Sunday, November 21 Sorting out the NFC Least By Tom Oates Special to ESPN.com

As the Cowboys celebrated Sunday's surprisingly easy 27-13 victory over the late, great Packers, they couldn't help but remember what had happened to them the previous Monday night.

	Brad Johnson and the Redskins put up 50 points on the Giants in Week 2. The rematch is Sunday.

In a 27-17 loss to the Vikings, the Cowboys' fourth defeat in five games, they had blown a 17-0 lead, seen Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith join Michael Irvin on the sideline with serious injuries and watched themselves fall to third place in the NFC East with a 4-4 record.

"Six days ago we were in that locker room in Minnesota, an emotionally devastated team," Cowboys coach Chan Gailey said.

And now, Gailey didn't need to add, the Cowboys are on top of the world. Or at least the small portion of it that is the NFC East.

Such is life in the NFL's weakest division. One week you're out of the playoff chase, the next week you're leading it.

With seven games to play, the Cowboys, Redskins and Giants are tied for first place in the division with 5-4 records. It might not be good football, but it is a great race.

"Any time you have a share of the lead with the record we have, you feel fortunate to be there," said Gailey, whose team got lucky when the Giants lost to the Colts at home and the Redskins were upset by the lowly Eagles last Sunday.

The three-way tie for the lead is just another indication of how far the NFC East has fallen since 1995. No other NFL division is led by a team just one game over .500. If the NFC East leaders were in the AFC East, they would be tied for fifth place. The division winner could finish at 9-7 for the first time since the NFL went to a 16-game schedule in 1978.

Back when Bill Parcells, Joe Gibbs and Jimmy Johnson were coaching in the NFC East, the formula for winning the division title was universal: Play great defense, run the football and win 12 to 14 games in the regular season, followed by a triumph in the Super Bowl. In the 10 seasons from 1986 to 1995, that happened seven times.

After nine games this season, it is apparent that none of the division's no-longer big three is good enough to make a late-season run and pull away from the other two. The Giants have no offense, the Redskins have no defense and the Cowboys, if their injuries keep mounting, won't have much of either before long.

The NFC East has become a war of attrition. Even in the watered-down NFC, the winner of this three-for-all is likely to be the division's only representative in the playoffs.

The formula for winning the division title has changed, but it's still universal: Just win at home, baby. The ability to win game in the friendly confines will be crucial in a tight playoff race such as this, especially since none of these teams is good enough to do more than spring an occasional upset on the road.

"Home games are important," Gailey said. "You have to take care of your home schedule. It's one of the factors in getting into the playoffs."

In this race, it's a huge factor. If each team wins out at home and loses all of its games on the road, the Cowboys and Redskins would finish 9-7 and the Giants 8-8. Since the Cowboys have already beaten the Redskins twice, they would win the division by virtue of the tiebreaker.

So far this season, the Cowboys are 4-0 at home. In fact, they've won 10 of their last 12 regular-season games at Texas Stadium. The Giants and Redskins each have two losses at home so far this season.

The remaining schedule favors the Cowboys and Redskins, mainly because they have four home games remaining, while the Giants have only three. The Giants also must go on the road for the only remaining matchups among the division's big three: At Washington this Sunday and at Dallas on the final Sunday of the season.

"Anybody can take it," Giants linebacker Jessie Armstead said. "Whatever team wants to make their mind up. ... Right now, it's up for grabs."

Each team has several reasons why it can grab the title, and an equal number of reasons why it can't.

The Redskins are the most talented team of the bunch, but they're experiencing their usual midseason collapse under coach Norv Turner. They started 7-1 in 1996 and 4-2 in 1997 and missed the playoffs both times. This year, they opened up 4-1, but they've lost three of their last four games, including Sunday's six-turnover, 35-28 debacle at Philadelphia.

Despite quarterback Brad Johnson's first rough outing of the season against the Eagles, the Redskins have one of the NFL's most potent offenses. However, the defense is ranked 31st in yards allowed and no team ranked last in the league in defense has ever made it to the playoffs. On Sunday, the 'Skins couldn't protect a 21-10 third-quarter lead against the NFC's worst offense with a rookie quarterback making his first NFL start.

"We should not be in this predicament," Redskins halfback Brian Mitchell said. "A lot of guys have been kind of lackadaisical, not trying to step on anybody's toes. I'm stepping on toes this week. I've got something to say to the coach and to the players."

The Giants defense has given up more than 17 points only twice in nine games, but coach Jim Fassel's offense has been so abysmal he is talking about switching to a spread formation full-time after Sunday's 27-19 loss to the Colts. He might as well, because the Giants simply can't run the ball with their halfback-by-committee approach and a shaky offensive line.

The Giants have only a 2-3 record against opponents with winning records and five of their last seven games are against teams above .500, including all four road games. Worse, many of the remaining opponents are high-scoring teams and the Giants are ill-equipped to win many shootouts.

"We could have distanced ourselves a little bit," Giants defensive end Michael Strahan said. "We've got to take steps forward, and we're side-stepping right now. Winning at home would have been a nice way to start the second half of the season."

Winning at home is the only way the Cowboys are going to end this season in the playoffs because they're 1-4 on the road this season. After Sunday's game at Arizona, four of Dallas' final six games will be at home. By then, Aikman, Smith and guard Larry Allen should all be back from injuries, perhaps giving Dallas a leg up in this slow-motion race to the wire.

"If we can maintain a share of the lead going into the end and can beat the Giants, we can end up winning the division because we've already beaten Washington twice," Gailey said.

That might sound like wishful thinking, but in the NFC East there is no other kind these days.

Arms crisis by the Bay
San Francisco without a quarterback is like Joe Theismann without an opinion.

	Steve Stenstrom Quarterback San Francisco 49ers Profile
	1999 SEASON STATISTICS COMP ATT YDS TD INT RAT 27 51 224 0 2 48.2

It hasn't happened often in the last 20 years.

But not only are the 49ers lacking a quarterback of the present, they're shy a quarterback of the future, too.

That's the realization Bill Walsh and Co. have come to after watching Jeff Garcia and Steve Stenstrom lead -- and we use that term loosely -- the 49ers to a 1-5 record in the absence of 37-year-old Steve Young.

Walsh, the team's general manager, this week made his strongest declaration yet that Young, who hasn't played since suffering another concussion against Arizona in Week 3, will never play again. That would end a 20-year run in which the team was quarterbacked by Joe Montana or Young, one a Hall of Famer, the other destined for Canton.

Garcia, a former MVP of the Canadian Football League, was hand-picked by Walsh to replace Young but he has been error-prone and inaccurate. Stenstrom, who played for Walsh at Stanford, knows the offense but lacks the talent to be anything more than a backup. Garcia was benched in favor of Stenstrom last Sunday at New Orleans, but the offense went a third consecutive game without scoring a touchdown.

And so the search for the successor to Montana and Young is on.

"We're looking at all of our options for this year and next year," Walsh said.

The 49ers had serious talks with 38-year-old Jeff Hostetler, but that was more for next year than next week. Family obligations will tie up Hostetler for three weeks, so it is likely the 49ers will bring him next year to provide a one- or two-year bridge to their quarterback of the future, whoever that is.

"We're not ruling out the possibility of him playing for the 49ers in the future," Walsh said. "The reasoning would be ... let's just say we draft a quarterback early, and he's not ready to play, then a Hostetler in the meantime might be the alternative. And it's wouldn't be a bad alternative. On the other hand, maybe Garcia or Steve Stenstrom is. We'll just have to let it play out."

Even then, the 49ers' options might be limited. The draft is thin in quarterbacks and the free-agent market is expected to be weak. In this era of severe quarterback shortages, it isn't likely any team will be willing to trade a good one, either.

With a 3-6 record, the 49ers are looking to draft somewhere around 10th, their best pick in years. But there are only two college quarterbacks worthy of being drafted in the first round -- Louisville's Chris Redman and Marshall's Chad Pennington -- and both might be gone by then. Since both are pocket passers, neither is a perfect fit for the 49ers offense anyway.

It's possible that some well-paid quarterback who doesn't have a future as a starter with his current team will be available in a trade. San Diego's Ryan Leaf, Chicago's Shane Matthews, Buffalo's Rob Johnson, St. Louis' Trent Green and Detroit's Gus Frerotte could all fit into that category. Whether they'd fit under the 49ers' maxed-out salary cap is another issue.

	Jason Hanson Kicker Detroit Lions Profile
	1999 SEASON STATISTICS FG PAT PTS LNG 16/18 15/16 63 51

Completely missing the point
Lions coach Bobby Ross and his critics among the media and fans are going to have to agree to disagree on whether his decision to eschew an extra point and go for a two-point conversion late in a 23-19 road loss to the Cardinals was the right move.

Given several opportunities to win the game, Ross won't admit to making a mistake even though the previous 78 coaches faced with a similar situation since the advent of the two-point conversion had opted for the kick.

Ross went for two points after Terry Fair's 35-yard fumble return for a touchdown had pulled the Lions within four points with 5:26 remaining. An extra-point kick would have put the Lions within a field goal of the Cardinals, but Ross followed the old sports adage that you play for a win on the road and a tie at home. Therefore, he chose to go for two and try to win the game with a field goal.

The plan began to unravel when the two-point conversion try was stopped. That meant that when the Lions got back to the Arizona 10 in the last two minutes, they had to go for a touchdown on fourth-and-2 instead of kicking a chip-shot field goal to tie it. Gus Frerotte's pass to Germane Crowell was incomplete and the Lions lost the ball, and the game.

"I'm not ever going to look back on that," Ross said. "If (the media) wants to second-guess me, that's fine. But I know the mentality of this team, and that requires taking some risk. No one else is going to understand that.

"I've got a card that lists all the situations and, in that one, it says to go for the one, or go for the two if you want to win the game. We didn't want to go into overtime -- not with three games in 11 days and as banged-up on special teams as we were."

So let's recap: Ross went for two because the Lions got to 6-3 this season by taking risks, because his team is facing a busy upcoming schedule and because his players are banged up.

Ross can offer all the lame excuses he wants, but it doesn't obscure the stupidity of his decision. Here's why.

In Jason Hanson, he's got the best kicker in the NFL. Hanson has the strongest leg, is the most accurate and has long since passed the test of time by making clutch kicks.

Hanson's combination of range, accuracy and experience is an advantage in overtime whether the Lions are home or away. Somewhere on Ross' flip card, it should have told him to make use of that advantage.

Bears kicking themselves
Some people think Dick Jauron is the coach of the year for guiding the no-talent Bears to a 4-6 record.

But they could be much better than that.

With even adequate field-goal kicking, the Bears might be 8-2 and in first place in the NFC Central.

Chris Boniol's 41-yard miss in overtime of a 27-24 loss to the Vikings was the 12th for the Bears this season in 23 attempts. Ever since reliable Jeff Jaeger was lost for the season with a hip injury, the misses have been piling up. In fact, missed field goals have played a role in four of Chicago's six losses.

The other three: