Ten Things We're Pretty Sure We Think We Think About This Weekend's Football Games

Starting with number 1. Because that's where you start.

1. At no point will Peyton Manning and Tom Brady be on the field of play at the same time. They do not face each other. They face each others' defenses. Unless the NFL's new overtime rules include either an arm wrestling competition between quarterbacks after a quarter of OT or putting both offenses on the field at the same time, they will never play directly against one another. 
2. If you object to San Francisco QB Colin Kaepernick's tattoos because they "make him look like a thug" and that this somehow taints the "purity"of a game predicated on large men regularly slamming into each other with the force of an automobile accident, you are an idiot.  
3. On second thought, NC State probably should have let Russell Wilson finish his career there.
4. But the only people who ever thought Wilson was going to be a stellar baseball player were football fans.
5. Denver is probably going to lose. This is not because Peyton Manning lacks a certain special specialness that can only be magically bestowed by the Super Bowl Pixies, but because Denver's secondary couldn't stop Temple on a good day. If Denver doesn't get to the QB, their defensive backs get carved up like overcooked prime rib at a Golden Corral (which is to say they get relentlessly hacked until they collapse into a bleeding mess). Doubt me? Go watch the second half of last week's game against San Diego. Tom Brady's got a better O-line than Phillip Rivers did. And that's why the Patriots are probably going to win.
6. It has been nearly a decade since the Patriots won a Super Bowl. Just thought I'd throw that out there, Boston fans. Somewhere, Bill Simmons is cradling a Stanley Morgan bobblehead doll and weeping softly as he murmurs "Soon...soon..."
7. Given a choice between wearing a goofy-big helmet that makes him look like Rick Moranis in Spaceballs and being able to remember how to tie his own shoelaces in ten years, I'm pretty sure Wes Welker is making the right call in going with the big anti-concussion helmet.
8. Odds that Quinton Jammer is going to be allowed anywhere near the football field this weekend? Very low.
9. Pete Carroll is a conspiracy-loving loon. He's also a cheating bastich who did the equivalent of inviting USC out to dinner at French Laundry and then sticking them with the NCAA-sanction tab. But should his team and New England win this weekend, God save us from the "former Patriots coach" narrative that will surely swamp everything in its path.
10. Seattle is probably going to win. They have macerated the 49ers their last two times in Seattle, the Niners aren't that good defensively on third down, and one of these days Jim Harbaugh is just going to blow like Thunder in Big Trouble in Little China. Meanwhile, as they say around here, All Russell Wilson Everything.