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            Did you ever notice that in every NFL game, this happens about four times.   The referees are huddling to discuss the call, and a player tries to crowd into the huddle to hear the discussion, or perhaps even to participate in it.   One official breaks away from the pack to push the intruder away and tell him to go play with his teammates. 

            You know what this always reminds me of?   At Logan airport for several years when you cleared security in your stocking feet there was an area there right in front of you with about six chairs.   Only thing was, you weren’t supposed to sit in those chairs and put your shoes back on and your belt back on and your computer back in your briefcase and your wallet back in your pocket and your watch back on your arm and your keys back in your carry-on and your false teeth back in your sock.  It was a security area, where they sat you down if you were selected for special screening.   There was a sign somewhere saying that this was a security area, or maybe two or three signs, but you know. . .you’re going through security separated from your valuables and trying to watch your stuff and also obey instructions coming at you from eight different directions, there could be Sarah Palin there putting lipstick on a pit bull and you probably wouldn’t notice.  

            So people would go through the scanner and sit down in the seat to try to put their stuff back together, and a TSA official would bark at them that this was a security area, and you weren’t supposed to be sitting here, and they’d get up and gather all their stuff and grumble and shuffle on out to a seating area, and as soon as they did somebody else would sit down in the security area, and the TSA official would bark at them to get out of there.  This went on for several years.   I wouldn’t exactly say that there was a full-time TSA employee devoted to shooing people away from the security processing area, but pretty close to that; there was always somebody doing it, and usually getting constantly more annoyed because he spent all day telling people the same thing over and over and over, and people just never learned because of course it was always different people. 

            Of course, only the government could do that; any business was paying a full-time employee to shoo people away from seats would figure it out within two days, but it took the government several years because, you know, it was in the budget.  Finally they moved the security screening area off to the left, blocked off by ropes, so that it was intuitively apparent to the travelers as they picked up their stuff that this was not a re-shoeing area. 

            This is the same sort of situation:  it is really, really obvious what needs to be done here, but for some reason the NFL hasn’t seen it yet.   They need a penalty, “Intruding on an officials’ conference” or “Intruding” for short, 15 yards.   You make a rule that, when the officials are having a conference no player or coach can get within ten feet of the huddle, and if anybody does you drop a rag on ‘em.   You’ll virtually never have to actually throw the flag, because anybody who gets flagged for that, once you put in the rule, is not going to be very popular with the coaching staff on Monday morning.   I even have a hand signal for it.   Left arm in front of you, pointed upward at 45 degree angle, fingers straight, right hand (also fingers straight) moves toward the palm but jabs past it, sort of the universal symbol for breaking in.   Intruding, 15 yards.  Sometimes it takes a little time.   It took the collective intelligence of the human race a little over 100 years to realize that people wouldn’t drive away and leave their gas caps at the gas station if you just tied the cap to the gas tank with a little chain.

            So anyway, in Sunday’s games we were 9-4, bringing us to 41-28 on the season.   For the games on which we agreed with the Las Vegas oddsmakers we were 7-3, and they were 7-3, and for the three games on which we disagreed we were 2-1 and they were 1-2.   So it was a pretty decent day for us, although 41-28 is still not a prediction record that anybody would brag about.

            Tennessee remains the number one team in the NFL and Chicago the number one team in the NFC, no change in those since neither team played on Sunday and it is now too late in the season for the ratings to be seriously discombobulated by the performance of prior opponents.   These are the updated rankings:

             Since we have Tennessee as the best team in football and they are at home, obviously we would pick them to win Monday night against the Colts, by 11 points as it happens. 

            There were two teams on Sunday that had their best games of the season, Houston and Seattle.   Even allowing for the caliber of the competition, Sunday’s 35-6 thrashing of the Bengals was by far Houston’s best game of the year, scoring at 106.9 in our system—the first time this year the Texans have scored as high as 100.00.          Seattle has only two wins this year, but both of them have been impressive—37-13 at home against St. Louis, and 34-13 yesterday in San Francisco.   The game on Sunday scores at 104.2. 

            On the down side, four teams had their worst games of the year, including the victims of those two beat-downs, Cincinnati and San Francisco.  While the Bengals are 0-8, they played competitive football their first five weeks, with scores ranging from 90.2 to 98.0 (the memorable 23-26 loss to the Giants on a Monday night.)  Since Palmer has been out, though, their scores have nose-dived, down to 88.6 in Week 6, a new low 83.5 in Week 7, and a new low 80.9 with the humiliating 35-6 loss to a not-very-good Houston team.   Which may, of course, turn out to be better than we have seen up to now.

            Being blown out at home by a team that comes in 1-6 is really not a good way to start your coaching career.  The 49ers were 7 points worse under Singletary than in their worst game under Mike Nolan.   

            Jacksonville (96.3 against Cleveland) is 3-4 and inclined to blame a brutal schedule (Tennessee, Buffalo, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, Denver.)  We don’t really see it that way.  While the quality of their competition has been good, it’s not that good; the real problem is that Jacksonville has put up three games over 100 (better than average), three games under, and one game right at.   Sunday’s 17-23 loss to Cleveland, at home, was their worst game of the season, but the 20-16 loss to Buffalo, at home, scores at 96.8 and the 30-27 squeaker against Houston (at home) scores at 99.0.   That’s three games that don’t look like playoff caliber performances—whereas the Bears, for example, have no performances scoring at less than 106.5,  Tennessee has nothing so far lower than 107.4, Philadelphia has no games less than 101.4, Tampa Bay nothing worse than 101.4, and Pittsburgh’s Sunday game against the Giants was a season-worst 102.1.   Pittsburgh’s other loss this year was at Philadelphia, and, regardless of what the experts think, our system thinks that Philadelphia is a better team than the Giants.