The afore-mentioned San Diego. Chicago. Pittsburgh, sort of.
San Diego was, after all, playing against the third strong St. Louis quarterback, Marc Bulger, and gave up two touchdowns in the last six minutes of the game. Bulger set a team record–this is Kurt Warner’s team, isn’t it?–with 36 completions (on 48 attempts) for 453 yards passing. Jeff Wilkens kicked about the perfect on-side kick after the first score and Dre Bly plucked the ball out of waiting Charger hands. The offense, with Marshall Faulk standing injured on the sidelines, just couldn’t be stopped. San Diego: 6-3 on their way to 8-8 and an early tee time?
Chicago had a 21 point lead in the third quarter against New England. But Peninsula native Tom Brady is showing he’ll be the next…Drew Bledsoe but with the bonus of being a winner and he took the game in his hands, with some help from the finally woken up Patriot defense. Plus, the Bears offense left the building, unable twice (twice!) to pick up a first down when either one would have given them the chance to run out the clock, the Patriots having no timeouts left. New England: 5-4 on their way to 10-6 a wild card slot?
Technically this was a tie, not a loss, but it might as well have been since the Steelers missed an easy W. Pittsburgh was up against hot new quarterback Michael Vick. So who would be surprised that Atlanta rallied from a 17 point deficit? Probably anyone who checked the Steelers’ defensive results from the last month. And talk about bad coaching blowing a game! Bill Cowher is often called a genius, and he is one of the longest-serving head coaches in the NFL, so you tell me, why did he leave both overtime timeouts on the shelf when he could have given Tommy Maddox 40 more seconds? That should have been plenty to move the ball 25 yards for a field goal try; Tommy Maddox already had a Pittsburgh-record 473 yards passing and four touchdowns and Amos Zeroue had 123 yards rushing. But instead they ended up with the NFL’s first tie since the Giants and Redskins played to a 7-all stalemate on Nov. 23, 1997. Steelers: 5-3-1, playing in the league’s weakest division, will surely make the playoffs but one wonders if they’ll escape their wild card opponent.
BillSaysThis 