Normally I like to precede my football picks with something non-football-related, but this week's Tuesday Morning Quarterback column is too ludicrous for me to leave without comment. For those of you unfamiliar with TMQ, it is a weekly football column written by Gregg Easterbrook where he intersperses commentary on the previous week's NFL (and occasionally college) games with scientific and cultural items of interest. Although the column has gotten a bit stale, it is still a good read, and Easterbrook has coined or supported many NFL truisms like the notion that teams should go for it on 4th down more frequently and that teams often hurt themselves blitzing too often.

This season, however, Easterbrook has been irrationally fixated on the Patriots' "Spygate" scandal. His first column on the subject claimed that the scandal would lead to the downfall of the NFL as a dominant league. In his second, a week later, he accuses the NFL of a conspiracy to destroy the evidence of cheating which smacks of the same logic that UFO enthusiasts use to "prove" that the government has evidence of alien landings and asserted that Patriots coach Bill Belichick will be jobless by the end of the season. He gave the topic a rest for the next few weeks, but this week he dragged it out again with the assertion that the upcoming Patriots-Colts game is a Star Wars-esque battle of "good vs. evil", in no small part due to the videotaping incident.

He then proceeds to list out reasons why the Colts are "paladins who carry the banner of that which if benificient" and the Patriots are "scoundrels in the service of that which is baleful", let's take a look at a few, shall we?

Colts
Sportsmanship - I see no evidence that the Colts are any more or less sportsmanlike than the rest of the teams in the league, unless you consider the fact that after the Patriots beat them in the playoffs a few years back they whined to the league's competition committee to make a change prohibiting DBs from touching WRs, clearly favoring their team.
Honesty - Again, no evidence why they are more honest than any other team.
Modesty - I'll give them this one in that they have no obvious showboats, but then again neither do any of the other teams that don't employ Chad Johnson or Terrell Owens.
Devotion to Community - I believe Troy Brown was in as many United Way commercials as Peyton Manning, and infinitely fewer commercials for cell phones, directv, etc.
Embrace of Traditional Small-Town Life - Umm, as someone who sat through an hour of Indy traffic a few months ago can attest, it's not exactly a small town like Green Bay or Buffalo.
Belief in Higher Power - Wow, so the belief in a deity is a sign of "goodness"? I guess we shouldn't be fighting radical Islamic fundamentalists then, because they're clearly on the side of good.
Love of Laughter - If we weren't in the realm of hyperbole before, we certainly are now.
"Through prior years of postseason frustration, they never complained or pointed the finger outside their team" - See "Sportsmanship". Also, while they never pointed the finger outside their team, they often pointed their fingers inside their team. Peyton Manning, whom Easterbrook devotes an entire gushing section of this paragraph to, grimaced and sulked after every poor play in their postseason losses, and after one loss blamed his offensive line for his own failures in his postgame press conference.

Patriots
Dishonesty, Cheating - Easterbrook lists these as two separate items, when I believe they mean the same thing. As I pointed out last week, when the Dolphins stole the Patriots' signals using readily-available technology nobody (including himself) accused them of threatening the future of the NFL, but I'll let this one slide since the videotaping was against league rules (although I still contend it had no bearing on the outcomes of games).
Arrogance - On the contrary, evil coach Belichick spends most of his weekly press conferences praising his upcoming opponent in order to instill within the locker room the notion that arrogance is unacceptable. Refusal to pander to the media when it goes contrary to the goals of his job is not arrogance.
Hubris - From dictionary.com: "hubris - noun - excessive pride or self-confidence; arrogance". Another rerun.
Endless Complaining Even in Success - There is a big difference between "complaining" (i.e. what Peyton Manning did during the aforementioned press conference) and recognizing that you can always do better. Again, this is a purposeful attempt by Belichick to instill in his players the sense that, to quote the old adage, "when better is possible, good is not enough".

He goes on like this for numerous sentences, claiming that all past Patriots victories are tarnished by cheating that he has no evidence of (under the good old logic that a lack of negative evidence is evidence enough); asserting that rather than spurring his players to keep working, Bill Belichick should blow sunshine up his players' asses and be satisfied whenever they win (please don't confuse your own experiences coaching Pop Warner football with how a professional football coach should behave); and most amusingly that Tom Brady is sneaky because "people who smirk are fairly broadcasting the message, 'I'm hiding something'".

So Lucas, I leave you with this. On the good-evil Colts-Patriots continuum, where do the Packers fall?

CLE at STL: CLE
NYG at MIA: NYG
IND at CAR: IND
DET at CHI: CHI
PIT at CIN: PIT
PHI at MIN: PHI
OAK at TEN: TEN
BUF at NYJ: BUF
JAX at TB: JAX
HOU at SD: SD
NO at SF: SF
WAS at NE: NE
GB at DEN: DEN, sadly