It's amazing that two teams that were unbeatable over the first two weeks of the season were thoroughly confounded Sunday by a couple of old football tricks.
The Steelers and their big, bad offensive line got abused by an Eagles blitz package that was far less exotic than it was effective sacking Ben Roethlisberger eight time and backup Byron Leftwich once.
This is a Steelers team that prides itself in not getting out-schemed, yet even after halftime it had no answer for an Eagles defense that had given up 41 points to the Cowboys six dayes earlier yet all but threw a shutout at the Steelers in a 15-6 win at Lincoln Financial Field.
The scene at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., was even more bizarre. There, self-professed football historian Bill Belichick saw his Patriots defense baffled not once but four times for touchdowns resulting from direct snaps by the the Dolphins' so-called "Wildcat" offense as the Patriots' regular-season win streak ended in a stunning 38-13 loss to the previously winless Fish.
Didn't Belichick run the Single Wing in Cleveland, after all?
-- In the shockingly predictable news bulletin department, the San Jose Mercury News is reporting that the Raiders are about to fire coach Lane Kiffin, whose team blew a pair of nine-point second half leads in a 24-23 loss to the Bills on Sunday.
-- After three weeks, the NFC is 8-0 against teams from other divisions. Its only losses are by the Eagles to the Cowboys and the Redskins to the Giants.
-- John Dudley