Stat of the Week I

Tom Brady's Patriots have scored 38 points in each of their first three games. AP

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Ridiculously Proficient Patriots Stats of the Week:

• After three weeks, Brady has completed 79.5 percent of his passes. Three of his six best career completion-percentage games have come this month.

• Moss has two consecutive weeks with two touchdowns in a game. The last time a Patriot did that was 13 years ago, when Ben "Winter'' Coates was the man.

• Brady is 24-1 on artificial turf in regular-season games. You might want to put that stat in your oddsmakers' bonnet when the Pats visit Dallas in mid-October.

• New England has won 13 of 14 against Buffalo.

• Brady's on pace to throw 53 touchdown passes.

Stat of the Week II

Postscript to the HBO Inside the NFL screed the other day about the meaninglessness of the quarterback rating stat:

Johnny Unitas' career quarterback rating: 78.2.

Jeff Blake's career quarterback rating: 78.0.

MVP Watch

We're starting early this year, people. MVP Watch debuted in December last year, but I figured, hey, why not September? Why not get the angry e-mails earlier this year?

1. Tom Brady, QB, New England. Six incompletions in each of his first three games. Playing almost perfect football on the best team of them all. His three-game rating is 141.8, just 12 points shy of perfection ... not that I buy into QB ratings.

2. Peyton Manning, QB, Indianapolis. Wind him up, and he keeps on dominating and winning.

3. Brett Favre, QB, Green Bay. Reincarnated at 37. Only three times in his career has he had a better quarterback rating and a better completion percentage for a season.

4. Randy Moss, WR, New England. I mean, have you been watching the games?

5. Ben Roethlisberger, QB, Pittsburgh. He wanted the pressure on his shoulders. It was put there, and he's directed the 3-0 Steelers to 32 points per game.

Book Corner

No pride of authorship here. I totally credit a highly respected peer for this idea, because it is Rick Gosselin's doing. Gosselin is the NFL columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and he occasionally takes one of the many football books we all get mailed and picks out a passage or two relevant to today. Like last week. He picked a couple of things from the book of well-traveled former Cowboys front-office ace Bob Ackles (who ran the front office under Jimmy Johnson), including, ironically, the fact that Ackles felt Pete Carroll's Patriots were pilfering Dallas' signals when they played.

I really like Michael Holley's stuff. He's a talk-show host for WEEI now, but his book, Patriot Reign, on a year in the life of the Belichick Patriots, was an all-time keeper. I say this not to demean the late David Halberstam, but Holley's book was significantly richer in meaningful factoids and real knowledge about Belichick than Halberstam's -- a credit to Holley, not a criticism of Halberstam. Anyway, Holley wrote Tedy Bruschi's book, Never Give Up (John Wiley & Son Inc.), about his life and return to football after suffering a stroke in 2005. I love the section in the book about the real-life conflict between Bruschi and wife Heidi, who, understandably, wanted him to stay retired when he'd recovered. She feared the health consequences of another stroke. Bruschi, through Holley, writes:

"Of all the fights I've had with Heidi, none could match the length and intensity we had over my future as a football player ... It was something that went on for weeks. We would wake up and she would be mad that I was going to the stadium. And I'd be mad that she was mad. We would state our cases three times a day and never come to a resolution ... It was a tense time for us, basically a month without hellos and goodbyes ... Everything I said about playing football seemed outrageous to her. I asked her a few times to come and watch me work out, so she could see for herself how close to normal I was. Heidi is naturally much more emotional than I am, and mentioning football wasn't helping. She would restate her position often: 'You're the father of my kids, I don't want you to have another stroke, and I'm not having this return to football.' ... I had doubts, but they lasted for split seconds and went away. Her doubts flashed constantly, and that led to her being overprotective and scared.''

It wasn't until she heard two specialists, one at a time, say Bruschi was at no more risk for a stroke than any normal person that she believed, and then things got back to normal with them. Insightful stuff.

Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me

The Arizona Cardinals have devoted 13.6 percent of their salary cap to the quarterback position this year, with Matt Leinart ($8.1 on the cap) and Kurt Warner ($5.0 million) taking up $13.1 million.

The Colts' quarterback percentage of the cap: 11.6 percent, with Peyton Manning and Jim Sorgi combining for $9.1 million on the cap.

Gee, I wonder which team feels better about its quarterback situation and its quarterback/cap situation.

Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Week

Last Wednesday, 7:41 a.m. New Jersey Transit train, Upper Montclair to Penn Station in Manhattan, seated in a two-seat bench seat, on the way into the city for our second HBO Inside the NFL taping of the year.

Where have you heard that one before?

What can I say? I don't travel much anymore during the season. On this morning, the well-suited salt-and-pepper-haired man is on his cell phone, loud enough for the folks in a two-seat radius to hear.

"Phoebe's good ... Yeah, yeah, right ... No, she was away for four weeks ... Saxophone camp. Can you believe that? She had a wonderful time. Lots of new techniques ... Four weeks, yeah ... On a lake up there, lots to do, a beautiful setting. We went up one weekend and loved it ... No ... No ... I don't know if that's what she'll end up playing, but she loves it now ... When she got home? She volunteered ... No, locally. She worked at an orphanage. That's not what it's called, but that's what it was. You know, working with kids, reading with them, playing, doing crafts ... ''

Got off the train with a feeling of what in the world did I do wrong with my kids. What a miserable wretch of a parent I've been. How could I have reared two non-saxophone-playing, non-orphanage-working human beings? Then, just off the escalator into the lobby of Penn Station, a guy sidled up next to me. "Hey, loved your story on the makeup lady the other day.'' And that made it all worthwhile.

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