One side note to the Tennessee Titans finally losing a game this season came when Kerry Collins got to listen to something other than Alan Jackson’s “Good Time.”
The quarterback was listening to the CD while driving when the season started, and the superstitious Collins couldn’t change that habit once the Titans kept winning. That meant 11 straight weeks of the same CD, grabbing to switch back if the CD changer tried to shuffle to something different, and learning every word of every song by heart.
Since the Jets beat the Titans on Nov. 23, Collins’ ears have been freed and he’s making sure to keep his music selection moving now.
“I haven’t picked another one yet. I’ve been listening to a little bit of Jamey Johnson, a lot more radio this time of year. I’ve got a desire to get some Christmas music going, some Christmas albums,” Collins said.
For the Pennsylvania native, maybe it’s living in Music City, but Collins has become quite the country music fan.
“It’s about all I listen to anymore these days,” Collins said.
atching the 12 games he won with the New York Giants in 2000. Over the past five weeks, Collins has a 93.6 passer rating that ranks fifth among NFL quarterbacks in that time. He trails only Jeff Garcia, Matt Ryan, Peyton Manning and Shaun Hill.
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THE FEW, THE PROUD: Normally placid Minnesota coach Brad Childress had moist eyes on Monday when he talked about his son, Andrew. The soon-to-be-20-year-old enlisted in the Marines and left this week for basic training in San Diego, and team owner Zygi Wilf gave him with the game ball after the Vikings’ victory at Detroit last Sunday.
The moving presentation was overshadowed a bit by the clamor that came after a Fox television camera accidentally caught tight end Visanthe Shiancoe naked in the background for live viewers. But Childress said he was floored by the gesture by his boss.
“My family is very grateful,” Childress said. “It was touching to my son.”
The coach said he was proud, but also anxious.
“It’s heart-wrenching, because it’s against every instinct that you have as a parent to allow your child to be put in harm’s way,” Childress said. “But it was a decision he wanted, and he’s wanted to do it for a very long time. I have no doubt that he’ll be good at it, and he’ll serve our country very well.”
Unfortunately, Andrew Childress wasn’t able to bring the ball with him to basic training.
“All he went with was the clothes on his back and 20 dollars in his pocket,” Childress said, “and he won’t have that for very long.”
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CHEESE MAN: Macaroni and cheese. Pizza. French fries. Bengals rookie linebacker Keith Rivers is eating them all these days, a sign he’s on the mend.
Rivers recently had most of the wires removed from his broken jaw, an injury suffered when Pittsburgh’s Hines Ward leveled him with a block on Oct. 19. With his jaw wired shut, the first-round draft pick was reduced to living on soup and drinks that came from a blender.
It wasn’t pleasant.
“I lost like 24 pounds,” said Rivers, who played at 241 pounds. “Right after I got the wires off, I gained nine pounds in two days. It’s coming back very fast. I just have to keep working and trying to get back to where I was.”
Rivers will get the rest of the wires and protective bands out of his mouth next week, allowing him to return to a normal diet. For now, he has to eat only soft foods, which are challenging enough.
“I had french fries, and it hurt,” Rivers said. “That was pretty much it – french fries were the first thing and that hurt because your teeth aren’t used to chewing and whatnot. Now I can eat almost anything that’s soft: macaroni and cheese, pizza, soft stuff like that.”
Also, he can resume full workouts, which were impossible as long as he had the jaw wired shut.
“I couldn’t work out too much because I couldn’t really breathe well out of my mouth,” he said. “But now I’m back to working out normal.”
Rivers is expected to be fully healed for next season. He still gets a lot of questions about Ward’s block, which wasn’t flagged or fined.
“I mean, a lot of players would have done it,” Rivers said. “It’s whatever. It’s happened. It’s over with. I’m not really concerned about it. I’m just concerned about getting back to my normal state and back to playing.”
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PUTZIER RETURNS: Jeb Putzier will have to learn Spanish another time. He’s busy reacquainting himself with the Denver Broncos’ playbook instead.
Cut by the Seattle Seahawks two weeks ago, Putzier was planning to purchase instructional DVDs to learn Spanish on his 36-hour drive from the Northwest to his home in Houston when the Broncos called him Tuesday just as he was about to get in line at the bookstore.
“We needed another tight end,” coach Mike Shanahan said. “And obviously we know what Jeb can do and he knows our system.”
d in practice behind Daniel Graham and Tony Scheffler.
So, Putzier was back in a Broncos uniform Wednesday for the first time since getting jettisoned in a salary cap move after the AFC championship game in January 2006.
The team has only a handful of players left from that squad.
“I know probably as many equipment guys as I know guys on the team,” said Putzier, who has 96 catches for 1,251 yards and three touchdowns in his career, plus 10 receptions for 159 yards and a TD in the playoffs.
“It’s great to be back in the snow. I missed the mountains,” Putzier said. “The air is great. The weather is great. I missed it. It’s a great organization. It’s not like that all around the NFL. It’s really exciting to be back in that type of environment.”
Putzier is a seventh-year player who played in Denver from 2002-05 after the Broncos made him a sixth-round draft pick out of Boise State. He spent the next two seasons in Houston, then he played in six games, starting once, for Seattle this year before the Seahawks waived him on Nov. 26.
So, why Spanish?
“I had 36 hours to kill driving,” Putzier said.
Alas, he put the DVDs back on the shelf and scrambled to catch a flight to Denver.
“I was like, ‘All right, I’m leaving. I don’t have time,”’ Putzier said. “I’m going to have to study my playbook too much.”
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AP Football Writer Barry Wilner and Sports Writers Joe Kay in Cincinnati, Arnie Stapleton in Denver, Dave Campbell in Minneapolis and Teresa M. Walker in Nashville contributed to this story.
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