Just before midnight Sunday, in the midst of a celebratory night with some Indianapolis Colts teammates and several of their friends, 12th-year wideout Reggie Wayne stepped outside of a downtown Indy establishment and lit up a celebratory cigar.

"I'm just out here with the normal folk," Wayne told me toward the end of our 15-minute phone conversation. "You know – my people."

Reggie Wayne heads for the end zone for a 4-yard touchdown reception against the Packers. (AP)Wayne was laughing as he spoke, but I've known him long enough to understand that he seldom says anything entirely in jest. In this case, he had good reason to celebrate the Colts' emotional, dramatic, come-from-behind, 30-27 upset of the Green Bay Packers with the fans of Indianapolis, for they – along with the franchise's sentimental owner and passionate head coach – played a very legitimate role in the five-time Pro Bowl receiver's unexpected return to the rebuilding organization.

What Wayne did Sunday against the Packers was truly astounding: The 33-year-old wonder caught 13 passes for a

Read More »from Morning Rush: Reggie Wayne's career day almost as stunning as his return to rebuilding Colts

The first time Tom Brady started an NFL game, he walked off a winner at Peyton Manning's expense, guiding the previously winless New England Patriots to a 44-13 home upset of the defending AFC East champion Indianapolis Colts.

Peyton Manning talks with Tom Brady when the Colts and Patriots met last year. (Getty)Eleven years and a dozen meetings later, in a vastly superior stadium on that same plot of land in Foxborough, Mass., Brady and Manning will go head-to-head again, each quarterback having staked his claim as the best of his era – or, perhaps, any era.

If Sunday's showdown between the Pats and the Denver Broncos, Manning's new team after 14 seasons in Indy, turns out to be the final clash between these fierce competitors and worthy rivals, let's all give thanks that fate (or, as some call it, the NFL's scheduling formula) has brought them together so frequently.

And if facing off against an equal and opposite force brings out the truest measure of excellence in an all-time great athlete, as it did for Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, then Read More »from Football gods were very kind in delivering us Peyton Manning-Tom Brady rivalry

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The captain of the New Orleans Saints' seemingly sinking ship was the last man out of the visitors' locker room at Lambeau Field last Sunday night, his manner conceding nothing, his head held high.

Packers' C.J. Wilson celebrates after sacking Drew Brees on Sunday. (AP)"Our best is yet to come," Drew Brees insisted as he strode to the team bus outside the stadium, following a 28-27 defeat to the Green Bay Packers that dropped last season's NFC South champions to 0-4. "We're gonna continue to fight and grind, and if we can keep getting better each week and build on this, the wins will start coming."

When you play as masterfully as Brees did in Sunday's setback, a game in which the 12th-year quarterback completed 35 of 54 passes for 446 yards and three touchdowns, it's easy to avoid copping a defeatist attitude.

Indeed, if Brees can perform similarly against his former team, the San Diego Chargers, at the Superdome on Sunday night, the Saints might be able to start a winning streak to save their season.

Even so, a

Read More »from Winless Saints lead group of biggest disappointments in first quarter of NFL season

GREEN BAY, Wis. – The ball flashed free and plummeted to the perfectly groomed grass below, disappearing under a pile of lunging green jerseys – a game-turning turnover to the naked eye and a godsend for the Green Bay Packers.

Players scramble after the fourth-quarter Darren Sproles fumble. (AP)And then, in an almost inconceivable sequel to the "Fail Mary" in Seattle last Monday that cost the Packers a game and spurred the end of the NFL's officiating lockout, that sickening, sinking feeling returned to Titletown: The officials – not the replacements, but the real ones who'd been welcomed onto Lambeau Field Sunday afternoon with a rousing ovation – ruled that New Orleans Saints kick returner Darren Sproles had been down by contact before coughing up the ball at his own 31-yard line with the Pack up by a point and just under seven minutes remaining.

For the second time in six days, the Packers felt they had gotten the shaft in a crucial situation, something the replay shown on the Lambeau scoreboard seemed to confirm. As 70,571 fans howled

Read More »from Reign of error by refs not enough to hold Packers down for a second straight week

SEATTLE – Marshawn Lynch runs like a man who's late for a liver transplant, taking on defenders with a driven defiance that leaves all parties bruised and battered by game's end.

Yet even though Lynch plays football's most disposable position and tends to get caught up in a disproportionate share of gang tackles, the Seattle Seahawks' sixth-year halfback has zero desire for coach Pete Carroll to lighten his load.

Marshawn Lynch picks up tough yardage vs. Packers. (US Presswire)."I gotta earn my paycheck," Lynch said last Monday night as he dined with family and friends following the Seahawks' stunning, controversial and indelible 14-12 victory over the Green Bay Packers at CenturyLink Field. "I want to earn my paycheck. So yeah, give it to me as much as you want – let's go."

With a rookie starting quarterback and a conservative attack designed to take advantage of Seattle's deceptive defensive dominance, Lynch is the man who makes the Seahawks' offense go. With 98 yards on 25 carries against the Packers, Lynch took over the NFC's

Read More »from Seahawks' Marshawn Lynch mum on July arrest; straightforward on the field and in community

Our three-weeks-too-long national nightmare is over, and now that America's most popular sports league will no longer be officiated by men who should have been wearing Ghostface masks, most of us want to scream with joy.

Refs drew heat from Patriots coach Bill Belichick (R) and his counterpart, John Harbaugh (not pictured), Sunday night. (REUTERS)The labor staredown that reached a boiling point last Sunday night and became a bona-fide public relations inferno after Monday night's Fail Mary (not sure who came up with that, but bless his/her soul) in Seattle has finally come to an end. Not since the 1970s have stripes been so universally popular.

In the end, the NFL and its locked-out officials compromised on the major issues, which is what usually happens when high-stakes business disputes get resolved. I'm not so sure the NFL owners would have blinked had last Sunday's games not been so blatantly butchered by the replacement refs – and there's no way this would have been settled so quickly had the Packers-Seahawks ending not joined the annals of outrageous sports injustices.

Put it this way: If you

Read More »from Welcome back refs; it's been too long

SEATTLE – Several hours after the completion of one of the more memorable games in Monday Night Football history, Marshawn Lynch was sitting in a private room in the back of the Metropolitan Grill, celebrating a thrilling, last-second victory with friends and family members over big steaks and fat lobsters.

Then, with the flick of a remote control, Big Brother appeared and left a rancid taste in the Seattle Seahawks halfback's mouth.

Packers Tramon Williams (38), Charles Woodson (21) and safety M.D. Jennings (43) fight for possession. (AP)A waitress pointed the remote at the large mirror on the wall behind Lynch, and it suddenly morphed into an enormous, high-definition television screen. Within seconds, Lynch craned his neck and joined his dining companions in viewing a replay of rookie quarterback Russell Wilson's 24-yard touchdown pass to wideout Golden Tate, giving the Seahawks a 14-12 triumph as time expired and sending 68,218 fans at CenturyLink Field into hysterics.

[Dan Wetzel: Roger Goodell needs to immediately clean up NFL officiating mess]

As Lynch watched

Read More »from Seahawks RB Marshawn Lynch stunned at replay of controversial final play Monday night

The NFL's officiating lockout is now entering its fourth regular-season week, and like most high-stakes disputes about money, the argument comes down to simple math.

On paper, the owners are winning, and that's a major leverage point. Though the outcry and indignation over the substandard performance of the replacement officials has intensified, the games are still being played, and fans are still buying tickets and jerseys and watching on television.

Jim Harbaugh works his magic on official Ken Roan (No. 86) on Sunday. (US Presswire)If you subscribe to the theory that the only bad publicity is an obituary – and that the bottom line is some sort of holy covenant – you undoubtedly believe the owners should tune out the noise and press their advantage until the locked-out officials cave and accept a contract to the NFL's liking.

This may, in fact, be the league's strategy, and it is well within the owners' rights to pursue it. Yet given that I believe in neither of the aforementioned theories as absolute principles, and because part of my role as a

Read More »from NFL must put end to farce with replacement refs