1. The Red Sox should never get knocked out of the playoffs before the ALCS. It’s just bad for baseball.

2. Wade Phillips will not be a head coach in the NFL next season unless he can orchestrate a Tom Coughlin like turn around. Thanks to Miles Austin and Jay Ratliff, that might still be possible.

3. No team should ever win a game when their quarterback (Derek Anderson) has a 15.1 passer rating. Derek Anderson was so bad, he had nearly as many completions to the opposite team as he did his own (2 completions, 1 interception).

4. If the NHL is able to successfully thwart Jim Balsillie from buying the Minnesota Wild, the NFL should be able to stop Rush Limbaugh from buying the Rams… Right?

5. Fantasy Football stops being fun when you’re 4-0 but your team underperforms so woefully that you lose to an opposing team that didn’t start its quarterback, number one wide receiver, tight end, and opposing defense. I started Willis McGahee, Calvin Johnson, John Carlson, and Neil Rackers who combined for an incredulous 7 points between them. I also sat Roddy White against the 49ers in favor of Steve Smith with a matchup against the Raiders. Three points would have won me the week.

We all have to come to terms with the fact that:

1. Tim Tebow is the poster boy of sports in America. Move aside Lebron and Shawn Johnson, Brett Favre and yes, even you Michelle Wie, America only cares about Tim Tebow and how many chapters of a book he can read before his headaches set in. I cannot remember the last time media covered the health of a collegiate athlete as actively as they have pursued the status of Tim Tebow. And while reporters critiqued Tebow’s every breath, a much better quarterback named Sam Bradford returned to the football field as well. And I don’t buy this Florida-LSU national championship showdown either. The Tigers offense isn’t BCS bowl worthy and this definitely won’t be their last SEC loss….
Oh and this just in, Barack Obama’s main competition for the Nobel Peace Prize? Yup, you know it. Tim Tebow.

2. The Broncos are better than we thought they were. Nobody wants to jump onto the Kyle Orton bandwagon but it’s time to face the facts; they’re 5-0, allow an average of 8.3 points a game for opposing offenses this season and have wins against the Patriots and Bengals–a Cincinnati team that would be undefeated themselves if Brandon Stokely hadn’t plucked Kyle Orton’s batted ball out of the air and raced 87 yards for a game-winning touchdown.

3. The Cowboys are just really mediocre. Miles Austin bailed out Tony Romo and the rest of his teammates by almost single-handedly winning the game against the Chiefs on Sunday. Don’t be fooled by Tony Romo’s 300 yards of passing either. 250 of them were to Miles Austin and almost all of those yards came after the catch.

4. J.P. Losman will lead the Las Vegas Locomotives to the UFL championship this year. After watching a gritty come from behind win to beat his California Redwoods, coach Denny Green said of Losman and the Locomotives, “They are who we thought they were!” Just kidding. He did however say, while analyzing his ground game, “We were really chasing the rabbit into the rabit hole in the second half.”
I don’t know which is more comical, Dennis Green coaching a team called the Redwoods or JP Losman getting his first UFL win while teams in the NFL with quarterbacks named Jamarcus Russell, Marc Bulger, and Kyle Boller have one win between them.

5. It’s time to usher in the Vince Young era in Tennessee. With all due respect to Kerry Collins, there is simply no way the Titans will contend with him behind center. Jeff Fisher has to realize that he’s playing in the AFC and that, even if he won the remaining 11 games on his schedule he still might not make the playoffs (as the Patriots learned last year). If this was the NFC it would be a different story, but the Titans are now all but done. If Jeff Fisher needs more motivation, all he has to do is look into the stands where his fan base is begging the organization to make a change. And why not just run straight wild cat formation the rest of the year with Young and Lendale White in the shotgun and Chris Johnson running the motion route from the wide position? The Titans could be the first team ever to rush for 3,000 yards and it would probably sell tickets.

6. Chad Pennington is probably done in Miami. Out with the old Chad and in with the new. If you missed Monday Night’s game, Chad Henne did an excellent job managing the Dolphins offense. Henne however, displayed not only the ability to spread the ball across the field and hit open receivers for first downs, but also the strength to stretch the middle of the field, as evident on Ted Ginn Jr.’s 53 yard touchdown catch. Most impressive however, was that Henne led three come from behind drives during the fourth quarter against one of the best defenses in the NFL.
6.a. If in fact Chad Pennington’s days as a Dolphin are over, is it merely setting the two-time Comeback Player of the Year Award to win it for the third time?

Final Thoughts About the Weekend:
Football reigns supreme in America right now. For the most part each individual game in the Division Series was interesting, but the Series themselves were all short without much major drama. Alex Rodriguez has quieted his critics who have termed him “un-clutch” in the past for now, but he better realize that Yankees fans equate performance in the ALDS roughly with that of the regular season. With expectations in New York as high as they are right now, the only way A-Rod can permanently quiet his critics is by leading the Yankees to a World Series. I’m much more excited by the second round matchups in the MLB playoffs and especially a potential showdown between Joe Torre and his former team. While things in baseball have been going more or less as predicted (all four favorites winning short series’) both the NFL and College football have had their share of surprises and great matchups. The week ahead features more of the same for football fans and the start of two potentially great series in baseball. Early indications all point towards a great week of sports ahead.

Anyway, it’s football season! And as we are now in week 5, we’re starting to figure out where all those teams we were confused about lie. And we definitely learned a lot this week.

Stock Up: Denver, Cincinatti, Seattle

Let me start with the Denver Broncos. I definitely have not been on that bandwagon, and if you read this article I wrote a couple days ago entitled, “Overachieving in Denver” you might note that I had already penciled in the Broncos to be 4-4 after Week 9. Well that’s not going to hapeen anymore. The Broncos proved that they can beat good teams too, taking down the Patriots in overtime. (A friend noted that the Giants have had an easier schedule than the Broncos, so it was wrong to criticize Denver for not having had a real matchup) And I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a head coach more pumped up than Josh McDaniels at the end of the game. Furthermore, the Patriots are still listed by Footballlocks.com as the odds-on favorite to win the Super Bowl, should that still be the case?

The Bengals proved they would be legitimate 5-0 team if it weren’t for a freak play, and are a real force in the NFL. First they beat Pittsburgh, now Baltimore, and it’s getting easier to mark down the close call with the Browns as a blip on the screen. Still not completely sold on them but they’re making a great case to be considered as one of the best teams in the league.

While I didn’t see any of the Seahawks game, if you win 41-0 you’ve got do something right. i thought the Jaguars were surging, but Seattle shut down MJD and David Garrard.

Stock Down: Buffalo, Dallas, San Francisco

On the other end of the spectrum the Browns and Bills had what must have been one of the worst games in the history of football. Derek Anderson had only two completions…and won. Not much else to say except that I didn’t know the Bills were this bad, I suppose they are though.

Even though the Cowboys actually won their matchup, it took an overtime to make it happen, and that’s not good when you’re playing the Chiefs. The good news for the Cowboys is that Miles Austin emerged as a serious threat on offense, which will be pretty helpful because I don’t think anyone thinks Roy E. Williams is that good. On the other hand, playing at the same pace as Kansas City is not going to hold up against better teams, and Coach Wade has got to be feeling the pressure.

Again, I don’t know exactly what happened to San Fran, but I was really feeling their resurgence. Even though I thought Atlanta would win the game today, I was expecting the 49ers defense to hold up pretty well, but instead Michael Turner ran all over them. Was last week’s defensive performance a fluke? We shall see.

Personally, this shocks me. I mean, Tony Romo a top-ten quarterback in the NFL, and he’s not working out enough to play the whole season? Come on Tony, maybe this is why no one thought you were going to be good until you took over the floundering Cowboys a few years ago. If you are an NFL player, and not just a player, but a leader of the most publicized team in the nation, how hard is it to do your workouts over the summer and lift some weights? Somehow, all good professional athletes manage to do it, and while I can imagine Jessica Simpson is a little distracting, I would think she might start cracking the whip sometime and get her boy into shape. 

Also, if this has been happening, I think the Cowboys should have leaked it earlier. It would be extremely embarrassing for a such a public athlete like Romo to be considered a “soft body” and someone with a poor work ethic. The fans would start getting on his ass for not working out, and before you know it, you would have an actual committed athlete on your hands. But no matter what the Cowboys do or say, really only one thing has to be done, just get into shape Romo.

Side note: When I search for Tony Romo on Google, why is it that I get more pictures of him with Jessica Simpson (or just of Jessica Simpson) than actual photos of him playing football?

Side note 2: If anyone possibly cares, Brett Favre has said he will “consider” playing football again. Great.