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I was away from the blog for much of Tuesday while traveling back from New Orleans, but I just got back to the new home office in suburban Buffalo and wanted to take a few moments to acknowledge the most significant seven days in the AFC East all year.

The stretch began Monday night, when the New England Patriots cracked the door for the rest of the AFC East by losing for the second time in three games. The Patriots remain the prohibitive favorite to win the division, but we'll learn gobs this week.

For the only time all year, all four AFC East teams will play each other.

The New York Jets will play the Buffalo Bills on Thursday night in Toronto. The Patriots will visit the Miami Dolphins on Sunday in Land Shark Stadium.

I will attend both games. Counting the Patriots' collapse in New Orleans, I'll trek 4,675 miles (205 miles in my car with Florida plates and still no ice scraper and 4,470 by air) to see every AFC East team in a concentrated period at a critical juncture.

The loser of the Jets-Bills game will be all but eliminated, and even if the Bills win they still will be two games below .500 with four to play. They'd both be 5-7, would have to run the table and get serious help along the way. In other words, the Jets need this one much more than the suddenly feisty Bills do.

Sunday's game is imperative to New England and Miami.

The Patriots, preparing on a short week for back-to-back away games, are 0-4 in true road games. They're desperate for a victory. So are the Dolphins, who could've nudged a game above .500 had they beaten the Bills on Sunday but imploded in the final minutes.

This is the week that could rip the AFC East wide open or bunch everybody together for a fascinating final month of jockeying.

When Eric Mangini was head coach of the New York Jets, he hired noted boxing trainer and ESPN analyst Teddy Atlas as an assistant coach of sorts.

The Jets didn't always show much fight despite the presence of a guy who coached the likes of Mike Tyson, Michael Moorer and Hall of Fame featherweight Barry McGuigan.

But it was a cool idea nonetheless.

So current Jets head coach Rex Ryan has dipped into Mangini's bag of tricks, summoning help from outside the football world.

Ryan, who apparently has no trouble thinking outside the tackle box, contacted the New York Yankees on Tuesday to see if they could dispatch an instructor to teach quarterback Mark Sanchez how to slide.

The Yankees sent their best guy, manager Joe Girardi.

"I want to make sure we do everything in our power to provide him with the best tools,'' Ryan said Tuesday, per the Newark Star-Ledger. Sanchez is "the face of our franchise. We have to keep him healthy.''

Sanchez came up a little gimpy after trying to run out of bounds Sunday against the Carolina Panthers. The play scared Sanchez more than anything, and he returned to the game.

But the Jets don't want to take any chances.

"When you have an opportunity to get the best, you get the best," Ryan said. "As Mark went through it, you could see the more comfortable he got.''

Sanchez found that old habits are hard to break.

"I’ve never really been a slider," he said. "In baseball, I slid head first. In football, I’ve done the same thing, or tried to get out of bounds or throw the ball away. It’s something that you need to learn at this level. Once you get the first down or as many yards as you need, just protect yourself and protect the ball and give yourself a chance to play.

"[Girardi taught me how to] hook my leg, because I wear that brace on my left leg so you don’t want to hook that leg into the ground because it might get stuck. He showed me how to do it with the opposite leg and hook that leg under. He showed me how to protect the ball while I am sliding and try not to fall on one side or the other on my shoulder, just absorb the blow with my butt and my legs. It was important for me to learn that and I really appreciated it."

Ryan said Sanchez took the instruction well.

"He's a natural,'' Ryan said. "He did a great job. He did a better job than I could do."

Fittingly, the Jets will play the Buffalo Bills on Thursday night in the Rogers Centre, home of the Toronto Blue Jays.

We'll see how often the Jets take two and hit to right.

Chicago’s decision to sign free agent linebacker Cato June is an ominous signal about the condition of linebacker Lance Briggs, who injured his knee during Sunday’s 36-10 loss at Minnesota.

We don’t have any official word yet from the team, but June’s signing has been confirmed by ESPN’s Adam Schefter. Early indications have been that Jamar Williams would replace Briggs in the short term, but if nothing else, June will provide depth at the position.

The Bears have already lost two of their opening-day linebackers, Brian Urlacher and Pisa Tinoisamoa, to season-ending injuries. We’ll keep you updated on Briggs as more information is confirmed.

The Week 13 ESPN.com NFL Power Rankings are out.

What we learn this week is that AFC South grandboss Paul Kuharsky has a thing for the AFC East.

Even though he ranks the Buffalo Bills lower than any of the other panelists, Kuharsky still rates AFC East teams much more favorably across the board, giving them an average 16.75 ranking -- nobody placed the New England Patriots, Miami Dolphins or New York Jets higher than he did.

Kuharsky explains his rationale on the AFC South blog.

In addition to Kuharsky, the power rankings panel consists of ESPN senior writers John Clayton and Jeffri Chadiha and NFC West blogger Mike Sando.

No. 6 New England Patriots

• Last week's rating: No. 4
• Best rating: No. 4 (Kuharsky)
• Worst rating: No. 8 (Clayton)
• Note: I thought the Patriots would drop a bit more than they did. This isn't a precipitous drop for the Patriots. In fact they were ranked No. 6 after their narrow loss to the Indianapolis Colts with a high of fourth (Clayton and Kuharsky) and a low of eighth (Sando).

No. 19 Miami Dolphins

• Last week's rating: No. 17
• Best rating: No. 18 (Clayton, Kuharsky)
• Worst rating: No. 20 (Sando, Chadiha)
• Note: The Dolphins had been gaining momentum up the power rankings grid from a season low of No. 24 after a 0-3 start. They could have peaked above .500 for the first time with a victory over the No. 24 Bills. Instead, the Dolphins sink backward to their worst rating in a month.

No. 21 New York Jets

• Last week's rating: No. 22
• Best rating: No. 19 (Kuharsky)
• Worst rating: No. 21 (Sando, Chadiha)
• Note: The Jets finally won a game at home, but the pollsters weren't impressed with a victory over the No. 22 Carolina Panthers to nudge the Jets any higher than one spot.

No. 24 Buffalo Bills

• Last week's rating: No. 27
• Best rating: No. 22 (Sando)
• Worst rating: No. 26 (Kuharsky)
• Note: After two highly competitive weeks under interim head coach Perry Fewell, the Bills jumped three spots, ties for the healthiest bump with the No. 10 Denver Broncos and the No. 16 Tennessee Titans.

Brace yourselves. It’s time to revisit and perhaps conclude the bitter argument we started the morning after Chicago acquired quarterback Jay Cutler. At the time, I suggested the trade was a pivotal point in the 2009 NFC North race: It would either hand the division title to the Bears or bury them in a debt of unfilled holes and lost draft picks.

Larry David would probably join me in saying we’re getting pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty close to wrapping up that debate. Cutler’s arrival has coincided with the collapse of the Bears' defense and exposed several personnel gaps that limit his strengths as a downfield passer. Worse, the Bears are headed toward their second consecutive draft without a first- or second-round pick -- a substantial hindrance for upgrading/retrofitting their roster to make the Cutler trade work.

We hashed through the Bears’ defensive woes a few weeks ago. So today, let’s look at the impact of the Cutler trade on their offense -- and the entire franchise -- with 11 games of evidence to cull from.

Let’s be clear: Cutler has exacerbated the Bears’ issues with an NFL-high 20 interceptions and a sour demeanor that makes him easy to target. But I think we can safely say he parachuted into a team built for someone else.

The bus stalled out
When he was hired in 2004, Bears coach Lovie Smith announced his teams would “get off the bus running.” That was Smith’s way of describing an offense built around the power running game, a time-honored tradition in Chicago and the entire Black and Blue division. Smith had a 1,200-yard rusher in three of his first five seasons, along the way building a roster designed for that approach.

That style began to erode on that fateful day in March, when they acquired Cutler and signed former Pro Bowl left tackle Orlando Pace -- known more for his pass blocking than a bull-dozing even in his best days with St. Louis. Free agent Frank Omiyale, their new left guard, was also better known as a pass-blocker during his time in Carolina.

Neither Omiyale nor Pace has played to expectations this season, leaving the Bears with a double conundrum: Their run blocking has weakened and their pass blocking is less reliable than they had hoped for. Incredibly, the Bears now have the NFL’s lowest-ranked rushing game; they are averaging 85.1 yards per game. Even more surprising, their 232 rushing attempts are also a league-low.

Few quarterbacks, Cutler included, can succeed when a huge chunk of the playbook is rendered moot. Sunday, the Bears passed on their first three plays and punted. Then they ran on their next three plays before punting again. From that point, they passed on 17 of their next 20 plays.

Was that really the Bears? Or was it Texas Tech?

“We didn’t really even try to establish a running game,” lamented tailback Matt Forte, a smooth runner who has proved unable to gain much in the way of unblocked yardage.

The idea in acquiring Cutler was to give the Bears a passing threat to match their long-held rushing prowess. Instead, he climbed aboard the bus just as it was stalling out.

Unbalanced roster
Unfortunately for Cutler, the rest of their offensive personnel wasn’t equipped to handle a shift to the passing game. If their receiving corps has been a pleasant surprise, it’s mostly because expectations couldn’t have been lower. Devin Hester, Earl Bennett and Johnny Knox have combined for 136 receptions, but they’re still inexperienced and -- importantly -- none of them command a double-team from opponents.

That inexperience was on display early in the third quarter Sunday at the Metrodome. Knox’s 77-yard return of the second-half kickoff put the Bears in position to get back into the game, but on second down from the Vikings’ 8-yard line, Cutler looked confused and took a sack. Afterward, offensive coordinator Ron Turner said Cutler’s primary receiver ran the wrong route.

Turner wouldn’t identify the culprit, but in watching the replay, you see Cutler look to the left side of the end zone where Hester and tight end Greg Olsen were both running routes.

“[Cutler] is looking for a guy that’s supposed to be there that would have been wide open,” Turner said. “But he’s not there so he gets sacked. It’s a matter of us executing better offensively and giving him an opportunity. When you give him an opportunity, he’s a hell of a player. But we have to give him a chance on each and every play.

“It’s easy to look at the quarterback and blame the quarterback or whatever you want to blame,” Turner added. “But everybody has to execute. If one guy doesn’t do it, it’s tough for any quarterback to execute and that’s kind of been the story of what we’ve had. … We seem to bust base plays that we’ve had in [the playbook] and not give ourselves a chance. We have to clean that up.”

Limited options
Focusing only on the offense, you could argue the Bears have two and perhaps three critical needs entering the 2010 draft. They need a big-play receiver, an influx of new bodies to give them options along their offensive line and a running back to complement or share duties with Forte.

Hindsight is 20-20, of course. (But we wouldn’t have an NFC North blog without it.) If you look at the players available at what would have been the Bears’ first two picks of the 2009 draft, you see they could have filled at least one of those needs. (Remember that the Bears traded out of the second round in part to recoup a third-round pick they gave up in the Cutler deal.)

Now, they’ll have to address those same deficiencies during a draft that won’t start for them until the third round, completing the trades for Cutler and defensive end Gaines Adams. Free agency is always a possibility, but acquiring impact players through that avenue is usually the exception rather than the rule.

I’ll maintain that the Bears upgraded at quarterback when they installed Cutler in place of Kyle Orton. But that wasn’t the central question of our original debate. The real issue is whether the Bears would be able to surround Cutler with enough support to make the trade worthwhile. To this point, they simply have not.

The latest ESPN.com NFL Power Rankings are in, and the Colts lost their first place votes as a result of New Orleans’ impressive win over New England Monday night.

Mike Sando flipped the Colts to No. 3, while Jeff Chadiha dropped them to second, where John Clayton and I already had them.

Here’s Sando’s always informative breakdown of the voting.

Here’s how the AFC South ranks:


The AFC South remains No. 1 on average, with a 13.3 to a second place 14.3 for the NFC East.

An explanation of three teams I see differently than the other three panelists:

The Patriots are sixth, I have them fourth, three spots higher than anyone else. Yes, sixth feels high. But two of their losses are to No. 1 New Orleans and No. 2 Indianapolis and I’d still pick them over San Diego or Cincinnati.

The Falcons are 14th, I have them 12th, three spots higher than anyone else. This spot isn’t so much about how I feel about Atlanta as it about how I feel about Green Bay, Baltimore or the Giants. I still believe the Falcons would beat those teams head to head.

The Bills are 24th, I have them 26th, three spots lower than anyone else. I don’t believe they are better than Seattle or Washington.

Now there is no dispute. The Saints are the No. 1 team in our weekly power rankings with all four voters.

Understandable that there weren’t any voters holding out for the Colts at No. 1. There had been some division by our voters in recent weeks, but Monday night’s impressive victory over the Patriots convinced every voter. The Saints remain the No. 1 overall team for the fifth straight week.

The news isn’t so great for the rest of the NFC South. Atlanta is No. 14, Carolina’s No. 22 and Tampa Bay is No. 30.

Four AFC North teams all played one another over the weekend.

So here is how things shook out for the division in the latest ESPN.com Power Rankings:

Cincinnati Bengals (8-3)

Last week: No. 7

Current ranking: No. 5

Analysis: The Bengals pulled off an impressive feat by completing a season sweep through the AFC North with a 16-7 win over the Cleveland Browns. That moved Cincinnati up two spots to No. 5 this week. The Bengals are quietly in position to secure the second seed and a first-round bye in the AFC. It will be interesting to see if Cincinnati can hold that spot for five more weeks. There are a few tough games remaining but its schedule overall isn’t too difficult.

Pittsburgh Steelers (6-5)

Last week: No. 9

Current ranking: No. 12

Analysis: The Steelers were in the top 10 but fell three spots to No. 12 this week. They are dealing with a three-game losing streak and perhaps even some internal strife in their locker room. Receiver Hines Ward's comments toward quarterback Ben Roethlisberger (concussion) sitting out last week caused a stir. But it could simply be a situation that blows over with winning. Sunday’s game against the Oakland Raiders will be a must-win for Pittsburgh for a variety of reasons.

Baltimore Ravens (6-5)

Last week: No. 15

Current ranking: No. 13

Analysis: The Ravens continue their roller-coaster ride up and down ESPN.com's Power Rankings. I don't know how Baltimore is one spot below the Steelers after beating the defending champs head-to-head last week. I’m sure plenty of AFC North readers have that same question. So make sure to send complaints to the appropriate people and not our division inbox. The Ravens have the talent to get hot and become a major factor down the stretch. But through 11 games, I’m still waiting for that potentially dominant and talented team to show up.

Cleveland Browns (1-10)

Last week: No. 32

Current ranking: No. 32

Analysis: The Browns dropped their sixth straight in a loss to the Bengals. Cleveland was successful in making the game ugly but didn't have enough firepower to beat a first-place team. The Browns have been outscored by an astounding 154 points this year. The offense went from scoring 37 points against the Detroit Lions to seven points against the Bengals, further displaying Cleveland's inconsistency. Don’t expect things to get much easier when Cleveland hosts the red hot San Diego Chargers (8-3) this week.

The Saints were close to perfect during their 38-17 dissection of the Patriots on "Monday Night Football."

That helped New Orleans emerge as a unanimous No. 1 choice in ESPN.com's NFL Power Rankings heading into Week 13.

Jeff Chadiha and I moved the Saints into the top spots on our ballots at the Colts' expense. I took another step by moving the Vikings into the second spot, with the Colts third, even though Indianapolis improved to 11-0 with a comeback victory over the Texans.

These are power rankings, not straight standings, and I think Minnesota might have the most complete team in the league. Nothing personal, Colts fans.

The chart shows my votes in the first column, followed by votes from Clayton, Paul Kuharsky and Jeff Chadiha.

A look inside the rankings ...

Rising: The Broncos, Titans and Bills each rose three spots, the largest gains from last week. The Chargers, Bengals, Ravens and Falcons each rose two spots. The Cowboys, Eagles, Packers and Jets rose one spot apiece.

Falling: The Giants fell four spots, the largest drop from last week. The Jaguars, Steelers and Cardinals each dropped three spots. The Redskins, Dolphins and Patriots each fell two places. The Chiefs and Panthers dropped one spot each.

Unchanged: Rankings for the Saints, Colts, Vikings, Texans, 49ers, Bears, Seahawks, Raiders, Lions, Bucs, Rams and Browns did not change.

Deadlocked: We broke no ties this week.

Groupthink: All four panelists ranked the Saints first, the Lions 29th and the Browns 32nd.

Agree to disagree: The Packers and Ravens generated the widest gap between highest and lowest votes, five spots apiece. Four other teams generated disparities of at least four spots:

• Packers (5): Chadiha ranked them eighth, higher than any voter ranked them. Sando and Kuharsky ranked them 13th, lower than any voter ranked them.
• Ravens (5): Sando 10th, Kuharsky 15th.
• Patriots (4): Kuharsky fourth, Clayton eighth.
• Falcons (4): Kuharsky 12th, Chadiha 16th.
• Jaguars (4): Chadiha 15th, Sando 19th.
• Bills (4): Sando 22nd, Kuharsky 26th.

Power rankings histories: These colorful layered graphs show where each NFL team has ranked every week since the 2002 season.

Ranking the divisions: Teams from the AFC South ranked 13.3 on average, higher than teams from any other division. Teams from the NFC West ranked 20.5, lower than teams from any other division.


A voter-by-voter look at changes of at least four spots since the Week 12 rankings:

• Sando: Giants (-5), Panthers (-4), Bills (+5)
• Clayton: Steelers (-4), Patriots (-4), Texans (-4), Ravens (+4)
• Kuharsky: Titans (+4)
• Chadiha: Texans (-4)

For download: An Excel file -- available here or here -- showing how each voter voted this week and in past weeks.

The file includes a "powerflaws" sheet pointing out potential flaws in voters' thinking by showing how many higher-ranked opponents each team has defeated.

A quick primer on the "powerflaws" sheet:

• Column Y features team rankings.
• Column Z shows how many times a team has defeated higher-ranked teams.
• Change the rankings in column Y as you see fit.
• Re-sort column Y in ascending order (1 to 32) using the standard Excel pull-down menu atop the column.
• The information in column Z, which reflects potential ranking errors, will change (with the adjusted total highlighted in yellow atop the column).
• The lower the figure in that yellow box, the fewer conflicts.

We have streamlined the voting process in ESPN's Power Rankings. I no longer have a vote.

I still have an opinion, though, so here goes:

San Diego

Power Ranking: 4th

My ranking range: 4 to 5

Why: The Chargers are playing better than any team other than the Big Three.

Denver

Power Ranking: 10th

My ranking range: 11 to 13

Why: Denver has to show its troubles are truly behind it.

Kansas City

Power Ranking: 27th

My ranking range: 27 to 28

Why: The Chiefs are fortunate there is a cluster of really bad teams below them.

Oakland

Power Ranking: 28th

My ranking range: 28 to 29

Why: See Kansas City.