Chicago's fleet-footed linebacker Lance Briggs will likely draw Colts tight end Dallas Clark on primary pass plays. AP
	MAILBAG Peter King will answer your questions each week in Monday Morning Quarterback: Tuesday Edition. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

ITEM: Watch the HBO Inside the NFL show on Wednesday if you want to see Cowher in his element again. Not sure exactly how the piece is going to turn out, but I spent last Wednesday in Raleigh, N.C. with Cowher, breaking down his view of the big factors in Super Bowl XLI on a big plasma TV. "Modern technology,'' he said at one point, shaking his head. "I'm blown away by it.'' Here's why.

Cowher gave us five factors, such as the major impact of Colts tight end Dallas Clark and why he thinks Brian Urlacher and Lance Briggs, the athletic Bears linebackers, will be better-suited to play Clark than anyone so far in the playoffs. (Don't want to give everything away.) Then crack producer Abtin Motia got EA Sports, makers of the Madden game, to literally invent the Colts and Bears going at it, with the results of the plays the way Cowher designed them. It's actually pretty unbelievable.

"Can you imagine,'' I said to Cowher during our taping, "if something happens in the game the exact way you drew it up? Talk about fiction imitation reality.'' Cowher's really in his element here. Make sure you watch the piece. (Shameless promotion: 10 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, with several subsequent airings.)

ITEM: I would not be surprised to see Cowher sit out two years, not just one, from coaching. It's just a feeling I got. He's really enjoying life in Raleigh, as a parent and as a fan of his daughters' basketball teams. Two attend Princeton; a third, Lauren, is a high school junior in Raleigh. He told me he'd really like to be at home with his wife, Kaye, and with Lauren for her last two years of high school. In fact, when he left me, he hustled over to her school for a parent-teacher conference.

"I'm loving it,'' he said. "I don't wake up at 3 in the morning anymore to make notes to myself about something I wanted to make sure I remembered. But it's too early to say what I'm going to do. I just got into this.''

No red lines in Cowher's eyes. No stress. He looks good. I'll tell you one thing: No question in my mind the guy can do TV, and would do it well as an analyst, if that's what he chooses.

ITEM: Watch this Super Bowl if you want to see class ooze out of the game. Rod Marinelli was hired with Lovie Smith in 1996 out of college football as defensive position coaches for rookie Tampa Bay coach Tony Dungy. For two months after the hire, Marinelli and Smith roomed together in a Holiday Inn near the Bucs' facility. "We'd eat dinner, then sit down and open our notebooks and figure out this new defense we were learning,'' Marinelli said. "Lovie and Tony were the same type of person -- high character without ever having to talk about it, consistency, no ups and downs, excellent teachers.''

So as someone who probably knows both men better than anyone in the world, Marinelli was asked the other day: "Who wins this game?'' His great answer: "The winner will be the sport of football. The game of football wins. Every young man playing football in the United States, any coach coaching football in the United States at any level ... they all should watch this game and see the class of the two coaches and the class of these two teams. This is going to be one of the great days for football, and I love football so much I hope every kid who plays this sport watches the game, just to see how great a game it is when it's done right.''

ITEM: Tony Romo felt worse for Bill Parcells that night in Seattle than he did for himself. Remember ol' Teary Eyes after he muffed the hold that would have given the Cowboys the lead in the wild-card game in Seattle on Jan. 6? Romo told me two interesting things the other day. One: "The hardest thing for me walking off the field that night was knowing this might be it for him,'' Romo said of Parcells. "I knew he didn't have a lot of chances left. He never cared about his legacy, never talked about it, never in any way. But I thought about it. I cared about his legacy. So it was hard for me. He was hard on me, like a dad would be, but he was also great for me. All he cared about was making me the best player I could be.

"Last week, we talked, and he hinted it might be all over for him," Romo added. "I knew there was a possibility that it would be our last conversation. He wanted to tell me a little list of the four or five things I needed to do to reach the level he thought I could reach. He told me he thought I had it, that I could do something. I'll probably never repeat those four or five things to anyone. But I will remember that conversation for the rest of my career.''

The second thing Romo told me was about the muffed hold. He was vague and a little foggy -- maybe on purpose, I figure. It looked to me, and to a lot of people, that the ball was as shiny as a piece of glare ice. Maybe, just maybe, the ballboy on the sideline had been saving the most slippery of the 12 balls in his K-ball stash (different balls are used for all special-teams plays than for plays from scrimmage) for a crucial kick for the visitors, such as this one.

"When I got the ball, it's hard to explain, but it just wasn't staying in my hand,'' Romo said. "I really can't say if it was a different kind of ball or not, and I would never make an excuse about something like that. I don't care if the ball has been in six inches of rainwater. I've got to make that hold.'' And the mystery continues.

ITEM: If the Raiders don't take LSU quarterback JaMarcus Russell with the first pick of the April 28 draft, stop the presses. At a speaking engagement near Palm Springs the other day, USC coach Pete Carroll said he figured he knew his former protégé, Lane Kiffin, would pass on Notre Dame's Brady Quinn in favor of Russell, now that Kiffin is the head coach of the Raiders. His reasoning: Kiffin likes throwing it downfield, and Russell's downfield arm is much stronger than Quinn's. "The kid from LSU is exactly what they're looking for, more than the kid from Notre Dame,'' Carroll said. Just another brick in the wall of the evidence that says we don't quite know where Quinn will go, but we know where Russell is likely to go.