Random Thoughts from Around the NFL

Is there a more bizarre team in the league than the Giants? They’re just 3-4 in the Meadowlands, but an impressive 7-1 on the road. Although four of their seven wins away from home were against cupcake teams.

If someone told you before the season that Tom Brady would throw about 50 touchdown passes, Randy Moss would approach Jerry Rice’s NFL record of 22 receiving touchdowns and the Pats would go 16-0, what would you say?

This just in – The Home Shopping Network, MTV, Oxygen, Bravo and Lifetime for Women will all be broadcasting Saturday’s New England-New York Giants game.

If the Seahawks had home field advantage throughout the playoffs, I have no doubt that they’d win the NFC. They are a completely different team at home, more so than most NFL franchises.

There is a lot of nonsense going around about how Cleveland should bench Derek Anderson in a somewhat meaningless season finale (their playoff fate is solely based on what happens with the Titans) so he does not suffer a potential injury. The theory is that if Anderson got hurt then his trade value would be severely diminished in the off-season. My question is - what makes the Browns think that rookie Brady Quinn is their future? Anderson’s play has not been as good in the second half, but he looks like a potential franchise quarterback and we know very little about Quinn other than he dropped significantly in April’s NFL Draft.

Here is more on Derek Anderson and an interesting stat as well. If Anderson throws at least two touchdowns on Sunday against San Francisco, he’ll become the fifth quarterback this season with 30+ touchdown passes. There have NEVER been five quarterbacks with at least 30 touchdowns in the same season in the rich history of pro football (four quarterbacks with 30+ has only happened twice). Furthermore, in 15 of the last 30 years (since the league went to a 16-game schedule), there has been ZERO or ONE quarterback with 30+ touchdown passes in a particular season. Looks like the NFL is a passing league.

The Chargers are a joke. Anyone that thinks their late-season success will translate into anything is clueless. Philip Rivers is an average quarterback and Norv Turner is overrated as a coach – not a winning formula in the playoffs.

We might not have a 1,500-yard rusher in the league this season and that would be the first time since 1993 when Emmitt Smith led the NFL with 1,486 rushing yards. But can you name the player with the lowest total to win a rushing crown since the NFL moved to a 16-game schedule in 1978 (not including strike seasons)? If you guessed Barry Sanders, you’re a genius. The great Sanders ran for only 1,304 yards in 1990 yet still led the entire league in rushing.

While doing research on great wide receivers of the past I came across a very surprising stat. Buffalo’s Andre Reed, a potential Hall of Famer, had just four 1,000-yard seasons in his 16-year career. With Jim Kelly and all the offense those Bills’ teams produced, I find that to be an amazingly low number.

You know it’s an interesting NFL season when two tight ends (Jason Witten and Tony Gonzalez) are in the Top 10 in receiving yards this late in the year and one of them is not named Antonio Gates.

I swear to God if I had a vote for Offensive Player of the Year, I would give serious consideration to Atlanta’s Roddy White. The Falcons have only scored 20 touchdowns as a team all season (Randy Moss has 21) and White has accounted for five of them. The quarterback play has been abysmal with the suspect trio of Joey Harrington, Byron Leftwich and Chris Redman and White still has 78 receptions for 1,140 yards with five 100-yard games.

I am not sure if Drew Brees gets enough credit as a quarterback. He (and the Saints) got off to a very rough start this season with just one touchdown and seven interceptions in the first three games. Since that point, Brees has tossed 24 touchdowns against only nine picks and the team has gone a respectable 7-5 over that span without much of a running game. Brees has averaged 26 touchdown passes over the last four seasons and has gone well over 4,000 yards in each of the last two campaigns.