When we last left JetBlue pegboy Peter King, he got a Kindle for Christmas. Oh yes he did! All the Grisham he can handle, in one slim device. What a democracy.

So what about this week? Who is the most ultra-mega-dangerous team in the NFL playoffs? Who will be an Arizona, besides Arizona, which is already itself? Will Peter break his personal best of 18 espresso shots in 3 days? And will he finally get to see “Up In The Air”? Exciting developments, all. That’s for sure. Read on. But FIRST. Another quick travel note… FROM ME!

I was in Philly this weekend. And I stayed at a WESTIN. Oh, yes I did, Peter King. THAT HAPPENED. And they had my room waiting for me. AND there was a coffee maker IN THE ROOM, WITH POUCHES OF STARBUCKS BREW FREE TO ALL. And the shampoo? Not perfumey in the least. Sorry Peter, but I give the Westin a quasi-Ebertesque thumbs up! Now, to the column…

Now that was a weird day. Sad with the devastating knee injury to one of the real poster children for everything that is good about the NFL, Wes Welker.

Indeed, Wes Welker is less a receiver than a beacon of hope to all. He represents not only scrappiness, but the promise of tomorrow. He carries on his shoulders the dreams of little shithead Patriot fans the world over. He is all that is good and pure about this game. Looking into Wes Welker’s eyes is like looking into the eyes of a newborn child, and seeing nothing but the promise of new life, of new discoveries. He is our future. Losing Wes Welker, a possession receiver on a 10-6 team, is akin to South Africa losing Mandela.

Eeriest part of the day: Houston safety Bernard Pollard landing on Welker after he had blown out his ACL and MCL early in Patriots-Texans and fallen to the ground in agony. This was 16 months after Pollard, then with Kansas City, had dove into Tom Brady’s knee, shredding ligaments.

“I heard Wes yell out, the same way I heard Tom yell out,” Pollard told me last night. “It was the same yell. It was terrible. He went down right in front of me. I saw his knee buckle, then I fell on him, and when he went down, I said, ‘Just my luck.’ ”

Yes, what rotten luck YOU have, Bernard Pollard, to be out there on the field when people who are not you crumple to the turf with horrid injuries, while you remain perfectly healthy and capable. Terrible, horrible luck for you. I know how you feel, my son. Just last week, I read in the newspaper about thirty Iranian protesters who were herded into a donkey stable, bound, gagged, and gassed to death. Cannot believe I read about that. JUST MY LUCK!

Steve Smith says a torn ACL and MCL is a minor nuisance.

What are the odds of the same defender being at the epicenter of the temporary demise of two true New England heroes?

I know! And let’s not discount the fact that Wes Welker and Tom Brady are both TRUE New England heroes. One’s a white wide receiver. The other is a QB who bangs hot Brazilian chicks and spends as little time in New England as humanly possible. Move over, Peabody volunteer fire department. BRADY AND WELKER ARE HERE TO SAVE US ALL.

I said on NBC last night that this isn’t going to be Black Monday (black because so many coaches usually lose their jobs on the day after the season), but rather Charcoal Gray Monday …

“Well, there we’re kind of in a grey area.”

“How grey?”

“Charcoal.”

I’ve never seen so many legitimate MVP candidates, by the way.

Peter King for the past four hundred weeks: PEYTON MANNING IS THE CONSENSUS MVP AND I’D BE SHOCKED IF ANYONE ELSE EVEN GOT A VOTE, AS THAT WOULD REEK OF IMPROPRIETY.

This week: I’ve never seen so many legit candidates!

I finished choosing my All-Pro team in the wee hours of the morning, and I have some picks sure to rival my Stewart Bradley middle linebacker choice last year, and sure to make you nail me with some outraged Tweets.

Derek Jeter at free safety? That’s fucked.

Just kidding. But I’m certain he put Welker in there.

/looks at team
/sees Welker

Yep, there he is. Only King doesn’t have him at wideout. He has him at HERO.

I love (Philip) Rivers’ guts…

Agreed, the man has FANTASTIC innards. Quasi-Steve Smithesque. Philip Rivers leads the league in internal organ tissue.

(The Patriots) fill his spot with Julian Edelman, who is a Welker clone

He’s white and will receive a disproportionate amount of affection from a white fanbase?

— the same body type, the same frenetic quickness after the catch. Amazing that the Patriots are going to try to win their fourth Super Bowl in nine years with Edelman playing the part of Welker.

Agreed. I find it AMAZING that a team will try and win a Super Bowl by trying to replace an injured player with another player.

Green Bay’s playing awfully well, but well enough to be a rerun of the Pittsburgh team that ran the table four years ago on the road or the Giants two years later? It’s possible but problematic.

Green Bay is playing really well. But do I expect them to duplicate the feats of two really good teams who pulled off similar runs in two of the past four years, a pattern which suggests that this kind of thing is more than feasible? Let’s just say I have issues with it. I mean, it’s only happened HALF THE TIME! That’s barely ever!

What I like about the Ravens is they’ve won at San Diego this year (Week 2, 31-26), lost narrowly at New England (Week 4, 27-21) and lost even more narrowly to the Colts at home (Week 11, 17-15).

What I like about the Ravens, going into the playoffs, is that they went 1-2 against certain playoff opponents. AND they went 0-2 against the Bengals. Gotta love that.

I said last night on NBC that despite the Browns’ four-game winning streak (longest since Bill Belichick coached the team in the nineties), I think it’s 60-40 that Mangini will get fired. But that’s a legit 40 percent.

It’s a 40 percent chance he’ll stay. BUT THAT FORTY PERCENT IS WAY MORE SUBSTANTIAL OF A PERCENTAGE THAN YOU MIGHT THINK. It’s more of a seventy percent kind of forty percent. It’s a really strong forty percent. Eighty percent of the time, this forty percent gets the job done.

Quote of the Week III

“On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I would say 17, somewhere in that range.”
– Miami coach Tony Sparano last week, on the number of hours his coaches work during the week during the season. Sparano added that he gets into the office at 4 or 4:30 a.m. most days. “And 2:30, 3 a.m. this week,” he said, referring to preparation days for the Steelers game on Sunday.

How is it possible for a man to be that productive working that long, every week?

How is it possible for a man to work 17 hours a day? A day only has what? 13 hours in it? It’s insanity. Back when I started at SI, I only had to work three hours a year. Those were the good old days.

MVP Watch

I don’t like putting five quarterbacks on my final list of the year, but I had to put the five most indispensable guys here … and if I had to put a sixth, I’d likely put Romo ahead of Darrelle Revis and Chris Johnson.

Okay. Well then, why don’t you rename the fucking award the Most Valuable Quarterback award? Quarterback, by its very nature, is a more valuable position than any other on the field. So quit dicking over Chris Johnson, who had THE FUCKING GREATEST SEASON ANY RUNNING BACK HAS EVER HAD, just because he doesn’t have the luck of playing the right position. I know Romo’s played well lately, but it helps when your defense has allowed, you know, zero points in the past two games.

Factoids of the Week That May Interest Only Me

My favorite 2010 scheduling notes:

-There’ll be three Favre Bowls, if he returns to the Vikes: Vikes at Pack, Pack at Vikes, Vikes at Jets. Fireman Ed will be hoarse after that third one.

Oh, only THREE Favre Bowls? Hardly seems adequate. If only there could be a Favre Bowl every week. Then, every Favre grudge match would be that much more special, not unlike a very special episode of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. You know, like the one where Carlton bought a gun. Or the one where we all suddenly realized that Tatyana Ali’s tits had doubled in size.

A cheap travel note. It involves only walking — 25 minutes on New Year’s Day from my apartment in Boston’s South End to Fenway Park.

I DON’T NEED A CAR! I WALKED! I AM PETER KING, BIPED!

But that was the walk each way to the NHL Winter Classic, Bruins versus Flyers, and it was a great day.

Truly, it was…

walk_to_remember

First, the best thing was standing on the field while the teams walked out for warmups. Everybody smiling.

FENWAY PARK LEADS THE NFL IN SMILING.

Tim Thomas, the Bruins’ goalie, smiling. The Bruins coaches smiling. NHL brass smiling. Jon Miller, the NBC exec whose brainchild this great idea was, pulled out his phone and asked me to take a picture of him, smiling, by the side of the rink.

The fans, smiling. Jack Bowers, smiling. Pam Whiteley, smiling. Mitch Puin, smiling. That kid I stole a stray puck from, smiling. If your fantasy league counted smiles this week, you were a HUGE winner.

Tweet of the Week

“Ted Williams he ain’t.”
–@Lucasentric, of Iowa, on Drew Brees sitting in game 16 and winning the all-time single-season accuracy title over Ken Anderson by percentage points (see MVP Watch above). Nine people sent similar Tweets.

ANYONE ELSE IN ANY OTHAH SPART WHO HOLDS A RECAHHHD IS A FACKIN’ PUSSY COMPAY-UHED TO TEDDY BALLGAME! NO ONE DENIES THIS! SHANE LECHLER’S NET PUNTING RECAHHHD WILL NEVAH TOUCH YAZ’S TRIPLE CROWN!

How in the world are we going to get people fired up about the the Jets-Bengals rematch Saturday on NBC?

Well really, that’s YOUR problem now, isn’t it? The fuck do I care?

Keep in mind that Peter said last week that there was no debate that Jets-Bengals was the must see primetime game of this past week. This man, as always, defines consistent.

Sorry. I don’t blame Josh McDaniels for Tony Scheffler saying he can’t wait for the season to end, and for questioning Brandon Marshall’s hamstring injury when the MRI on it showed no damage.

Sorry, folks. I don’t blame Josh McDaniels for shutting down two of his most important offensive players and then watching his team’s season go down into the shitter, in a completely unnecessary power play. Sorry. SORRY. It’s not gonna happen. You know who I blame? BIG OIL.

Every football fan knows there’s been only one 17-0 team, Miami in 1972, and never a team better than that.

Indeed. Never a better team, except for the ’89 Niners, and the ’92 Cowboys, and the ’93 Cowboys, and the ’95 Niners, and the ’98 Broncos, and the ’04 Patriots, and every Steelers title team from the 1970’s, and the ’85 Bears, and the ’91 Redskins. And maybe thirty other teams, including 80% of the league’s teams this year, who, as a result of modern size and strength improvements, would fucking crush the ’72 Dolphins with relative ease.

I think I’ve said it before about Tim Tebow and I’ll say it again: The NFL team that can’t find a spot for Tebow to help it win games is close-minded. I don’t know if he can be an every-down quarterback…

Any NFL team that doesn’t draft Tebow is fucking stupid. Now, I have no idea what position he can play, if any. Can he play QB every down? I don’t know. Can he convert to linebacker? I don’t know. Can he be even a blocking fullback? Not sure. You see, Tebow’s position is like chemistry… YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT HE IS, HE JUST HELPS YOU WIN BALLGAMES.

…but I do know 28 teams passed on Joe Montana through two rounds because he was too small, 31 teams passed on Tom Brady through five rounds because he was just another guy, and Kurt Warner went undrafted and twice went knocking on doors as an unwanted free-agent even after he won a Super Bowl in the NFL.

And all of those QB’s were classic dropback passers in college, which Tebow is not. Ah, but you see, Tebow is going to play a position that hasn’t even been invented yet. Don’t you see? The man was born to be an NFL Jesusback.

Every GM didn’t go to Harvard. Every personnel czar is not Ron Wolf. What I do know is if I ran a team, and I’ve got the 40th pick in the draft, and Tebow’s there, I pick him without hesitation and pass the card in as, “Tim Tebow, football player, Florida.” And I pop the champagne corks.

Not every GM is smart. Not every GM is talented. But what I do know is that if I ran a team, I’d totally pick Tebow without worrying about how to use him. AND THAT MAKES SENSE.

Coffeenerdness: Ordered a triple grande hazelnut latte at NBC Sunday, and what came back was a triple venti skim 180-degree hazelnut latte. Uh, don’t throw that skim crap at me, Starbucks. Not happening.

OH SNAP! YOU JUST GOT SKIMM’D!

OK, I promise. Finally this week we’re going to see “Up in the Air.”

Pinky swear? I won’t be able to rest until I know you’ve seen it and absorbed all its obviousness.