FanHouse Brian Williams

With attention spans dwindling, we forgo full game-by-game previews to give you the essentials you need to know about every contest this glorious NFL weekend. We call it The Once-Over.

The Early Games

New England (4-2) at Tampa Bay (0-6): Tom Brady threw for six touchdown passes last week, five in one quarter alone. And to be honest, it gets easier for him this week in London against the Bucs. Expect fireworks from the Patriots offense, as Brady is beginning to click with Randy Moss, and he's extremely happy that Wes Welker is back in action.

On defense, the Buccaneers don't have the speed or skill at the cornerback position to defend against Brady and the Patriots' aerial attack. On offense, the Bucs are young and inexperienced -- especially at the quarterback position where Josh Johnson is already looking in the rear-view mirror at competition from Josh Freeman.

Pick: New England

The last thing the Atlanta Falcons wanted on Sunday night was to lose Brian Williams to a season-ending knee injury. But Williams landed funny in the fourth quarter of the Falcons 21-14 victory over Chicago and tore his ACL, forcing Williams to be placed on injured reserve, where he'll miss the rest of the season and require reconstructive surgery. Now, the 18th-ranked Atlanta pass defense must find a new cornerback somewhere on their roster.

"This will be an opportunity for Tye Hill, Chris Owens and Chevis Jackson", said head coach Mike Smith in a press conference Monday. Those three will compete for time in the secondary, playing alongside cornerbacks Brent Grimes and Chris Houston.

Did the injury bug hit your fantasy football team like it was a car windshield moving at 100 MPH? If so, it may be time to do some Damage Control.

Quarterback

• Daunte Culpepper, Lions - Culpepper calls the injury a tweak, others call it a slight hamstring pull. Drew Stanton played the majority of the second half on Sunday and nobody knows who will be the Lions quarterback in Week 7.

• Joe Flacco, Ravens - Flacco was noticeably limping on Sunday after his foot was trampled. He has a bye week this week -- rest will do him good.

• Trent Edwards, Bills - Edwards took a blow to the head on Sunday. The Bills aren't using the word concussion until further tests have been completed.

ATLANTA -- It was one game. They kept saying as much on Sunday inside of the mostly business-like home locker room at the Georgia Dome.

"Yeah, it's one game, so we don't get too hung up on what we just did," said John Abraham, among the Atlanta Falcons defenders who spent the majority of their NFL season opener keeping the Miami Dolphins listless, clueless and scoreless.

It was one game, all right, but this was a scary game for the rest of the league in general and the NFC South in particular.

This week, FanHouse is taking an early look at the top teams heading into 2008 with a BlogPoll decided on by our college hoops bloggers. To help with the team capsules, we've brought in some of the top fan bloggers around the internets to give us insights on their teams.

Today, we have enlisted RBK of the BruceBall Blog to break down the Tennessee Volunteers.

The Tennessee Vols are coming off of back-to-back Sweet Sixteen appearances under Coach Bruce Pearl, and last season's 31 wins were tops in the program's history. Tennessee fans were disappointed in the finish, hoping that the 2007-2008 Volunteers would be the first ever to break through to the Elite Eight. It was not meant to be, and this year's Vols appear to be in somewhat of a transition mode after the loss of three senior guards including the SEC's all-time three-point shot leader, Chris Lofton.

Jacksonville Jaguars defensive back Brian Williams was arrested for drunk driving in 2006, and new information that has come out about the arrest reveals that Williams made profane threats about having sex acts with the arresting officer's wife and daughter, used racial slurs toward the officer, and told the officer he could have sex with Williams' date in exchange for letting him off.

The Jacksonville Times Union reports that it obtained the arresting officer's notes, which had not previously been disclosed, through a public-records request. And they reveal that the officer, wrote, "Almost every other rant was racial. Loud and yelling throughout ride to jail."

Says Williams' lawyer, "it isn't within Brian Williams' makeup to be the one to initiate any racial remarks."

The notes say Williams questioned whether the officer was jealous of his date, and told the officer he could have sex with her if he would not arrest Williams. When the officer asked Williams whether he wanted his date to take the car, Williams replied, "I ain't letting that ho take my car."

The case is back in the news because Williams, who initially pleaded guilty to drunk driving, has withdrawn the plea. He has a pretrial hearing scheduled for Monday.

The Jaguars-Steelers wild-card game won't be remembered for its flawless execution, but it was exciting. The Jags surged to an 18-point second-half lead only to find themselves down one late in the fourth quarter. The play that set up the Steelers' go-ahead touchdown was a fourth-down fade pattern to Hines Ward.

The ball fell incomplete, but Brian Williams, defending on the play, was flagged for pass interference. Let's just say that Williams, along with just about everybody else, questioned the call:



Ultimately, it didn't matter -- Jacksonville won on a last-second field goal -- but calls like this don't do much for fans' confidence in NFL officials. But here's the bigger issue: the Jaguars defense gave up 337 passing yards to Ben Roethlisberger, most of them coming in the second half. Does this mean that we can expect Tom Brady to be the first quarterback in playoff history to throw for 1,000 yards in a game?

The Steelers have some weapons, but the Patriots have Randy Moss, Wes Welker and Dante' Stallworth. And the league MVP. And one more thing: if you think Ward got away with one last week, wait until Moss doesn't get called for offensive pass interference. It won't be hard to miss; he's been doing it all season and I think it's been called once.