The NFL released the complete 2007 schedule yesterday, and every "pundit" on Planet Pigskin is tripping over themselves to highlight the biggest games of the year – as if you need to read NFL.com to know that New England at Indy is a big game that will generate some interest.

 

But not us. We looked at the 2007 schedule and saw a team of dogs so epic that they should be pulling a sled at the Iditarod.

 

If you want to read a bit about the top games of the year, The Sports Network has its list here. And, yes, we will have our own list of top games a little later. But this list is a little more entertaining.

 

If kickoff weekend were a “Peanuts” episode, this is the part where Lucy pulls the ball away just as Charlie Brown’s about to kick it.

 

There is some good news for Matt Millen & Co.: The Raiders were so bad last year that fans back in Detroit may actually root for the Lions on opening day.

 

 

If you had the misery of watching every minute of every Cleveland and Oakland game last year, you saw them combine to score just 34 offensive touchdowns in 32 games. San Diego’s LaDainian Tomlinson scored 31 TDs in 16 games all by his lonesome.

 

 

Here’s the 2007 season checklist for Dolphins fans: New coach. No quarterback. No hope. There’s a very real chance that Houston’s Matt Schaub, he of the six-career-TD-passes Schaubs, will be the biggest offensive star in this Week 5 game that aspires to be a yawner.

 

The true lack of brilliance of this game is that never – ever – in NFL history has “Tampa at Detroit” signified a great game.

 

Since joining the NFL in 1976, the Buccaneers have fielded just nine winning teams. Our friends the Lions have produced eight winning teams over the same period – that’s 17 teams better than .500 in a combined 62 seasons. There's little hope 2007 will be any better.

 

 

We actually looked forward to the Houston-Oakland match-up – back in 1967.

 

If we had feelings, we'd feel bad for Raiders fans. They suffered a real nut-kicker in 2001. They were humiliated in 2002. Their team couldn’t score in an Asian massage parlor in 2006.

 

And here in 2007, they’ve spent the past three months beating up Berkeley kids and stealing their tuition money to pay for season tickets, only to find that their home schedule begins with Detroit, Cleveland, Kansas City and Houston. Al Davis can't die soon enough.

 

 

If Democrats take over the White House in 2008, you’ll be able to abort this game in the third trimester.

 

The We Love Receivers Bowl features the two most habitually inept franchises in NFL history, with a combined nine postseason victories in 164 years of NFL football. Just two of those playoff victories have come since Detroit's 1957 NFL championship. That’s not a misprint, folks: two franchises, two playoff victories since 1957.

 

 

These two NFL jugger-nots have combined to win 52 games over the past five seasons, against 108 losses (.325). To put that into perspective, New England has won 59 regular-season games over the same five years. Indy has won 60.

 

 

Since resurfacing in Cleveland in 1999, the Browns are a spectacular 40-88. That makes them no match for the mighty Cardinals – 41-87 since 1999.

 

 

JaMarcus Russell will be 22 years old when he walks into Lambeau Field with the Raiders in early December. There’s at least a 50-50 chance Brett Favre will have tossed more than 22 INTs by that point in the season. By August, "Favre INTs > Russell's age" will surely be a prop play somewhere in Vegas.

 

 

Someone up there likes us. They really, really like us.

 

We thought the NFL would stick the Fourth Annual Brett Favre Farewell Game in a nationally televised primetime slot. Instead, it’s a 1 p.m. game that, the good Lord willin' and the crick don't rise much, won’t be shown outside Michigan or Wisconsin.

 

For the record, we wrote about the first Brett Favre Farewell game back in November 2004.