The weather outside is frightful (except in Foxboro, apparently)

Two quick comments and a link before I round up the sled dogs and head for Boston . . .

1. I'm not saying I think there's much of a chance the Pats will see their vengeful quest for an unbeaten season end today, but I do worry that the weather could be the great equalizer in this thing. Thomas Jones strikes me as a better bad-weather back than Laurence Maroney, and the absence of Ben Watson could be problematic for both the running and passing games. Where are Snow Bowl superstars Jermaine Wiggins and J.R. Redmond when you need them? (And as I'm writing this, I turn on the TV and there's not a snowflake on the playing field. What the . . . Well, disregard that previous braying nonsense. Ours are going to kill theirs.)

2. The more I think about it, the more I realize the Mitchell Report - and the ensuing press conference by that dead-fish Bud Selig, who might be the only person on earth with negative charisma - was little more than a dog-and-pony show designed to make it appear as if baseball had gotten tough and solved its performance-enhancing drug problem. In truth, though, the report doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know or strongly suspect, and it is curious that there were no star-caliber players revealed whose names hadn't already been associated with PEDs. Baseball spent $20 million - at the minimum - to tell us that Bart Miadich and Adam Riggs juiced, and yet they seem to consider it money well spent. Ask me, the accounting - and accountability - doesn't add up.

As for the link . . . Friend of TATB Tom E. Curran has a thoroughly enjoyable, lighthearted and yet insightful interview with the Grey Hoodied One on NBC. You can tell Belichick gets a kick out of Curran, who takes a quirky approach to trying to get answers from the coach. (From a recent press conference: Curran: "Bill, who was your favorite ball boy when you were with the Browns?" Belichick, smirking: "How long did it take you to come up with that one.") Anyway, check it out. Curran, formerly of the ProJo, is as good as it gets on the national scene, and unlike some of his peers, he doesn't have a barely repressed Brett Favre fetish (that we know of, anyway).