Forget All That Talk of Parity

Clearly, Bill Parcells didn’t like what he had seen. And on the most over-hyped, anticlimactic Sunday the NFL has dispensed since the last Super Bowl, he wasn’t alone.

“I don’t know what I’m expecting,” Parcells told reporters in Philadelphia.

“I excepted more, maybe.”

Parcells was talking about his Dallas Cowboys, 36-10 losers to the Philadelphia Eagles at Lincoln Financial Field, but he could have been discussing Week 14 of the NFL’s 2003 season, a so-called “Showdown Sunday” that was overrun by letdown.

On the marquee: Five games pitting first- and second-place divisional rivals on the first Sunday of December.

Four of those games were decided by an average margin of 21 points.

Dallas at Philadelphia? Matchup of longtime enemies. Rematch for the Eagles with the team that handed them their last loss. Parcells versus Andy Reid. First place in the NFC East at stake.

Philadelphia scores 26 unanswered points in the second half. Game highlight: Cowboy Matt Lehr can’t hit a wide-open Quincy Carter on a center snap, ball bounces out of the end zone for a safety.

Kansas City at Denver? Another pair of hated rivals. Chiefs come in boasting the league’s best record. Chief receiver Eddie Kennison comes in talking trash without a janitor, or defense, on hand for backup.

Denver scores 28 unanswered points in the second half, Chiefs lose for the second time this season, 45-27. Game highlight: Broncos taking a seat, just as Kennison had colorfully promised, only after Clinton Portis’ fifth touchdown of the day.

Cincinnati at Baltimore? Salvage-job Bengals against reclamation-project Anthony Wright. Marvin Lewis against Ray Lewis. Jon Kitna -- Jon Kitna! -- spends much of the pregame week answering questions about his standing in the league MVP race.

New Bengals look suspiciously like old Bengals, turning the ball over five times in a 31-13 loss. Game highlight: Kitna fumbles twice and is intercepted twice.

Miami at New England? Dolphins, generally lousy in December, generally worse than that in the snow, come in reminding everyone to forget about the past, except for maybe their Thanksgiving Day rout of the Cowboys, which was supposed to trumpet a new revolution in the Dave Wannstedt era.

New England kicks a field goal, scores a safety and gets a four-yard interception return from Tedy Bruschi in 28-degree weather en route to a 12-0 victory. Game highlight: It’s so cold, when Dolphin guard Jamie Nails and Patriot linebacker Ted Johnson knock heads in the second half, Nails’ helmet splits straight in half, cracking open like a holiday walnut. Jack Del Rio couldn’t have done it better with his motivational ax.

Only Indianapolis at Tennessee was decided by fewer than a dozen points -- although the Colts led by 16 in the fourth quarter before, in traditional Colt fashion, they frittered away almost all of them.

Steve McNair, adding a sprained left ankle to balance his already sore right calf, rallied the Titans to two late touchdowns and had the tying two-point conversion in his sights before Indianapolis defensive end Dwight Freeney threw up a paw with 1:52 left and tipped away McNair’s pass. By that much, the Colts held on for a 29-27 triumph.

Throw in Seattle at Minnesota NFC North-leading Vikings 34, second-place-in-the-NFC-West Seahawks 7 and six games matching first- and second-place teams were decided by an average margin of 19 points.

Suddenly, a league bogged down by parity -- and proud of it -- was riddled by big-game blowouts.

And none of the lopsided scores could be truly categorized as surprising.

The Cowboys got blown out because behind Parcells’ smoke-and-mirrors and bailing wire, the Cowboys aren’t all that good. That they were once 5-1 with Carter and Troy Hambrick carrying the offensive load is the crux of Parcells’ coach of the year campaign. They are 3-4 in their last seven games, 1-3 in their last four, losing to Miami and Philadelphia by a cumulative 45 points.

For similar reasons, the Bengals should have seen 31-13 coming as soon as they stepped off the team plane. The Bengals haven’t made the playoffs since 1990. They hadn’t played an important game in December in Corey Dillon’s seven-year NFL career. Before Sunday, they had lost their last six trips to Baltimore.

The Bengals did beat the Chiefs, however, a Week 11 upset that helped kindle a month’s worth of Kitnamania. That game amounted to an unmasking of the previously unbeaten Chiefs, who haven’t looked impressive since. After struggling to victories over Oakland (3-10) and San Diego (3-10), Kansas City ventured to Denver wobbling on rapidly fading press clippings, which made Kennison’s victory prediction sound desperate and empty.

The Broncos lost the first meeting with the Chiefs, 24-23, in Kansas City on a punt return by Dante Hall that might have included a clipping infraction or three. Denver had been stewing for payback for two months.

When the chance arrived, Portis kept running until he had 218 yards and a club-record five touchdowns.

With the loss, Kansas City no longer has the league’s best record, or even AFC home-field advantage. New England is 11-2, same as Kansas City, but the Patriots have the better conference record, 8-1 to the Chiefs’ 10-2.

Once 9-0, the Chiefs are 2-2 since. Once 2-2, the Patriots have won their last nine, including a pair of 12-0 decisions during the last month. As the Raiders know, the Patriots are particularly tough in big games played at home in the snow -- and Foxboro was blanketed with more than two feet of snow in advance of the Dolphins’ visit.

Sunday morning editions of the Boston Globe advised fans planning to attend the game to “wear footing that provides good traction.” Evidently, the Dolphins did not read the Sunday Globe. Slipping and sliding all over the snow-covered turf, Ricky Williams managed only 68 yards in 25 carries and the Miami offense netted 134 yards -- averaging but 2.2 yards a play.

Two teams clinched playoff berths in Week 14 -- Philadelphia and New England, which also wrapped up the AFC East title. Denver moved past Miami in the race for the AFC’s last wild card. Indianapolis took a big step toward the AFC South championship, completing a season sweep of Tennessee while taking a one-game lead over the 9-4 Titans.

In the NFC, Minnesota and Philadelphia protected or increased first-place leads while Carolina continues to test how much of its insurmountable NFC South lead is actually surmountable. Once 8-2, the Panthers lost their third game in a row, 20-14 in overtime, to an Atlanta Falcon team aided, finally, by Michael Vick’s first start of the season.

At least it was close. On Settle Down Sunday, the Panthers were among the very few losers who could say that.