The Fine Fifteen

1. New England (15-0). Classic ho-hum job over Miami. The most fired-up the crowd got might have been when Youkilis, Schilling and Ortiz brought the Word Series trophy onto the field before the game.

2. Indianapolis (13-2). It's scary how good the Colts are right now. They've won six straight by an average of 13.3 points per game.

3. Dallas (13-2). "God is good. It could have been worse,'' said Terrell Owens, just before walking out of the Cowboys' locker room Saturday night in Charlotte with his sprained ankle. Actually, he didn't walk out of the locker room the way his teammates did. He walked out on crutches. In a walking boot. The guess here is we won't see T.O. until the divisional playoff game in 19 or 20 days.

4. Green Bay (12-3). Somebody needs to do a psyche transplant on that punter, Jon Ryan. Talk about a bad day. That's one of the all-time awful days for a punter.

5. San Diego (9-5). These are your father's Chargers ... last four games: 130 points.

6. Jacksonville (11-4). My first question to Fred Taylor postgame: Did you go out today with vengeance against the Pro Bowl voters? "No,'' he said. "I wasn't going to use that as motivation. If you use that as motivation, and you lose or play bad, what good does that do? I do wish we'd get to vote after 16 games, not 13. I always finish with a strong November-December.''

Couldn't have said it better, Fred! In fact, down in Ten Things, you'll get a much longer take on how fans, players and coaches should vote for the Pro Bowl. Taylor had his fifth straight 100-yard game, this time seven carries for an eye-popping 111 yards.

7. Pittsburgh (10-5). Of all the stupid opinions I had in my King 500 (the top 500 players in football, which I authored for the SI NFL preview), perhaps the biggest was not having Ben Roethlisberger in my top 20 players.

8. Tampa Bay (9-6). Interesting comment from a prominent league official last Friday. "The Bucs are amazing,'' said the official. "They're running away with their division, they've got a quarterback who's played great in the playoffs, they've got a Super Bowl coach, and it's like they don't exist. You never hear a word about them when people talk about Super Bowl contenders.''

9. Tennessee (9-6). Big game Sunday night at Indy. The Titans win and they're in the playoffs. So here's the last eight meetings between Tennessee and Indy, from oldest to most recent: Colts by 26, Colts by 2, Colts by 14, Colts by 27, Colts by 21, Colts by 32, Colts by 1, Titans (on the Rob Bironas 60-yarder to win) by 3. In other words, Tennessee's got its proverbial work cut out Sunday at the RCA Dome.

10. Washington (8-7). We've gone in the span of a month from preparing to award Joe Gibbs his gold watch to preparing to give him a two-year contract extension. What a performance by the Redskins. If you'd have told me a team would go 80 yards in 10 plays on the Vikings to make the score 23-zip in the first half ... I'd have said something like, "Who's that? The Patriots?''

11. Cleveland (9-6). Scary game by Derek Anderson, who looked nothing like the top-10 quarterback he's played like for 80 percent of this season. Not a good time for him to be forcing, aiming and underthrowing receivers.

12. Seattle (10-5). A bit of a surging ground game against the Ravens: 34 carries, 148 yards.

13. New York Giants (10-5). In the history of this proud franchise, never, ever have the Giants had two 100-yard rushers in a game. At Buffalo, Ahmad Bradshaw and Brandon Jacobs both went over 140. Roll that around in your brain for a while. It's amazing enough that the ground-hugging Giants had never had two guys surpass 100 in a game.

14. Minnesota (8-7). So much for the Vikes' automatic bid into the NFL Tournament. Now Washington must lose to Dallas and Minnesota must win at Denver. This is great for interest in Week 17, which was nearly nil 24 hours ago, but it could be bad for the men in purple.

15. Philadelphia (7-8). Brian Westbrook went over 2,000 combined yards at New Orleans in another powerful performance. He's on his way to earning my All-Pro vote. He's at 2,005. By the way, Philly's last four road games have been against teams in the playoffs or who entered Week 16 with playoff chances. Philly won at Washington, lost at New England, won at Dallas, won at New Orleans. This is the best team that won't make the playoffs.

15. Buffalo (7-8). You think the Bills might have gotten a tad inspired from the appearance of Kevin Everett in their locker room before the game? By 1:22 p.m. ET, it was 14-0, and Trent Edwards had two perfectly thrown touchdown passes -- one to the man signed as a replacement for Everett, tight end Michael Gaines.

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