So, our long national nightmare drags on. The Patriots are still undefeated. The Giants did manage to play surprisingly well. I have never had much faith in either Tom Coughlin or Eli Manning, so I went into the bar to watch last night's game without a lot of hope. And the Giants played just well enough to get me excited, only to pull the rug out from under me when they eventually collapsed.

There are some encouraging signs. Tom Brady set the single season passing TD record. Randy Moss set the single season receiving TD record. The Patriots set the single season scoring record. And they became the first team to go through a sixteen game regular season without losing. And in all of that I can still find some positive aspects.

First, the last two QBs who set the single season passing TD record did so in seasons which did not culminate in championships. Then there's the fact that Jerry Rice set the single season record for TD receptions in a season in which the 49ers didn't win the Super Bowl. And the last two teams that set the single season scoring record (the 1983 Redskins and the 1998 Vikings) failed to win the Super Bowl. Not only that but the suffered embarrassing losses (the Raiders blew the Redskins out in the Super Bowl and mighty Minnesota lost to a terrible Atlanta team at home in OT in the NFC Championship Game).

It is true that this season for the Patriots has been utterly without precedent, from the head coach being mired in the most inexplicable scandal since Watergate (why, by the way, did Nixon even bother breaking into the DNC offices? He went on to win 49 states, were his preliminary polling numbers that out of whack?) to the 16-0 finish. But only one team has finished a regular season undefeated and gone on to win it all since the days of the Decatur Staleys and a ten team league. That was the 1972 Dolphins. There were two Bears teams in the late 30s and early 40s era that went undefeated but lost the NFL Championship Game.

I guess it depends on perspective. One can see history and karma being full square behind this Patriots team, or one can see history and karma setting a massive ambush for this mob of cocky nitwits. And based on the crowd at the bar last night, I get the sense that very few people deserve a comeuppance more than Pats fans. I actually overheard a guy at the bar refer to Mangini as "Mangina." And he seemed to be one of the more enlightened and articulate Pats fans in the place.

Far more vexing at the moment was the crime against aesthetic sensibilities perpetrated by the Dallas Cowboys this afternoon in the nation's capital. What the hell happened there? Did Jerry Jones forget the shipment of Diet Pepsi Max? Did he finally grab the headset from Jason Garrett and take the helm? I know the weather was frightful, but with the way they played you'd think that none of the Cowboys had ever seen rain before in their lives.

Having said that, I am not too nervous about their chances to advance to the Super Bowl. After all, most of the same people who are hyping the dangers of facing the Redskins in the playoffs were sitting there around Thanksgiving time telling us exactly how dangerous the Minnesota Vikings would be in the playoffs. Funny how that ended up working out these last few weeks.

I suppose it is unfair to dismiss the Vikings at this point. After all, they do still have the potential to surprise a few teams this postseason. I imagine they just might be able to rush onto the field in Seattle or Pittsburgh as though it were Wrestlemania. Or they could really impress the other guests at whatever resorts they will visit while the teams that actually made the playoffs are busing playing this January.

I would like to see the Redskins win next week. Even before I earned the ire of a few losers who root for the Seahawks, I didn't much care for the team. I just didn't like the way the team and the fans reacted to the bad calls in the Super Bowl two seasons ago. It's not as though they would have been so interested in the pure technical art of officiating a professional football game had the calls gone in their favor. Plus Matt Hasselbeck is a bald whiner and a proud product of Boston College.

I just don't see it happening. Todd Collins has been a great story so far and they have the sympathetic angle covered because of the tragic death of Sean Taylor. But that sort of thing only takes a team so far in the playoffs. I remember back in 1991 when Mike Utley was paralyzed playing for the Lions and his thumb up gesture as he was carted from the field galvanized the team for its stretch run. They made it all the way to the NFC title game, but it all came to a crashing halt against the Redskins under the first Gibbs administration.

Incidentally, that was also the year that the Falcons latched on to the MC Hammer song To Legit to Quit. Of course, like so many of my digressions, this has no real point. But they rode the momentum of that dreadful song and the pointless human interest story it generated for nearly two months. Fortunately, they rode the momentum right into the divisional round in old RFK Stadium and the Redskins crushed them 56-17. I really don't know why I bring that up, except that it is on my mind right now, and (at least to me) moderately amusing.

What really concerns me about the Redskins going forward is their defensive backfield. This is a trifle indelicate, considering I've already mentioned that their Pro Bowl caliber safety was murdered in the not too distant past. But I just don't see them being able to contain the Seahawks vastly overrated group of wide receivers. Stopping the Cowboys today, with TO on the sidelines and an understrength Terry Glenn trying to get some game action prior to the playoffs in a driving rain storm is one thing. Holding down Bobby Engram and Nate Burleson in front of the even more massively overrated 12th Man is a whole different story.

I will, I think, be posting more about the playoff matchups as we get closer to game time next weekend. I also have to collect my thoughts tomorrow to see if I can find a way to talk myself into a plausible scenario which ends in Illinois beating USC in their first bowl game since 2001. It's definitely doable, but I have to consider the ramifications of the SIRSN jinx, which has claimed more victims in the last 18 months than the SI jinx has in its lifetime, I think.

Tonight, I find myself defending Mike Wilbon for the first time in this space. In general, I think Wilbon is full of himself, a shameless homer, rabidly anti-Notre Dame and a tool. That said, I do not share the opinion of Mr. Irrelevant, the loser blogger who condemned Wilbon to an eternity in the infernal region.

This is all in relation to the tragic death of Redskins safety Sean Taylor last night. On the Monday edition of PTI, Wilbon said he was saddened, but not shocked that Taylor was shot in an apparent home invasion late Sunday night. Wilbon's rationale was that Taylor had been involved in some troubling off-field incidents in his first two seasons in the NFL. Mr. Irrelevant condemns Wilbon to Hell because Wilbon didn't stress the fact that Taylor had calmed down and lived a much different life in the last year or so with enough emphasis to satisfy Mr. Irrelevant.

As a Catholic, I have it on reliable rumor that no blogger, not even the greatest living authority on the DC sports scene in his own mind, is counted among the few authorities with the power to condemn a soul to an eternity in hell. I also didn't find the comments Wilbon made to be tremendously out of line, but then I am notoriously insensitive. It struck me that this was Wilbon's honest reaction to a tragic situation, and it's much better that he should come out and say this as opposed to shedding crocodile tears for the people involved.

Among Wilbon's words with which Mr. Irrelevant took issue is this sentence: "Whether this incident is or isn’t random, Taylor grew up in a violent world, embraced it, claimed it, loved to run in it and refused to divorce himself from it." Wilbon actually makes a good point there. One simply doesn't announce to all that one is retiring from a violent subculture because one has had a child and expect any and all bad blood to evaporate.

That's not the way the world works. People have long memories and regardless of race, culture or creed, there are very few people who are patient enough and rational enough to walk away from a grudge. I know I don't often give up grudges easily, and very little of any lasting emotional significance has happened to me in my life.

It was great that Sean Taylor changed his life. It was great that his coaches, teammates and fans loved and admired him. Sean Taylor didn't deserve to be murdered. But that doesn't mean that all people felt that way, simply because it was the correct and rational viewpoint. And that's what Wilbon was trying to say. He wasn't saying Taylor got what he deserved. He was saying that the world is a violent and irrational place and we can't count on everybody to change for the better because one safety on one NFL team got his life in order.

Far worse, I think, than what Wilbon said about Taylor was what Mr. Irrelevant seems to regard as Wilbon's real crime in this. WIlbon said something that wasn't nice to the blogging community. Wilbon came out and said this: "There’s a ton of speculation about the details of his condition and the details of the incident, but this isn’t a blog and we’re not going to get into wild guessing and speculating here". Can you imagine the gall of the man? Even the voice of reason that is the fanhouse at AOL couldn't stand Wilbon's obvious fear and contempt for Establishment-challenging blogs.

I hate to be the one to break this story on the blogosphere, but bloggers do engage in wild flights of fancy and speculation from time to time. Case in point, check out this guy and his bizarre predictions motivated in large part by personal antipathy rather than deductive reasoning. That's part of the point of a blog, isn't it? The freedom to say things, to take chances and not worry about the pressures exerted on conventional media.

Most blogs are a total waste of time. How many blogs are out there publishing something substantially different from or more insightful than the things average people email their friends about sports or politics or movies? It's just something that most bloggers don't want to admit, probably because they cherish the dream that they might through hard work and begging other sites for links and references vault themselves over every other site saying essentially the same damn thing to become the Marcel Proust of the 21st century.

If by that you mean an uber-tool admired by a legion of lesser tools, then, yes one blogger might become this generation's Proust. But if you mean by that that you have something to say to start an intellectual movement, then you might just want to cut the dose on your meds. With my luck, if there is a next generation Proust waiting in the wings in the blogosphere, it will probably be me. In case you haven't realized, I hate Proust.

On a lighter note, I couldn't help but chuckle at this story. Great Britain's vaunted MI-6 thinks that James Bond movies are hurting their efforts to recruit quality people, particularly in the minority communities and especially among Islamic populations. That's pretty funny. Apparently, British nationals who watch Bond movies are no cooler than their American counterparts. Too many of MI-6 applicants turn out to be losers who think they can seduce beautiful spies and destroy cutting edge gadgets for Queen and Country, rather than practical people with useful skills. It's nice to know that the next time the fate of the free world rests in a British dude's hands, he won't be wearing a tux and playing baccarat with a European floozy.