The mysterious Peyton Paradox

The Chiefs hung on for their second 17-16 victory this season over a visitor from the Lone Star State -- first the Cowboys, now the Texans.

Sweet No. 2: Trailing 7-3, Indianapolis recovered a fumble on the Denver 11. The first snap following a turnover is a good time for whatever is the best play in the playbook. The Colts lined up with an I-backfield, Reggie Wayne in a slot left and speed merchant Darrius Heyward-Bey wide left. Heyward-Bey came in motion toward Andrew Luck, who play-faked a power rush right. Heyward-Bey spun and sprinted back toward to left, uncovered, to catch a touchdown pass as Wayne, one of the league's best blockers at the wideout position, sealed off pursuit. Sweet.

Later, completing a pass that made it third-and-1 on the Denver 8 with about 20 seconds showing, the Colts rushed to the line. Broncos defenders seemed to assume Luck would spike to stop the clock. But that would have created fourth down, and at any rate, the Colts held a timeout. Broncs should have noted Luck frantically giving signals to his receivers as they rushed to the line: that's not needed for a clock-spike. Coby Fleener ran a flare to the right flat, uncovered, touchdown. Two uncovered receivers for touchdowns in the same half. Tout sweet.

Defensive coordinators will study film of this game, in which the Broncos ran up 33 points but were just 5-of-16 on third down and often seemed discombobulated. Indianapolis used press corners to throw Broncos receivers off their carefully timed routes.

Sweet No. 3: The Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons snapped back to form, gaining 499 yards to win a shootout with the Bears. Contest tied at 31 in the fourth quarter, R*dsk*ns facing second-and-9, Robert Griffin III play-faked, the line call was "max protect" with seven blockers, extra muscle created time for Aldrick Robinson to get deep for a 45-yard touchdown. Sweet. In 2012, Washington opened 3-6, then went 7-0 down the stretch. A similar rebound could be in the cards.

TMQ credits this victory not to Griffin's improving knee, but to the Washington cheer-babes. As weather turns cool, cheerleader professionalism comes into play: the less cheerleaders wear, the better the home team's chances. Kickoff temperature 61 degrees, Washington cheerleaders came out in bikini-beach numbers. Often NFL cheer squads start the game in cheesecake looks, then at halftime, with the warm sun declining behind the stands, switch to track suits. Not the Washington cheer-babes, who at the half changed to a second set of two-piece hot-weather outfits. Outstanding professionalism!

Sour Plays of the Week: At favored Seattle a week ago, Tennessee coach Mike Munchak employed hyperconservative tactics that seemed intended to ensure a close loss rather than go all-out for victory. Hosting favored San Francisco, Munchak set some kind of record for fear of his own shadow.

The Titans punted on fourth-and-4 in San Francisco territory. Trailing by 24 points, the Titans punted on fourth-and-1. Just to prove it was no fluke, still trailing 24 points, the Titans punted on fourth-and-2. Trailing by 24 points in the fourth quarter, the Titans launched a field goal, thus all but assuring defeat -- see the Chase Stuart stat below -- but keeping a shutout off Munchak's coaching record. At the three-minute mark, trailing by two touchdowns when it mattered little whether the Flaming Thumbtacks took risks or started square dancing, then Munchak tried on onside kick. What a riverboat gambler!

Sweet 'N' Sour Play: Game tied, the Lions faced third-and-4 on their 23 with 40 seconds remaining, Cincinnati down to its final timeout. Cincinnati surprised Detroit with a corner blitz. Matt Stafford threw the ball away, stopping the clock. Detroit shanked its punt, and the stopped clock left Cincinnati enough time to kick the winning field goal as the scoreboard clock hit all-naughts. Sweet.

When Stafford was chased from the pocket by the blitzing corner, he should have allowed himself to be sacked. That would have forced Cincinnati to spend its final timeout, and probably led to overtime. By throwing the ball away to prevent a sack -- which didn't help Detroit in field-position terms -- Stafford left Cincinnati time to reply. Sour.

Wacky Wines of the Week: The Wine Spectator's upcoming New York Wine Experience is sold out despite an admission fee of $250 nightly, and for that, one cannot enter until an hour after the A-list crowd flounces past the velvet rope. A weekend package with meals and wine-world celebrities is sold out at $1,875 per head. Photographs from last year's event depict an absolute mob scene -- an NFL game seems sedate, and affordable, by comparison. We live in a world where thousands of people have the wherewithal to travel long distances to pay premium prices to be uncomfortable while tasting wines.

Among these wine aficionados, will there be even one who could tell a merlot from a malbec in a true blind test? Tell a $75 bottle of Shafer Relentless (this year's in-the-know red) from a $12 Columbia Crest? Wine is among life's delights, and if the mystique of wine-making brings happiness, then customers get their money's worth. But TMQ continues to believe the overwhelming majority of oenophiles and wine critics would do no better on a true blind test than the people who swore they could tell Old Coke from New Coke.

In the run-up to the Wine Spectator event, a New York Times panel led by a "tasting coordinator" found all wines to be at least three-star. Everybody's above average! One vintage is "vivacious and pure," another "subtly complex" with "creamy texture" (wine?), another has "red fruit aromas" while another is "crunchy" (wine?), another "slow to open up" yet "deep." One exhibits "lingering aromas of flowers and rocks." These terms are said to signify tasting conventions -- for example, "flowers" means a set of sensations on the tongue, not whatever an actual flower would taste like. Still, I would not want the aroma of rocks lingering in my mouth.

Tuesday Morning Quarterback continues to propose a reverse palate test. Anyone can swirl a wine around and pronounce it subtly complex. I want a tasting coordinator to place 10 wines before a panel and say, "One of these is vivacious and pure. Identify it."

The Football Gods Chortled: Adjusting for sacks and scrambles, Washington State coaches called 93 passing plays and 8 rushes at Oregon. Ducks defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti had the temerity to complain that the Cougars kept trying to score after the outcome was ordained because "they want stats." This from a school that averages 58 points per game and often stays with hurry-up tactics after the outcome is ordained. Oregon kept its starters on the field, playing for stats, when ahead 48-24 in the fourth quarter.

Aliotti later apologized, which is the proper thing to do. But his comments were the first indication there is an underside to the Ducks of 2013. University of Oregon football went down a notch in this columnist's estimation and now is on the watch list for punishment by the football gods.

New Books: The word average in the above paragraph caused me to think of the brilliant and unsettling new book "Average Is Over," by economist Tyler Cowen. The thesis is that trends in education and economics are splitting the nation into a well-off privileged class and a struggling downtrodden class, with no room between for the average. Let's hope Cowen's thesis is wrong. Since there is a disturbing chance he will be proven right, this book is a must-read.

"Average Is Over" caused me to reflect that two decades ago, Mickey Kaus wrote in a prescient book called "The End of Equality" that the more open and fair the United States becomes, the less equal it will be. If society is rigged to favor any one particular group, others have a grievance; if society is completely open to anyone willing to work hard in school, then the result will be fair but highly unequal, and those who don't try won't have much claim on those who succeed. Kaus' warning is amplified and given new weight by the evidence Cowen presents.

Column housekeeping note: If you are wondering, "Didn't he mention Mickey Kaus last week?" the answer is yes. The beauty of Tuesday Morning Quarterback is that I don't have to explain that kind of thing. I also mentioned the Martin Luther College football team for two weeks running -- hmmm, and just made it three weeks running.

Another new book to watch for is "Their Life's Work" by Gary Pomerantz, a well-done and richly detailed look at the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers' four-peat. Anyone who follows Pittsburgh sports needs this book. Plus, reading it will keep your mind off this Steelers season.

You Will Be Assimilated by the Offense, Resistance Is Futile: Visiting Houston, BYU gained 681 yards, recorded a hard-to-believe 41 first downs and needed a closing-seconds interception to eke out a one-point victory.

Headlines from the Future: Headline from the year 2013: "SKULL DISCOVERY SHEDS LIGHT ON HUMAN SPECIES." Headline from the year 3013: "SKULL DISCOVERY SHOWS PRIMITIVE HUMANS HIT HEADS IN RITUAL GAME."

Here is the news story from the future:

Oct. 22, 3013 (New Johannesburg, Martian Federation) -- Anthropologists at New Johannesburg University said today they have discovered a skull that proves the controversial thesis that primitive humans engaged in a combat sport called football.

"The skull is in good condition and was found with a Riddell VSR4 still on," said Dr. Claudia Abdul-Wasserstein-Singh, leader of the research team. "The helmet bears a faded image that appears to be some sort of flaming thumbtack, which must have symbolized power to the ancients. This is proof that football is not just a legend, it was real."

She added, "The skeleton was found clutching a drink bucket that was used in some kind of anointing ritual."

Historical research on Earth has been prohibited since the late 21st century, when the planet's surviving population fled to Mars to escape a zombie plague that was accidentally created by the special-effects department of a Hollywood studio. Rockets began departing in 2093, just as United States Congress finally agreed on a debt-reduction plan. The project to trigger global warming on Mars worked perfectly, since by then humanity was very experienced at causing climate change.

Abdul-Wasserstein-Singh's expedition was among the first allowed to return to Earth since a robotic device called a "Wall-E" completed the zombie cleanup. "We've made many discoveries," she said. "For example, we confirmed that Miley Cyrus was elected president in 2028, running as a conservative Republican. We confirmed that ancient humans never actually spoke to each other, communicating solely through small electronic boxes."

Researchers remain puzzled by ancient adoration of the goddess Ron-Dah. "People would appeal to the goddess by singing, 'Help me, Ron-Dah. Help me, Ron-Dah," Abdul-Wasserstein-Singh said. "Perhaps it had something to do with primitive mating rites -- this was in the era before heterosexuality was banned. We have yet to find a definitive icon of the goddess Ron-Dah."

Buck-Buck-Brawkkkkkk: Trailing favored Atlanta, weasel coach Greg Schiano had the Buccaneers punt on fourth-and-1 from midfield. Maybe there's a reason City of Tampa is winless. (At one point, the Buccaneers faced first-and-goal on the 30.) Visiting Indianapolis, twice Denver punted on fourth-and-1, despite having the league's best offense. The Broncos' pass-wacky tactics can be better on third-and-long than on short-yardage downs -- something else that needs to be corrected before the postseason.

Because Atlanta, like Denver, uses last-second audibles and like Denver struggles to run the ball, Falcons coaches need to modify Matt Ryan's calls so that offensive linemen have several seconds to adjust their heads from pass-blocking to drive-blocking.

Invisible Hand Can't Make Up Its Invisible Mind: Last week, the Nobel in economics was shared by University of Chicago professors Eugene Fama and Lars Hansen and Yale professor Robert Shiller. Hansen's research is grounded in mathematic models; Fama and Shiller are involved in public-policy aspects of economics. More than one pundit noted the Nobel seemed to contradict itself, as Fama backs the rational-actor premise that economic behavior is logical, while Shiller thinks markets often are swayed by fads, emotion or lack of basic information. The list of Nobel laureates in economics contains many thinkers with opposing views. Edmund Phelps (2006) and Joseph Stiglitz (2001), for instance, are not exactly peas in a pod.

The sort of rational-markets concepts backed by Fama, or by 1997 winner Myron Scholes, is often misunderstood as meaning, "Because markets are rational, therefore everything is great." A market can be efficient yet have all kinds of problems, including nosedives, as nearly all financial and real-property markets experienced in 2008. Efficient in this sense simply means that most buyers and sellers are doing a reasonably good job of establishing prices based on what is known at the time. In an efficient market, there will still be errors and nasty surprises.

A friend with economic chops puts it this way: "Fama would agree with TMQ: All Predictions Wrong Or Your Money Back. His view is that anything you know today about how the market will behave tomorrow will already be impounded in the price. Only the unexpected leads to real change, and as the unexpected is, well, unexpected, this means stock price changes cannot be predicted."

Bear in mind, Wall Street prices are not a barometer of the overall economy, or even necessarily measures of how specific companies are doing. Stock prices mainly reflect investors' guesses about what stock prices themselves are going to do. Fama would object to a pundit who said, "Economic forecasts are strong, so stock prices will rise in coming months." He'd say stock prices already incorporate the economic forecasts -- if the market does later rise, that would be caused by some new force, such as an invention or political development.

Shiller focuses on real estate, where behavioral economics is important. Someone who purchases equities for retirement saving is unlikely to have any emotional connection to the companies issuing the stocks. Most who buy homes or condos live in them, which adds feelings about towns, neighborhoods, schools and other subjective matters. When home prices in an area rise or fall for a couple of years straight, too many people seem to reason, "Prices have been rising/falling, that means prices will keep rising/falling!"

The Yale economist gained much of his stature by warning, in early 2005, that a housing bubble soon would burst; that happened in 2006. Shiller was concerned because the index he devised with economist Karl Case began rising in 2002 on a curve that seemed unsustainable. The Case-Shiller Index peaked at a delightfully hyperspecific 206.52 in July 2006, then plummeted to 134.07 in March 2012, suggesting a loss of about a third in national housing value.

Were super-sophisticated Nobel-class econometrics required to see what was coming? A subscription to The Washington Monthly would have done the trick. In 2004, the Monthly's Benjamin Wallace-Wells cautioned that "home prices are about to plummet, and take the recovery with them." The Washington Monthly is renowned for diligent journalism, and Wallace-Wells, now with New York Magazine, is unusually good at what he does. But the 2004 article shows there were sufficient warning signs that banks, policymakers and the Federal Reserve could have acted well before the meltdown of securities based on the gimmick mortgages set in motion the 2008 financial crisis.

Both Shiller's academic work and his media appearances have come to be associated with gloom regarding the housing market, but that's not really right. Since its nadir, the Case-Shiller Index has been rising, now standing at about 163. That suggests the United States housing stock is worth about 20 percent less than before the meltdown -- a negative, but no emergency. Adjusting for inflation, today's houses and condos are more valuable than they were in 2003. If anyone says, "I wish we could go back to the way the housing market was a decade ago," point out that a decade ago, mortgage rates were higher and houses were not worth as much. Shiller's research is not gloomy, rather oriented around cautioning home buyers and sellers, construction firms and policymakers against forgetting that the housing market has long shown cycles of overconfidence.

Here is TMQ's stab at boiling down into everyday advice the work of new Nobel winners Fama and Shiller:

Regarding Wall Street, never try to play the market by jumping in and out of stocks. You don't know what's going to happen to prices because no one knows. Never invest in a stock because you heard a news report that it's shooting up -- by the time you hear, the information that caused the rise has already been incorporated into the price. Do not buy because prices are rising, or sell because prices are falling. Stated another way, don't listen to Jim Cramer. "Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out right now," Cramer said of Wall Street in fall 2008. Anyone who followed this "buy high, sell low" advice lost his or her shirt by cashing out when the Dow was at about 8,000. Five years later, the Cramer time horizon, the Dow was above 15,000.

Regarding retirement savings, diversify by having some in stock funds, some in bond funds and some in Treasurys. Don't jump in and out of the funds as prices move. Most people -- even most well-off people -- should be fine with a plain-vanilla S&P index fund, which reflects the market as a whole and insulates you from the temptation to trade individual stocks.

In real estate, think first of your own housing needs. If the house turns out to be a good investment, that's great, but the priority is finding a house that's right for you at a price you can handle for years to come. Declining housing prices are a problem for anyone who wants to sell, and a huge problem for anyone who must sell. But if you simply wait it out, chances are you will be fine. This is true even if your house is under water -- so long as you don't sell, you take no loss.

"Housing prices are rising, I've got to act fast" is a formula for a mistake unless you are certain you want a specific home or condo and can afford that place regardless of which way the market might move. Don't assume "I can always refinance later to lower my payments." With mortgage rates historically low, there's no chance they will go lower. The fixed-rate mortgage at anything around today's averages is such a great deal -- cheap to begin with, then repaid with future inflated money -- that few buyers should consider anything other than fixed-rate loans.

In all investing, there are no secret formulas for instant wealth. Those stories about people buying old houses and flipping them for quick profits? There are stories about people winning Powerball, too. Those stories about secret stock-market formulas? If some money manager actually possessed a secret investing formula, he would not need clients. Bernard Madoff's whisper of "I have a secret investing formula" was all any person should have needed to know to head for the door. Head for the door if you hear this from anyone seeking your money.

When the Cat's Away, the Mice Will Play: Atlanta's Harry Douglas normally is the third option at wide receiver. With Julio Jones and Roddy White both out with injuries, Douglas had seven receptions for 149 yards.

MSM Piles on GOP: The government shutdown turned out to be a complete waste of everyone's time, and from the Tea Party standpoint was always fated to fail. The hard right lost on ObamaCare in Congress in 2010, lost on ObamaCare in 2012 in a Supreme Court decision written by a Republican appointee, lost on ObamaCare in the 2012 presidential election. ObamaCare may or may not prove wise policy, but it was put before Congress, courts and the national electorate and won fair and square. Only sore losers endlessly demand re-hearing of an issue on which they've already been defeated repeatedly.

That said, there was media gloating. "GOP BACKS DOWN" -- New York Times headline. "EXTORTIONISTS EXTINGUISHED" -- Huffington Post headline. "BOEHNER SIGNALS HE'LL CAVE" -- NPR. The House Republican position wasn't sinister, just bad political strategy. The can has been kicked down the road for only 90 days. Left, right and media need to kiss and make up so the country does not go through this nonsense again.

Yippies, Tea Party Have More in Common Than Meets the Eye: In 1972, radicals took over the Democratic Party. Their cause, opposition to the Vietnam War, might have been just, but their tactics were scorched-earth and led to the landslide Democratic defeat in the 1972 elections. The party went haywire internally, as candidates had to cater to vocal extremists who represented only a small fraction of voters. It took 20 years, 'til the 1992 victory by centrist Democratic Bill Clinton, for the Democratic Party to regain its bearings.

In 1994, radicals took over the Republican Party. Their cause, opposition to an ever-expanding entitlement state, might be just, but their tactics are scorched-earth and just led to one of the worst defeats in the annals of Congressional politics. The party has gone haywire internally, as candidates must cater to vocal extremists who represent only a small fraction of voters: If Mitt Romney had not spent so much of his political capital last year catering to extremists, the GOP might have regained the White House. Supposing the 20-year clock observed in Democratic politics also applies to the Republican situation, 2014 will make two decades, and the GOP will move back toward the center.

Stats to Watch: The Broncos finally lost a game but are on a 17-2 streak and this season have outscored opponents 54-19 in the fourth quarter. The Panthers have consecutive wins, with Cam Newton throwing four touchdown passes and no interceptions; the Panthers also have the league's third-ranked defense.

Football IQ Lacking: Leading New England by three points with 2:29 remaining, Jersey/B faced second-and-11 on its 40 and went incompletion, incompletion, punt. This stopped the clock twice; New England scored with 16 seconds remaining to force overtime. TMQ's Law of the Obvious holds: Sometimes, simply running up the middle for no gain is fine.