6. I think the best compliment you can give a man is that he's his father's son. Well, John Mara is his father's son. Every time he opens his mouth, he says the right thing.

7. I think I don't have a lot of expectations that the continued fascination with Spygate will bear much fruit this offseason. I hear one news-media outlet spent two weeks, off and on, talking with former Patriots video employee Matt Walsh recently and came away convinced that Walsh did not have the goods on the Patriots -- or if he did, he was holding out for something (money? legal indemnification?) and left the impression he knew something but not quite the mother lode the Arlen Specters of the world wish he did.

8. I think the demise of Inside the NFL, to the best of my knowledge, was not so much about money as it was about not being different enough anymore. That's what we, as a staff, were told by HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg and executive producer Rick Bernstein.

The 27 minutes of NFL Films highlights and feature footage we aired each week, plus the often hard-hitting features we did on the show, were unique to NFL studio shows. For example, even though the Cardinals hosted the Super Bowl this year, our Super Bowl week piece by producer Christine Wilt about how the 1925 NFL title was stolen from the rightful winners, the Pottsville Maroons, and now resides with the Cardinals had to be embarrassing to the Cardinals franchise. That's not a story most studio shows would have done, ever, and certainly not during Super Bowl week.

Though the show was different, it's hard to call any NFL studio show "unique.''

I've gained so much respect for people I didn't know very well entering the experience. There's not a more salt-of-the-earth guy in the game than Dan Marino; once you're on his team, you're family. Not satisfied with just being on the show, Cris Carter worked to become a better broadcaster. I assume the same way he worked to become a better receiver. Bob Costas worked as hard trying to make everyone else on the show look good, setting us up with the right questions he knew we could bat out of the ballpark, as he did in excelling himself.

I learned a lot from Cris Collinsworth, about former players who became great in this line of work, not just because they were polished, but because they're not afraid to speak the truth. The truth he spoke this year about the shame of Spygate and how Bill Belichick should have been suspended for it ought to be required viewing -- whether you agree with him or not -- for ex-jocks trying to make a TV go of it. (I know my family will never forget Collinsworth, on Christmas Eve 2006, excusing himself from a dinner we were hosting for the out-of-town NBC studio team members at our home. Cris went into the kitchen and washed the dishes. Not just for laughs, either. He did every last plate.)

It was great working with everyone there -- segment producers like Bentley Weiner, Bruce Cornblatt, Jason Hehir, Rahul Rohatgi and Wilt included -- and I hope the show isn't dead forever. But if someone picks up the show, it wouldn't be the same if Brian Hyland, a superb and fearless storyteller in a land of TV puffery, weren't producing it. I'm not encouraging Hyland to take a hike from HBO. I'm simply stating a fact. Thanks for the experience, HBO.

9. I think, if I had to guess, that a third of the owners in this league would prefer a new labor deal without a salary cap to the labor deal that exists now. That's dangerous for long-term league stability. Very dangerous. Expect the late-March league meeting in Palm Beach to be very much about that.

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

a. If you want to know what a real hero is like, read Jodie Valade's story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer Sunday about Pro Bowl return man Josh Cribbs, who is becoming a difference-maker on the incredibly rough-and-tumble East Side of Cleveland. Great story.

b. Finally saw Michael Clayton. Very good movie. Not as good as No Country for Old Men, or Charlie Wilson's War, but I believe if I were writing a blurb for the newspaper ad for Clayton, I would write: "Taut legal thriller.''

c. Len Pasquarelli was up and about and feeling well in his Phoenix hospital room Sunday, just seven days after his bypass surgery. "Let me tell you something,'' Pasquarelli, the ESPN.com pro-football maven, reported from his bed Sunday afternoon, after his first post-bypass shower. "There's no better feeling in the world than your first shower after a heart attack.''

All is going well with him, and he may be able to go home by midweek. I can't tell you how many of my peers -- competitors in the business, but friends and admirers of Lenny -- have been burning up the phone lines, asking for any piece of Pasquarelli news they could find. It's heartening to hear that such a scary situation is headed for what appears to be a happy ending. Our best wishes, Len. By the way, not to pressure you or anything, but if you're not at the NFL Scouting Combine in two weeks, we're all boycotting it, and I think the league would actually call it off.

d. Coffeenerdness: No coffee news this week. None. Had a lot of tea, actually, coming off my bronchitis/virus/ear infections. Filled to the gills with the green tea, just like Phil Simms advises.

e. Do people realize how silly they look and sound, even with Bluetooths (Blueteeth?) in their ears, to be cackling and talking loudly and gesturing with no one around.

f. I wonder if the Red Sox would have been so uninterested in Johan Santana if they'd known all about Curt Schilling's bum shoulder a month ago. I doubt it.