K.C. TD Trumps Even T.O.

And on the ninth Sunday of the 2005 season, perhaps just to prove it could be done, someone did something outrageous and went over the top and pulled off a blatant attention-grabbing ploy that had absolutely nothing to do with Terrell Owens.

More than that, this stunt might have saved a team’s season, rather than leaving it in smoldering shards.

With the league about ready to keel from T.O. OD -- What did T.O. do? What did T.O. say? What will happen to T.O. tomorrow? -- Kansas City Chief Coach Dick Vermeil restored the good name to the concept of going against the grain by forsaking the safe score-tying field goal and going for the touchdown on the last play of regulation against the Oakland Raiders.

In other words, Vermeil did an anti-Schottenheimer. He broke ranks, he threw away the book, he showed some guts, he showed some confidence in his players.

And then he watched Larry Johnson leap over a pile of snorting Raiders and Chiefs and fall into the end zone, carrying the football and a 27-23 Kansas City victory with him.

This probably will not go over well within the fraternity of NFL coaches, who have adopted their own sideline dress code, the one that instructs them to hold on tightly to the big and fancy laminated play-call sheets that tell them what to do and when to do it.

But Vermeil is something of an oddity among NFL coaches. He’s pushing 70, so he doesn’t worry about job security. He often cries after games, which some NFL media types consider strange, even if thousands of Houston Texan and San Francisco 49er and Arizona Cardinal fans do the very same thing.

Vermeil has a different way of looking at things. And when he looked at the situation at the end of Sunday’s game at Arrowhead Stadium, he saw this: Oakland with a three-point lead, Kansas City with the ball on the Raider one-yard line, five seconds on the clock.

Vermeil decided to go for it.

And what, after all, did he have to lose?

Just a football game, one that will be dissected by millions of know-it-alls, to his team’s oldest and most hated rival.

Johnson scored on a play the Chiefs call “20-blast.” It’s a play that propelled the Chiefs to a 5-3 record at the season’s midway mark, a play that could be remembered as the turning point in the team’s season.

The Philadelphia Eagles have a play like that. It’s called “81-blast-everybody” and it also should be remembered as the play that turned the Eagles’ season.

By the time Owens finished insulting Donovan McNabb and whining about the Eagles’ publicity staff and reportedly exchanging punches with former Eagle Hugh Douglas this week, Philadelphia’s big-play pass-catcher had been suspended indefinitely, along, most likely, with the Eagles’ playoff chances.

With Owens out of the lineup, the Eagles managed only 10 points against a Washington defense that yielded 36 to the New York Giants the week before. The Redskins won, 17-10, leaving the Eagles 1-3 in their last four games -- the victory coming by way of a blocked field-goal try against the San Diego Chargers.

Philadelphia is 4-4 -- and in last place in the NFC East -- after the first half of the 2005 season. Philadelphia’s full-season records since 2001 read: 12-4 in 2002, 12-4 in 2003, 13-3 in 2004.

That was hardly where anyone expected the Eagles to be, even if acknowledging that any team signing Owens assumes an understood time-release implosion risk.

Other prominent first-half surprises include:

* The Chicago Bears leading the NFC North with a rookie quarterback, Kyle Orton, and a rookie kicker, Robbie Gould.

* The Bears leading the NFC North with a winning record. They said it couldn’t be done, but there the Bears are, 5-3 after Gould’s late decisive field goal in a 20-17 victory over New Orleans.

* The Green Bay Packers tied for the worst record in the league despite having outscored their first eight opponents, 168-159. The Packers dropped to 1-7, same as the Texans, with a 20-10 home defeat to a Pittsburgh Steeler team quarterbacked by Charlie Batch, who last started an NFL game Dec. 2, 2001.

* The Cincinnati Bengals leading the AFC North standings with a 7-2 record, tying them for most victories in the league with the Indianapolis Colts, who will try to improve to 8-0 tonight against New England. The Bengals won No. 7 on the road, 21-9, over the Baltimore Ravens, who relied on the kind of quarterbacking rotation most commonly found in Cincinnati over the previous decade and a half: Anthony Wright, followed by Kordell Stewart.

* The 49ers starting four quarterbacks, including Cody Pickett on Sunday, in their last five games. Not so surprisingly, the 49ers lost for the sixth time in eight games, 24-6, to the Giants.

* The Giants assuming sole possession of first place in the NFC East at 6-2 after Eli Manning’s first road victory as an NFL starting quarterback and all sorts of pundits proclaiming the Giants as the team most likely to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl.

The Giants’ chief competition in the NFC figures to come from the Carolina Panthers, a strong-closing team that improved to 6-2 with a 34-14 victory over Tampa Bay, and the Atlanta Falcons, who made sure one Vick had some success against Miami this weekend. Michael Vick passed for a season-high 228 yards in a 17-10 triumph over the Dolphins, leaving Atlanta tied with Carolina in the NFC South at 6-2.

In the AFC, the undefeated Colts will spend the second half trying to protect precious playoff home-field advantage, with Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, New England, Denver, Kansas City, San Diego and Jacksonville trying to devise a way to win in the RCA Dome in January, if and when.

Very likely, it will require bold and decisive action.

And, yes, that is actually possible in today’s NFL, as an old coach named Vermeil reminded all the youngsters Sunday.

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Triple threats

The four players since 1970 with at least two touchdowns rushing, receiving and passing in one season. LaDainian Tomlinson, above, ran for three touchdowns and caught a touchdown pass against the New York Jets on Sunday (Tomlinson statistics through nine games):

*--* Player Team Year Rush Rec. Pass Marcus Allen L.A. Raiders 1983 9 2 3 Walter Payton Chicago 1983 6 2 3 Craig James New England 1985 5 2 2 LaDainian Tomlinson San Diego 2005 13 2 3

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