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Stat of the Week

The best 34-game stretches of the championship NFL teams since 1960:

Factoid That May Interest Only Me

The night before Super Bowl XXXIX, New England trainers Jim Whalen, Joe Van Allen and coaches had a mantra for the players: "Drink, drink, drink.''

Want another reason why the Patriots are so good from top to bottom? The organization knew some of the players would be having their share of drinking fun during Super Bowl week. They also knew the weather in Jacksonville on Sunday was going to be significantly warmer than it was during the week. Whereas the players were practicing in sweatshirts with the 40-degree chill during the week, it was supposed to be in the mid-60s Sunday afternoon when the Patriots would take the Alltel field to loosen up for the 6:38 p.m. kickoff.

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"Drink, drink, drink.'' The Patriots were tuckered out in the fourth quarter, but no players had to miss playing time because of dehydration. For the Eagles, safety Rod Hood had to miss time because of cramps, Jevon Kearse struggled with cramping, Todd Pinkston had to go into the locker room to get an IV of fluids for dehydration ... and Donovan McNabb, in the heat of the final drive of the game, couldn't go no-huddle because he was disoriented and wretching, probably from dehydration.

New England 24, Philadelphia 21 ... with an assist to heads-up trainers and coaches telling players to hydrate.

"It wasn't just Saturday night either,'' Troy Brown told me last week. "We were hydrating all week long.''

What effect did hydration and exhaustion play in the game? We may never know, but the Eagles sure looked beat, particularly McNabb, on the drive when they didn't go no-huddle and wasted so much of the clock.

"That last five, six minutes of the game, we just figured they were exhausted and that's why they didn't go no-huddle,'' Brown said. "We saw they couldn't run the two-minute offense, and the only reason they didn't, we thought, was because they were exhausted.''

Quote of the Week

"I had some reservations as to the sophistication of the NFL game. But after watching tape with the coaches and going over their offense and our offense, it made sense to me that it's just football. It's a ball game.''

-- New Tennessee offensive coordinator Norm Chow, who will take his first pro coaching job after 32 years in college football.

Aggravating/Enjoyable Travel Note of the Week

This is more of an "interesting'' travel note.

Last Wednesday, during an afternoon lull in the taping of the final Inside the NFL show for HBO, Dan Marino and I decided to make a Starbucks run. At first, I thought: Maybe I should have mercy on this guy and not subject him to the 53 "Hey Dans'' I thought he would get, but he didn't seem too concerned about it, so we just started off walking. The HBO studio is on 23rd Street in Manhattan, and there is a Starbucks one block west of the studio. The street wasn't quite teeming with people, but it was a typical crowded New York sidewalk scene, with people rushing to go wherever on a cloudy and cool afternoon.

We were out of the building maybe 15 minutes total. On the walk to the Starbucks in the five or so minutes inside the Starbucks, and on the walk back to the studio, not a soul said anything to Marino. One guy in front of him at the coffee shop did a double-take and looked like he recognized Marino, but other than that, he was ignored. Not even a hello. I thought that was pretty amazing, that Dan Marino could be on the streets of New York for 15 minutes and not be bugged or even recognized.