt's careers as well as Curtis Martin's late-career resurgence.

Meanwhile, the trash talk has been flying leading up to the Denver-SD game.

- Since the NFL went to the eight division realignment in 2002, one team has gone worst to first within their division each year. The streak can continue this year with the Phins, Falcons, or Bears.

- Because of the Boston/Patriots/Belichick hate, the Pats accomplishments with Matt Cassell this year have gone underappreciated. Many are quick to make the "system QB" argument, but that could only fly in college. The NFL's talent level is simply too much of a mitigating factor no matter how ingenious a system is. It's about as ridiculous as making the dominant college team X could beat NFL cellar dweller Y argument.

Credit is due to the Belichick and the Pats staff for having the confidence in both Cassell and their own evaluative abilities, and the for the foresight in understanding the value system familiarity has for a QB.

To chalk up Cassell's success to a system is not only shortsighted but it also presumes that the Pats kept a QB who hadn't started a game since high school as their #2 for three seasons only because they couldn't think of a better option. Cassell was a long-term investment, someone whom the Patriots decided had the skill set to succeed in their designed offense and someone whom, as the years went on, the Patriots felt more and more comfortable with because of his knowledge of their system.

- Two short articles worth checking out:
1. Michael Silver on the absurdity of draft grades.

“We know who we are,” defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz, soon to be a hot head-coaching prospect, said after Sunday’s game. “We have a system. You have to give Mike Reinfeldt a lot of credit. This team is not built to say, ‘Hey, we’ll be good as long as we don’t get any injuries.’ This team is built to say, ‘When we get injuries, we’ll still be good, because we have the depth to withstand them.’

2. Jason Whitlock on the Chiefs' questionable use of Glenn Dorsey. It's rare that someone even attempts a critical evaluation of NFL line play, let alone convincingly makes his case.

“He has no chance in pass rush,” guard Brian Waters told me. “I love it when a guy lines head-up.”

Members of the Chiefs’ scouting department have blamed Dorsey’s subpar rookie season on the extra weight they allege he’s carrying. I’ve been told on two separate occasions that KC’s scouting department evaluated a 300-pounder who is now playing at 315. The personnel guys stand behind their evaluation of Dorsey, the insinuation being a lighter Dorsey would be a more effective Dorsey.

“The way we’re playing him, he better be 315,” Waters said. “He would get destroyed in the run game at 300.”

[H/T to TBL for the Whitlock piece]

-Agent Easy

Specter's interest in Spygate

An interesting tidbit for those of us wondering why Senator Arlen Specter doesn't have anything better to do than go after the New England Patriots. Specter apparently has "close ties" to Philly-based Comcast, who's in the middle of a dispute with the NFL over the terms of its broadcasting of the NFL Network. Of course having to deal with an independent investigation would make life more difficult for the NFL. Weird to think of a strategist like Bill Belichick, of all people, being a pawn in a fight between the NFL and Comcast, but that's what the connection suggests.

Another good summary of the Comcast/Specter/NFL story.

Two Fourth Down Calls

In retrospect, everything Belichick did will be seen as a mistake, and everything Coughlin did will be seen as part of the master plan. But Belichick's going for it on 4th-and-13 might not have been such a bad move, and Coughlin's decision to punt on 4th-and-1 in the 4th quarter may nearly have cost New York the game.

Belichick's Call

Up 7-3 with just under 7 minutes left in the 3rd quarter, the Patriots found themselves facing a 4th-and-13 situation on the Giants 31 yard line. In vintage Pats fashion, Belichick elected to go for it, but the pass fell incomplete and New York got the ball on downs. In the wake of the stinging upset, Belichick has taken some serious flak for this decision, including Gene Wojciechowski's musing that there was no "logical reason" for this call.

Let's look at this more closely. The field goal would have been about a 49-yarder and for Stephen Gotskowski - like pretty much any kicker - that is hardly an automatic 3. The Pats kicker is 6-for-10 lifetime from over 40 yards with a season-long of 45, and has misses of 32, 41, and 48 this season. Even indoors in Arizona, those aren't great odds.

Meanwhile, as anyone who's watched the Pats offense this year knows, a pass of 13 yards is not beyond New England's capability. The team was 15 for 21 on 4th down this year and, while 13 yards is of course longer than usual, it's not hard to picture them converting it.

Basically, a field goal attempt would give them maybe a 50/50 chance of scoring 3 and giving the ball back to New York immediately. A pass attempt would give them a somewhat lesser chance of setting themselves up for a touchdown or a much easier field goal, and taking more time off the clock with at least a 7-point lead. Not a slam-dunk either way, but it's hard to fault Belichick too much for taking the more aggressive option - after all, that's the kind of play-calling that helped get them to 18-0 in the first place. If anything, given the Patriot's tendencies, it's surprising they didn't make more calls like this.

Coughlin's Punt

Here's a risk not taken that could have come back to haunt the Giants if not for the offense's late heroics: up 10-7 with about 8 left in the game, New York faced a 4th-and-1 on their own 38. They punt. A safe call, but was it the right one?

It's hard to believe that the Giants thought they could beat the Patriots with 10 points on the board. Given their strong running game and the fact that they were probably only going to get one more offensive possession, was this the time to give the ball back to New England? True, if you fail to convert here, you put New England about 10 yards from field goal range and less than 40 from the end zone. But if you punt, you can see the script unfolding - the Patriots get the ball deep in their own territory, drive the length of the field for a touchdown while killing the clock, and New York gets it back with a mere minute or so on the clock, down four points. If you give the Pats a short field, of course they're more likely to score, but at least they'll be plenty of time left for an offensive possession. Even though they had been held in check all night, it's hard not to assume that the Patriots offense will score in this situation one way or another, and manage the offense and clock accordingly.

As it was, the Patriots did score a touchdown - no worse than if they had been given the ball at the NYG 38. Luckily for the Giants, their long drive only took about 5 minutes off the clock (maybe it would have been more if they had done more than one running play), leaving enough time for Eli & Co.'s late-game heroics.