* The Saints are the real McCoy. Any team that can fluster Tom Brady and lay out a convincing ass-kicking on national television must be taken seriously. The irony watching this game became profound to me: Had A.J. Smith stuck it out with Drew Brees, instead of dumping him because his arm injury he suffered at the end of the 2005 season, there would be Super Bowls XLI and XLII titles in San Diego...and possibly rival Belichick's Patriots as the team of the decade. Yes, I said XLII, because watching the way Brees played against the Pats when he was a Charger, and how he played them on Monday night, add to it the endless amounts of firepower San Diego has, from LT to Antonio Gates to Vincent Jackson, Brady would have gone down in the Championship game.
* The Patriots will win the AFC East. They'll probably take the 3rd or 4th seed in the playoff picture. They'll probably embarrass whichever Wild-Card team comes to Foxbrough in January. The praise will be on full blast: the team that no one wants to play in the postseason is back and we'll have the Rivalry of the Decade, Part 2 between Manning and Brady. Yada, yada, yada. Guess what? Not gonna happen. Why? The young, inexperienced secondary will be eaten alive by either the tandems of Carson Palmer/Chad "Ochocinco" or Phillip Rivers/whichever 6-foot wide receiver is open down-field in the Divisional round. Unless Belichick can get the Secondary up to snuff, New England will face an early exit from the playoffs.
* As we pick up our collective jaws off the floor with Vince Young's last-minute heroics against the Arizona Cardinals, the team that went from a shocking 0-6 start under Kerry Collins (the same Kerry Collins that took Young's spot last year and led the Titans to a NFL-best 13-3 record and homeland advantage through the playoffs), to an equally shocking 5-game dream run of a winning streak, and with it, talks of being a contender for the 6th seed in the postseason. As much as I love the story of football's comeback kid and his growing maturity we see in each game, Tennessee won't make the playoffs for two reasons: the Indianapolis Colts and the San Diego Chargers.
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