4. I think this is what I know about the three coaching vacancies right now:

a. Miami. Looks like an inside job ... an inside Bill Parcells job. I asked a friend of the coach Saturday how sure he was that Tony Sparano was getting the Dolphins head-coaching job. "Very,'' he said. Parcells told me not to go overboard on the Dallas offensive aide yet, that the team still had to conduct interviews with defensive coordinators Leslie Frazier and Rex Ryan early this week. Sorry, Bill. I'm going overboard.

I'll be very surprised if the 46-year-old Sparano -- who 10 years ago was the head coach at Division II University of New Haven -- is not the coach of the Dolphins a week from today. You've got to love his perseverance. The University of New Haven football office was in the basement of a store in a strip mall; the team practiced on an elementary school's playground.

Smart guy, though, and Parcells got to like his tough coaching style and his reliance on a bedrock running game while working with him in Dallas. He even allowed Sparano to be his play-caller in 2006, when the Cowboys exploded on offense.

b. Atlanta. Anybody's guess. The first thing the Falcons will do this week is hire a GM, which I think will be either Tom Heckert Jr., of the Eagles (he's scheduled to be interviewed today) or John Schneider of the Packers. Then that man will join the coaching search and be a driving force in it.

Two things I do know: The Falcons, now, are not interested in either Mike Singletary or Marty Schottenheimer; and Rich McKay, despite being stripped of his football-architecture duties, is still a very important whisperer in Arthur Blank's ears in this interview process.

There's almost no chance one of the objects of their affection, Dallas offensive coordinator Jason Garrett, will be interested in the Falcons job. My guess is he'll stay put for another year at least, perhaps with a golden handshake from owner Jerry Jones. I don't think Jones can publicly assure Garrett he'll be the next Dallas coach because of the Rooney Rule mandating every coaching opening must have at least one minority applicant. But I do think Jones can keep him for at least one more year because Garrett knows he's got a great deal and the offense is going to continue to flourish with Romo pulling the trigger on Garrett's play calls.

c. Baltimore. Everyone who interviews Sparano and Garrett ends up loving them, and the Ravens, on Saturday, were no exception. They liked Jim Caldwell, too. But they're very early in their process, and I doubt they'll pick a coach until owner Steve Bisciotti, GM Ozzie Newsome and the rest of the front office helping with the process talk to at least eight or 10 candidates. I find it interesting that they're in no hurry to pursue Schottenheimer.

5. I think, speaking of coaching vacancies, as I said Saturday night on NBC, I wouldn't be surprised if the situation in Oakland boils over and results in Al Davis either firing Lane Kiffin or accepting his resignation. Why Rob Ryan is forced to stay in a place where the head coach clearly wants to make a change at defensive coordinator is counterproductive and not conducive to coaching-staff harmony. Why not give Kiffin a chance to work with a guy he wants and trusts on that side of the ball? Unless Davis thinks Kiffin is a short-termer and will jump to the best college job he can get after this season, of course.

6. I think this is what I liked about Wild Card Weekend:

a. The Seattle front seven. That's what won the game Saturday.

b. Marcus Trufant really impressed me on Saturday, too -- in both his coverage and his physical play.

c. Amani Toomer. Consistently underrated, which is pretty tough for a New York athlete.

d. One name you didn't know entering the weekend but had to know by the end of it was Jacksonville's Derek Landri. A high school teammate of Maurice Jones-Drew at De LaSalle High in California, the rookie Landri came in when John Henderson went down with a strained hammy early in the game. Landri made three big plays to help the Jags win -- a sack of Roethlisberger, an interception on a short screen that Roethlisberger badly misjudged and Landri played athletically, and a fumble recovery on the Steelers' last offensive play of the game. Excellent relief job by an unknown kid.

e. Chris Chambers, for the first time this year, was a true difference-maker in the San Diego muck.

f. I thought the play of the game in San Diego's win was by Shawne Merriman. Remember? Early second quarter. San Diego's getting nothing going on offense and is down 3-0. Tennessee's driving, with second-and-nine at the Chargers 12, and Chris Brown rumbles over right tackle, on his way to third-and-short, or better. In a minute, there's a very good chance it's going to be 10-0, Tennessee, with all signs pointing to very long offensive day for San Diego. And here comes Merriman from behind, bringing his left fist underneath the ball and blasting the ball out. San Diego recovered the fumble, and even though the Chargers didn't score 'til midway through the third quarter, the Merriman play prevented the game from getting out of control early.

g. What a gorgeous throw by Philip Rivers, 34 yards up the right sideline to Vincent Jackson in the third quarter. You can't throw a football better.

h. Guttiest big-game player this weekend? Hines Ward. Hands down. Reminds me of Michael Irvin, with the chip on his shoulder, the jabbering to try to get into the heads of defenders, and the borderline offensive interference he gets away with. I love watching him play.

7. I think this is what I didn't like about Wild Card Weekend:

a. The hands of Washington's receivers. Santana Moss, Chris Cooley and Clinton Portis all let first-down-conversion throws from Todd Collins -- perfect passes, by the way -- go right through their paws in the first half.

b. Why did Moss give up on the Trufant interception in the fourth quarter? I don't like his story about losing track of the ball, either. You can't lose track of a ball so that you have no idea where it is.

c. Najeh Davenport needs to pick a hole and burst up through there. Too indecisive. Not physical enough.

d. Roethlisberger takes too many sacks. I used to think it was all the line's fault, but on Saturday, he was just slow to throw the ball away on at least two of his six sacks. You know what else Roethlisberger needs? A mental clock in his head. I've seen real clocks at lots of training camp. Ballboys stand behind the offensive backfield and have clocks or stopwatches, and when it's exactly four seconds after the quarterback receives the snap from center, a horn blows and the play's dead. That gets a quarterback used to getting rid of the ball on time. Roethlisberger takes too much time too often.

e. Bad replay challenge on the Ernest Wilford catch/non-catch, when Jacksonville coach Jack Del Rio had only one timeout left with 2:31 left in the fourth quarter. He was down a point and needed that timeout badly.

f. Why the Chargers steadfastly eschew the powder-blues, I don't know. They'd be the best uniforms in sports.

g. I have no explanation for this, other than the suspicions that all the resting by the Bucs in recent weeks had some effect on their second-half staying power. They just didn't put the front-seven pressure on Eli Manning in the last 40 minutes that they put on him in the first 20.

8. I think of all the coaching decisions this weekend, the one I liked least was this one, in the Steelers-Jags game: Pittsburgh up 29-28, Steelers ball, third-and-six, 2:56 left. Jacksonville has two timeouts left. Both defenses are exhausted. Pittsburgh needs two more first downs to end the game, in essence. So the Steelers call a designed Roethlisberger rollout run left, with a third-string offensive tackle out there.

Third-and-two, I understand. Third-and-six? Ridiculous. By the time Big Ben chugged left, the entire Jag defense was there to greet him. Gain of one. Punt. I don't understand, for the life of me, why an 8-yard curl to Hines Ward or a Santonio Holmes reverse isn't the call. The odds of Roethlisberger making six yards on this play were what? Fifteen percent? Twenty? The Steelers had to punt, and Jacksonville took over at their 49, where the Jags began their game-winning drive. Crazy thing was, they had to try to score slowly to keep the Steelers from having too much time left.

9. I think if the Jacksonville-New England game is 80 percent as good as the Giants-Patriots game or the Jags-Steelers game, we're going to be a lucky bunch of football-watchers Saturday night. The NFL is on a roll of tremendous prime-time football the last two Saturday nights.

10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:

a. Can you imagine a year ago, if you'd walked up to John Q. Public and told him the presidential favorites after Iowa would be Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee?

b. The political wars are wearing on John King.

c. Bengals.com Web czar Geoff Hobson had a great line the other night: Could Barack Obama in 2008 be Jack Kennedy in 1960? He might be right. Everyone says Obama's not experienced enough, or this country will never elect a black man president. Fifty years ago, Kennedy was a neophyte, and he was Roman Catholic. Hobson might be right.

d. Beard looks absurd, Dave.

e. Coffeenerdness: The Redskins have the best in-house coffee in the NFL, east of Seattle. (The dark blends in the Seahawks training facility are second to none.) They've got one of these individual coffeemakers, by a company called Keurig, with little mini-plastic-cups with coffee and mini-filters from Green Mountain. Had the Green Mountain Sumatran Reserve dark roast with a little half and half, and it was every bit as good as a cup of Starbucks French Roast in the store.

f. I don't get the Bud Light "dude'' commercials. I miss the Bill Parcells "Bigfoot'' commercial, which for some reason has been eradicated from the face of the earth.

g. The "Rock Me Gently'' Jeep Liberty commercial was cute the first 416 times I saw it. Now it's torture.

h. Don't care about LSU-Ohio State. Had a little interest in the Hawaii-Georgia game, but that ended about 15 minutes into the game. That's it. The bowl season is totally non-compelling this year.

i. I did, however, care about the New Year's Day hockey game in Buffalo. Fantastic visuals, fun event, tremendous game capped by the best player in hockey scoring the winning goal in the last round of a shootout, with 71,000 riveted fans in the stadium. This was the best new sports-event idea I've seen in years, and I don't say that because I draw a paycheck from NBC.

j. Would love Canadiens-Bruins at Fenway next year. Or Canadiens-Maple Leafs somewhere up north. Or the Flyers-Penguins at Heinz Field or the Linc. Or the Wings-Penguins at Comerica. Or -- what about this one -- the Stanley Cup champ against Sidney Crosby and the Penguins, either in Pittsburgh or in the biggest outdoor stadium in Canada? Whatever, NBC's got to keep this going.

k. A TV buddy of mine, Dan Brady, is going the Wayne's World route and would love to have you text or e-mail or just log on to watch a pretty opinionated weekly show. The Dan Brady Show (http://newcenturytv.biz/bradysports/index.html) is a live webcast that originates from a basement in Pennsylvania every Monday night from 8-8:30. Dan is not shy.

l. My hope for the New Year is a pretty simple: that John Cougar Mellencamp writes a new song for Chevy.