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Middle America's Super Bowl
Posted: Monday December 06, 1999 03:41 PM Week 13 Awards | The Top 10 Teams | Click here to send a question to Peter King's NFL Mailbag. FOXBOROUGH, Mass. -- Jerry Jones loves to schmooze. He loves to watch football. He loves to plot his future. When he can do all three at once, well sir, life is pretty good. Late Sunday afternoon, as this reporter was diligently tending to his Monday Morning Quarterback in the press lounge at the stadium, Jones was sitting across the table monitoring the late games and waiting for the Cowboys' Sunday night game to begin. A writer approached Jones to ask how the early games impacted the playoff picture, as cloudy a thing as it is. "Anything affect you guys so far?'' the writer said. "Miami lost,'' he said. Then he smiled, lest anyone think he really wanted Jimmy Johnson to lose. He'd never want something like that, would he? "Joke. Just kidding,'' Jones said. Then ESPN analyst Paul Maguire came by to kibitz. "Craziest year I've ever seen in my life,'' he said. Well, those games yesterday just about capped it. St. Louis clinches the NFC West with four games to play. Indianapolis, 3-13 a year ago, is steamrolling toward 13-3. At the end of the first half on Sunday in Miami, the Colts' state-of-the-art offense was in perfect symmetry: Peyton Manning was 11 of 12 for 104 yards and Edgerrin James had 103 yards rushing. The Giants snapped their five-year schneid without a 300-yard passing game against a hot defensive team, the Jets. The Titans, formerly 9-2, lost by 24 points. The Bengals, formerly 2-10, won by 14. Kansas City was three games out of the playoffs two Mondays ago. TThe Chiefs are one game out today. The total points scored in the early games: 54, 71, 47, 69, 55, 74, 55 and 50. And as night turned into day, I walked into the Dallas locker room and found Troy Aikman looking older than I'd remembered. What a day for the Cowboys. What a year, really. A few lockers down, Michael Irvin, dressed to the nines with a career going nowhere, waited with Deion Sanders and pals for the bus to take them to the Providence airport for the near four-hour flight home. Sunday night's game against the Patriots illustrated this team's season. With Irvin gone forever with stenosis of the spine (everyone knows it, it seems, but him), the Cowboys were set to play Ernie Mills and Rocket Ismail at receiver, with Wane McGarity, Jeff Ogden and Jason Tucker as backups. Mills pulled a calf muscle in pre-game warmups. McGarity started. But here are the Cowboys, in the Ali of divisions (I mean that literally; the NFC East was for years and years so dominant, and now it is feeble and infirm), still with a heck of a shot. Washington, at 7-5, is just a game ahead of Dallas, New York and Arizona, all tied for second at 6-6. And the Redskins have a tougher schedule down the stretch, with games against Indy and Miami. Dallas swept Washington this year, so a two-way tie between the Cowboys and 'Skins atop the division results in a trip for Dallas to the playoffs. "Nobody wants it,'' Aikman shrugged. With three-quarters of the season gone, what does it all mean? Probably this: Indy at Jacksonville for the AFC title in seven weeks, and the winner of Monday night's Minnesota-Tampa Bay matchup at St. Louis for the NFC championship. In a game middle America will take to its heart, I say it's the Colts 30, Rams 25. Pretty strange year, and that says it all. OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK: The Cincinnati Enquirer. My my alma mater (I did a stint there from 1980-85) did itself proud, calling on Bengals owner/president/GM Mike Brown to fire himself for the long-term sake of the losingest franchise of the '90s. (At least from the GM part of the job, the paper is right, I believe.) "The consistent variable in the Bengals' failure is bad management,'' the paper wrote. "Cincinnati is tired of blushing.'' In a week of some great offensive performances, a newspaper going on the attack is to be commended. I commend this even though the Bengals have won their last two games, because the last two games came against the worst Steelers team in a decade and the worst 49ers team in 20 years. DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK: The New York Giants' run defense. Jets carries in the Giants' 41-28 win: 12. Jets rushing yards: 15. Jets yards per carry: 1.3 yards. SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYER OF THE WEEK: Indianapolis kicker Mike Vanderjagt, who was ice in the Colts' 37-34 win at Miami. His 53-yard field goal at the gun won the game; it was his third of 40 yards or more of the afternoon. He has now made 18 in a row. Great teams have good kickers. And Indy's got a keeper. COACH OF THE WEEK: Indianapolis offensive coordinator Tom Moore for his play-calling in the victory over the Dolphins. Was it just me, or did it look as if the Colts called a smart play on every first down after the Dolphins scored? Moore has been the perfect mentor for Manning, a kid starved for football knowledge. 1. Indianapolis (10-2). Valiant win on the road. This team grew up on Sunday. 2. Jacksonville (11-1). Jags will win home field. It's a quasi-lock. 3. Miami (8-4). Marino the Warrior is back. Jimmy the Worrier needn't. 4. St. Louis (10-2). Dick Vermeil is getting some Coach of the Century votes. 5. Minnesota (7-4). You and me against the world, Jeff George. 6. Tampa Bay (7-4). At times, they play defense like the '85 Bears. 7. Tennessee (9-3). I am increasingly distrustful of the Men of Adams, especially when Tony Banks whips them embarrassingly. 8. Seattle (8-4). Jon Kitna's just in a little slump. Mike Holmgren will get him out of it. 9. Buffalo (8-4). Doug Flutie, on his day off, ran/biked/swam a triathlon. 10. Kansas City (7-5). I like what comes out of Gunther Cunningham's mouth. The 10 Things I Think I Think This Week 1. I think Michael Irvin will never play football again. 2. I think the two teams I saw Sunday night would both lose badly in the wild-card round of the playoffs, if they're lucky enough to get there. 3. I think it's objectionable, at best, that the Indianapolis Colts are playing Steve Muhammad. Every time I see him, all I think of is the alleged beating he gave his pregnant wife, who later died. 4a. I think I spent all week telling every talk show in America: "The 49ers haven't hit rock-bottom yet. We haven't seen them at their worst. But that's coming this weekend. The Bengals will beat them by two touchdowns.'' The final: Cincinnati 44, San Francisco 30. 4b. I think, before you say to yourself that this Peter King is one heck of a prophet, remember my most adamant of predictions on Draft Day: " Bill Polian will rue the day he picked Edgerrin James ahead of Ricky Williams. This is a dark day for the Colts' franchise.'' 5. I think the more I see that Dr. Pepper commercial with Bill Cowher acting like an absolute idiot, the more I agree with Steelers president Dan Rooney, who told me last week: "Some jerk wrote a commercial, but that didn't mean Bill had to do it.'' Especially when the commercial shows us a different person from the one alive today. Bill Cowher is coaching this season like a changed man, like a docile housecat, not like the raving lunatic Dr. Pepper shows him to be. A commercial is just a commercial, I understand. But what an embarrassment this one is. 6. I think, in my weekly crossover note, that baseball teams can be so stupid. (They do not, however, corner the market on sporting dumbness.) The New York Mets owe Bobby Bonilla $5.9 million this year. Bonilla the ballplayer is a useless waste of human flesh. There is great hand-wringing in New York about what to do with Bonilla. (Flashback: The Mets traded Mel Rojas for him a year ago. Rojas stunk. Bonilla was a gigantic pain in the rear end during his previous stint with the Mets. Instead of just firing Rojas, the Mets traded one problem for another. Bonilla plagued them all year, fittingly finishing the season playing cards in the clubhouse in the midst of an exciting playoff loss to Atlanta.) The Mets will spend something like $65 million on payroll this year. Why not spend 7% more to ensure a relatively harmonious clubhouse? What gives the Mets their best chance to win the most games this year, a team with Bonilla clubhouse-lawyering all the way or a team that bites the Bonilla bullet and dumps him? Why enter the season with an anchor tied around both ankles? Cut the guy now. 7. I think I had an interesting experience at Sports Illustrated's 20th Century Awards show last Thursday night at Madison Square Garden. The show was fun. Afterwards, my lovely wife, Ann, and two good friends were invited with me to an after-party at a downtown Manhattan nightclub. "None of the suits will go,'' we were told. "This is the after-party everybody will want to attend.'' Problem was, we were suits. I was in a tux, as was my buddy, and the two women were in beautiful gowns. We got to the club, only we didn't know it was a club. No sign. Just a velvet rope outside an unmarked building in a desolate neighborhood. We waited in line for a few minutes, then gave our name to a 23-ish guy, who let us in. We went to the top of a flight of stairs, walked past the hostess -- a woman who, for some reason, was wearing a faux fur coat -- and were let into a very dark common room with bar filled with cigarette smoke and 21-year-olds. One woman wore bright red vinyl pants. We looked around for anyone who might have been at the Garden for the big event and saw no one. We ordered two Bass Ales and two glasses of wine for $33 and tried to be heard above the Motown/Techno/Pop/Rap stuff being played by the disc jockey. We all thought this was some kind of mistake. So I went to Faux Fur and said: "Is this where the Sports Illustrated after-party is supposed to be?'' Faux Fur smiled sweetly. "Yes,'' she said. "Where is it?'' I wondered. "You're standing in the middle of it,'' Faux Fur said. We left. I guess it's like my colleague Mike Silver told me when I related the story to him: "Sometimes when you're really, really in, what that actually means is that you're out." 8. I think the Minnesota-Tampa Bay game is going to be a great one. My key: Can Jeff George withstand the best defense in the league hitting him in the mouth 14 times and win the game in the fourth quarter with a 26-yard laser to Cris Carter? I say yes. 9. I think Emmitt Smith is proving a lot of us wrong. And not just because he has rushed for over 1,000 yards for nine straight years. Did you see the way he ran Sunday night, with abandon and great cutting ability? 10a. I think the most interesting thing I learned all weekend was this: King to Deion Sanders: "What's your favorite sport?'' "Fishing,'' he said. "I want to be in the Bassmasters someday.'' 10b. I think a close second behind that one is how Sanders described himself, taking charge of his kids' softball and T-ball teams. "I coach like Bobby Knight,'' he said. My advice, Deion: If you're going to throw a chair, make sure it's one from Playskool. Click here to send a question to Peter King's NFL Mailbag.
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