Nothing Makes Sense on Sunday

It was an NFL Sunday unlike any other, an NFL Sunday that shook our fundamental values system to its core.

Given 44 seconds, the ball on the Tampa Bay 13-yard line and four chances to produce a game-winning touchdown, Brett Favre failed.

Given enough time and space for two Hail Mary attempts to beat the Cleveland Browns, Doug Flutie went 0 for 2.

The Philadelphia Eagles, 14-point favorites at home to Arizona, lost by one when they couldn’t stop Jake Plummer from driving 74 yards with 83 seconds to play and no Cardinal timeouts left.

The Tennessee Titans, the NFL’s winningest team in 1999 and 2000, lost again in 2001, dropping to 0-3, leaving them three victories behind the 3-1 Browns.

In Seattle, Trent Dilfer won on a day the Mariners lost.

In San Francisco, George Seifert forgot how to beat the 49ers.

In Oakland, the Raiders were a bobbled onside kick away from being taken into overtime by a team relying on quarterbacks Quincy Carter and Anthony Wright.

Even Old Faithful, Trent (Don’t Call Me Dilfer) Green, shattered long-held perceptions by leading the Kansas City Chiefs, as expected, to a 20-6 defeat in Denver.

In so doing, he threw four interceptions--all of them to a Bronco cornerback named Deltha O’Neal.

Previously, skeptics in Kansas City held that Green couldn’t hit the delta with a football if he were standing at the mouth of the river. Sunday, Green proved the skeptics wrong.

He connected with Deltha so many times, Deltha tied the NFL record for interceptions in a single game. He almost broke the record, Deltha did, but he let historic interception No. 5 slip through his hands in the end zone. It happens. You spend so much time close to Derrick Alexander, bad habits can develop.

Stranger still was Green’s postgame self-analysis: “I felt good with the way I threw.”

Can we get a witness?

“The balls that Trent Green threw, they looked like ducks,” Denver safety Eric Brown testified. “I thought I was in a position to get a couple of them, but it was like Deltha had a magnet on him.”

That one hadn’t dawned on Deltha, who, after the game, still couldn’t believe what he had seen.

“Trent, I don’t know, I was wondering what he was doing,” he said. “I had two of them, and he kept throwing at me.”

(Note to Dick Vermeil: The Chief playbook might need some reworking. In particular, that one line about, “When in doubt, throw to the open man.”)

By the end of the day, the only undefeated team remaining in the league was St. Louis, partly because: a) the Rams weren’t scheduled to play their fourth game until Monday night, and b) the Rams were scheduled to play the Lions Monday night.

If you can’t depend on Ty Detmer, well, who then?

Not Favre, much to the amazed dismay of the Green Bay Packers, now 3-1 after a 14-10 loss at Tampa Bay. Favre had the ball on the Buccaneer 13, first down, 44 seconds on the clock.

What more could the Packers want?

They, along with every person inside Raymond James Stadium and everyone back in Wisconsin, knew the drill. Which is: Touchdown pass on first down, can the Packer defense hold it together for 36 more seconds?

Instead, this is what they got:

First down: Favre hands to Dorsey Levens, who churns up the middle for five yards, wasting valuable seconds.

Second down: Tight end Bubba Franks is flagged for a false start. Ball back to the 13. Favre is pressured, knows he has to get rid of the ball, doesn’t, is sacked.

Third down: With the clock running, Favre forces a hurried pass into the end zone. Ball falls incomplete with eight seconds left.

Fourth down: Favre rolls right, throws into the back of the end zone, into heavy traffic, ball is tipped away, Packers lose.

Similar circumstances confronted Sir Doug Flutie, the Wonder Gnome, in the waning moments in Cleveland. San Diego’s 3-0 Chargers trailed by four with 14 seconds to play and two cracks from the Browns’ 45.

Flash back, as Brown Coach Butch Davis did, to 1984, Boston College versus Miami, and Flutie heaving it up for grabs and BC’s Gerard Phelan hauling it in for a 47-45 upset victory.

Davis, then a Miami assistant coach, was on the losing end of that Hail Mary. Seventeen years later, he flinched as Flutie let it fly again, and again.

On the first attempt, Flutie lofted the ball into the end zone for Curtis Conway. Cleveland safety Percy Ellsworth leaped for the ball, but failed to get a hand on it.

“I didn’t turn around,” Ellsworth said. “I was afraid to turn around.”

Barely, the ball hit the turf just beyond Conway’s reach.

Flutie reloaded and let it fly one final time.

In a gridlocked end zone, a mob of Chargers and Browns go up with the ball. None of them came down with it.

“There wasn’t going to be any Flutie magic today,” Brown cornerback Corey Fuller said. “I wasn’t going to hear about that on SportsCenter.”

Instead, the Browns won, 20-16, to improve to 3-1 and share first place in the AFC Central with Baltimore, a 26-7 winner over Tennessee.

Elsewhere:

* Seifert also fell from the ranks of the undefeated, at least in games against his former team, as his Carolina Panthers finally lost to the 49ers, 24-14, for the first time in five meetings.

* Dilfer moved from urban legend (You don’t really believe that bit about him winning a Super Bowl, do you?) to Seattle folk hero by throwing the Seahawks’ first touchdown pass of 2001 in a 24-15 victory over Jacksonville.

You tell me, what’s more impressive: the Mariners at 116-46 or the Seahawks at 2-2?

* The Cardinals rallied to win at Philadelphia, which occasionally has been known to happen in baseball but never in football. “They’re not as bad as people think they are,” Eagle cornerback Al Harris said of the Cardinals, 21-20 winners at the Vet--and if the Cardinals wanted a slogan for their 2002 season-ticket campaign, they need look no further.

* The Cowboys took the Raiders to the final onside kick before losing, 28-21, which is about as good as it’s going to get for Dallas this season.

* And in Atlanta, Michael Vick was officially welcomed to the league by getting sacked six times, losing the ball twice, in a 31-3 home loss to the Chicago Bears.

“I knew there’d be days like this,” Vick said.

If so, he’s the only one.