BALTIMORE – His has been the uncertain life for so long that after 15 years Charlie Batch simply accepts it. Week after week he practices with the Pittsburgh Steelers, preparing to play quarterback, even though he knows the chance is likely to never come and he will spend the game wearing a cap, carrying a clipboard and celebrating somebody else's touchdowns.

Then he walks back to the locker room, sees the coach – a happy man with a congratulatory hand extended – and he never knows quite what to say.

Great job? For what? Wearing a cap and carrying a clipboard?Mike Tomlin and the Steelers are still in control of a wild-card spot after Sunday's victory. (AP)

So on Sunday night, Charlie Batch wept. He turned away from the last-second field goal that gave the Steelers a 23-20 victory over the Baltimore Ravens, fell into the arms of injured Ben Roethlisberger and sobbed. He cried for the win. He cried for the chance. And he cried because he knows it will go away. But mostly he cried because he didn't want last week to be the final memory the NFL had of Charlie Batch.

Something awful has happened. Something we can't comprehend. A young athlete and a young mother are dead. A football team and two families are devastated. A baby has lost both of her parents before she will ever learn to say their names. And so today we grasp for answers because it's what we do whenever something awful and incomprehensible happens. Like in the death of Jovan Belcher.

This is human nature, after all. We need a cause to make sense of what can't be explained. Why else would a great American success story – a football player who rose from obscurity to a starting job in the NFL – murder his girlfriend? What drove him to do it? What took him to his employer's door and made him shoot himself in front of the men who brought him into professional football?

The Internet filled on Saturday morning with the usual culprits: It must be football. It must be head trauma. It must be the culture of on-field violence carried into real life.

Here is where we need to hit

ASHBURN, Va. – Robert Griffin III should be overwhelmed by now, begging for the playbook to be cut. Instead, the Washington Redskins make it more complex.

Longtime Redskins tight end Chris Cooley realized this in October, just two months after the team released him. He watched at home as the Redskins played the New York Giants and the offense resembled little of the one he learned through training camp.

"I could not have told you one-third of it," Cooley said Wednesday morning. "I couldn't watch a lot of plays and tell you how they got to this.

"And that was just eight weeks in."

Robert Griffin III scrambles away from Cowboys DT Marcus Spears in the second half of last Thursday's victory. (REUTERS)We are getting to a point where Griffin's rookie season is becoming a marvel to which others will be compared. His passer rating of 104.6 is exceeded only by Aaron Rogers, Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. He has thrown eight touchdowns in his past two games while being intercepted only once. The other day, Fox analyst and two-time Super Bowl-winning coach Jimmy Johnson said Griffin is the

NEW ORLEANS – On the night they came for Bobby Hebert they brought a policeman to take him away. Can you believe that? A policeman. And the voice of Louisiana sports looked with shock upon the men from LSU about to eject him from their press box. They were tossing him out? Seriously? The host of the biggest sports talk show in New Orleans, during the biggest moment of the biggest game of the year? And they called a policeman? A policeman? For Bobby Ehh-Bearrrr? They were only throwing him out of their press box, not sending him to Angola, but still. The Cajun Cannon getting tossed?

Bobby Hebert (R) pumps up the crowd at a Madden kickoff event in New Orleans in August 2010 (Getty)The school's sports information official said there had been complaints; that all the cheering Hebert was doing earlier this month for LSU during the Alabama game was a distraction and a direct violation of press box protocol prohibiting such outbursts. The LSU official said other journalists in the box had noticed. "Belligerent," is how one would describe him. And how could they not help but see? When a

HATTIESBURG, Miss. – Behind a desk, in a second-floor office of an old mansion-turned-college alumni center, sits a man some call the greatest punter who ever lived. Ray Guy looks old now. His once boyish face has aged. His eyes droop. A white goatee sags. He is only 62 but his voice is rich and rural in that way of a country grandpa.

Ray Guy's poses next to his College Football Hall of Fame certificate. (Yahoo! Sports)He's got a bad back. "This sucker is wore out and there ain't no parts left." A few years ago he was forced to sell his three Super Bowl rings after declaring bankruptcy. "Something I had to do," he says quietly. "We all have to do something we don't want to do."

These days he works at Southern Mississippi, where he was an All-American, working with former athletes from his alma mater and helping to run the school's athletic fundraising campaign. He loves the job because it puts him in touch with old players. There are old games to remember, stories to tell.

On one wall of his office hangs a giant framed certificate that says he is a member

He was supposed to be a savior when the private jet pulled off the runway at Dulles International. Mike Shanahan stepped off the plane with the Redskins insignia three winters ago and squinted into a late-day sun. Here was the moment that was going to change everything about a franchise quickly becoming the most dysfunctional in the league. The sheer burn of Shanahan's will would make it good again.

Now comes another lost Sunday with FedEx Field having long failed to be any kind of home advantage and the Redskins withering to another loss in front of empty stands. Afterward, Shanahan announced he was giving up on making a go of the postseason. At 3-6 in a conference filled with defenses built for January, he couldn't see anything but a wasteland stretching into the new year. The Redskins are beaten up. They miss their two most dominating defensive players and their most reliable pass catcher. Without defensive linemen Brian Orakpo and Adam Carriker and tight end Fred Davis,

DETROIT – Victory at last came from the right hand of the most eccentric of the San Francisco Giants. Sergio Romo threw one last fastball to Miguel Cabrera and then he jumped and flailed his arms and made all the strange arm twists and jerks that have been the image of these Giants postseason victories. He danced on the mound. He jumped in teammates' arms. He ran around.

None of it seemed to make much sense Sunday night.

Then again what does make sense with the team that has handled each stumble with a shrug and a laugh? When Melky Cabrera, the league's leading hitter, was suspended after testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs, Gregor Blanco helped take the Giants to the playoffs and made several key plays in the World Series. When the pitching staff seemed to fall apart in the first-round series against Cincinnati, they found a way to survive three games on the road and make it to face the St. Louis Cardinals, who they beat by winning three straight.

Sergio Romo reacts after striking out the Tigers' Miguel Cabrera to win the World Series. (AP)Then

DETROIT – The end came much like this series, not with a boom, but with a little fly ball that fell through the 10th inning raindrops and onto the Comerica Park outfield grass for a single that would win the San Francisco Giants the 2012 World Series.

In a series where new heroes come nightly and from a roster of anonymous names, the star would be second baseman Marco Scutaro, whose fly ball fell in front of Detroit Tigers center fielder Austin Jackson. It scored journeyman infielder Ryan Theriot, who slid across home plate for what would be the winning run in a 4-3 victory in Game 4 on Sunday night.

San Francisco's Pablo Sandoval was named the World Series MVP. (AP)And after closer Sergio Romo struck out Miguel Cabrera for the final out, the Giants raced to the center of the infield to celebrate their second World Series championship in three years. It's the franchise's seventh world title.

[More: Pablo Sandoval named World Series MVP]

Pablo Sandoval was voted World Series MVP after batting 8 for 16 in four games, doing most of his damage