Week eight wrap

The surprising Minnesota Vikings came into their Monday night match up against the New England Patriots with the number one rush defense in the NFL. The Patriots ran 80 percent pass plays on route to a 31-7 road victory.

See, football is easy.

Patriot QB Tom Brady utilized ten anonymous receivers and finished with 372 yards and four touchdowns. Brady's career compilation percentage is 61.6, which is good, but not upper echelon. He can be mistake prone at times and throws plenty of bad passes. What makes Brady so special is how accurate he is when he completes the pass.

Since he doesn't have the strongest arm his throws are almost always short and medium ranged. Often the receiver is coming back towards the ball or moving straight across the field. Brady is the best there is at hitting receivers in a way that allows them to immediately change directions and head towards the end zone. Sometimes this means an extra yard-and-half and first down. Other times a long TD.

Brady is regularly compared to Joe Montana, including last night by a breathless Kornheiser. I'm not sure it is a fair comparison: Montana played with Jerry Rice, John Taylor, Dwight Clark and the outstanding receiving running back Roger Craig.

There is always going to be somewhat of a chicken or the egg element to a great quarterback and his receivers. Not so with Brady. His receiving corps change every year. It is currently made up of rookies and rejects from power house teams such as Oakland and Houston. He makes them all look good. If he wins another Super Bowl he is way past Montana in my book.

Brady was so on last night I got bored and watched most of Friday Night Lights, the new critically acclaimed, ratings challenged drama on NBC. It is based on the book and the movie of the same name.

I liked what I saw, and might watch it again. Between that and Two-A-Days -- the MTV reality show which follows a high school football team -- I think my dream in life has become to move down south and play big-time high school football.

I guess that is a step up from a couple years ago when the dramatic/reality combo of The OC and Lagauna Beach made me want to move to Orange County, where I could go to high school and do a lot of gossiping.

Yes, I was born during the Ford administration.

Picks -- I also had my fantasy basketball draft last night. I had the first pick, for the first time ever. Despite the "take Lebron" sentiment among many of the fantasy experts (and yes, there are many) I went with Shawn Marion -- who is perpetually the number one fantasy basketball performer when all is said and done. I'm feeling pretty good about my team.

But not so much about my football picks: 5 - 9 for the week. 42-52-4 for the year.

*Another great thing about Brady is when you do an image search you get just as many pictures of Brady with hot chicks as Brady playing football. It doesn't work that way for Montana. Although Montana did once utter the phrase "I think I'm going upstairs to masturbate" on national television. So he's got that going for him.