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Sunday, October 08, 2000

It has been one year and one month since John Elway stood at midfield in Mile High Stadium and shouted from the mountain tops that Denver's fans were the secret to much of his magic.

Since then, Elway and his magic have disappeared. The Broncos have lost seven of 11 home games.

The Broncos had lost just three home games in Mike Shanahan's first four seasons as their coach.

Nice try

It's a good thing the Chiefs' pathetic attempt to set a single-game, regular-season paid attendance record with an asterisk fell through.

The Chiefs always sell out Arrowhead Stadium, so they tried to sell seats to the baseball field next door, Kauffman Stadium, to set an NFL record. The record was 90,833 set by the Los Angeles Rams in 1958. Only 4,000 people paid the $10 admission to the baseball park, where they watched the game on the big screen and looked like a late-season Royals crowd.

That left the Chiefs about 8,000 short of the record.

Advantage?

The Steelers play the Jets today after New York had off last weekend.

That is thought to be a considerable advantage for the Jets, but the statistics don't reflect that.

Since the NFL started using bye weeks in 1990, teams coming off of bye weeks have a 156-142 record, a meager winning percentage of .523. AFC teams have won just four more games under those circumstances, 77-73.

The Raiders, though, have thrived on the off week lately. They have won five of their past six games the following week.

"There is a lot of psychology going into that game before a bye, how to finish the bye and how you come off the bye," Oakland Coach Jon Gruden said. "To me, those are real tangible things that can tell you about your football team."

After further review

Seattle's Mike Holmgren has pushed the use of instant replay since he became a head coach in 1992.

Oops.

Holmgren was steaming the past week because he did not agree with an instant replay ruling that hurt his Seahawks Monday night. The referee overturned a call that had been a first-down reception by Seattle tight end Christian Fauria.

It was ruled a non-catch.

You live by the instant replay, you die by it.

Ivy League reunion

It's rare when someone from the Ivy League makes an NFL roster. It's rarer still when they meet on the field.

But, if Buffalo defensive end Marcellus Wiley, a Columbia grad, can manage today to sack Miami quarterback Jay Fiedler, a Dartmouth boy, it would be the first time one Ivy Leaguer sacked another in the NFL in 15 years.

The last time that occurred, Buffalo's Joe Dufek of Yale was sacked by Reggie Williams of Dartmouth in 1984.

Who keeps track of these things?

It's a buffalo

Maybe it's a Buffalo-Miami thing. Those two teams hate each other on the same scale as Pittsburgh-Cleveland.

Dolphins linebacker Robert Jones, for example, had this to say about the Bills' mascot:

"It's a buffalo. There's nothing finesse about a buffalo."

There's also nothing finesse about Jones, because he admitted that preparing to play the Bengals last week was less than arduous.

"Now that it's done and over with, I can honestly say I didn't have that much respect for Cincinnati. I do respect Buffalo."

Except, that is, for their mascot.