Monday was the 30th anniversary of The Epic in Miami, a playoff showdown between the Chargers and the Dolphins that is widely considered the best NFL game of all time. The game had it all: an epic comeback, a series of clutch plays, a miracle hook-and-lateral at the end of the first half, an all-time great performance from Chargers tight end Kellen Winslow, and even a few missed field-goals that nearly pushed the game to double overtime. (If you're interesting in reading more about the game, I wrote a diddy about a few years back: 1/02/1982 - The Epic in Miami.)

However, there's one aspect of the Epic that's never made sense to me, and that is the widely-reported figure that Kellen Winslow lost 13 pounds during the course of the game. 13 pounds! Yeah, the game was played in the extreme humidity of the Orange Bowl, and it was a four-hour game, and Winslow caught 13 catches for 166 yards, blocked a field-goal, and played with a pinch nerve, a 105 degree temperature, a swollen eye, a split lip, an injured shoulder and cramps brought on by dehydration, and that he had to be carried off the field. But still... 13 pounds?

This isn't a Twitter-inspired, totally-unreliable factoid either. Here's a Washington Post column where it was noted in 1997. Here it is again in an ESPN25 retrospective column (which, I need to point out, misidentified Winslow as having 16 catches in the game). And here is an SI article and a New York Times article where he supposedly lost 12 pounds, and not 13. So am I really supposed to believe that this completely unbelievable figure is true, that in a four-hour period, Kellen Winslow lost the equivalent of 52 Quarter Pounders, that he basically gave birth to a pair of 6.5 pound sweat babies? (Or 6-pound sweat babies, depending on which version you believe.)

I'm skeptical. If he really did lose that much weight, then we truly are the dumbest country in the world, because the world's greatest weight loss program has been under our noses for 30 years, and we haven't utilized it at all. Sure, you may have to suffer a split lip and a few cramps and injuries along the way, but who can argue with the results? It's especially hard to take the number at full value because there are plenty of Chargers who, to this day, believe that Winslow was greatly exaggerating his injuries, with the cou de gras being the final moment when he appeared unable to stand on his own feet and had to be lifted off the field. Former San Diego linebacker Kim Bokamper expressed as much in 2006: "Every time I see it you wonder whether he should have gotten an Academy Award for the performance. It gnaws at some people, and it certainly gnaws at me."

But until the Academy awards Winslow an honorary Oscar, the credibility of the sources above push this story out of the myth category. It really is amazing that anyone could lose that much weight that quickly, assuming that it's true.

One of the longest standing maxims in not only football but in all of sports has a tremendous chance of being proven wrong this year. Those who believe defense is more important than offense will probably have to reevaluate their beliefs in February, since it's all too likely the Super Bowl winner will not only have a bad defense, but one of the worst defenses of all time.

As of now, the benchmark for the worst defense to win it all is the 2006 Indianapolis Colts, who despite having the second-best pass defense in the league ranked dead last in rushing yards allowed. However, that pales in comparison to the Saints, Packers and Patriots of 2011, all of whom already have allowed substantially more yards in 15 games than the '06 Colts allowed in 16. The Packers and Patriots in particular are allowing 400 and 412 yards a game, 40 and 52 more yards than the Colts allowed per game. And while the Colts ranked 21st in yards allowed, the Saints, Packers and Patriots rank 26th, 31st and 32nd overall, while the Packers and Patriots are on pace to allow 1,000 more yards than the Colts did in 2006.

And here's another nugget. In 2006, of the teams that ranked 17-32 in yards allowed, only three had a winning record. In 2011, half the teams ranking 17-32 in yards allowed are at least 8-8, while two other teams (Tennessee and Arizona) have 7 wins. And of the eight teams that don't have 8 wins, only the Buffalo Bills aren't also one of the 16 worst teams in the league in terms of offensive yardage. In other words, there are hardly any examples this season of a team entirely owing its futility to defense, if there's even an example at all.

• The best thing I can say about the NFL is that it's totally unpredictable on a week-to-week basis. Coming into Week 15, there were three constants of the NFL season: that the Packers were unbeatable, that the Colts were a train-wreck, and that Tim Tebow was either the football equivalent of a magician or the messiah. So what happened this week? The Packers lost, the Colts won, and Tim Tebow got his brains beat out. On the Tebow side of things, I don't want the story to go away on any level; I'll be crushed if the half-assing San Diego Chargers sneak into the playoffs on the last day of the year, as they always seem to do. But I'm glad the Colts and Packers finally got the '0' out of their records. Neither was historically-great or historically-awful, and for another batch of teams to do what the 2007 Patriots and 2008 Lions did, not even five years later, would've really devalued what it meant to go 0-16 and 16-0. So my hat goes off to the Kansas City Chiefs and Tennessee Titans for restoring order to the universe.
• If there's one thing to come from the Packers' first loss of the year, it's that maybe it opens up a few more MVP votes for Drew Brees. Admittedly, I'd vote for Rodgers in a pretend-scenario where my opinion matters, and I expect him to come close to winning it unanimously. But Brees is going to finish with probably the greatest overlooked season in the history of the NFL. He's going to break multiple records, and may not even crack double-digits in MVP voting. Brees needs only 305 passing yards over his final two games to break Dan Marino's 27-year, single-season record of 5,084. He needs only 34 completions to break Peyton Manning's record for completions in a season (450). He has thrown for 300 yards an NFL-record 11 times this season, and has at least one touchdown in 41 straight games. And if the season ended today, he'd finish with the highest completion percentage (71.6%) in the history of the league. And yet, despite having one of the five-to-six greatest statistical seasons ever, Brees won't even come close to winning the MVP. That's how good Aaron Rodgers has been.
• Here's an interest nugget courtesy of the Elias Sports Bureau: Sunday marked just the fourth occurrence in NFL history in which a team with a double-digit winning streak lost and a team with a double-digit losing streak won. The last time it happened was in 1984, when the Buffalo Bills snapped a 13-game losing streak and the Miami Dolphins -- lead by Dan Marino -- snapped a 16-game winning streak, the same Dan Marino who would finish the season with 5,084 passing yards, the record that's about to broken by Drew Brees. Isn't history fun?
• After stifling Rashard Mendenhall and the Pittsburgh Steelers, the San Francisco 49ers are the first team to go its first 14 games without allowing a single rushing touchdown. Yeah, yeah, they play in the horrifying NFC West (which magically has only one team under .500), and yeah they've had an east schedule. But I think it's time to consider the 49ers defense on a Baltimore-Ravens-with-Trent Dilfer, Chicago-Bears-with-Rex-Grossman level. It's great enough that they don't need to rely on Alex Smith to put up a lot of points for them in order to win. Now will that act work against a high-powered offense like the Green Bay Packers or New Orleans Saints? Maybe not. That might be the game where they'll actually need Smith to put up some touchdowns. But until they meet one of those teams, there's no reason to think they won't go far in the postseason.
• I briefly mentioned the San Diego Chargers. Philip Rivers now as an astounding 23-2 career record in December as a starting quarterback. Inconsistency is the only thing keeping Rivers out of the Elite Quarterbacks Club, because if he played the way he plays in December for a full season, the Chargers would never have to struggle to get in the playoffs like they are now.

• The Green Bay Packers may not be perfect. Their defense is lousy, they don't have a running back, and they just lost Greg Jennings for the final three games of the season. The good news is that they have one of the most prolific quarterbacks in the history of the game, and they don't need no stinkin' running back thank you very much. And hey, neither did the 2007 Patriots team that went 16-0. Some of Aaron Rodgers' numbers are simply mind-boggling. Sunday was the first time all season that Rodgers failed to have a QB Rating over 100 and a completion percentage over 60%. He's on pace to finish with the highest passer rating ever, his completion percentage is only 1.3 points behind Drew Brees' current total for the single-season record, he needs 11 touchdowns over his final three games to tie the single-season record of 50, and he needs 960 yards during that span to surpass Dan Marino's seasonal record. In entirely likely that Rodgers will finish with one of the five highest totals ever in all four major statistical categories for a quarterback, AND his team is on the verge of going to 16-0. It'll be a crime if he doesn't win the MVP unanimously.
• If the Packers do go unblemished, one of the gripes people will have is that they did it with a pretty easy strength of schedule. It can't be argued that there isn't tremendous parity between the second and the twenty-second best teams in the NFL, and that the Packers have had a pretty easy go of it. However, Green Bay's light schedule pales in comparison to the saintly 1972 Miami Dolphins, who pride themselves as the only 19-0 team in history. That team played exactly two teams with winning records in the regular season, and their opponents' winning percentage was below 40%, giving them one of the easiest schedules of all-time. They were so un-tested that even with an 18-0 record, they were underdogs going into the Super Bowl.
• Tim Tebow.... I mean, what can I say? It's inexplicable. It'd be one thing if Tim Tebow was 7-1 as a starter and pulling off all these comebacks by playing incredible, but Tebow is somehow doing it despite looking totally inept 90% of the time. Somehow, magical things seems to happen all around him that allow him to win in spite of how bad he plays. Marion Barber basically had to cough up the game twice in order for Matt Prater to kick game-tying and game-winning field-goals of a combined 110 yards, and that had nothing to do with Tebow. One of the worst defenses last year is suddenly amazing, and it has nothing to do with Tebow. They're winning with Knowshon Moreno out for the year, Brandon Lloyd traded and Kyle Orton released. It's an entirely new team, with an atrocious statistical quarterback, and they can't stop winning. There's why no to explain it, so all we can do is love it. What we're witnessing is better than any schmaltzy Hollywood sports movie, better than Rocky, better than Hoosiers, better than Remember the Titans. It's better because it's real.
• Poor Jim Caldwell. Is there any move he can make that won't look like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? He subbed out Curtis Painter and his 0-8 record for Dan Orlovsky, who is also 0-8 in his career after losing on Sunday. The Colts are 0-13 and their next two match-ups are against the Titans and Texans (loss, loss), however, they finish the season on the road against the pitiful Jacksonville Jaguars, and if there's any quarterback who Dan Orlovosky might have an edge over, it's Blaine Gabbert.
• Prior to the season, I read an article in the Boston Globe professing that Aaron Hernandez was going to have a breakout year for the Patriots. The odds that Hernandez would indeed have an excellent season, which he's having, and that the other tight end on the roster would set the single-season touchdown record for a tight end 14 games into the year is pretty remarkable. Hernandez is good, but he isn't Rob Gronkowski good. Meanwhile, the other record-seeking Patriots receiver, Wes Welker, is going to have a hard time cracking either the single-season receptions record or the single-season receiving yards record. With 100 catches, Welker would need another 44 in the next three weeks to break Marvin Harrison's catch record (so that ain't happening), and he needs 510 yards during that time to break Jerry Rice's yardage record. Welker has slightly more yards through 13 games than Rice did when he set the record in 1995; the problem is that Rice finished that year on a ridiculous run, posting outputs of 121, 289 and 153 yards in the last three games. Even with a minor head start, it's going to be difficult for Welker to best a performance that incredible over a three-game period, particularly if Brady gets rested in the final weeks. Regardless of what Welker's final numbers are, he will easily finish with one of the greatest seasons of all time by a wide receiver.

What happened on Thursday night was nothing short of astounding. It was honestly the most unprecedented thing David Stern had ever done, not to mention the most ill-timed, not to mention the most egregious. Not even 24 hours after a new CBA between the players and the owners had been ratified, Stern obliterated even the faintest chance that the two sides had really found common ground, vetoing a perfectly reasonable trade that would've sent Chris Paul to the Lakers, Pau Gasol to the Rockets, and Kevin Martin, Luis Scola and Lamar Odom to New Orleans on the grounds of "basketball reasons."

Was it a criminal action? No, not really. A similar situation occurred in the 70's, when MLB commissioner Bowie Kuhn vetoed a move made by A's owner Charlie O. Finley on the equally murky claim that it was in "the best interests of baseball." A lawsuit occurred, and the court sided with the defendant, claiming that the commissioner had the right to exercise what he thought was rightful action. Stern has had autonomy over the NBA for years, far more than any baseball commissioner has had, and it's hard to think his annexing of the trade was in any way inconsistent with the powers he has been vested with.

The circumstances of Kuhn's veto mirror Stern's closely. Finley was trying to trade away players he no longer valued for a profit, essentially selling them straight-up for cash. Dell Demps, the Hornets GM, was also trying to get something in return for his team's prized commodity, knowing that soon Chris Paul was going to leave for somewhere else, and they'd be left with nothing to show for him.

In both instances, the commissioners grossly overstepped their boundaries. However unseemly selling his players may have seemed, Finley had every right to do it, the same way it would've been completely acceptable to trade one of his stars for a player worth exactly as much as he would've gotten by selling him; all he did was cut out the middle man. But at least Kuhn had a semi-feasible argument that what Finley was doing wasn't in good faith. What Stern did was utterly indefensible. Demps was doing what he had to do -- giving the franchise a few spare parts so they don't begin the post-Paul era without anything to build on.

But the league stepped in and voided the deal, and now we have to ask ourselves what sort of decision-making led such a preposterous thing to happen, and what it will do the image of the NBA. As baffling as it was that the league intervened, it's that they did it with the intention of helping the Hornets that's truly astounding. They denied the Hornets three starters and a draft pick and forced them to keep Paul, who's just going to flee the city the first chance he gets. That's supposedly helping. Of course, the real reason Stern blocked the trade was to show the small-town owners that the players weren't going to walk all over them. It's impossible to think he canceled that deal believing the Hornets would be better off from it a year from now.

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The quarterback position is being played as well as it ever has before, but that doesn't mean there aren't still some awful QB's bringing the league's stats down. The Colts, amazingly, have two of them. If John Beck's 0-7 lifetime record looks bad, consider this: Curtis Painter has lost all eight of his NFL starts, putting him only two losses away from Brodie Croyle, whose 0-10 record is the worst of any quarterback without a win. And Painter has just been benched in favor of Dan Orlovsky, who has an 0-7 lifetime record. No matter who starts the final five games for the Colts, either Painter or Orlovsky has a chance to finish the year with the worst winless record in NFL history. In Orlovsky's case, he truly would become the most ignominious quarterback ever, since it was he who finished the season as the starting quarterback on the 0-16 Detroit Lions. If the Colts go 0-16, becoming only the second team to do so, and Orlovsky winds up being the final starter on both teams, with the worst lifetime record ever at 0-12, he'll have to go down as the least successful quarterback of all time, if not outright worse than Ryan Leaf and JaMarcus Russell.

Still, let's go back and consider for a second that through 11 games, Peyton Manning's backup quarterbacks have a combined lifetime record of 0-15. Is that a coincidence? Perhaps, but perhaps not. In the spirit of the Kennedy assassination, which had its 48th anniversary last week, what are the odds that Colts Vice Chairman Bill Polian picked Painter and Orlovsky to be Manning's backups specifically so the Colts could wind up with a high draft pick? It sounds crazy, but at the same time, the Colts seemed woefully unprepared to handle Manning's absence, almost too much so. The Patriots at least had a competent backup in Matt Cassel waiting in the wings when Tom Brady was lost for the season, but the Colts had to go out and get Kerry Collins before they turned to Painter. Bringing Collins out of retirement was curious -- why even have Painter on the roster if they didn't intend to actually use him as Manning's replacement?

Maybe the answer was that Painter was a contingency plan all along, a last case scenario to be used only when the season was truly out of reach, and sure enough, he was subbed in for Collins the moment people realized this team was going nowhere. I might just be inventing this (okay, I am), but if Bill Polian truly wanted to wreck the season and wind up with Andrew Luck's draft rights, would he have done anything different than he has so far? It does seem pretty odd that a franchise as consistently spot on as the Colts, with nine consecutive 10-win seasons, would really put their hands in the fate of Curtis Painter and Dan Orlovsky as Plan B. Painter just went almost five full games without a touchdown pass -- surely, this same player didn't fool anyone coming into the season, when they immediately signed Kerry Collins. And surely they could have come up with a better backup-backup than the 0-7 Orlovsky.

This is all complete speculation on my part, but if it's true, Bill Polian is nothing short of a genius. He realized that if the Colts are going to lose this year, they might as well lose as epically as possible, allowing them to wind up with the most coveted rookie quarterback in several decades. But again, that's only an if.

via a.espncdn.com

Brett Favre has become the boogeyman. He's resurfaced so many times, like a monster out of a horror film, that no one really believes he's gone even when he says he is. He'll have to be pushing 50 or in the grave before people at last accept it, but so long as he's a year two from activity, his name will always come up whenever a team of prominence loses its quarterback.

Teams like the Houston Texans. If ever a team needed a savior to come out of retirement and bail them out, it's Houston, who has the No. 1 defense in the NFL, the best running back in the NFL (Arian Foster), maybe the best receiver in the NFL (Andre Johnson), and another great running back in Ben Tate. Their only problem is that with both Matt Schaub and now Matt Leinart out for the year, fifth round draft pick T.J. Yates is suddenly the team's starting quarterback. If they could solidify the QB position, they'd be a juggernaut, but for all we know, Yates could be as bad as Tim Tebow, only without the innate ability to win.

It was only natural that Favre's name would be propelled as a possible replacement, even though Favre hasn't picked up a football in forever, even though the Houston GM is on the record saying he doesn't "want to bring the circus to town," even though Favre looked as old and fragile last year as any athlete in recent history. Favre's image transcends reality. On a pure football basis, there's no reason to think there aren't a hundred better options for the Texans to pursue. But Favre's name value is so strong, and he's done this so many times, that even though there isn't any reason to think the Texans are even remotely interested in him, it's something sports fans are discussing today. Brett Favre is in the news today simply from people's imaginations.

But as much of an enigma as Favre is, he pales in comparison to Wilt Chamberlain, who stretched comeback rumors longer than Favre could ever dream. It was impressive that anyone wanted Favre at all at age 41 last year, but in 1978, a 42-year-old Chamberlain found his services requested by a number of teams, five years after he had last played in the league. The Warriors and Bulls both made overtures of bringing him off the bench as a backup, and the Lakers even got in on the act, claiming that they were the only team Wilt could play for because he had previously retired there with a year left on his contract.

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Let's say you work at a programming company. You work hard, everyday, seven days a week. You do coding, and you do it as good as any regular programmer out there. But then there's this other guy -- he does his work better than anyone does there's, but he only works one day a week. He's obviously important, and he excels at what he does. But if it came time to announce the Employee of the Year, would it really be fair for the guy who only works 35 times a year to win it over the best of the regular workers, who work 162 times a year?

Apparently so, if you're the BBWAA, who announced a few days ago that Justin Verlander had won the American League MVP. Verlander becomes the tenth pitcher to win an MVP and a Cy Young in the same season, and the first since Dennis Eckersley in 1992. He had an outstanding season and was easily the best pitcher in baseball. He was better at what he did than any player in the American League. But does that make him the MVP?

It all depends on what your definition of "valuable" is. If you believe that the MVP should go to the player who has the best season, it's feasible that Verlander should have won it. He did have the best season, and if Alex Rodriguez deserved to win it on a last-place Texas Rangers team, perhaps Verlander was rightfully awarded it, since the Tigers were a .500 team in games he didn't start. It's reasonable to say that they might not have been a playoff team without him.

At the same time, that same argument can be made ten-fold for the MVP candidates who were position players. No matter how good Verlander was in getting his team 24 wins, he helped them in only one out of every five games. It's hard to accept that a pitcher who contributes 20% of the time is worth more than the upper echelon of the position players, who play 100% of time, that Jacoby Ellsbury and Jose Bautista didn't do more for their teams in five games than what Verlander did in one. To his credit, Verlander may have picked the perfect circumstance to have the season he did. Ellsbury's team blew the largest September lead in baseball history, and Bautista's numbers come with a certain amount of skepticism because of how historically inexplicable they are, as well as the fact that he plays in Canada. Verlander lacked an MVP challenger who voters wouldn't have had reservations supporting.

And then there's the question of whether a pitcher should ever win the MVP, simply because the Cy Young has been designated as the pitcher's MVP, and giving someone the MVP and the Cy Young is somewhat redundant. Rather than rewarding the best pitcher and the best batter, giving both awards to the same guy sort of defeats the purpose of even having the Cy Young. After all, there isn't a Cy Young for batters. They can only win one award.

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