Let's just put it this way: We haven’t seen anyone fall off a wagon this badly since the night our own Frankie C. woke up after two-weeks of court-ordered sobriety in a Tijuana prison with a new boyfriend named El Papi and a tattoo across his back that said “Daddy’s Little Girl.”

 

The final scorecard for CHFF appears below. Instead of administering cardio-pigskin-rescusitation to the factless "pundits," as we do week after week with our first-response team, we're the ones who need to dial 911 in the wake of a horrific Halloween weekend.

 

About the only team that came through for us this week was Phillips Exeter in its big 41-19 win over Cushing Academy in gorgeous Exeter, N.H. It's a historic town in the midst of a beautiful last gasp of autumn in northern New England. But when you're relying on uppity Northeastern prep schools to provide the high point of your Halloween football weekend, you've got some issues.

 

And believe you us, we got more issues than National Geographic.

 

Is it time to pile on board the Matt Schaub bandwagon?

 

It is if you’re like us and you put a lot of stock in a quarterback’s average per pass attempt ... or, you know, in touchdown passes

 

Schaub didn’t reinvent the forward pass Sunday in Houston's 31-10 win over Buffalo. In fact, he threw two picks and failed to find the end zone, while star-of-the-day honors went to back-up ball carrier Ryan Moats (23 for 126 with 3 TD).

 

But for the seventh straight week, Schaub marched his Texans up and down the field, shredding defenses in a manner that belies his rep as a second-rate journeyman who nobody sees on the tube outside of Houston. After struggling against the Jets in Week 1, he’s blown the baseline 7.0 YPA mark out of the water each week (remember, 7.0 YPA is the historic average mark for passers ... so, naturally, anything above that is above average): 

Those are Peyton-esque numbers. But Schaub’s performance against the Bills Sunday was probably his most impressive performance of the year in one respect: Buffalo entered the game with a 58.0 Defensive Passer Rating, second in the NFL to New Orleans. The Bills had also surrendered just 5.8 YPA through the air, second in the NFL in this category as well (to Indy). So, even with two picks Sunday, Schaub was gobbling up huge tracts of territory with his aerial attack.

 

He currently leads the league in passing yards (2,342) and TDs (16, tied with BrettFavre) and he’s among the league leaders in YPA (8.3). More importantly, the Texans are 5-3 at the halfway mark and all alone behind the mighty, mighty Colts in second place in the AFC South.

 

If the season ended today, the Texans would be in the playoffs for the first time and Schaub would probably be heading to the Pro Bowl ahead of Tom Brady and Ben Roethlsiberger (or at least he should be ahead of them at this point ... but the Pro Bowl popularity contest doesn't always represent who's more productive in a given year).

 

As you know, teams win when they pass well ... and right now the Texans are winning, and passing, better than any of the predeccesors in their brief history.

 

You know we love passing yards per attempt as an indicator of success. And it's no coincidence that Houston's modest recent success (13-11 since 2008) has a lot to do with theh success of its quarterback.

 

Schaub (1,113 career attempts) is still well short of the minimum 1,500 attempts required for "official" NFL records. But his career average of 7.78 YPA puts him on pace to join the all-time top 10. As it is, he's sandwiched between two of the greatest and most successful quarterbacks in the history of the game.

 

	Player	Attempts	Yards	YPA
1	Otto Graham	1,565	13,499	8.63
2	Sid Luckman	1,744	14,686	8.42
3	Norm Van Brocklin	2,895	23,611	8.16
4	Tony Romo	1,537	12,470	8.11
5	Steve Young	4,149	33,124	7.98
6	Ben Roethlisberger	2,138	17,036	7.97
7	Kurt Warner	3,840	30,505	7.94
8	Ed Brown	1,987	15,600	7.851
9	Bart Starr	3,149	24,718	7.849
10	Matt Schaub	1,113	8,659	7.78
11	Johnny Unitas	5,186	40,239	7.76

 

Now, we're not saying Schaub deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Bart Starr or Johnny Unitas. (Nor does Tony Romo, No. 4 on the list, for that matter).

 

But the truth remains that the NFL is all about the passing game and the Texans are on pace to become the best team in their short franchise history because Schaub has been very, very effective passing the ball, especially with the highly productive Andre Johnson as his battery-mate.

 

As we stated before, if the Texans can field a decent defense one of these days, Schaub appears to have the tools that could lead them to a Super Bowl.

 

Our updated Quality Stats, including the latest Defensive Hog Index, will be out Tuesday, after the Falcons-Saints NFC showdown Monday night.

 

But we took a peak at the indicator Monday morning, in the wake of Sunday's action, because the top of the list includes members of some of Week 8's biggest games (Broncos-Ravens, Dolphins-Jets, Giants-Eagles, Falcons-Saints), and because the DHI has proven such an effective portent of things to come in the playoffs. If your team is high on the Defensive Hog Index, you have to feel pretty good in general (though good feelings are hard to come by in Denver today).

 

 

1. Denver (2nd in rushing YPA, 2nd in forcing Negative Pass Plays, 7th on third downs) – Denver’s D Hogs cling to the No. 1 spot – just barely – after what was easily their worst performance of the year. The Ravens ran the ball often and fairly effectively (35 for 125, 3.6 YPA), while suffering just two Negative Pass Plays on 27 dropbacks (both sacks) – about half the rate the Broncos had forced in their first six games.

 

The Ravens also converted 11 of 18 third downs (61%) against a team that had allowed opponents to convert just 27 percent of their third downs all year – the Broncos tumbled from No. 1 on third-down defense to No. 7 as a result of Baltimore's success against them.  

 

2. Philadelphia (6th in rushing YPA, 1st in forcing Negative Pass Plays, 5th on third downs) – Philly’s Defensive Hogs continue to be the best in football at forcing Negative Pass Plays – Eli Manning Sunday suffered four Negative Pass Plays (2 sacks, 2 INT) in 41 dropbacks, as the Eagles hammered the Giants. The Eagles have forced a Negative Pass Play on 13.7 percent of dropbacks this season.

 

3t. Miami (5th in rushing YPA, 8th in Negative Pass Plays, 6th on third downs) – Miami’s wildcat offense generates all the headlines, but the Defensive Hogs actually rate much higher than the Offensive Hogs (Miami's O-Hogs are 11th after Sunday). Offensively, the Dolphins generate 4.6 yards per attempt on the ground (10th); defensively, Dolphins opponents are held to 3.6 YPA on the ground (5th).

 

The Jets on Sunday pounded away at Miami 40 times on the ground, but produced just 127 yards (3.2 YPA). That’s a great day for Miami ’s D- Hogs: Remember, this same Jets team had ripped off 54 attempts for 316 yards (5.9 YPA) against Oakland just one week ago.

 

3t. New Orleans (13th in rushing YPA, 5th in Negative Pass Plays, 1st on third downs) – The Saints haven’t even played yet – they face the Falcons Monday night – but they’re now the No. 1 defense in the NFL on third downs (opponents convert 30.95% of attempts). The Saints entered Sunday’s action No. 5 in this category, but everyone ahead of them tumbled.

 

5. Baltimore (4th in rushing YPA, 14th in Negative Pass Plays, 4th on third downs) – Baltimore ’s defense has taken a lot of heat this year for a substandard performance by franchise standards. But they still stop the run nearly as well as any team in football. The Ravens held the Broncos to  just 66 yards on 19 rushing attempts (3.5 YPA) in their spectacular 30-7 win on Sunday.

 

BrettFavre once was the Packers. Now he owns the Packers.

 

Naturally, he’s a big reason, as quarterbacks always are, why his team is 7-1 at the halfway mark.

 

But there’s no doubt the ageless wonder has played his best in his two games against his old club. Here’s how Favre has performed in his six other games this year:

Very, very good numbers. But here’s how Favre has performed in his two games against the Packers:

Wow! Favre has been better against the Packers this year than he has been against the rest of the league in every indicator. He also has just three games of three TDs or better this year – two of them against the Packers.

 

But that’s only half the story. Here’s the other half:

 

The Packers defense has OWNED its other opponents this year. Green Bay entered Week 8 with a sterling No. 4 ranking in Defensive Passer Rating (64.7). We just showed you BrettFavre’s amazing numbers against the Packers.

 

But here's how the Green Bay defense has performed against its five other opponents:

Those are shutdown numbers for the Packers. Granted, three of Green Bay's five other opponents are awful (St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland).  But the disparity is amazing: Favre’s passer rating in two games against Green Bay is nearly three times what the Packers have  surrendered against their five other opponents.

 

Minnesota's crazy-eyed defensive end and pass-rushing specialist leads the NFL with 10.5 sacks, a shade ahead of Denver's Elvis Dumervil (10.0).

 

Seven-and-a-half of Allen's total have come against the Packers and Aaron Rodgers, including three Sunday in Minnesota's 38-26 win in Green Bay.

 

Rodgers is easily the most-sacked quarterback in football this year. In fact, according to official statistics provided by Pravda, he's been taken down more often than Stalin statues in the Russian Federation: 31 times in 259 dropbacks (12%).

 

 

You can forgive the rest of the AFC South for figuring they had a shot this year to knock down the Mighty, Mighty Colts a peg or two. As you know, prolific winner Tony Dungy retired, while prolific receiver Marvin Harrison was set upon an iceberg to quietly meet his pro football demise.

 

Instead, the Colts look as good as ever. Two marks leap off the stat sheets this week:

 

One, Peyton Manning passed for 347 yards in Indy's tough 18-14 win over San Francisco Sunday. It was his sixth 300-yard performance in seven games this year. Amazingly, Manning, already on pace to break every passing record known to Trolls, has never produced more than six 300-yard games in a single season. So he'll easily blow past that milestone this year, with nine games still to play.

 

Two, Jim Caldwell is 7-0 in his rookie season as Indy's head coach. He's the first rookie head coach to go 7-0 since Potsy Clark did so with the 1931 Portsmouth Spartans (who became the Detroit Lions in 1934).

 

Potsy, you might remember, popularized the phrase "sit on it" as a teenager in Milwaukee.

 

Clark went 8-0 in 1931, including a pair of shutout wins over the mighty Frankford Yellow Jackets, before suffering his first loss to the Giants. The Spartans ended the season 11-3 and just missed out on the league championship (there was no title game before 1933), to Curly Lambeau's 12-2 Packers -- who captured their third straight championship that year.

 

Tony Romo has had better luck in his short career spreading his man seed among various pop starlets than he has had spreading the football among his receiving corps.

 

In 2007 and 2008, Romo completed 611 passes. But tight end Jason Witten and wide receiver Terrell Owens hauled more than half those, with 327 catches between the two of them in those two seasons.

 

Witten remains his No. 1 guy (37 catches) this year. But with no TO to rely on (or to publicly demand the football), Romo has done a much better job of getting the ball to his full stable of weapons. Miles Austin has generated all the buzz, thanks to his 21.7 YPC average and six TDs, but he's caught just 26 passes this year. Hardly a TO pace at this point in his career.

 

Meanwhile, Sunday's 38-17 beatdown of the Seahawks was a big step in the maturation of Romo in the post TO days. He completed passes to 10 different receivers, virtually every eligible offensive player on the roster.

 

The 38 points for Dallas was the team's greatest output since a 41-37 win over the Eagles in Week 2 of 2008.

 

 

It’s the interview you wanted to hear ever since we put the smack-down on Pete Prisco way back in the fledgling days of the almighty CHFF.

That's right: it's Pete Prisco of CBS Sports vs. the Cold, Hard Football Facts, live and in color.

 

A certain chubby football web site publisher is slated to be on Prisco’s show on Jacksonville sports talk radio 930 AM "The Fox" Tuesday at 6:05 p.m. It's about time he douched-up and took us on.

 

But believe you us: we can out-douche even Prisco. You don't call yourself the King of All Douche Bags without a certain sense of pride in your craft.

 

(Well, on second thought, after seeing this photo from Prisco's web site, it looks like he's gonna be awful hard to out-douche.)

 

• 53 of 107, 49.5%, 643 yards, 6.0 YPA, 3 TD, 6 INT, 54.4 passer rating

• New York’s opponents in the first five weeks – all wins – are today a combined 10-26 (.278).
• New York’s opponents in the last three weeks – all losses – are today a combined 15-5 (.750).

The guys at KissingSuzyKolber posted this picture Sunday, apparently co-opting it from Giants fan site Big Blue View.com.

 

We need to break out our Asser Rating calculator to measure this performance.

 

Rest assured that the CHFF first-response team has not lost its commitment to the welfare of you, the pigskin public, even in the wake of our terrible performance. In fact, we have a safety alert!

 

Twice this year, in games that pitted equality pathetic competitors, we’ve picked scores with safeties obvious in the result.

We figured, with each offense so bad, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to envision a safety. But, mostly, our predictions were in jest, as a sort of protest of the fact that we’d be subjected to such awful football.

 

Turns out, there were in fact safeties in each of those games.

 

Back in Week 5, in a 20-17 win over the Redskins, Carolina scored its first points when Julius Peppers tackled Clinton Portis in the end zone.

 

The Lions notched their first points this weekend when Rams safety James Butler picked off a Matt Stafford pass at the goal line. Typical of one of the worst teams in football, Butler stepped out of the end zone, and then ran backwards into his own end zone, where he was tackled by Detroit running back Kevin Smith. On a real team, he’d lose his job for that kind of blunder. But on the Rams, flush with their first victory since primordial amphibians crawled from the oceans onto land, his blunder probably won't register with the staff.

 

We don’t have the numbers on this – maybe one of the Trolls do, as they so often do – but you would just assume that bad teams suffer a lot more safeties than good teams. We do know this: the two games between bad teams that we expected to produce rare safeties both did.

 

So at least something went right for us this weekend.