Multiple NFL stars deliver season-defining performances in Week 10

Ray Lewis had two interceptions in leading 6-3 Baltimore to a 41-13 win over Houston. AP Peter King's Mailbag Peter King will answer your questions each week in Monday Morning Quarterback: Tuesday Edition. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND Follow Peter King on Twitter

I don't normally do this, but it's a different week. I have two column leads today. The first concerns the stars -- Ray Lewis, Peyton Manning, Adrian Peterson, Wes Welker -- carrying their teams with the season on the line.

Second: I cannot ignore the biggest political event (and social, probably) of my lifetime and that of many of those in the league I cover. If you want to skip history, feel free to read page one, skip page two, then go to page three and beyond for the rest of the week in football. I won't be short-shrifting you this week if you have no interest in the ebullience of football people in the wake of the presidential election.

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There is no sports league better at creating new stars than the NFL. But Week 10 was all about the boldface names you knew very, very well.

Ray Lewis. Peyton Manning. Wes Welker and a stifling New England defense. Kerry Collins. Ricky Williams. Thomas Jones. Eli Manning and a smashmouth running game. Adrian Peterson.

I'd be remiss to not include Joe Flacco and Matt Ryan and the offensive lines of the Titans and Giants and the secondary of the Jets, because they shared in how important games were won. But as I watched the games through the day Sunday at the NBC studios, it seemed there were familiar names everywhere winning the games that mattered.

Lewis intercepted two Sage Rosenfels passes in the second half to stop Houston drives when the Texans were still in the game; Baltimore won 41-13. Peyton Manning -- I honestly wonder if Manning will retire a bigger folk hero in Indiana than Larry Bird -- continued to single-handedly keep the Colts in AFC playoff contention; his first TD pass Sunday in Pittsburgh tied the game, his second brought the Colts to within three, his third provided the winning points in a 24-20 win. New England, which starts one player on the front seven (Jerod Mayo) who isn't an AARP member, held the rising-star Bills to 168 yards in a 20-10 statement win in Foxboro. Welker, on pace to catch five more balls with Matt Cassel this year than he did with Tom Brady last year, took in 10 of them Sunday. The Bears shut down the Tennessee running game, forcing Collins to beat them. Which he did, 21-14, and gladly. Ricky Williams ran out of the wing-T for a 51-yard touchdown. Jones ran out of a regular old normal offense for three touchdowns in the Jets' slaughter of the Rams. Eli Manning hasn't had a 200-yard passing game since Oct. 5, but he competes and battles and makes enough plays to win ... and it helps when the three backs behind combine for 217 rushing yards.

Peterson? A marvel. An absolute marvel. All we can hope as witnesses is that he has a career as long as Walter Payton and as explosive as Gale Sayers. Oh, that'd be too much to ask? Well, on behalf of all of us, I'm asking anyway. What an electric game he played in a 28-27 win over Green Bay, in the rivalry that has to be the most exhilarating and closely contested in the NFL. The last 14 meetings have been decided by 4, 5, 3, 3, 3, 14, 3, 3, 6, 2, 7, 34, 5 and 1 points.

I'm going to focus on Lewis and Peterson here, because I haven't written much about either guy all year. (And because I could write fawning stuff about Peyton Manning in every column.)

Suddenly the Ravens are exceedingly dangerous. They've won four straight -- by 14, 19, 10 and 28 points -- and snuck into a tie for the AFC North lead. Finally they've got a respectable offense; when you score 37 and 41 points back to back, you're winning because of more than just defense. But it's still the defense that pays the bills. Baltimore is second in yards allowed and sixth in points allowed, but it's still a mystery team. Maybe that changes Sunday when they travel north to play the Giants. But when I spoke with Lewis on his way to the airport in Houston after the game, that's what he liked the most about his team right now. They're a stealth group.

"We LOVE for people to talk about other teams,'' he said in his raspy postgame voice. It's always raspy because he yells so much during the game. "Let us stay off the radar. We're building into a great team, but we don't want anyone to know it.''

Lewis is 33, in his 13th year with Baltimore. Maybe he isn't as fast-twitch quick as he was four or five years ago, and I doubt he can make the Superman kind of play he made in the Super Bowl eight years ago, when he caught Tiki Barber from waaaaaaay behind in one of the great athletic plays I've ever seen. But I can't tell any difference in Lewis at 33 from Lewis at 28. You may remember how I got grilled for my top 500 list of NFL players -- a list based on talent today plus longevity -- before the 2007 season. There's a good chance my biggest mistake was putting Lewis 86th, behind the likes of Vince Young, Shaun Alexander, Willie Anderson, Derrick Burgess and Kamerion Wimbley. Yikes. Talk about calls you'd like to have back. When I saw Lewis and told him where he was on the list, he got agitated, began pacing back and forth, and said, "I don't UNDERSTAND! What is the criteria!''

Lewis has managed to move on from this disappointment of seismic proportions, I believe.

He told me defensive coordinator Rex Ryan looked him in the eye recently and told him, "I've just never seen you play football like this before.'' With the Ravens up 19-6 in the third quarter Sunday, Lewis and tackle Haloti Ngata stuffed Ahman Green for a two-yard gain. On the next play, dropping into coverage, Lewis felled wideout Andre Johnson after a catch and a five-yard gain. Two plays later, back in coverage again, Lewis plucked a Rosenfels pass at the Baltimore 30.

"I don't play against offenses,'' he said. "I play against offensive coordinators.''

He prides himself in knowing when plays will be called. He thinks it helps him as much as the physical preparation for the game.

"It's my will,'' Lewis said when I asked about playing so well in year 13. "My will is stronger than the other people I play against. I'm going to sacrifice more than anyone else to make a play, I can promise you. And I'm going to hit you so you don't want to play no more.''

Sound familiar, Rashard Mendenhall?

"I love challenging these kids,'' he said. "I think I have something to teach them. Talent is one thing. Having the will and the maturity to win is something else. I still have some upside, and I intend to use it with this team.''

Now for Peterson. When Ray Lewis was drafted by Baltimore, Peterson was in sixth grade in Palestine, Texas. But Peterson's no kid now. He took over the NFL rushing lead from Clinton Portis on his final carry of Sunday, the 29-yard touchdown run that beat the Packers with 2:22 left in the game.

Sunday was Peterson's 23rd NFL game, and he has 2,356 rushing yards, a tidy 102 yards per game. That's 14 yards more than Payton averaged. Though Payton played long before Peterson's time, that's the back he reminds me of most.

With nine minutes left and the Vikes trailing 24-21 Sunday in Minneapolis, they faced a fourth-and-one at their 41-yard line. The smart play said punt. Coach Brad Childress said punt. But during a replay review prior to the fourth-down call, Peterson loudly urged Childress to go for it ... and the coach did. Peterson, running left, was stoned, and fumbled the ball, losing it.

"After that,'' Peterson told me via cell phone, "my whole mindset was, 'I gotta carry this team. I gotta make it up to them.' After the fumble, I was going to leave everything I had out there. I knew I was up to it.''

The Vikings got the ball back, trailing 27-21, at their 31 with six minutes left. They chipped away and chipped away, and Childress called for Peterson to get the ball on five of Minnesota's final six plays. With just over two minutes left, Peterson found a hole outside and it was a race to the pylon with Packers safety Atari Bigby. Peterson's 40 time helps -- he's run a sub-4.440-yard dash -- as does his vision and toughness. He saw Bigby chasing him peripherally and just got the ball over the goal line as the Packer safety dove to try to jar the ball out.

Peterson wasn't the whole storyline. The officials screwed up an early safety call on the Packers that, obviously, could have been a huge difference in a one-point Green Bay loss. While being upended in the end zone, Aaron Rodgers threw an underhanded pass that landed about three yards from Packers tight end Tory Humphrey, and ref Alberto Riveron called it an illegal forward pass. Only it wasn't, because quarterbacks often make underhanded scoop passes, which this was. After the game Riveron called it intentional grounding, and it wasn't that either, because Humphrey was so close. So this was a gift two points for the Vikes. The other safety was a hustle play by defensive end Jared Allen, playing with a grade-three shoulder separation in a display of guts not many players would have equaled.

So there was much more to discuss in this game. But Peterson's best game of the year led the list for me.

Now for part two of the column lead.