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Tuesday morning NFL notebook

By TheDarkHorse

Rivers fits in San Diego as well as Eli Manning ever would have. (Source: Splog.com)

¶ Chargers wide receiver Patrick Crayton dislocated his left wrist in the team’s 35-14 win over the Denver Broncos on Monday night and could miss two weeks, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune. Crayton, who had three catches for 105 yards and a touchdown, benefited from the return of wideout Malcolm Floyd, who re-tweeked his hamstring, according to the newspaper. Crayton’s set for an MRI today. None of this is good news for the Chargers, trying to distance themselves from the pack in the AFC West with an irritated Colts team on tap Sunday night.

¶ NFL.com’s Adam Rank journeys to the dark side of Philip Rivers’ titanic season — namely, your fantasy team, clinging to a lead heading into Monday, only to watch Rivers carve you up like Thursday’s bird. Rank feels your pain, fantasy owners:

“One week you are Mike Eruzione celebrating the ‘Miracle on Ice’ during the opening credits of the Wide World of Sports,” Rank writes. “The next week you are that anonymous skier wiping out in a blaze of snowy glory.”

¶ Do you think our grandfathers, who fought in wars across the globe to keep us free, would smile proudly on fantasy football? It’s probably harmless, until I take it one step too far and play fantasy businessman — where I sit on the couch and get points for someone else’s productivity and ingenuity. That, sir, would be going too fa… wait, that’s the stock market — and our ancestors invented that thing. OK, we’re good… continue on.

¶ Heading into Week 12, three Browns quarterbacks have generated three wins and three ankle sprains. Eric Mangini won’t say, but possibly three high-ankle sprains (which is the equivalent of a maternity leave in this league). Colt McCoy played most of the second half against the Jaguars on a sprained left ankle that required an MRI exam Monday. Per usual, Mangenius is quiet about who will start Sunday — and this might be the VERY first time in Cleveland that the decision even matters. On the heels of the battered, laborious Quinn vs. Anderson debates — which resulted in NOTHING, zero — the emergence of McCoy is a revelation for Browns fans used to the team’s Week 16 starter being a guy who started the year as a CVS check-out clerk in central New Jersey. With that said, we might see Jake Delhomme face his old team this weekend.

Speaking of the mess in Carolina, coach John Fox hinted at a potential mistake in allowing Delhomme to leave in the offseason.

“Looking back, sitting here at 1-9, I’m not sure how many moves were right,” Fox said Monday. “And that’s not being critical of anybody other than hindsight is always 20-20. But I know Jake is happy where he is. Sometimes change is good. I don’t believe in looking back.”

Not controversial. Fox is just being real about the quarterback mess in his own backyard — something Delhomme likely couldn’t have improved on. Delhomme’s done very little in Cleveland beyond hold a clipboard and nest in the whirlpool with Big Baby.

Before the season, people talked about Fox “writing his own check” for a new coaching job — almost anywhere he wanted. That’s quieted down, but he’s one of the better coaches in the league, despite this season’s Ho Chi Minh trail-like campaign.

¶ Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt is saying all the right things — and refusing to call his 3-7 team a failure.

“We’ve gone to a Super Bowl,” Whisenhunt Monday, per the team’s official website. “We’ve played six playoff games and won four of them. I’m not going to apologize for that. I’m proud of the fact that we’ve done that. To think that we’re going to do that every year, even though we aspire to do that, that’s tough.”

Not even sure why we’re having this conversation. Nothing in Arizona should surprise us. Semi-decent team replaces Hall-of-Fame-bound quarterback still functioning at a high level with act-before-think Derek Anderson. Sure, he’s got a big arm — and people have clung to both DA’s “potential,” and his sign-a-deal-with-the-devil 2007 Pro Bowl season, but this guy is at the core of why the Cards scare nobody and can’t take control of a terrible NFC West. Anderson has all the tools in Arizona to succeed — everything he claims he never had in Cleveland — and now the Cards are looking very much like last year’s Browns team. You are going nowhere in this league with a below-average, poor-decision-making quarterback who — oh, by the way — can’t stay healthy four games in a row.

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