MMQB Review: It Turns Out All the Teams Peter King Had in the NFL Playoffs After Week 3 May Not Make the Playoffs After All Edition

Peter King was surprised last week that Ruby Tuesday's did not have a great local beer selection, discussed the JFK assassination (because this is a football column and all), as well as decided that the Chiefs have a bunch of flaws that no one noticed prior to them losing to the Broncos. Losing a game does that I guess. Everything that was right about the team is suddenly wrong. Peter focused on the Chiefs lack of pass rush against the Broncos, even though the Chiefs had struggled to rush the passer the previous two games and Peter wasn't concerned about this at the time. Mostly, last week's MMQB was about Ruby Tuesday's lack of beer selection though. This week it may shock you to learn that Peter talks about the Patriots-Broncos game (Manning v. Brady! Fumbles v. less than 100 passing yards passing by the fourth quarter! Only on NBC!), decides the Colts are in free-fall (as always, a loss completely changes Peter's perspective on a team...just like last week with the Chiefs), and even though there is no travel note, he uses the word "precocious" yet again when talking about an adult male. I think it's weird.

Well, if you went to bed at halftime, when Denver led New England 24-0, you missed:

New England stop fumbling the ball and Peyton Manning struggling to throw the football into the wind until he absolutely had to throw the football into the wind to tie the game?

On the 11-year anniversary of the ill-fated Marty Mornhinweg deferral to start overtime (Lions-Bears, Champaign, Ill.; for more details, that is why Google and Bing were invented,

I greatly dislike it when Peter King references an event and then tells his readers to Google or Bing it. He's an asshat. For more details on what that is, Peter should Google it.

but suffice to say it did not end well for coach Mornhinweg),

WELL NOW I AM COMPLETELY IN THE DARK ON WHAT HAPPENED IN THAT GAME. DID MORNHINWEG'S TEAM WIN THE GAME? I CAN'T TELL FROM THE HINT YOU JUST DROPPED!

Bill Belichick chose to give Manning the ball to start overtime. “We were like, ‘Defer? Take the wind?’ Even the captains didn’t know,” said Patriots defensive captain Devin McCourty.

Next time the captains may want to ask this question prior to walking out to midfield for the overtime coin toss. I wonder what would happen if the Patriots took 20 minutes to decide if they took the wind or deferred? Could the officials force the Patriots to make a decision? Peter King should Bing the answer to this and get back to me.

The name “Peter” (no relation) playing a huge role in the outcome.

Cutesy of you to say "no relation," Peter. Very precocious of you.

Let’s talk about that muff.

Sounds like Peter's being using the Google machine to look up more than the answer to football-related questions and he is leaning towards Googling more NSFW content now that he has artistic freedom at THE MMQB.

It says so much about the game, and about why it turned the way it did 

Yes, the turnover in overtime that put the Patriots in immediate field goal range to win the game did have a lot to do with the game turning out like it did. This is analysis, people. Step back and let Peter do his work.

One bit of weirdness after another. “It was a significant wind,” said Belichick in explaining his call. Okay, but handing the ball to Manning? No way Belichick would have done this under the old overtime rules. Before 2012, any score in overtime would end the game. Starting last year, each team would possess the ball at least once in overtime, unless there was a touchdown or safety on the first possession. Upon the second possession, the game would be in sudden death. The specter of Manning driving, say, 40 yards to the winning field goal was far, far different than the specter of Manning driving 75 yards to the winning touchdown.

I just want to throw it out there that "Specter of Manning" would be a good name for a band and "It was a Significant Wind" would be a great name for this band's first power ballad...because of course Specter of Manning would be an 80's band that rocked hard but also weren't afraid to show their gentle side.

“Just a normal punt play,” Ebner said.

But not so normal.

The drama builds...

Back for Denver was Wes Welker, a sure-handed returner. Sure-handed, yes. But not the normal guy back there. The Broncos yanked Trindon Holliday, the normal (and dangerous) return man, because he’d fumbled earlier, and Welker, who’d returned but four punts all season, awaited.

You like how Peter is providing built-in excuses for Welker not handling this punt return well and telling his teammates to get out of the way early enough? Peter is all like, "Well yeah, but Welker doesn't normally handle punts and he hasn't handled but four punts all season, so there's no reason to expect him to be competent enough to handle a punt return for the Broncos."

It's not like Welker hasn't practiced returning punts or hasn't returned 245 punts in his NFL career. Yeah, there's no reason to expect him to not screw up. I guess Welker needed 300 punt returns in his career for Peter to feel good about him returning a punt in this situation.

“I’ve got to get to him earlier, and get those guys out of the way if I’m not going to make the catch,” said Welker.

Yes, you do.

Carter said, “I was hoping it was something else, not the ball.”

Maybe it was something else falling from the sky hitting Tony Carter in the leg. That would be much better and safer if it was space debris or just something else falling out of the sky and not a football. Realistically, what else was Tony Carter hoping had hit his leg? I really need to know the answer.

“At halftime,” said Ebner, “we knew it was a 60-minute game.

Actually, at halftime it was a 30 minute game at that point. Well, it was really a 42 minute game, but that's beside the point since no one had an idea at halftime overtime would occur.

My two takeaways from this game:
 
1. I will take Tom Brady in a weather game over Peyton Manning. Without question. Brady’s arm is better.

Does Peter mean a "bad" weather game? Because every game has weather.

2. We’ve spent a lot of time ripping New England’s player-acquisition process in the last few years.

(Bengoodfella looks around him confused) What's this "we" shit? I haven't ripped the player-acquisition process of the Patriots. Don't "we" your audience when it turns out you personally were wrong about something.

New England beat a very good team Sunday night, and it wasn’t just Brady that did it. It took a village.

Just like every Patriots win over another NFL team. It takes more than one player to win the game.

Of course the 2014 Denver-New England game, it happens, would be in Foxboro.
If he’s still around next season at 38, Manning would be playing his 13th career game in Foxboro, and it would be the 10th time in 12 seasons he has competed against Brady in the town halfway between Boston and Providence (not including 2008, when Brady was hurt, and 2011, when Manning was out).

I can't get enough of this quarterback matchup that isn't really a matchup between two quarterbacks but is really a matchup between two NFL teams. I hope the 2014 version of the Broncos-Patriots game gets hyped up even more. I feel like there wasn't quite enough hype around this year's game.

I'm sure Gregg Easterbrook thinks the "Peyton Paradox" is back now that the Broncos have lost a big game.

Indianapolis is a shell of the team it was in September.

The Colts have had to continuously come back in the second half over the past couple of weeks to win games. It simply wasn't sustainable.

I didn’t watch much of their game (my NBC duties precluded it), but I keep seeing Andrew Luck trying to force things.

"I know nothing about what really happened in this game, but let me guess as to what happened based on reading the statistics for the game and watching some highlights."

He’s doing so with so many of his important players gone for the season—guard Donald Thomas (the best offensive lineman on the team), wideout Reggie Wayne, tight end Dwayne Allen—that you wonder if Indianapolis will be able to hold off the flawed Titans and rebound for the playoffs.

Other young quarterbacks struggle to win games without his best players around him and that quarterback just isn't a winner and has been exposed by the NFL (umm...Colin Kaepernick), but when Andrew Luck starts to struggle it's because he just doesn't have enough healthy weapons around him to be a winner. I think I got it. The narrative changes depending on the quarterback.

Then, on Sunday, Indy’s best cornerback, Vontae Davis, went down with a groin injury, and he may miss some time. We gotta figure a way to get off the field. Well, that’s pretty tough to do when your best secondary player, the man whose job it is to get you off the field, is standing on the sidelines.

It's sad to hear the Colts are the only team in the NFL to have lost one of their best defensive players. It would be nice if Peter would make excuses for other NFL teams who suffer injuries to key players. Since Ryan Grigson is such a genius GM I'm surprised he doesn't have depth at the cornerback position to withstand an injury. Maybe he could trade this year's first round pic---well, nevermind, that pick has already been spent.

I'm not trying to be snide or critical of the Colts, but Peter hasn't ever mentioned how the Colts are a shell of a team at all this year prior to this MMQB. He's talked about how the Colts keep coming back and how Andrew Luck plays well in the second half of games, but then the Colts lose a game, and all of a sudden they are a shell of the team they were and may not hold off the flawed Titans (if the Colts do lose a playoff spot to the Titans, wouldn't this mean the Colts were flawed too?) for a playoff spot. He bases everything he says about the Colts on the fact they lost this week. When the Colts are winning, they aren't a bad team, but now they lose a game and all of a sudden this is a team who is a shell of the team they were in September. Peter did this last week with the Chiefs. It's fine to believe the Chiefs and Colts are flawed, but don't base this opinion solely on the fact they just lost football games. Try to have some foresight. The fact the Colts kept having to come back in games is a sign their success may not have been sustainable. I'm sure if the Colts win this upcoming weekend then Peter will jump right back on the bandwagon.

Sunday was the seventh straight game the Colts have trailed in the first half. Two of the last three have been downright embarrassing.

Six straight games the Colts have trailed in the first half, but because the Colts were able to come back in a few of these games Peter only noted how the Colts were down early as evidence of how clutch Andrew Luck and the Colts are when coming from behind.

With road games at Cincinnati and Kansas City remaining in the last five weeks, it’s fair to say if they can’t beat the Titans at home, their once rock-solid playoff hopes are in jeopardy.

These "rock-solid" playoff hopes were probably rock-solid back in Week 3 of this season when Peter was deciding which teams were and were not going to make the playoffs. Not that Week 3 is too early to make any postseason pronouncements of course.

My quick hit on a fun weekend of football: There’s no unbeatable team.

Every NFL team can be beaten. These are the types of insights a person reads MMQB for.

Now that Seattle has lost two of its top three corners for the next month—Brandon Browner to injury, Walter Thurmond (according to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network) to a four-game substance-abuse suspension—even the 10-1 Seahawks might be vulnerable to a productive passing team.

They should have lost to Tampa Bay and Carolina already, so it's obvious that Seattle isn't unbeatable. Plus, Peter King noted last week the Seahawks aren't the same team when playing on the road.

“The parity is unbelievable,” San Diego quarterback Philip Rivers told me after the Chargers—who’d lost three in a row before Sunday—put up 41 on the formerly impenetrable Chiefs. At Arrowhead.

This is the same Chiefs team that had a great pass rush until they lost a game, at which point Peter King noticed the Chiefs didn't really have a great pass rush over their last three games.

The Chargers are 5-6. There are six of those 5-6 teams in the AFC, and the one that wins the tiebreaker currently, Tennessee, is the sixth playoff seed at the moment. Tennessee, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, San Diego, the Jets, Miami … With the exception of the Jets, who are playing poorly, you can’t count one of those teams out.

It's probably stupid to count the Jets out too. You never know.

That’s this year’s NFL. I ask again: Can you tell me with conviction right now that San Francisco is better than Arizona? That’s an unthinkable question a month ago. It’s a legitimate one today.

Well, it wasn't unthinkable. I'm not expert and I predicted the Cardinals would be 8-8 this year and the 49ers would be 11-5, while also stating that probably under-predicts (I just made that word up) the Cardinals season record. The 49ers started a quarterback who had limited experience starting in the NFL and teams would have all offseason to scout him, while the Cardinals had no quarterback last year and were bound to improve with a somewhat competent quarterback slinging the ball around for them.

Fine Fifteen

1. Seattle (10-1). Tough call for No. 1. Seattle, New England, Carolina, Denver and New Orleans in contention.

In theory, every NFL team is in contention for the #1 spot since they are all eligible to be placed in this spot.

Seattle will need Byron Maxwell, a third-year dime back from Clemson, to step up in the next four weeks. No problem! ’Hawks just have Drew Brees, Colin Kaepernick, Eli Manning and Carson Palmer on the horizon.

Well, two of those quarterbacks haven't struck a lot of fear in defenses this year. 

4. New Orleans (9-2). No team has it tougher over 21 December days starting next Monday: at 10-1 Seattle, 7-3 Carolina at home, at 5-6 St. Louis, at 7-3 Carolina.

The Saints only have it tough because the NFL has it out for them. I'm sure the Saints can work up a complex over the next four weeks where no one likes them and is treating them unfairly, which is why they play teams over the next four weeks who are 29-13. No one believes in the Saints and they are being unfairly persecuted!

6. San Francisco (6-4). Talk about a lucky break. When Seattle travels to Candlestick for a game the Niners have to have in two weeks, the Seahawks will be without their second and third corners, and, presumably, San Francisco will have Michael Crabtree back.

Yes, it is very fortunate that the 49ers are getting their best receiver who has missed the entirety of this season back at some point during the season. Those lucky 49ers. How fortunate are they that they didn't have their best receiver all season?

9. Indianapolis (7-4). Talked to an influential Colts guy a few days ago.

He talked to Andrew Luck or Chuck Pagano. I feel like this is obvious. 

That’s the tight end who was one of the best rookies in football last year, drafted to pair with Coby Fleener in two-tight-end sets and star individually. Bruising blocker and sure-handed receiver. That, plus the loss of Reggie Wayne, is killing this offense.

Very likely, and yet I feel like these same excuses aren't being used to explain Colin Kaepernick's struggles. Not that Andrew Luck is really struggling all that much right now.

Offensive Players of the Week
 
Tom Brady, quarterback, New England. The wind became a prominent part of last night’s game when the Patriots chose to defend in overtime, but Brady looked as if he was playing in a light breeze in the Patriots’ incredible second-half and overtime comeback. Brady managed a respectable 6.9 yards per passing attempt despite the elements (4.2 for Manning), and had 274 of his 344 yards after the half.

Not a snarky comment, but Manning's reduced arm strength really showed last night with some of his passes into the wind. A few of his throws weren't accurate up to his standards and seemed to wobble a bit more than usual.

Goat of the Week
 
Matthew Stafford, quarterback, Detroit. Four interceptions against the Bucs, the third with the Lions driving for a potential 11-point lead. Detroit lost to the previously 2-8 Bucs. A bad day for the young gunslinger.

But I thought that comeback against the Cowboys that ended with a fake spike and dive into the end zone led to a whole new Matthew Stafford? I'm shocked Matthew Stafford is still the same old quarterback even after having that career-defining play.

“Do you think I sit around all day looking at magazines, or what? I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I haven’t seen a newspaper today. I don’t know what’s happening in the world.”

—Alabama coach Nick Saban, asked Thursday what he thought of the new Sports Illustrated cover, with his own quarterback, A.J. McCarron, on it.

I'm not sure that's healthy.

“I personally feel like the flag went down for a reason, and it looked like a foul to me.”

—Rams coach Jeff Fisher, with the last word on the ill-fated picked-up flag on the last play of the Panthers-Patriots game last Monday night.

I think it looked like a flag to me too and should not have been picked up. Of course I don't care what Jeff "8-8" Fisher thinks. He's just mad the NFC team won and that means the Rams are that much closer to not making the playoffs where he could better justify the high salary the Rams are paying him. I know Fisher is on the Competition Committee and I also know he's overrated as a coach, but his media cronies like Peter King protect him from any real criticism and won't do any real criticism themselves. That's my basic issue with Jeff Fisher and now I'm way off the topic at hand.

In Kaepernick’s 10 starts last year, Michael Crabtree, Mario Manningham and Randy Moss totaled 94 catches, 1,313 yards and seven touchdowns.
 
In Kaepernick’s 10 starts this year, Crabtree hasn’t played, Manningham has played two games, and Moss is off the team. Their Niner totals this year: four catches, 38 yards.

In other words, it’s Anquan Boldin—new to Kaepernick this year—

Now Peter, let's not make excuses. You told us during 49ers training camp and after Boldin's monster Week 1 performance that he and Kaepernick were quickly on the same page. Don't throw this "new to Kaepernick" excuse out there now. You've already stated that he and Kaepernick got on the same page quickly and it's obvious they did after Boldin's performance in Week 1.

Then Peter talks about JFK's assassination in terms that Hugh Millen was born three hours before JFK was assassinated. The best JFK ever did for his popularity was get killed. He didn't have time to disappoint anyone and he's a legend in the minds of many. It's the principle behind the best thing Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain did was die before the world got enough of them. I can see a bloated Janis Joplin doing an entire album of depressing duets with Stevie Nicks and Hendrix having a comeback album featuring the new hit single sung by Adam Levine.

John F. Kennedy was a huge football fan, and he spent the last Sunday of his life, in part, watching the game of the week in the National Football League: the 8-1 Packers (winners of two straight NFL titles) and the 8-1 Bears, live from Wrigley Field on Nov. 17, 1963.

Make this Kennedy stuff stop. It feels like it is going on two weeks of nothing but a discussion of JFK. He's dead and it is a sad thing. Peter seemingly has a new obsession. I wonder how Brett Favre feels about this.

So now you know the answer to the JFK Trivia Contest: What was the last game this football-mad president ever watched?

(Bangs head on the desk)

“I MUST call Bull—- on da slide! #scaredycat!!’’

—@SamuelLJackson, Falcons fan and movie star, after watching quarterback Matt Ryan slide at the Saints’ 5-yard-line on 3rd-and-goal instead of trying to score a touchdown. Atlanta settled for a field goal. Jackson did not settle for the field goal, however.

Matty Icccccccccccccccccccce doesn't care to get hit hard even when he doesn't have a big contract to play for.

Ten Things I Think I Think

1. I think this is what I liked about Week 12:

b. Kyle Long interrupting his mother, Diane, with a kiss on the cheek while she prepared for a FOX interview before the Rams-Bears game.

How precocious of Kyle Long.

c. Cam Jordan, the precocious Saints defensive end, returning from a mini-slump to sack Matt Ryan twice, share in a third sack and knock him down another time.

Peter loves to use the word "precocious" to describe a grown man. I don't understand why he does this, but he does, and it is never not annoying to me. Precocious means a person exhibits unusually mature qualities at such an early age. Cam Jordan is 24 years old and has 9.5 sacks. He isn't precocious. Peter needs to stop using this word in an effort to project child-like qualities on adults. Peter is obsessed with making grown men seem like they are children.

i. Excuse me for praising Miami GM Jeff Ireland—that is quite out of fashion these days—

Because there are quite a few things that don't deserve praise. Don't act like Ireland is being criticized needlessly.

but the value of getting pass rusher Olivier Vernon with the 72nd pick of the 2012 draft is pretty good. Vernon is a big help to Cameron Wake, giving offensive coordinators another pass-rushing headache when they play Miami.

Great job. Jeff Ireland did his job well and for that he deserves praise. You aren't a rebel for acknowledging Ireland made a draft pick that seems to be playing well.

o. Zac Stacy, proving the Rams were lucky Steven Jackson walked. Hope he’s okay after leaving with a head injury.

Zac Stacy was drafted by the Rams and the Rams are really good at drafting! You should read this article Peter wrote in May about how good the Rams are at drafting. They are on the right track to becoming a really successful team under Jeff Fisher. It's a rebuilding process though, so give Fisher another year or two after this year once he decides Sam Bradford isn't his quarterback of the future, at which point Fisher will be buying himself more time by pointing out Rams fans shouldn't expect immediate success with a new quarterback at the helm.

p. The more I see Mike Glennon, the more I like him.

His precociousness is off the charts.

t. Just as Joe Buck says Tony Romo has to step up in the fourth quarter, less than four minutes left in a 21-all tie at the Meadowlands, Romo lofts a perfect back-shoulder 18-yard third-down conversion on Antrel Rolle to keep the Dallas drive going.

But this ruins the narrative that Tony Romo is a choker when it counts.

2. I think this is what I didn’t like about Week 12:

a. Ref Ron Winter in the Saints-Falcons game missing both a facemask and blow to the head call on Akiem Hicks against Matt Ryan.

(Saints fans everywhere) "See, this is just further proof the NFL is against our team! The officials intentionally miss a call that goes again---oh wait, this call went in favor of the Saints? Well, why does Peter King have to report on things that occur during a football game with such a slant against the Saints? He did this when reporting on the bounty scandal too. He reported facts, rather than just not say anything bad about the Saints. It's us against the world!"

g. You’re not supposed to boot a field goal into the helmet of a lineman on your own team, Graham Gano.

The snap was low and I'm pretty sure he wasn't intentionally trying to hit the helmet of one of his linemen.

k. Luke Kuechly’s a lucky man. Two weeks in a row now.

Kuechly was lucky against the Patriots, but the announcers and Mike Pereira eventually agreed that Kuechly didn't lead with his helmet in the end zone when hitting a Dolphins player. I doubt Peter watched anything but the highlights as he prepared for Brady and Manning to face off once again, so I'm not sure what I should expect from him.

One other comment about defensive players leading with their head...Kuechly went up in the air to hit the Dolphins receiver and force him to drop the ball. I don't think he led with his head nor made contact with the receiver's head, but how is the defensive player expected to adjust in mid-air to a receiver jumping or making a move to catch the football? I get a defensive player isn't expected to launch himself at an offensive player, but there are times a defensive player could be leading with his shoulder and then the offensive player moves to where the defensive player contacts the head. I get the reason for the rule and I support it, but sometimes I think defensive players have a disadvantage because they are expected to adjust mid-air or in a split second to a move of the body the offensive player might make that could be the difference in a clean hit and a penalty.

l. Terrible pick thrown by Alex Smith.

Impossible. He's a winner and the perfect game manager.

6. I think Pete Carroll might need to redouble his efforts to warn players about substances they can’t put in their bodies, with Walter Thurmond blowing the chance of a lifetime by accepting a four-game suspension for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy, according to NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport. He’s the third Seattle defensive back to get similarly whacked in 12 months, and this will put tremendous pressure now on Richard Sherman to be really good over the next four weeks.

I wonder if we will get a repeat of last year's "Boy the Seahawks are really screwed without Sherman and Browner" talk from Peter King. Last year we got this talk from Peter and it turned out the Seahawks weren't screwed at all.

7. I think Darnell Dockett is the winner of the NFL’s Most Underrated Interview award.

I think this isn't a real award and you just made it up as an excuse to mention that Darnell Dockett is a good interview, so you decided to mention this in the most bizarre way possible.

8. I think under the category of “Contracts They’d Love To Have Back,” I give you Cortland Finnegan, the 108th- and lowest-rated cornerback in the NFL after 11 weeks, according to ProFootballFocus.com. The Rams paid him $50 million over five years in 2012, and place him on injured-reserve Saturday … after he’d allowed 76.5 percent of the passes to his men to be complete, and allowed opposing quarterbacks a 136.0 rating on passes thrown in his area.

It's absolutely impossible the Rams would want this contract back because this is assuming the Rams have made a mistake and with the effortlessly reliable leadership of Kevin Demoff and steady hand of Jeff Fisher leading the Rams ship they won't make a mistake. So the Rams wanting a contract back would assume the team has made a mistake and the Rams don't ever make mistakes. Ever.

By the way, where was this excellent Rams rushing attack at when Sam Bradford was the team's quarterback? Poor guy gets hurt and the Rams start running the ball well.

10. I think these are my non-NFL thoughts of the week:

b. I am an incredible know-nothing about the NBA, but there’s a chance I knew what I was talking about when I said the Nets were dumb for thinking you could win an NBA title with an Old Timers team.

I always dislike it when Peter writes that we need to discount his opinion on a topic and then the very next statement consists of Peter wanting us to take his opinion on that very same topic seriously.

d. The Yankees got better by signing Brian McCann. No doubt about it. Great ballpark for him. But …

e.

But this thought should be a continuation of "d" since "e" addresses the same topic discussed in "d" and "e" is in fact just a continuation of the exact same thought began in "d"?

I know we’re not supposed to care about batting average anymore, but he has hit .242 over the past two years. RBI high over the last four years: 77. I would have liked the signing a lot more in 2009 than 2014.

Three things:

1. The signing occurred in 2013.

2. And also, McCann was very, very injured during the 2012 season to the point he couldn't swing a bat and was benched during the idiotic one game Wild Card playoff. McCann missed the first month of the 2013 season due to surgery on this injured shoulder. So that had an effect on his batting average.

3. Any idiot would have liked this signing more four years ago. McCann is a catcher and would have been 25 years old instead of 29 years old in 2009. This is a pretty obvious statement. Though if McCann signed a five year contract in 2009 then his last two seasons that Peter doesn't seem to care for would have come while he was earning $34 million and not $23.5 million for these two years. So I'm not sure Peter would have liked McCann's production at $17 million per year.

j. Coffeenerdness: There is not much better in life early on a Sunday morning than the smell of Italian roast coffee wafting through the home.

I feel like Peter forces his wife to make the coffee before he wakes up. It seems to me like he would berate her if he is out of the shower and there is no fresh coffee available.

"If I wanted to be treated like I lived at a Holiday Inn where they don't make coffee before 6am then I would have stayed at a Holiday Inn last night. Make my coffee and put on a smile about doing it!"

k. Beernerdness: Tried perhaps my last pumpkin brew for the year (they start to disappear in favor of winter ales now), the River Horse Hipp-o-Lantern Pumpkin Ale from Ewing, N.J., the other night. Not enough pumpkin nose or taste for me. A little too alcohol-laden at 8.7 percent.

There's no such thing as an alcoholic drink that is too alcohol-laden. I haven't had the Hipp-o-Lantern Pumpkin Ale in a couple of years, but I will be taking a tour of this brewery in Ewing, N.J. on Saturday, so I will see if Peter is just being a wimp about the alcohol content or just being a beer snob. Nearly every River Horse beer I have ever had has been great, even the milk stout beer wasn't bad, and I tend to stay away from milk stout beer.

l. Best TV show I saw (and I didn’t see many) on the JFK anniversary: Tom Brokaw’s two-hour special Friday night with so many of the vital characters in the story. The shoe-store manager who followed Oswald into the theater where he was captured, one of the two cops who nabbed Oswald, the guy who drove Oswald to work (with his gun disguised as curtain rods) on the fateful day, the doctor who tended to Kennedy when he was wheeled into the operating room at Parkland Hospital. Great work.

What about the guy on the street who saw Oswald at a restaurant the night before? What did he have to say? What about the girl whose mom met JFK 24 hours to the minute he was killed in Dallas? Can we interview her?

San Francisco 23, Washington 20. This will be a better game than people think, and not just because the Niners have to travel. 

It gets very wearisome to have to hear a sportswriter tell me what everyone else is thinking simply so he/she can disprove this imaginary group-thinking as not being true.

The Adieu Haiku
Dan Dierdorf rode his
bike to the Hall as a kid.
Forever Canton.

Very precocious of Dierdorf to ride his bike to the Hall of Fame as a child.