In its preseason preview, TMQ described the Jacksonville Jaguars, which last season posted the best record in the AFC and entered this season as a Super Bowl favorite in many quarters, as "the most bloated, overrated team in the league." Now it turns out that assessment was too generous! Jax is 2-4 and has two straight defeats at home. Stretching back to last season, when the team lost the AFC championship on its own field, Jax is 2-5 in its most recent contests, including three home losses. Sunday night against the Ravens, extremely highly paid Jax players fumbled eight times, and just to prove that as no fluke also tossed three interceptions.

Jax seemed strong last year owing to a candy schedule, but its current skid traces directly to the most disastrous event in team history: the Jaguars' 62-7 victory over Miami in the AFC divisional playoff round last January. After this megawin many Jax players bragged, bragged, bragged about how they were kings of the world. But only one team may brag at only one point in the NFL season—those gentlemen who have just won the Super Bowl obtain the right to say whatever they wish. Anyone else who sings his own praises is disciplined by the football gods. Jax's punishment has now begun.

It's only going to get worse for these paper Jaguars. The team is already a stunning $30 million over the projected 2001 salary cap, having thrown money wildly in order to secure its present, underperforming roster. Jax used numerous contract gimmicks to shift payment of cap charges into the future, as if the bill would never come due. But next winter it will. For instance, bust linebacker Bryce Paup will count $3.6 million against the Jacksonville cap in 2001—even though Paup has already been cut and isn't playing for Jax this year, let alone next. Last winter's roster purges at Buffalo and San Francisco were caused by cap overage of about $12 million per team, which looks like cab fare compared to the Jax situation. To trim $30 million off its payroll, Jax will have to cut so many players it may have trouble filling out a 53-man roster. The coming cap collapse is the hidden reason for persistent rumors that poor-sport coach Tom Coughlin will flee to the Notre Dame head coaching job the instant the NFL season ends, leaving the Jax wreckage for someone else to deal with. Maybe, but why would Notre Dame want a guy who exceeds an unlimited budget, then sets the fine example of screaming insults at the opposing team?

One apparent lesson of the Jax decline: Cut costs on the offensive line. Though Tuesday Morning Quarterback, like all NFL purists, believes offensive line play to be the essence of football success (only QB efficiency matters more), this year the low-paid lines are doing notably better than the high-paid ones. Jax has the NFL's most overpriced OL: Its tackles each hold contracts worth $50 million-plus on paper, yet the team has already surrendered 27 sacks. Buffalo, with the second-most overpriced OL (a $30-million guard, a $26-million tackle, a $13-million center, and a $12-million guard), has given up 22 sacks. Meanwhile the Niners, fielding a who-dat platoon of OLs with nary a megabucks deal among the starters, have surrendered just three sacks. The Giants, who line up with relatively low-paid retreads (three of their OL starters were let go by other teams), have allowed just eight sacks.

Best Plays of the Week: Best No. 1. On the final down of the first half, with the ball at midfield, the P-Men sent in seldom-used quarterback Michael Bishop, who had not thrown a pass all season. Since big-arm QB Drew Bledsoe came out for the play and Bishop has a reputation as a wacky scrambler, the Colts assumed he was sent in to run. Instead Bishop dropped back and threw a standard Hail Mary, which the P-Men's Tony Simmons caught for a touchdown at 00:00, helping propel New England's upset of Indianapolis.

Best No. 2. Oakland's safety Anthony Dorsett blocked the short field-goal attempt by the Niners that would have won the Raiders-San Francisco game in OT. The game looked so over that Niners sideline personnel had practically already left for the locker room. Oakland then won on a Rich Gannon toss to Tim Brown. Dorsett is Tony's son; a journeyman till this year, he now starts for the Raiders and has at last earned the right to pronounce his name dor-SETT instead of DOR-sett. (You Pittsburgh fans will get that one.)

Worst Plays of the Week: Worst No. 1. With the score tied, 30 seconds remaining in regulation, and the ball deep in his own end, Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was chased and, rather than throw the ball away and let the game go to OT, put up a wild heave-ho that traveled toward no player other than senior citizen Darrell Green of the Maryland Indigenous Persons. Green returned the INT to position for the Persons' winning figgie as time expired. At age 40, Green remains the fastest player on the Persons. Fun fact: Green owns a vintage '60s Volkswagen Beetle (the pre-Internet-based color choice model) and says the reason he likes the car is that he can beat it in a 40-yard dash.

Worst No. 2. Two weeks ago, Tampa Bay lost a shocker at home to the New Jersey/B squad when Frequent Fumbler Mike Alstott put the rock on the ground with a minute to go, and then Jets RB Curtis Martin hit a halfback pass for the winning touchdown. Last night in Minneapolis, as Tampa faced fourth and one on its 47 with six minutes left and trailing by four, somehow the thoughts "Alstott" and "halfback pass" merged in the minds of Bucs coaches. They ran the halfback pass for Alstott—career zero for one passing—and he delivered himself a heave-ho in the general direction of, well, maybe he was aiming for Darrell Green. Minnesota took over and marched for the clinching field goal.

Worst No. 3. Against Detroit, three-time MVP Brett Favre threw a pick returned for six in the second quarter, and then in the fourth, with the Pack trailing by a touchdown, threw picks on consecutive plays from scrimmage. To prove these plays were no flukes, Favre also fumbled twice. Ye gods.

Worst No. 4. In the first quarter against the Niners, Oakland lined up in a trick formation with RB Napoleon Kaufman split almost at the sideline. The inexperienced Niners defense, which starts four rookies, left Kaufman completely uncovered—nothing but grasslike substance between him and six. Raiders QB Gannon quick-snapped to get the ball out to Kaufman before the Niners could notice their blunder and react. The short pass arrived on target, and Kaufman dropped it like he'd been thrown a rabid ferret. Just to prove this was no fluke, on the next Raiders possession, Kaufman fumbled a handoff.