Through Week 8
2007 WORST PERSON IN FANTASY FOOTBALL AWARD 
Pre-Season: Jack Del Rio
Week 1: Cam Cameron
Week 2: Cam Cameron / Norv Turner
Week 3: Rex Grossman / Lovie Smith
Week 4: Brad Childress
Week 5: Travis Henry
Week 6: Shaun Alexander / Adrian Peterson doubters
Week 7: Cleo Lemon + Randall Gay = Ronnie Brown
Week 8: Anyone associated with the slopfest in Wembley Stadium / Out-of-their-minds Patriots bashers
THRU WEEK 8 POWER RANKINGS 
AFC
1. New England Patriots, 8-0 / +204
2. Indianapolis Colts, 7-0 / +122
3. Pittsburgh Steelers, 5-2 / +93
4. San Diego Chargers, 4-3 / +43
5. Tennessee Titans, 5-2 / +28
6. Jacksonville Jaguars, 5-2 / +21
7. Baltimore Ravens, 4-3 / +5
8. Cleveland Browns, 4-3 / -9
NFC
1. Dallas Cowboys, 6-1 / +69
2. Green Bay Packers, 5-1 / +35
3. New York Giants 6-2 / +41
4. Seattle Seahawks, 4-3 / +29 / 81.8%
5. Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 4-4 / +13
6. New Orleans Saints, 3-4 / -30
7. Detroit Lions, 5-2 / -22
8. Washington Redskins, 4-3 / -11
Tie: Carolina Panthers 4-3 / -11
Couple of notes from the weekend:
In my long-time dynasty league, the same owner who got stuck on the shipping sink known as the end of Marshall Faulk's career has also been stuck on the sinking ship known as Shaun Alexander Post-2005. Another owner, fighting desperately for a chance at the last playoff spot at 4-3, threw him a life raft yesterday morning, sending LaMont Jordan and a 1st round pick his way for Alexander. I'm not high at all on Jordan's value either, but I thought he did very well to get a 1st round pick out of Alexander....especially when you could flip a coin to figure out who will be more productive the rest of '07 between Alexander and Jordan. Even better when you consider that the guy trading
for Alexander lost again yesterday and is now outside looking in at the playoff picture. That pick could end up as the #4 or #5 overall. It always chaps my ace a little bit when a lesser owner bails out a good owner who knows how to exploit an opening...
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I'm not a Patriots fan, though I am an admitted fan of watching good football as opposed to bad football. I read through all of the Belichick-Patriots-Running Up the Score threads on here last night. The blind hatred, jealousy, wishing -- nay demanding -- serious injury on Patriots players....congratulations, you're either a witless Jerry Springer Show reject or a future Darwin Award winner. Your utter incapacity to understand hypocrisy would be sublimely ironic if it wasn't so disheartening.
So the Patriots make the Hell's Angels look like manacled pansies? Big forking deal. It's professional football! I'm not going to get into the "play better defense if you don't want to get embarrassed" or "take out your starters if you want me to take out mine" arguments. Those points have been made....and have largely fallen on deaf ears. What hasn't been mentioned is that Bill Belichick is a iconoclastic football visionary. He thinks outside the box. I don't mean that in a kiss the ###hole's ### kind of way. I mean he's been iconoclastic his whole tenure in New England, and he truly is a football visionary in the strict sense of the description. To wit:
For decades upon decades hidebound conservative football coaches from high school to the pros have embraced the concept of running out the clock to preserve a win. You could argue that sportsmanship was at work here, but it's always been more about lessening risk and believing that it gave your team the best chance to come away with victory. It's the same idea that breeds calling for your RB to tip-toe into the pile for 2 or 3 plays before a game-winning successful field goal or a game-losing missed field goal. What if we fumble?! The goal isn't to successfully gain yardage. In fact, there is no goal to having your back tip-toe into a pile. That's the problem. It's an aimless philosphy. To quote Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe respectively: it's an "atavistic endeavor" or a "behavioral sink." It's also been called the "playing not to lose rather than playing to win" strategy.
The problem with this strategy is that it artificially extracts the aggressiveness inherent in the game of football and replaces it with passiveness and uncertainty. Don't get me wrong, some teams do it well and maintain their aggressiveness. I grew up watching the Bengals every week and saw Jerome Bettis and the Steelers time and again impose their will on the Bengals by running the ball down their throats for a full 2nd half. Nobody accused them of running up the score because it takes longer to run the ball all the way down the field than it does to pass the ball....and it's the accepted form of physical and mental domination handed down from generation to generation in football.
So where does that leave a team whose offense is truly dominant only when the threat of the pass exists and may struggle to impose their will on the defense solely via the rushing attack? I saw the Packers completely dominate the Bears in the 1st half a few Sunday nights ago only to run the ball into the line of scrimmage every time they got the ball in the 3rd quarter. And what came next? Once they stopped playing to win the game, once they lost their aggressiveness, the Bears found their own aggressiveness. The Packers lost the game because they were more concerned with running out the clock in the 3rd quarter than they were with actually running successful football plays.
What Bill Belichick has done is to push-button reject this traditional way of coaching football with a lead. You can call it running up the score. He's going to call it playing football the way it should be played. And you see it in the way his players continue to compete that they haven't mentally checked out of the game simply due to playing with a lead. Tom Brady was just as intense up 38 points as he was when the game started. Coaches have been preaching this to their players for decades, but you don't often see it. Most teams check out mentally once they get a big lead....to some extent it's only natural. Up by 30+ points, Tom Brady spikes the ball in the endzone like he just dove in for the winning TD. He chews out his O-lineman for a stupid penalty. This is what coaches of basketball, baseball, and every other team sport have been always been striving for: a team that doesn't let up just because they have a big lead.
Bob Knight used to say you don't compete against the other team. You compete against the game of basketball. Similarly for Belichick in football. You compete to play perfect football. You never lose your aggressiveness on the field simply because conventional wisdom warrants it. When you get a big lead, you don't run the ball into the pile and stop trying to be successful on offense. You continue to impose your will on the other team by doing what your offense does best. For the Pittsburgh Steelers, that was traditionally slamming Jerome Bettis down their opponents throats throughout the 2nd half. For this year's Patriots, that means Tom Brady picking apart your defense like a scorched earth policy. Bill Belichick is ensuring victory by allowing his team to maintain aggressive football. He is playing to win. He's just doing it a new fashion. Let other coaches play not to lose.
As a football fan, what would you rather watch? An offense running their 4th string RB into the pile for the last 25 minutes of the game or an offense continuing to play football until the other team's will is broken? I'll take the offense that keeps playing. Passive and aimless football is a flat-out unwatchable abomination. Either way, Belichick's new philosophy is here to stay. And it will be copied down the road if another coach has the same opportunity. It's a successful strategy for winning games, and this is a copycat league.
Almost exactly what I was going to say. He has never had a chance to show off his talents because the same coaching staff that's there now didn't believe he was an upgrade over a washed-up Eric Moulds last year or a raw 3rd round rookie in Jacoby Jones this year.
Alex Smith: from franchise to less appetizing than Boller in a month.
If so, it wasn't recently. I've had him in roughly the same spot for awhile now. I agree that we haven't heard much out of Oakland about him and maybe he'd move up once we get some solid info on his progress.
