NFL Week Three: My Three Wishes

A nice, humble return for Steve Smith

I will yield to no-one in my condemnation of what Smith did. And I entirely approve of his attempts to rehabilitate himself since, particularly his wholehearted apology for his actions. But all of this will be immaterial if Smith returns to the Panthers offense and struts and preens his way through 60 minutes of football. The Panthers have done surprisingly well in spite of the absence of their main strike threat and Smith needs to remember this. He's gone some way to repairing a badly damaged reputation and the worst thing he can do is to show up this weekend and act if he is the only Panther that matters.

QB ratings over 85 for Gus Frerotte, Tyler Thigpen et al

Purely because there's a strange momentum to the NFL this season (yes, already) where the flaky and mercurial starters are going down like ninepins, thus making heroes of their previously unsung heroes. I'm not just thinking of Matt Cassel or Matt Ryan here, but also the likes of JP O'Sullivan who, if he is not exactly setting San Fran alight, is at least putting more of a spark into the place than his predecessors did.

Frerotte has perhaps the easier task in replacing Tavaris Jackson. The Vikings' QB seemed to have lost the courage to pass further than three yards and not even Brad Childress - who has said on many an occasion that he felt the future of the franchise lay with Jackson - was going to tolerate that for long. Last Sunday's display against the Colts, where the Vikings led 15-0, were totally dominant in all phases of the game and then lost because Jackson could not conjure up anything more telling than five field goals, was the final nail in the coffin so far as Childress was concerned. Frerotte, in his second spell in Minnesota, now gets the chance to make the starter's job his own.

For Thigpen the situation is somewhat different. Having begun the season third on the depth chart for one of the NFL's weakest offenses, he now finds himself starting because no-one else has a full set of functioning limbs. It is a big ask. Not only is Thigpen fighting against the general perception that he could't throw his way out of a one way street, he did nothing to dispel that theory during last week's game.

The NFL to go back to backing its officials

Okay, so the Ed Hochuli howler last weekend was horrendous. No NFL official ought to make a mistake like that, no matter who they are. Yet, at the same time, all officials are as human as the players they police. Is there a quarterback in the league who never threw an interception, or a coach who never made the wrong play call? Of course not. We expect our players and coaches to be very good at what they do, but only the officials are expected to be infallible.

All of which makes the conduct of the NFL this week all the more reprehensible. Not one person made the very obvious point which I have made above. Without the respect of the players, officiating in any sport is impossible. This is why, in any other sport, the governing body goes to great lengths to support those who control the field of play, even when they do make heinous mistakes. No matter what you may think of Hochuli, the man was abandoned to his fate by the NFL this week and he was entitled to expect more than that.