This is the back of His Holiness being interviewed after last night's game. I can't show a picture of the front view, because he's crying, and that's just more than I can deal with on the first day of 2007.

Until the moment pictured above, I was pretty confident he was coming back next season, particularly given how well he played in the Packers' win over the Bears and the vast improvement Green Bay showed this season (finishing at .500 is a pigskin miracle just shy of the one I'm going to discuss below).

Now, I'm not so sure. He was rather emotional if it weren't his last game. I'll share the Evil Empire's brillant Gene Wojciechowski's thoughts, and leave it at that for now.

Let's focus on happier things.














This is what giddy Jets fans look like. I thought that warranted an explanation, given it's not a common sight.

Four months ago I would have bet, at minimum, my house and my brother's dog against the Jets' chances of having a winning record at any point in the season, let alone at the end. The idea that the team, led by its new head coach who is younger than me, would record a double-digit number of victories and make it to the playoffs was beyond ludicrous.

And now, both have happened.

Several months ago, I linked to a story about Chad Pennington's impressive progress recovering from surgery, and commented that I would be impressed when the season was over and he had played in all the games.

Consider me impressed.

Gang Green's win over the Raiders Sunday afternoon, celebrated with champagne in an East Rutherford parking lot on an unseasonably warm final day of 2006, put me in the strange position of rooting for the Broncos to beat the 49ers. As a semi-Browns' fan, it goes against everything I know to ever root for the Broncos. But in this case, Broncos win, the Jets play at Indy next week. Broncos lose, Herm's Chiefs get into the playoffs and the Jets have to go to New England next week.

Thanks to Denver's inability to beat a bad team in almost five quarters of football, Coach Belichick, we'll see you next week.

Speaking of Belichick, he actually did something yesterday I applauded - putting Vinny Testaverde in the game and letting him throw a TD, which extended his record of consecutive seasons with a touchdown pass to 20. The Titans didn't seem so impressed:

"To bring in a 50-year-old guy to throw a little pass, probably the last pass of his career or of his life, I don't know. Whatever."