well, lessee…

Felix is more talented.  He's also notoriously brittle, lackadaisical and inconsistent.  Phil Tanner is somewhat less talented, but dedicated, hard-w*rking and apparently durable.  The Cowboys like Tanner.  They have to keep insisting over and over that they still like Felix as it's pretty obvious from their actions that they're lying and no longer do.  Given a long-term absence of Murray, I think it unlikely Dallas would be satisfied to open next season with Phil Tanner entrenched as their featureback but with their current talent in place I'd give odds on him winding up as lead-dog this year.

In a somewhat similar situation, I give you the Pgh Steelers.  The Steelers have been dressing 5 RBs for games: a FB, new-toy scatback Chris Rainey, and Mendenhall & Redman as RB1&2, thus leaving one slot for Jonathan Dwyer or special-teams-captain Barron Batch.  Dwyer's been sitting.  Last wk, with Mendy and Ike sidelined, Batch was the only back active who could fill an every-down role.  Virtually everyone in the FFB arena seems to have concluded from that situation that, should the top two be unable to go, Batch would be next in line.  I am amazed  that nobody's yet asked Tomlin about it.  When they get around to doing so, I'm certain that he'll indicate Dwyer's still next in line for starter carries.  There has been absolutely no indication otherwise from anyone in the organization.

The RB injuries are really flying under the radar at this point, but it's entirely possible neither will be ready to go.  Should this be confirmed, my money's overwhelmingly on Dwyer over Batch to get the start & the majority of touches.  If you wanna speculate, now would be the time to do so n' avoid the inevitable rush…

thx – not that tough a call, really …all you need to remember is that, contrary to popular ffb opinion, what a tm did last wk is not necessarily what they're gonna do every wk from now on & what they went away from a coupla wks ago they are perfectly capable of going back to and are more likely than not to do so …after that, it's mostly just common sense…

I rarely find myself defending Marvin Lewis but the Steelers inability to defend the pass so far has mostly been the result of their ineffective pass rush n'  that's mostly been because of injuries n' they're getting healthier; they did a pretty good job of shutting down the air attack for most of that game …everybody wants to run on Pgh so bad n' it's so rare that they can that I think Marv just got stars in his eyes when BJGE broke a couple up the middle…

as for Harbaugh, he's got his eyes on the big one & I think he's got the chops to pull that off; he's not limiting his strategy to the current game on the field but planning ahead …the tm he's built reminds me a lot of the early 70s Pgh tms n' he's coaching them a good bit like Noll did …I don't know that I'd trust anybody on that tm in any given gm for ffb purposes, but they're gonna be a bear to face come January…

[Delanie Walker is a monster waiting to happen - remember, ya heard it here first...]