Since I last posted, I've been wondering whether the Steelers are the team to beat the Patriots. On Monday Night Football, provided that you could sit through the forced banter between the three hosts who have no business working with each other and stomach Tony Kornheiser desperately failing to channel Howard Cosel and/or be funny, you'd have seen a team look just about as good as a team can. But it was against the wreckage of the Baltimore Ravens.

The Patriots are slightly better than the Ravens offensively, in the same way that eating Thanksgiving dinner is slightly better than getting kicked in the shins a half dozen times. But the Steelers, more than any of the teams the Pats have played to this point, have all the pieces on defense to give stopping this juggernaut the old college try. Having the pieces and bringing them to the game and having them work the way the coaches drew it up isn't as easy as one could hope, though.

No matter how good they are, the Steelers cornerbacks are all considerably shorter than Randy Moss. And with Moss getting away with offensive pass interference the way no one on this Earth has since Michael Irvin brought his talents to the broadcast booth, he is a disconcerting prospect. And there is the question of whether or not the Steelers can find a way to stop Wes Welker finding every little hole in every zone. If they can't do that a handful of times, they're not going to get the Pats off the field on third down.

Then there is the zone blitz scheme which Dick Lebeau practically invented. It's greatest strength is its capacity to baffle, confuse and frustrate pass protection schemes and force them to break down while closing off the quarterback's outlets. Unfortunately, you can't do that to Tom Brady and his offensive linemen. As a group, the five linemen and their field general do not possess enough intelligence to be baffled, confused or frustrated. And while there are coaching staffs and teams that can come up with plans to outsmart any opponent, is there a plan to outdumb the morons on the Patriots?

On offense, the Steelers can run the ball, even though they didn't do much of that against Baltimore. Even if the size and strength of the Patriots defensive line leads you to believe that Fast Willie Parker will be contained, don't forget that the Steelers can throw Najeh Davenport at the Pats. Even though he's best remembered for being arrested after an ex-girlfriend awoke to discover him befouling her closet in the middle of the night, he still has the potential to run all over the Patriots like Marion Barber did in Dallas.

Pass protection could be a problem, since Mike Vrabel seems to have borrowed Rodney Harrison's fountain of youth. And Big Ben loves to hang on to the ball, even though he moves well in the pocket and shrugs off defenders because of his size and strength, this could hurt the Steelers. If he makes even one mistake when it comes to ball security, that could provide the Patriots with the opportunity to take a lead which no sign seen to date points to them relinquishing.

One thing this secondary for the Pats has yet to face is a deep threat like Santonio Holmes. If the Steelers can protect Big Ben, this could burn the Pats badly. Then again, if any of the ifs I have brought up to this point in the season had amounted to anything more than a small colossal waste of time in this giant colossal waste of time that is this blog, the damn Patriots wouldn't be undefeated and I'd look like less of a tool.

Speaking of tools, it provides an inelegant segue into a group of people who badly need criticism. NBC is saving the environment, whether we like it or not. I was reluctant to blog about this a few days ago, because I expected the Bush Administration to have a change of heart along the lines of Scrooge in A Christmas Carol when Matt Lauer went to Greenland to break the story of global warming, but I was disappointed.

While NBC is making hypocritical gestures like sending a waste of space to Greenland to waste even more time and space than he usually wastes and shutting off a few lights in its studio, a serious question is going unanswered. NBC wants me to be conscious of my carbon footprint (and as a subsidiary of GE, the network is far less a threat to the general environmental health of the planet than a guy who doesn't even own an automobile, right?), but did they really need to send one of their talking heads to Greenland to do it?

I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm assuming that Matt Lauer didn't row himself up to Greenland in a boat. So he must have taken a plane or a boat to Greenland. And since NBC probably didn't buy him and whatever personnel were required to support him and his crew tickets on a Southwest Airlines flight to the middle of nowhere in Greenland, some genius must have chartered a plane or a ship to move those people and their equipment to Greenland, unless of course the natives there have all the necessary equipment for broadcasting "news" across the globe.

So NBC spent how much money, transported how many people and how much equipment to Greenland to get me and a few million other people to think about their impact on fragile ecosystems? It seems like that could have been done more efficiently. What with the fact that these people (unless Matt Lauer can provide heat, shelter, food fresh drinking water and whatever other necessities a film crew in the middle of nowhere Greenland require with the powers of his mind) must have done some damage to the pristine ecosystem they visited, how much do I have to scale back my carbon footprint to offset what they did while they went up there to tell me to scale back my carbon footprint in the first place? Good job NBC.

This just might be my final post. For all the times I've been wrong, and the few times I've been spectacularly wrong, I have never been quite so wrong as I was on July 1st. On that fateful day, I mentioned how discouraging it should be for Red Sox fans that their $146 million ass-kicking machine of a baseball team had to that point managed to come from behind in their final at bat to win only once all season. Now I am eating my words, as they did it for the second time.

Unconfirmed rumors from the Tigers clubhouse placed manager Jim Leyland on the floor of his office, in the fetal position, chain-smoking and weeping when he heard the news tonight. That World Series trophy is as good as won for the Olde Towne Team as we speak. And that's why I have to shut this blog down for good, because this team has the perfect combination of tired arms and overpaid frauds who dream of hitting .250. Nothing I say can slow them down now.

Of course, there are naysayers who might point out that the two comebacks occurred against Baltimore and Tampa Bay, currently in next-to-last and last place respectively in the AL East standings. There are even some crypto-fascist reactionary types who might think that a team whose 3 and 4 hitters have not yet managed to equal the home run total put up by Alex Rodriguez could have a small problem when it comes time to face a more daunting bullpen than that of the Devil Rays. But I am no longer one of those guys.

Terry Francona changed all that. Never in all my born days could I have conceived of a move as brilliant as pinch-hitting JD Drew in the 7th so that the .248 hitter could ground into a double play. Not since C. Montgomery Burns pinch hit Homer Simpson for Darryl Strawberry with the bases loaded and two out so that a right handed batter could face the left handed pitcher (even though Straw was 9-9 with 9 home runs) against the Shellbyville team has a manager been so committed to playing the percentages. Hell, if all he wanted were a double play ball, who better than Wily Mo?

But the real key that emerged from this game...they finally know how to use Eric Gagne. He pitched a scoreless 9th because there was no real pressure on him. It would have been very difficult, indeed, for him to get the loss tonight. So no wonder he didn't choke. As long as the Sox can pitch him in situations where he can't make things worse, he'll be awesome.

And the Sox got a game back, thanks to the Yankees being mauled by the Orioles on the day that saw the passing of Hall of Fame shortstop Phil Rizzuto. I hate to say this, but all day, whenever I saw it on a news ticker or Sportscenter, the only thing that kept popping into my head connected with Rizzuto was George's key chain with Phil's head saying "Holy Cow" when it was squeezed. I know. I am a horrible human being. But at least I admit it.

And in other depressing news, it seems that the Patriots are going to try to play Adalius Thomas at inside linebacker and move Mike Vrabel back to his natural position of outside linebacker. Leaving aside the issue of whether one can still be said to have a natural position when one has lost a step or two or thirteen, I must confess this depresses me.

I was looking forward to ripping the Pats when Thomas' production from his contract year didn't follow him to New England. Now they have a ready made excuse. Of course he can't get double digit sacks, he's playing a different position in a different scheme. It should have very little to do with the fact that now Mr. Thomas has the financial freedom that he doesn't have to think twice about getting extra cheese on his Whopper.

Tonight also served up yet another disappointing episode of The Bronx Is Burning. I understand that it's based on a book (a book which I never read, in the interest of full disclosure), but I'm still bent that the show has so many different strands going at the same time. I want to see more about the Yankees in 1977 (more scenes of them beating the Red Sox would have been greatly appreciated).

If I wanted to watch a documentary of how Ed Koch got to be the Mayor of NYC, I'd find a way to do that. Or check into the psych ward, whichever comes first. And maybe it's because I am not a New Yorker or a particularly morbid person, but I really have no interest in Son of Sam stories. Quite frankly, I don't see how the election of Ed Koch or that tool shooting innocent people had any bearing on the baseball season.

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe if Bella Abzug had won the mayoral election, the Yankees wouldn't have caught the Orioles and the Red Sox. Maybe if Mario Cuomo had won, Kansas City would have held on to the lead at home in that fifth and final game of the ALCS. Maybe if Son of Sam had murdered one fewer person, the New York Rangers would have surprised the hell out of the civilized world and made the World Series in a stunning turn of events.

ESPN is a sports network, is it not? It's not the everything about everything about life network, and sometimes they'd do well to remember that over at the World Wide Leader.

It's funny to see the way professional sports franchises operate sometimes. The Celtics sinking ship let Sebastian Telfair go because his off court behavior gave them a convenient excuse to drop him without much fanfare. The Patriots reversed field on their operating mantra during this season's draft weekend, forsaking the traditional high character guys fans have grown accustomed to over the last decade and a half for riskier, sketchier players. The NBA equivalent of a chicken running around with its head cut off is trying to take the high road while the NFL's shining city on a hill is suddenly trying to recycle bad citizens. Funny, indeed.

Of course, we all learned recently exactly how significant the decision to cut Telfair is. Bob Ryan emerged from his lair and wrote yet another piece to kick a man while he was down. Anotine Walker, Butch Hobson and Nomar have all merited this treatment in the past, and now it's Telfair's turn. The only thing that amazes me in all of this is that it took an eminent basketball mind like Bob Ryan nearly 10 months to see the flaws in Sebastian Telfair's game.

I suppose I am being somewhat unfair to Mr Ryan and not presenting his entire argument, but this is my blog and I can say what I want. And anybody who has read any of my past material probably can anticipate where this post is heading. Cutting Telfair is just one more in a long line of spectacular personnel failures in this Celtic regime.

The Sebastian Telfair catastrophe is one more step Ainge has taken to step out from under the albatross that was the Antoine Walker trade. Ainge didn't like Walker's game, so he traded him to Dallas for Jiri Welsch and Raef LaFrentz. Jiri added very little value. And Raef's contract was such a nightmare that Ainge unloaded him for a glass menagerie of failure and helped enable Portland to pull off a draft day coup and land Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy.

In the end, I am somewhat disappointed that the Celtics have let Telfair go. He was paid too much, produced too little and served to remind the last few people that really care about the Celtics that the team was in the hands of incompetent morons. Every time he took the floor for the Celtics he was a walking dilemma. He either embodied the fact that the people running the team have no practical conception of how to assemble a basketball team or that the people running the team are deliberately assembling a bad team. Either way, it suited me.

And now the Patriots are rolling the dice with Randy Moss, who has promised to revert to the Randy of old. People can take that one of two ways. Randy Moss will either burn up the league, catching passes, scoring TDs and delivering in big situations or he'll burn down Gillette Stadium. I am more inclined to believe the latter than the former, although the fact that the CHB has thrown down a gauntlet on this deal makes me far less certain of that than I was at this time last night.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a Patriots fan. And even though reports have Moss wowing the assembled luminaries by clocking in at an impressive 4.29 in the 40, I do not find myself convinced that the Patriots are the prohibitive favorites in the AFC. I remember the old Randy from his days with the Vikings. Nobody could run like he did, catch the way he did or terrorize defensive backfields the way he did. But there was always something missing. I think it was courage.

At least, by that I mean the courage to go out and put everything on the line to win a big game. Say what you want about Terrell Owens being a miserable, selfish cancer. But let's not forget that he came back from a broken leg in a month and a half to play in the Super Bowl, signed a waiver and outplayed eventual Super Bowl MVP Deion Branch. And let's not forget that there is no moment like that in the Randy Moss highlight reel. There are no postseason moments in there at all.

That's the Randy I remember. As I talked to my man who is a Patriots season ticket holder, I couldn't help but think of the Randy moments I will never forget. And none of them involved that famous Monday Night game where he punished the Cowboys for passing on him in the draft.

No, when I think of Moss, I'll remember the day a dreadful Giants team earned the right to be destroyed by the Ravens. They shut out the Vikings 41-0. And in all of that, rumor has it Randy sulked all game and didn't perform because he was upset that the powers-that-be in Giants Stadium wouldn't let his kid on the sideline. Truly that is the heart of a champion.

Then there was the tail end of the 2003 season when the Vikings needed to beat the Bears in Chicago to clinch a playoff spot. The Vikings drove down into the red zone, in a goal to go situation, and they looked to Randy Moss on a corner route. The TD would give the Vikings the lead, which would have put them in prime position to make the playoffs. And what happened? Charles Tillman, an unheralded rookie at the time, took the ball away from Randy, who didn't put up much of a fight for the ball and the season, in the end zone. The Bears won the game, the Vikings got a jump on the offseason.

Maybe all the optimism is warranted. Maybe the Patriots can awaken in Moss the fire that never seemed to be there when it really, really, really mattered. Or maybe his production over the course of the regular season will be enough to get the team in prime position for a first round bye and home field throughout the playoffs, so it won't matter if he disappears in the playoffs. Or maybe he won't enjoy playing in balmy Foxboro in November, December and January. Not to mention trips to Buffalo or New York in the dead of winter.

If he is so fragile that he coasted through two dismal seasons in Oakland because he wasn't happy, what will Randy Moss do if he experiences any adversity in New England. Will Stallworth be able to play a full season and be productive? Will Kelley Washington play up to his potential? Will the fact that the Patriots did nothing to shore up a weak offensive line come back to bite this team when they have to play the Colts again this year?

Only time will tell the answers to those questions, and the other fascinating conundrum... can Teddy Bruschi and Mike Vrabel combine to form a serviceable linebacker since they have lost very nearly two steps at this point? And before any Patriots fan reminds me that Matt Light contained Shawne Merriman and was a Pro Bowl alternate last season, think back to how that line held up against the Bears and Colts last season. I think I have a better chance of smiling at the end of this season than Patriots fans do.

This draft was very compelling, and not just because of Brady Quinn's humiliating Green Room experience. It seemed to me like a group of teams got together to see who could make the most spectacular mistakes. Kansas City may very well have pulled it off, passing on Joe Staley to take a wide receiver when they desperately needed to replace Willie Roaf and Will Shields more than they needed a wide receiver. But I think Philly took the cake, trading down to the second round to take Kolb, who looked to have a big future in Canada.

Let's not leave Miami out of this, either. Going with Ted Ginn Jr. will come back to haunt them. They faced a similar situation as the Radiers did this season. Both teams made the wrong QB decision last season, Oakland passing on Leinart and Miami signing Culpepper over Drew Brees. This time out, Oakland owned that mistake and took Russell over Calvin Johnson. Miami didn't own that mistake. In fact, they made it again. Instead of taking Quinn, they took a college receiver who will have more impact returning kicks than catching passes and went with the Mormon Chris Weinke in Round Two.

We also have a tool of note segment or three before I wrap up tonight. First, to Chicago fans who are enjoying the fact that Pat Riley gave them an easy victory in their opening round series, here is an action shot of the broadcasters of the second team in Second City performing the song "Summertime Blues" at a benefit concert. I get the feeling that this song probably made things worse for any one who found themselves feeling any blues, regardless of the season.

There there is this ____________ on Myspace. I really don't know which insult out of my vast store of insults to apply here. This tool transcends words like spaz and dork and tool and fist magnet. Maybe it's because he's Australian. Maybe this is considered cool Down Under. Either way, you'll have to supply your own insult for him, I am just too baffled.

And finally, there is this loser having a go at the eating of meat. Apparently eating meat is not eco-friendly. Apparently it takes too much energy and produces too many carbons. Just for the sake of argument, I wonder how many carbons it takes to produce the synthetic protein supplements that vegetarians often take. Not to mention the fact that there would be a bunch of cows running around once people like me stop eating them. And chemical castration is ever so much more humane and natural than killing them outright and feeding them to people like me.

Orwell himself had very little esteem for vegetarians, whom he deemed "food cranks." In The Road to Wigan Pier, he wrote:

"This kind of thing is by itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity."

Eating meat is part of what it means to be human. My ancestors scratched and clawed and invented their way to the top of the food chain. And they didn't do it so I could eat lettuce and pop protein pills. And I wonder how much energy and how many carbons will go into caring for generations of vegetarians living to be 100 when all the meat eaters like me have kicked off from coronary thrombosis at age 60.

So, the Patriots have been more active in this free agency period than they have in the past. It is and it isn't a surprise. It was obvious from the way they wore down in the playoffs that they'd have to reload. The loss against the Colts was the first time they'd given away a game of that magnitude when they led in the second half since the dynasty began. It was just a question of how the team would go about it, through free agency or the draft.

Apparently, they've elected free agency. It makes some sense, since they seem to have lost their mojo in the draft at some point in the last two or three seasons. With the notable exception of Maroney, last season's draft was a disappointment. Chad Jackson is delivering fifth round pick performance on a second round pick salary. He may get better, but then again he may not. There is no reason he shouldn't have emerged as the team's number one receiver this past season, not so much because he's amazingly talented but because it's a pathetic group against which to compete.

Stephen Gostkowski has made some big kicks to this point, but I think it's too soon to evaluate a kicker. Place kicking is a strange racket. There are some guys who burst on the scene like Matin Grammatica in Tampa Bay and then fade away. Unfortunately, careers don't often rebound the way his has with the Cowboys. There are guys like Vanderjagt who (before his career went into respiratory failure in Dallas this season) only miss two or three kicks a year, but they happen to be the biggest kicks. But the Pats got through one season and letting Vinatieri go did not prove to be their undoing, so I should give credit to the team for that.

The other picks left something to be desired. Yes, David Thomas caught a big TD in San Diego, but the Patriots were fairly well stocked with TEs. For my part, I do not believe that Thomas made Daniel Graham expendable. Graham did that to himself, looking for top of the line TE money on a relatively parsimonious team which already had a much better TE in Ben Watson under contract who just happened to be younger to boot. I can't figure why they drafted another TE in the fourth round (Garrett Mills), but that's just me.

Ryan O'Callaghan started the first few games of the season, but he was far from inspiring. I guess any evaluation of his performance will be tied to your opinion of the team as a whole. I am not a Pats fan, so I think he was a bust. A Pats fan might say that his contributions were what you can reasonably expect from a fifth round pick. He might be in trouble if DeBrickishaw Ferguson is just the first in a trend of lighter, more athletic tackles to counter the smaller, speedier defensive ends like Dwight Freeney.

We'll have to wait and see on the other picks from last season. The draft is important, but not the only way to build a team. After all, the 1979 Steelers were the only team to win the championship with a roster of players who had only played for the Steelers at that point in their careers. It's still important, though. To keep playing at a high level, an NFL team needs to have significant contributions from its late round picks. Consider the Bears, their leading sacker was Mark Anderson, a fifth round pick. Or the Saints, with wide receivers like Marques Colston and Terrence Copper.

Although it wasn't necessarily the case in past years, this Patriots team needs immediate veteran help at a number of positions. Their linebacking corps in particular needed an upgrade. Age and health problems have taken their toll on Teddy Bruschi. More surprising was the decline of Mike Vrabel, who looked like Imhotep in the Mummy after he'd lost his supernatural powers at the end of the season. And of course the wide receiver position was not exactly a strength.

The Patriots have, to this point, made two moves to upgrade their linebacking corps. First, they signed Baltimore OLB Adalius Thomas. Perhaps more importantly, the team engaged in the underrated process of addition by subtraction. Tully Banta-Cain who was probably the 37th best linebacker in the AFC last season has departed for San Francisco. Alas, I couldn't ascertain by my astute investigative reporting whether he had flowers in his hair or not.

Patriots fans seem delighted with the Thomas signing. I am not as disappointed as you might expect. Unlike the average person who follows football, I have a very long memory. I can recall the strange case of Edgerton Hartwell. For those of you who don't remember him, he was once a promising inside linebacker playing next to Ray Lewis in the Ravens defense. He parlayed that into a 6 year contract with Falcons worth $26.25 million. Unfortunately for him, and the Falcons, Hartwell couldn't stay healthy. This offseason, as his former teammate Thomas made the big splash signing with the Pats, Hartwell was a footnote on the transaction wire as the Falcons cut their losses and released him.

At least I'm not the only one bringing up concerns in the wake of the Thomas signing. This writer on SI.com has a piece of his column on the Pats signing devoted to the list of free agents who have left Baltimore for greener pastures only to leave their mojo behind. It is not a short list, either. Gery Baxter, cornerback for the Ravens, turnstile for the Browns is just one of its members. I take issue, however, with the inclusion of Anthony Weaver. Yes, he had half as many sacks in 2006 as he did in his last season in Baltimore, but he only had 2 sacks that year. Of course, my defense of Weaver just might be related to the fact that he played at Notre Dame.

I am not convinced that Wes Welker is a significant upgrade at the wide receiver position. As you read this, if you are new to this blog, I guess I ought to point out that I have a significant antipathy to Wes Welker. Due to the bizarre priorities of the "people" who established the default scoring system for Fox Sports Fantasy Football, return yards were worth as much as receiving yards and more than rushing yards. So I ended up losing a game by 3 points when Welker went for 19.7 for my opponent. I blogged about it at length in the wake of that catastrophe, so you can read it if you want here.

Welker's career stats aren't overly impressive. One could argue that he is a more proven commodity as than what the team could expect from the two picks the team gave up to get him (2nd and 7th rounds). That may be true, but then last season's best return man, Devin Hester, was a 3rd round pick. I think the most important aspect of this pick is that it should free Maroney from returning kicks. I guess that's nothing to sneeze at, but I think that the Patriots will end up regretting the last few drafts, and giving up picks in this one, three or four years from now. Remember it when it happens that you heard it here first.