The Awards Section

Rookie Kolby Smith ran for 150 yards and two TDs in the Chiefs' loss to the Raiders. AP

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Offensive Players of the Week

Green Bay QB Brett Favre. "I threw it. They caught it. Nothing spectacular.'' That's what Favre said about his 20-consecutive completions, a franchise record, in Green Bay's 37-26 Thanksgiving Day win at Detroit. Add in three touchdowns, no interceptions, 76.0 completion percentage and 381 yards, and you have one of the most commanding performances of Favre's recent history, his own tsk-tsking of the day notwithstanding.

Kansas City RB Kolby Smith. On the Chiefs' second possession, Smith, making his first NFL start, ran the ball for 5, 3, 0, 19 (on a fourth-and-one with Herman Edwards getting gutsy and going for it), 16, 2 and 10 yards, the last one for a lunging touchdown. In one drive, we saw a better Kansas City running attack than we'd seen all season. By the half, he had 16 carries for 94 yards; for the day, he finished with 31 carries for 150 yards. A great debut -- even if he didn't get the one yard he needed in the fourth quarter to give the Chiefs a first down that could have won them a must-win game.

Defensive Players of the Week

Seattle DE Patrick Kerney. In the last eight days, Kerney has six sacks, a forced fumble, an interception and a pass deflected. In Seattle's 24-19 win at St. Louis -- which gave them a two-game lead in the NFC West -- Kerney continued to be the destructive force the Seahawks bought in free agency this offseason. "I'm playing with confidence recently, and confidence and knowing the system is pretty important to succeeding at this level,'' Kerney said afterward.

Tampa Bay LB Derrick Brooks. In his 200th NFL start, Brooks had a typical Derrick Brooks day -- 12 tackles. One was the kind of play that made him one of the best linebackers of his generation. With the Bucs hanging on to a 19-10 lead late in the third quarter, with a fourth-and-1 from the Tampa Bay 4, Brooks read either a Jason Campbell sneak or a Clinton Portis dive, and he moved to plug the hole. It was a Portis dive. "They showed a formation where it could be either,'' Brooks said over the phone from Tampa on Sunday night. "When Portis came through, we put a good lick on him, and I knew he wouldn't make it.'' He said "we,'' meaning he and defensive end Gaines Adams. But it was the slither and smash of Brooks that did 75 percent of the damage in the small space. "I'm 34 years old, and I haven't been that emotional in a long time,'' he said. "That's one of the more important plays I've made in my career.'' Quite a statement by a guy who will be a strong candidate for Canton in six or seven years.

Special Teams Players of the Week

Chicago WR/PR/KR Devin Hester. Hester is mocking history. The record for touchdowns on kickoff-returns and punt-returns, for now, belongs to Brian Mitchell, who scored 13 combined returns in 223 career games. Hester, after an 88-yard kick return and a 75-yard kickoff return for scores in the same quarter against Denver, now has 11 touchdowns on kickoff- and punt-returns in 27 career games. He is simply amazing. You can count on two fingers the number of times he was touched by a tackler on those two returns.

Seattle CB Josh Wilson. Looks like the Seahawks chose wisely with their first pick of the 2007 draft, the 55th overall (because they traded their first-rounder for Deion Branch). The rookie nickelback, with St. Louis off to a 9-0 lead and threatening to make this game a blowout, took a kickoff at the Seahawks' 11 and ran it back for a touchdown. Actually, he ran about 150 yards, juking this way and that, tiptoeing along the left sideline for about eight yards, then running against the grain into the end zone.

Coach of the Week

Cleveland coach Romeo Crennel. Now he's got them playing defense. The ex-Patriot has the Browns 7-4 with five games left, and he has them playing better defense than we thought they were capable of, at least on Sunday against Houston. "RAC [his nickname] has been grinding us, working us hard, making sure we get better every week on defense,'' Willie McGinest said via cell phone Sunday. "The best thing he's done, on both sides of the ball, is get rid of the individuals on this team. Everyone here's a team guy now.''

Goats of the Week

Arizona K Neil Rackers. He had a 32-yard chippy, in overtime, to lift the Cardinals to 6-5 and have them enter the month of December one game out out of the NFC West lead with five games left. Remember when Rackers was one of the best kickers in football? Not anymore. He pulled the 32-yarder barely wide left, brushing the flag atop the left upright with the miskick.

St. Louis QB Gus Frerotte. Down by five in the waning seconds, Frerotte fumbled a snap inside the Seattle 5-yard line, dooming the Rams to a 24-19 loss. He just exited from center too early, losing a game his team looked like it would win in the final minute. That's one of the very good reasons why the Rams are 2-9 right now.

Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me

The 49ers won at Arizona on Sunday, finally getting a break when they forced a fumble in the end zone in overtime and Tully Banta-Cain recovered. Interesting guy to have won this game. At the end of the year, San Francisco will fork over its first-round pick to New England, the result of a trade dating to draft day 2007. Sunday was San Francisco's third win of the year; a loss here would have placed them second in the first-round draft order. Who knows where they'll finish, of course, because there are five games left in the season. But the Patriots won't have as high a pick as they would have had because of Banta-Cain, which is some sort of parity-justice. Banta-Cain played the first four years of his career with the Patriots, before flying west in free agency in March.

Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Week

Walked past a demonstration in front of Macy's in Manhattan on Black Friday. Intense invectives hurled at passersbys who would even think of entering the store to buy anything with animal hair on it. Chants. Shouts. Whistles. Bustle. Very, very crowded.

"Hey Peter,'' one protestor near the end of the line, carrying a sign with a mangled weasel (I think) on it, called out. "Who do you like next week, Cowboys or Packers?''

Book Corner

Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting, (ESPN Books), by Bruce Feldman.

Normally I concentrate on books focused on pro football, but there was something compelling about this one, a you-are-there take inside the stupid, insipid and insulting-to-any-adult world of college football recruiting that Feldman captures vividly, mostly by following the Red Bull-addicted staff of University of Mississippi coach Ed Orgeron as it tries to recruit high school football players. Sometimes I hear how the college game is better than the pro game. That could be true. But the college football world is far worse if you ask me. Take the case of in-state prize running back Robert Elliott. Mississippi State won the recruiting battle with Ole Miss for him, and Feldman captured Elliott's press conference announcing the decision thusly:

"At first I was going to go to Florida State or Ole Miss,'' Elliott said from behind a podium, his smiling mother standing right beside him. "But then coach [Sylvester] Croom told me I could come in and wear No. 2. It was really where I could go and feel comfortable and rock my No. 2. I've been wearing it since Pee Wee, and that's the only number I can rock. If I put something else on, it won't look right on me. I figure, you've got to look good to play good. I can't wear those double-digit numbers.''

Mercifully, I believe, Orgeron was fired by Ole Miss on Saturday. If I were a football coach, I'd rather dig trenches to the center of the earth than chase 17-year-old boys and beg them to play football at my school. The sad part is, Orgeron will probably go back to where he came from, USC, and get back on the recruiting trail, or go somewhere else to do it because he's good at it.

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