Strange doings in Detroit these days. League sources say Lions head coach Marty Mornhinweg is spreading the word among his friends and coaching associates that the Ford family has informed him that he will return in 2003, but that team president/CEO Matt Millen is on the way out.

Millen, however, is said to be intimating just the opposite to those close to him -- that Mornhinweg is gone, but he'll survive the purge.

Some sources are spreading the notion that the Lions' head coaching vacancy to come is a large part of the reason that Washington defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis turned down Michigan State last week. Detroit and Cincinnati are the NFL teams believed to be most interested in hiring Lewis as a head coach.

Colts president Bill Polian broke into the NFL in 1978, but he's never seen anything quite like this year's AFC, where just one win can swing a team's fortunes dramatically. Fourteen of the conference's 16 teams are still alive in the playoff chase, and nobody has clinched a postseason berth.

"We're 15 weeks into a 17-week season, and nothing has been decided yet," said Polian on Sunday in Cleveland, shaking his head in amazement. "These guys have heard me say since June that this is going 17 weeks, and that's what it's going to do. It doesn't matter what you did today. If you won, enjoy it, but then it's back to the grindstone tomorrow. That's where the AFC is at this year."

Quick question: Whatever happened to Drew Bledsoe? On Sunday, the Bills quarterback was 11-of-33 for 107 yards. To put that into perspective, all 29 other quarterbacks who played the majority of their team's snaps threw for more yardage Sunday.

The first half of Bledsoe's season was MVP material. He threw for 2,500 yards (312.5 per game) with 16 touchdowns and five interceptions. The Bills were 5-3 and averaging 30.1 points per game.

In his past six games -- or ever since his first game against his former team, New England -- Bledsoe has thrown for just 1,449 yards (241.5 per game) with seven touchdowns and eight picks. Buffalo is 2-4 in that span and averaging 18.5 points per game. In four of the six games, the Bills have scored 17 points or fewer.

There are no records for this sort of thing, but Colts quarterback Peyton Manning audibled on all four of his team's touchdowns Sunday in Cleveland. Has anyone ever done that before?

Manning, who calls his own plays, audibled about 70 percent of the time against the Browns. The gutsiest of his check-offs at the line was a fourth-and-3 call from the Cleveland 29 with the Colts trailing 16-0 early in the third quarter. Manning changed from a pass to Marvin Harrison to a run by rookie James Mungro because he noticed Harrison was going to be doubled.

"I signaled to [Mungro}, and he gave me that blank look like he always does," Manning quipped. "I knew he knew what he was doing, but it still makes me nervous.

Said Mungro: "Your eyes would get wide, too, when he's calling audibles with three seconds left on the play clock."

All in all, Sunday was a bummer for NFL teams from California. The Raiders (9-5) lost at Miami, letting a big chance to grab the upper hand in the AFC's home-field advantage race slip away. The Chargers (8-6) failed in the final minute in Buffalo, giving them five losses in seven games and doing great damage to their fading wild-card hopes. And the 49ers (9-5) were whipped at home by Green Bay, putting them in line to play host to no more than one home game in the NFC playoffs.

At least two, and maybe all three, teams still could make the playoffs. But not that long ago, this season looked like a lock to be the first time all three franchises had qualified for the postseason in the same year.

This may be the most amazing statistic I've seen in a good long while: Philadelphia return man/running back Brian Mitchell now ranks second on the NFL's career list for combined net yardage with 21,912. He passed Walter Payton (21,803) on Sunday and trails only Jerry Rice (22,202).

Rice, Mitchell and Payton. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Mitchell has been a very good player for a long time. An under-appreciated talent. But sandwiched between Rice and Payton -- two first-ballot Hall of Famers? That's a very high-rent district. Heck, that's the penthouse.

Mitchell someday may inspire some Hall of Fame support himself. And he's probably a borderline candidate. But he has largely made his mark in the game as a special teams performer, and that's an enshrinement threshold (see Steve Tasker) that Hall voters still haven't crossed.

Here's the second-most improbable thought of the day. If the Steelers lose at Tampa Bay next Monday night and the Ravens take care of business against the visiting Browns on Sunday, Baltimore will be guaranteed a non-losing record and wind up playing meaningful games throughout its entire schedule.

That despite dismantling its roster this offseason in an unprecedented salary-cap purge. That's remarkable, and doesn't even touch upon that Baltimore at Pittsburgh in Week 17 would be for the AFC North title. The Ravens either prove just how good head coach Brian Billick and GM Ozzie Newsome are at their jobs or how mediocre most of the NFL is. More likely, both.

I like the aggressive way Wayne Chrebet plays the game, but the veteran Jets receiver didn't put his Hofstra education to good use when he decided to try to leap over a pack of Bears defensive backs late in Sunday's loss to Chicago.

If you're approaching the goal line and down to a handful of seconds in the game, fine, jump and take your shot at pulling off a Matrix-like move. But Chrebet went airborne near the 15-yard line with about 1:10 remaining in the seven-point game.

He got all the way up there, looked down at the waiting ground and forgot all about ball control at that point. His resulting fumble effectively ended the game and New York's playoff chances. Chrebet the Jet looked good preparing for takeoff, but he didn't exactly stick the landing. Aggressive is good. Smart is even better.