A difficult night of recapping at the Hawaii household, as in one room I recapped a Tivoed FNIA while the Red Sox’s fall at the hands of the Rays was being relayed to me play by play from another room. I am not a big Boston fan, though someone in the house is, and let’s just say the night ended in tears. That is this week’s excuse in advance if I missed some highlight or another of your favorite team’s game.

Ravens 27, Dolphins 13: After beating both the Patriots and the Chargers, the Dolphins manage to fall to….the Ravens?! What football universe are we living in this year?

Steelers 38, Bengals 10: Big Ben Rothlisberger was impressive this game and Keith Olbermann agrees with my assessment. I watched much of the actual game itself earlier in the day waiting for the Charger game to get electricity (seriously, see below). After the game, in the calmest voice of any coach ever in football, Bengals coach Marvin Lewis said of his teams 0-7 record, “It’s not good”. Ya think?

Bills 23, Chargers 14: According to Dan Patrick three helium balloon went into a power line and knocked out all the power at the stadium in Buffalo, hence delaying the broadcast of the game. Those must have been some big ass balloons! Though somehow FNIA still managed to get the highlights of the game. Suffice to say, Bills - good, Chargers - not so much.

Titans 34, Chiefs 10: Titan Landale White had an 80 yard run and the Chiefs continue to suffer in silence. Brodie Croyle was injured in the game and removed, though Keith thinks the Chiefs are at a point where no one but Croyle’s family would notice.

Panthers 30, Saints 7: Reggie Bush was hurt during the game, and in this game people did notice. From the videotape it appeared that he was injured because he ran without his shoe. Maybe he stepped on something? Whatever he did it requires surgery. Oh, and the Panthers have a guy named Steve Smith who is a ’stud’, but not that kind.

We’ll just take a moment to wish Keith a Happy 40th Anniversary of attending his first ever football game. He tells Dan that is was the Giants against the 49ers, just like…..

Giants 29, 49ers 17: Plaxico Burress blew his one game staying out of trouble streak with both an offense pass interference call and one for unnecessary roughness. Eli Manning has to take Burress aside and remind him, as KO put it, that “Dude, these are the 49ers!”. In other words, don’t bother, they are going to lose anyway.

Rams 34, Cowboys 14: Terrell Owens pinky still hurts, but other than that they have little excuse for their overwhelming loss to the Rams. Well, okay, to be fair they are playing without their quarterback Tony Romo too. The Rams, in their very spiffy looking helmets, put on what DP called “The Greatest Show on Turf”. A little hyperbole on Dan’s part to be sure, but they were good.

Bears 48, Vikings 41: Bob “Stratomatic Master” Costas does this one.

Texans 28, Lions 21: Matt Shaw gets the coveted “en fuego”. DP also throws in an oldie but goody when he says of the Lions , they “have licked the stamp and mailed the season in”. They do stage a small comeback towards the end of the game, but eventually lose it to the Texans.

Raiders 16, Jets 13: I was rooting for the Jets in this game mainly to piss off Al Davis. The two ‘not going anywhere’ teams battled it out right into overtime. Technological difficulties forced Keith to repeat a replay twice, with Dan attempting - somewhat unsuccessfully - to re-add in the humorous side effects. Fun with technology!

Redskins 14, Browns 11: Despite lots of late game mistakes by the Skins, the Browns couldn’t seem to catch a break. There was a really close 54 foot field goal attempt at the end by the Browns that wasn’t good and might have otherwise forced the game into overtime. Even the Redskin coach felt a bit bad for them in the postgame interview.

KO’s teaser for the upcoming Colts game discussion is, “Last week the Colts broke out at home, but then they got some ointment.” Keep your day job Keith.

Packers 34, Colts 14: The Packers clearly do not need Brett Favre on the field to make it happen for them, as new QB Aaron Rodgers has been holding his own. As KO said, the game was “turning into Mr. Rodger’s neighborhood”. Meanwhile Peyton Manning had only a 50% completion rate this game.

Just before departing for the game we learn that Bob Costas considers himself a stratomatic master and that Keith remembers electric football. Back on the old DP show Keith and Dan often discussed those icons of the pre NFL -Madden video game years. I miss the radio Big Show sometimes.

Halftime recap of the games was more of the same, only usually in fast forward, and for some odd reason they left out the Saints-Panthers game.

As for the game itself, it ended with the Bucs beating the Seahawks, 20-10.

Hey, it’s my week to recap this business, isn’t it? I totally knew that and definitely didn’t just come sprinting into the room at five after the hour.

Bob, having bounced back from his brush with death (in the form of a catastrophic chair-topple) is in full punning form, making me wonder: they have all that pre-highlight time on the show, why not have Dan on rim shot duty and have Keith practice his “Hi yo!”s? Seems the best way to use everyone as much as possible, while also providing Bob the Catskills-y backup he deserves! Call me, NBC.

Aaaaaaaaand that’s it for me tonight, as Mr. Olbermann is out with strep throat. Hey, wasn’t it roughly this time last year when his appendix did its “vestigial, my ass” death dance? Anyway. Best wishes for a speedy recovery; I will say that as someone who likes the sound of her own voice, I know how frustrating an ailment strep can be.

I’ll see you next time, everyone. Good Mondays all around.

Before I get to the recap, an apology. I apparently still don’t know how to completely work my TiVo and managed to program F’nIA and the second half of the Steelers-Jags game just fine, but somehow not the half time show. Were all gonna just have to use our imaginations for that portion. Sorry.

Now on to the part I did manage to recap!

Panthers 34, Chiefs 0: As Keith says, fasten your seatbelts, because the Panthers took the Chiefs for a ride. At some point a meaningless record was set and there appeared to be an awful lot of players whose names started with “D”, but otherwise it was a plain and simple blowout of a game.

Bears 34, Lions 7: Dan says that defense was just a rumor for the Lions and Marty Booker catches something that makes Keith shudder in the background.

Falcons 27, Packers 24: Keith calls it “a clash of titans”, though I hardly think Aaron Rodgers qualifies as a titan. Maybe he was being sarcastic? One thing about Rodgers is for sure, he either is a conehead or needs to learn how to take off his hat for post game interviews. Meanwhile in the stands there are people wearing reindeer cheese eating hats. Having lived in Wisconsin myself for a number of years, that actually sorta makes sense.

Giants 44, Seahawks 6: The Giants live up to their name and they did it with Plaxico Burress on a one game suspension. Brandon Jacobs wins this week’s “You can’t stop him, you can only hope to contain him” award from Dan. And Eli Manning looks 12.

Dolphins 17, Chargers 10: Those Dolphins are proving that the Patriot win wasn’t a one game wonder. And Ronnie Brown doesn’t even need a quarterback, carrying 12 snaps. Miami even kept LaDainian Tomlinson to 36 yards which meant he did not surpass O.J. Simpson’s. Though honestly, O.J. has other things to worry about this week.

Titans 13, Ravens 10: The Titans are a tough team. How tough? So tough that they rough up their own players for unnecessary roughness calls. Maybe that is why they are 5 and 0.

Colts 31, Texans 27: The Colts came from 17 down in the last 5 minutes to win the game. According to unofficial NFL historian KO, this is only the second time in history that this has happened. The first time were the Colts in 2003. Now coach Tony Dungy would like to see the last four minutes of this game played the entire game next time. Peyton in the post game interview looks 15. What is it with that family? Oh, and lots of Sage Rosenfels name jokes because this is football and it apparently isn’t enough to make fun of him for blowing the game in other ways.

Redskins 23, Eagles 17: Costas does this one. I am with Keith on this one - why do we still have a team named the Redskins?

Broncos 16, Bucs 13: Did you know that there are Broncos named Ebenezer and Elvis? It is almost enough to make a person watch. The recap anyway. Otherwise a pretty boring game, though possibly not for either Ebeneezer or Elvis.

Cardinals 41, Bills 17: The Bills are back, as KO said, for the first minute and a half. Their quarterback was sacked early on and carted off the field, though thankfully he was fine. This gave KO a chance to slip in a Sarah Palin joke (”I can see Russia”). In the end, nearly everyone but the Cardinals mascot managed a sack.

Cowboys 31, Bengals 22: The Bengals amazingly held their own for most of the game though they ended up losing. Chad Johnson had said before the game that he would kiss TO afterwards and did. I have no idea why he needed to tell (warn?) us of this.

Patriots 30, 49ers 21: Matt Cassell was sacked 5 times but still manged 259 yards, 111 of those going to Randy Moss (including one 66 yarder!). Still, I get the feeling Brady, New England fans, and Cassell wish Brady would come back.

The game that I manged not to record the halftime show to was won by the Steelers over the Jaguars, 26 to 21. Again, sorry about that.