There are six teams with at least eight wins, but it’s still hard to tell which teams are good, let alone which team is best.
The Jacksonville Jaguars have the league’s best record at 9-1. But they have played only one team that currently has a winning record, the Tennessee Titans, and they lost that game. All nine of the Jaguars’ victims have losing records. None is even .500.
The Jaguars have won seven consecutive games, the longest streak in the league. Since November 1996, they boast the NFL’s best record, 36-11, two games better than the Green Bay Packers. But when they face the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday, they will be trying to score more points than they managed two weeks ago when they squeaked past the Ravens 6-3.
The Jaguars and St. Louis Rams would get home-field advantage in their respective conferences if the season ended today, but like the Jaguars, the 8-2 Rams have defeated no teams with winning records. Their only two losses–against Tennessee and Detroit–came against the only two teams they have played with winning records.
Among the six top teams, only the Miami Dolphins have defeated more than two opponents with winning records. They have beaten four. The Titans have defeated two winners. Seattle and Indianapolis have beaten just one winning team each.
Not all the top teams were playing against non-winning opponents at the time they played, however. The Colts, for example, have faced seven opponents who were at least tied for first place in their divisions at the time they met.
But no team has yet established itself as the odds-on team to beat. The Dolphins, whose record is least suspect, revealed serious offensive flaws against Dallas on Thanksgiving.
Why wait? The Colts, currently a half-game up in the AFC East, have decided they are no longer a team of the future. They are a team of the present.
“When you put yourself in a position like we are in now, why think about next year?” coach Jim Mora said. “We have an opportunity to have some good things happen to us this season, so let’s do it. We can’t worry about down the road because we can’t control what’s going to happen next year. A lot of things can happen, good and bad. So let’s make the most of the moment.”
In today’s NFL, there is no such thing anymore as a predictable pattern of progression.
– The Carolina Panthers were in the NFC title game in 1996, and haven’t won much since.
– The Atlanta Falcons rose from 7-9 to 14-2 and fell back to 2-8.
– The Arizona Cardinals went from 4-12 to the playoffs at 9-7 and are now back at 4-6.
– The New York Giants and Tampa Bay Buccaneers thought they experienced playoff breakthroughs in 1997, only to slip out of the running in 1998.
“Every year is a new year now in this system,” Colts President Bill Polian said. “From a football standpoint, 2000 is light-years away. Every other team in the league will be different, and we’ll be different too.”
Still on pace: The Jaguars, despite allowing 23 points to the Saints last week, are still on pace to set the NFL record for fewest points allowed in a season. They have allowed 10.2 points a game. The 1986 Bears allowed 11.7 a game.
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Landry home: Former Dallas coach Tom Landry was released from Baylor University Medical Center and returned home for Thanksgiving to continue convalescing from leukemia. Landry was diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia last spring. He has undergone chemotherapy treatment.
Holiday Lions: The Detroit Lions played the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Halloween night, faced the Bears on Thanksgiving and will play the Denver Broncos on Christmas afternoon–all inside the Pontiac Silverdome.
The Christmas game may be asking fans to give too much. It seemed like a good idea at the time it was scheduled by the NFL. But now there is no Barry Sanders, no John Elway, no Terrell Davis, no Shannon Sharpe, and maybe no playoff implications.
The league thought Sanders would have a chance to break Walter Payton’s rushing record that day, figuring he might be about 1,457 yards into his season.
Now the game is far from a sellout.
“If we stay in the hunt, we have a shot at a sellout,” said Chuck Schmidt, the Lions’ chief operating officer.
At least the players are home for the holidays.
Plank theory: Mark Carrier can’t help it if he interprets the rules a bit unconventionally. He once played free safety for the Bears, where the position is understood differently.
In Minnesota, Paul Krause used to play free safety so deep that opposing coaches couldn’t find him in the film frames and opposing players swore he was turning down contact. He set the all-time record for interceptions and made the Hall of Fame.
In Chicago, the idea always has been to play the man rather than the ball. Carrier was suspended for Thursday’s game against the Bears because he carried the tradition too literally to Detroit. Last Sunday, he hit Green Bay receiver Antonio Freeman helmet-to-helmet, on which the league frowns, especially if the hittee is in a defenseless position.
“Every play is helmet-to-helmet,” reasoned Carrier.
Doug Plank understands. As the Bears’ free safety from 1975-82, he used to get in similar trouble by routinely drilling everything that moved. Now a hamburger king in Arizona, Plank said he attended a silent auction recently and picked up a Green Bay Packers helmet.
“Much to my surprise, I saw a warning label on the helmet: `This helmet is not to be used for spearing, head-butting or ramming an opponent,’ ” Plank said. “I thought that was the only thing it was used for. What else is a helmet for but to drive it into your opposition?”
Behind the curve: Ricky Williams scored 28 touchdowns in one Heisman Trophy-winning season and 75 in his career at the University of Texas. He scored once every 14.6 times he touched the ball in college. But Saints running back Williams touched the ball 221 times in the NFL before finally scoring his first pro touchdown last weekend against Jacksonville on a 19-yard run. He scored his second NFL touchdown later in the game on a 1-yard run. He’s now averaging a touchdown every 118 touches (runs and receptions) in the NFL.
It’s about time: One of the all-time great players of the Minnesota Vikings, Jim Marshall, who holds the league record for consecutive games played at 282, will have his No. 70 jersey retired in a pregame ceremony Sunday. Marshall played in Cleveland in 1960 before coming to the Vikings for their inagural year in 1961. He played in every Vikings game from that point until his retirement after the 1979 season. He also holds the NFL record with 29 fumble recoveries, one of which he returned the wrong way.
Former Vikings coach Bud Grant prefers to recall an interception Marshall made against Detroit on Thanksgiving in 1969 on a pass deflected by Alan Page.
“He must have gone 40 yards, and they’re chasing him,” Grant said. “And just as he’s about to get hit, he throws the ball behind him, to Page (who scored). I’ve looked at that film over and over. And I don’t know how Jim knew Page was there. An option quarterback couldn’t have done any better. It was the greatest athletic feat I’ve ever seen on a football field.”