Revelation No. 7: Simmons Knows Dick. Not only was his team thoroughly manhandled at home by the Ravens (though Joe Flacco finishing with a QB rating of 10 was an amusing touch) but Bill Simmons missed on all four of his Wild Card picks. Possible cosmic retribution for writing this:

Revelation No. 5: If your team blows a chance to go 19-0 because the opposing QB broke free of a sack while his offensive line was having a “who can commit the most blatant holding penalty” contest, then chucks the ball up for grabs, only to have it caught by a backup wide receiver who’s falling backward and traps the ball off the top of his helmet to keep the drive alive, the only way that sequence can be more gut-wrenching is if that receiver never makes another professional football catch.

Or simply the result of more mundane cluelessness. A divisional rivalry actually compelled me to root for New England to win this game, but in consecutive weeks for the Pats to lose to a team with Bernard Pollard on the roster, then one with David Tyree, is about as sweet a coda for a Pats seasons as, well, almost anything.

As I’m sure you’re heard by now, Giant Snatch-maker David Tyree was on the list of the final cuts made by the Giants. Tyree’s never going to be mistaken for a good player, but he did make a fantastic play that will be with us forever, if for no other reason that Simmons will not stop bitching about how “fluky” it was. Since when do marginal players get to make critical plays in big games? AARON BOONE, YOU-AH A FACKIN FLUKE TOO! BUT NAWT DAVE ROBERTS! HE WAS GOOD ALL ALONG, YOU JUST DIDN’T KNOW IT! WE WILLED HIM TO STEAL THAT BASE!

I think Drew summed up the inherent retardery of this argument nicely: “Jeffrey Maier stealing the ball and gifting the Yankees a home run? That’s a fluky play. A random wideout summoning the strength he never knew he had to trap a ball against his head and keep it there despite getting jacked? That would be the opposite of fluky.”

Jeebus. Your team won three Super Bowls this decade. Quit trying to tarnish the one team who knocked off the Pats in the big game through inane cattiness. Creating the consensus that the Giant Snatch was a “fluky” play allows Simmons to forever bitch that the 2007 Patriots were the greatest team ever, and the only thing that could have derailed them was an act of God.

But it doesn’t end there.

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Since early this season, I’ve tried valiantly to avoid Bill Simmons, he of the puffy jowls, the nasally voice and the inept game predictions. His work this season is an unremitting stream of recycled jokes and ramped up Patriots gloating that is devoid of reason or the faintest whiff of shame. Punter summed it up nicely in a recent e-mail thread, “He’s gone from openly insightful (though somewhat dated) to a fact-bending homer.”

This weekend, I had to spend Saturday night working the cops beat for the paper. This is okay because you get the occasional gem like this one: 6500 BLK, 12TH ST. MALE ATTACKED BY FAMILY DOG WHILE STABBING HIS WIFE. ANIMAL IS ON THE LOOSE IN THE AREA.

But it also involves long stretches of inactivity, with which I must fill with football-related reading. Running through enough of it (or churning up enough masochistic urges) I eventually got to Simmons’ Friday picks column and came upon this stretch of mind-boggling retardery:

(Note: Thank God the NFL doesn’t work like fantasy and San Diego couldn’t steal Chambers away for a measly second-round pick simply because Miami wanted to take a dump on their fans, tank their season and preserve the legacy of the ’72 Dolphins. Because that would suck.)

Put simply, this is the dumbest fucking thing I’ve read all year from any writer. Take a million supermikes writing on a million Etch-A-Sketches for a million years and you wouldn’t come up with anything half as fucking asinine.

Really? We’re supposed to believe a team like the Dolphins, a winless team obviously in need of unloading big money players for value while they still can in advance of overhauling their roster, is dumping their no. 1 receiver for no other reason than to fuck the Pats chances at an unbeaten season? Taking that logic, maybe they might have shipped him to a team that the Pats HAVEN’T ALREADY BEATEN! Why? To protect a 36-year-old record?

We’re also to ignore the fact that Chris Chambers for a second-round pick isn’t actually that lop-sided of a trade?

We may need another bounty.