Glitch in Bradshaw Formula

He is merely the NFL’s fifth-best quarterback in Terry Bradshaw’s estimation, and sure enough Sunday, in the second half of an important interconference game, he completed only five of nine passes for 73 yards and no scores.

Of course, that was after Peyton Manning passed for 320 yards and five touchdowns in the first half of a 45-31 victory over the Green Bay Packers.

Are there really four active quarterbacks better than Manning, as Bradshaw claimed on Fox’s pregame show Sunday? For two quarters against the Packers, he looked no worse than 1A in the entirety of Colt history, giving fans in Indianapolis too young to remember Johnny Unitas a sample of what the old master was all about.

And no computer graphics were used in the making of this incredible simulation.

Manning had four touchdown passes in the first quarter, putting Brett Favre, No. 2 on Bradshaw’s list, in such an early hole that Favre’s 358 yards and four scoring passes meant Green Bay would lose by only 14 points.

Manning finished with 393 yards passing, completing 28 of 41 attempts for a quarterback rating of 140.9. And how did the others on Bradshaw’s list fare?

* No. 1: Tom Brady. Idle Sunday. Say this for him: He knows how to win. Including the postseason, Brady has won his last 17 starts, including three against Manning’s Colts.

* No. 2: Favre. Strained his hamstring trying to keep up with Manning. Before he hobbled off in the fourth quarter, Favre combined with Manning to throw for 751 yards and nine touchdowns. Not bad. But in the books, it goes down as just one more dome defeat for Favre.

* No. 3: Donovan McNabb. Is Rush Limbaugh watching? McNabb passed for 356 yards and two touchdowns, and ran for a score, and Philadelphia improved to 3-0 with a reality-check, 30-13 rout of the previously unbeaten Detroit Lions. In those three victories, McNabb has completed 70% of his passes for 931 yards, eight touchdowns and no interceptions. Rush? You out there, Rush?

* No. 4: Steve McNair. Shared the league’s most-valuable-player award with Manning last season and, unlike Manning, has been to the Super Bowl. Sunday, however, he was back in the hospital, too frequent a postgame hangout for the Tennessee Target. Before he left the Titans’ 15-12 loss to Jacksonville, McNair completed 16 of 26 passes for 143 yards and an interception.

More about McNair-Manning: McNair’s Titans lost for the first time at home against Jacksonville, which is 3-0 despite averaging fewer than 12 points a game. Fifteen got it done this time. The week before, McNair was beaten by Manning by two touchdowns, 31-17, McNair’s third consecutive loss against Manning.

After Manning, the next three names on Bradshaw’s list won Sunday (No. 9 Chad Pennington and No. 10 Jake Delhomme had the day off), although one of them did so without producing a touchdown and another could have prevailed had his team managed only a field goal.

Michael Vick, No. 7 in your program, No. 7 in the Bradshaw Top 10, had what sounded like half a game in a 6-3 triumph against Arizona. He completed 10 passes for 115 yards. He ran for an additional 68 yards, 58 on one play.

That final score again: Atlanta 6, Arizona 3. Three field goals. Three threes that separated 3-0 from 0-3.

A bizarre bit of math, and an interesting piece of history. The Falcons last started a season 3-0 in 1986. So this is shaping up as the Falcons’ season, right? Not so fast. In 1986, after opening 4-0, Atlanta won one of its next eight games and finished 7-8-1, third in its division. Having quarterbacks named David Archer and Turk Schonert might have had something to do with it.

History hung heavily over Atlanta’s old NFC West rivals, the San Francisco 49ers, who failed to score for the first time in 421 games during a 34-0 loss to Seattle. That streak, 420 consecutive games without being shut out, is a league record. The last team to hold the 49ers scoreless? Atlanta, in a 7-0 victory at Candlestick Park on Oct. 9, 1977.

It has been a rough month for the dynasty formerly known as the 49ers.

Last Sunday, former 49er Jerry Rice failed to catch a pass for the first time in 275 games, a streak that was another NFL record. Now the NFL’s longest scoring streak is gone as well.

Where have you gone, Joe Montana and Roger Craig and Bill Walsh?

You know the answer to that one, Ken Dorsey and Jamal Robertson and Dennis Erickson?

Seahawk quarterback Matt Hasselbeck (Bradshaw’s No. 8) threw for 254 yards and two touchdowns, although he could have taken the day off after Josh Brown’s first-quarter field goal. Shaun Alexander scored three touchdowns for Seattle, and San Francisco’s best hope of salvaging the streak, a 50-yard field-goal attempt by Todd Peterson, plunked off the crossbar and fell limply to the turf, which is the way it’s looking in the NFC West this season.

Has a team ever clinched a division championship in September? With the 49ers and Cardinals appearing hopeless at 0-3, and the St. Louis Rams at 1-2 with still no answer for Mike Martz, the 3-0 Seahawks have the look of a team killing time until its first-round playoff bye.

While waiting for Martz to come up with a reasonable excuse for his last-minute squib kick after taking a three-point lead over New Orleans, we examine the Week 3 production of Bradshaw’s No. 6-rated quarterback, Daunte Culpepper, who passed for 360 yards and two touchdowns during the Minnesota Vikings’ 27-22 triumph over Chicago.

Still waiting on Martz. He’s up, 25-22, with 28 seconds to play. Kick it deep, man! Instead, Martz calls for the squib, the Saints take over at their 42 and two completions later, they’re in position for the tying field goal. One more field goal in overtime and New Orleans wins, 28-25. And that’s why the Rams haven’t won the Super Bowl since Dick Vermeil left town.

Of course, Vermeil has his own issues now, namely a Kansas City Chief team that is 0-3 after a 24-21 loss to Houston. You need a quarterback to win in this league, true. But more important than that, you had better have a defense.