Got an email from the league office today that made me chuckle.
Subject?
"Week 12 Playoff Scenarios"
What?
That's right NFL fans, the New England Patriots can secure a spot in the playoffs with a win this week or a Buffalo Bills' loss.
Yes, those same Buffalo Bills the Pats throttled 56-10 on "Sunday Night Football." As an interesting aside, Tom Brady put up 108 points in one fantasy league this week (I know that because I was on the losing end of that epic game).
You Falcons fans my wonder why I'm mentioning an AFC team in my weekly musings column. There's no particular reason except to kickoff the normal discussion of how crazy this NFL season has been.
Falcons fans, you know first hand how a season can became one long news event. Well, turns out every team has something crazy going on -- sometimes it just happens with five touchdown passes from what seems to be a truly dominant quarterback.
Speaking of dominant quarterbacks, Peyton Manning visits the Georgia Dome Thursday night for a Thanksgiving contest against the Falcons who, as you know, got beat 31-7 Sunday.
There were several striking story lines that hit me during the game, but injuries kept leaping to the top of my post-loss checklist.
Trey Lewis.
Rod Coleman.
Todd Weiner.
Players get banged up every game, but all three of these injuries looked rather serious.
Now for the understatement of the blog. The Falcon's don't want to weather many more injuries.
That leads me to my second musing/point.
There's not time to dwell on hurt bodies or hurt feelings.
I've been a part of a team that played on Thanksgiving each of the past two seasons. There's no time to worry about what happened or -- in some cases -- game planning for the next team.
You've got four days to make it happen. Your reward? A sort of de facto bye week in the middle of the season.
But enough of my thoughts. Lawyer Milloy? Take us home.
"We got our butts kicked today and that is basically the bottom line," the veteran safety said Sunday
.
"We have the defending champs coming in here so we don't have time to
dwell on the outcome of this game. The beautiful thing about this is
that we get another opportunity on Thursday."
© 2007 Atlanta Falcons. All rights reserved. Do not duplicate in any form without permission of the Atlanta Falcons.
