Notes from the watching of the football:

As a fan of the Steelers, it's very satisfying to see a season start with a game where we meet our new Vinny. I'm jumping the gun here of course, but there are similarities between Mr. Testaverde and Mr. Boller, most notably the insane amount of faith teams first put in him, and the ability to throw an interception that looks like he was actually throwing to the linebacker. It's of course too early to see if the Steelers will own Boller the way we owned Vinny. The big tipoff will be if he's moderately effective for the rest of the year, but then blows it in the last game of the year. That would be the sign that the Steelers will own him like we own Vinny. How do we know that the Steelers own Vinny? I was at the game where they burned his mortgage at halftime.

I got suckered into the Miami-Houston game for cutthroat (Matt, commence your snickering, but the only other games I thought were worth considering were Detoit, which I took, and Carolina, which I still didn't like at all.) I forgot that no matter how many years in the league, Dave Wannstedt's teams will have that one game where you're sitting there going "I can't believe they're losing to these guys." I just didn't figure it would be the first game.

I was wondering during the draft what the Steelers were doing. They omitted one key factor in their draft, they didn't get Offensive Coordinator Mike Mularkey a new toy. Until this morning, I didn't realize they actually had. It came from a statement made during the pregame, that free agent signee tight end Jay Riemersma had taken some snaps in his past at quarterback. Well, that made everything fall into place. As Hannibal Lecter would ask: "What do the Steelers covet, Clarice?" The answer is, former quarterbacks. Well, the traditional joke is that the Steelers promise every year they'll throw to the tight end more. This year, I actually will believe them. In fact, I'd wager that Riemersma will score a TD by throwing it once this year. Mularkey is simply that crazy, in fact, we keep him in a specially designed cell when it's not game day.

Kurt Warner's performance today, 342 yds, 6 Sacks, 4 fumbles, 1 INT, 1 TD, 1 concussion, allows us to do the long awaited linear regression. And now the question you've got to be asking. If you decapitated Kurt Warner, what would his line be? The answer: 220yds, 8 sacks, 4 fumbles (4 lost), 8 quarts of blood (4 lost), 0 INT, 0 TD, and still a better quarterback rating than Randy Fasani.

Finally, I'm actually amazed that the new Titans unis (on parade this evening), actually managed to make their uniforms all of the following: more Rollerball-y, more Slamball-y, and more retro-to-the-Oilers-y. Not an easy trifecta.