5. New York Giants
The defending Super Bowl champions are once again a very good defensive team. While they don’t have the amazing pass rush they had last year, they are a solid all-around defense. They give up only 177.1 yards per game in the air, which is second best in the NFL. The Giants are a serious threat to win another Super Bowl this year — in large part due to their defense.

4. Baltimore Ravens
In the Ray Lewis Era, the Baltimore Ravens have been a very good defensive unit. Coming into this season, the Ravens were thought to be over the hill on the defensive side of the ball. It turns out that the supposed NFL experts were wrong. In 2008, Baltimore has been almost impossible to run against, as they give up only 65.4 yards per game on the ground. No team in the league looks forward to facing this veteran yet effective defensive bunch.

3. Carolina Panthers
The odd part of the Carolina Panthers’ defense is they aren’t especially good in any one category. However, the bottomline is it’s difficult to score on this team. The Panthers give up only 14.8 points per game, which is second best in the NFL. While it’s possible to get yards against the Panthers, getting into the endzone has proven to be quite difficult.

2. Pittsburgh Steelers
The Pittsburgh Steelers have long been a very good defensive team — and this year is no different. They lead the league in pass defense, allowing only 171.1 yards per game. Overall, no team gives up less yardage per game. Pittsburgh mark of 240.3 yards given up per game is more than 18 yards better than second place Baltimore.

1. Tennessee Titans
The main reason why the Tennessee Titans are currently undefeated is their league-best defense. The Titans give up only 13 points per game, which is easily the best mark in the league. Tennessee can pressure the quarterback, stop the run and shut down passing games. All in all, no team in the NFL can claim to have a better defense than the one in Tennessee.

Part of the reason why it’s hard to score against the Titans is their distracting cheerleading squad:

Almost everyone plays fantasy football these days. You can turn on an NFL broadcast without repeated discussion about fantasy football. Chances are that you are in a fantasy football league right now.

So which fantasy players have been the best during the 2008 NFL season? Let’s take a look at each position.

QB Philip Rivers, San Diego Chargers
Who would have thought that Rivers would be the top fantasy quarterback in the NFL? You would have won a lot of money on that bet. But with Tom Brady out for the sesaon and most of the other stars underperforming, Rivers is the head of the class this season.

RB Clinton Portis, Washington Redskins
The Redskins love to run the ball, which has been great news for Portis and his fantasy owners. He has consistently gotten a great amount of touches each week and has produced very well. While he may break down due to injury, he has held up so far in 2008.

WR Roddy White, Atlanta Falcons
Who? While hardcore fantasy football owners and Falcons fans knew he was, White is just now getting national recognition. With rookie quarterback Matt Ryan tossing him the rock, White has looked like the combination of Randy Moss and Terrell Owens at times this season.

TE Tony Gonzalez, Kansas City Chiefs
Now this one isn’t much of a surprise. Gonzalez is one of the best tight ends in NFL history — if not the very best. He started off the fantasy football season slowly but has really picked it up over the past month. He’s now once again the best tight end in the game.

Cheerleader, Washington Redskins

No wonder Clinton Portis is running so hard this season.

Tony Romo, the star quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, has missed the last three weeks after suffering a broken pinkie. While he’s been out, the Cowboys have gone 1-2 under the helm of Brad Johnson.

While Johnson has a Super Bowl victory to his name as a starting quarterback, his NFL career is over. He’s 40 years old and his arm just isn’t strong enough anymore to survive in the league. His weak arm is even more evident in a Cowboys offense that usually features a lot of long passes.

When Romo was first injured, it was estimated that he’d miss about a month. Romo himself said that he expected to be back in the middle of November. After Sunday’s 35-14 loss to the New York Giants, Romo needs to step up and regain the reins of the Dallas offense.

And really, Romo should have played this week. I’m sure a broken pinkie doesn’t feel too pleasant but it’s not a life threatening injury. Do you think if Brett Favre wouldy play if he had the same injury? Of course he would.

The NFL is a league of toughness. Romo’s teammates won’t say it publicly but they can’t be too thrilled with Romo taking his time coming back from injury. Heck, Jason Witten played this week after suffering a broken rib in Week 8. If Witten can play with a broken rib, Romo can play with a broken pinkie.

At the very least, Romo is a threat the defense has to respect. Running back Marion Barber III can’t do much because the opposing defense knows Johnson can’t throw. At least defenses know Romo can throw the ball if he has to.

Romo sitting out has hurt the Cowboys’ chances of making the playoffs. If he doesn’t return in Week 11 after the bye, Dallas can start making vacation plans.

And since we are talking about Romo, we might as well have another look at Jessica Simpson.

With eight weeks of the NFL season complete, the worst of the worst have revealed their ugly faces for the world to see. Which five NFL teams are so bad that they should just cut their losses and go home? Here’s the SteamySports list:

5. Oakland Raiders
The Oakland Raiders entered the year with modest hopes and with a goal of making the playoffs. That’s simply not going to happen for the Raiders. First year starting quarterback JaMarcus Russell looks pretty good and rookie running back Darren McFadden has shown flashes of brilliance, but those two players need more help on both sides of the ball.

4. Seattle Seahawks
Some NFL pundits had the Seattle Seahawks making it to the Super Bowl. But with injuries to quarterback Matt Hasselbeck and literally everyone on the wide receiving corps, this is just a lost season for Seattle. It’d be best to press the reset button on the year and try again in 2009.

3. Kansas City Chiefs
Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong for the Chiefs. Starting quarterback Brodie Croyle was lost for the season and then backup quarterback Damon Huard was also lost for the season. Running back Larry Johnson has personal problems and legal problems that could force him out for the season. Basically, Kansas City is going nowhere fast.

2. Detroit Lions
Speaking of nowhere fast, that is basically the life story for a fan of the Detroit Lions. The Lions have been bad for a long time and may actually be hitting rock bottom this season. Starting quarterback Jon Kitna was lost for the season and star receiver Roy Williams was traded away. Stop me if you’ve heard this before but the Lions are bad.

1. Cincinnati Bengals
The Cincinnati Bengals have revolutionized the underachievement this season. Carson Palmer, the former All-Pro quarterback for the Bengals, has an elbow injury that might end his season. Chad Johnson (or Chad Ocho Cinco, if you will) has been horrible and TJ Houshmandzadeh hasn’t been much better. The Bengals haven’t won a game and may actually become the first team to go 0-16 in the history of the NFL. 2009 can’t come fast enough for this disaster of a team. The only reason a Bengals fan should continue going to games this year is to check out the Ben-Gals.

It didn’t take long for Mike Singletary to leave his mark on the San Francisco 49ers after being elevated to head coach. Singletary, the legendary former Chicago Bears linebacker, coached his first game this past weak against the Seattle Seahawks.

Even though the Niners got demolished by a final score of 34-13, Singletary is already proving that he will make his mark. Angered by a careless penalty by tight end Vernon Davis, Singletary got into his face and eventually ordered him into the locker room – even though there was still about ten minutes left in the game.

After the contest, Singletary said that Davis is “uncoachable” and said he’d rather play with ten players instead of eleven if it meant those ten players were trying hard to win. Singletary picked a good target to rage on considering that Davis has been a monumental bust after being selected high in the first round. Davis, who is known for being in excellent shape and being a workout warrior, has done little in his two and half year career.

A couple days after the game against the Seahawks, reports surfaced that Singletary used some inventive coaching tactics during halftime. In an attempt to fire up his team, Singletary reportedly dropped his britches and bared his backside to illustrate how the Niners were getting their tails kicked. While that was certainly an adventurous maneuver, Singletary is already showing the toughness and the heart to become a good head coach in the NFL. Although keeping his pants up might be a good idea from here on out.

The Indianapolis Colts have been a very good team for a relatively long time. They have a Super Bowl title and have cultivated multiple Hall of Famers during this stretch of great play.

That said, the Colts look like they are done as a top tier team. Peyton Manning is one of the best quarterbacks of all time but the current problems start with him. His offseason knee surgeries of robbed him of much of his quickness and elusiveness in the pocket. Now, he’s much more of a statue than he’s ever been.

More dramatically, is the drop off in the effective of Marvin Harrison. Harrison is one of the best, if not the absolute best, wide receivers in the last 15 years. But he has definitely lost a step and is no longer able to create space in the open field.

The running back situation in Indianapolis also isn’t as rosy as it used to be in past years. Joseph Addai is injured and even when he was healthy, he wasn’t playing too well. Dominic Rhodes is a good backup back but he’s hardly a player to build a ground game on.

Dallas Clark and Bob Sanders have become increasingly injury prone. Clark, the team’s tight end, is rarely 100% these days. Sanders, a Colts safety and arguably its best defense player, simply can’t stay healthy for any stretch of time.

The Colts have been one of the most exciting teams to watch in the last decade. Are they finished? Sadly, it looks like that may be the case.

Larry Johnson, the star running back for the Kansas City Chiefs, once again had a run in recently with a girl at a night club. While we here at Steamy Sports are perfectly fine with the idea of hitting on girls, actually hitting girls literally is a whole different matter. Johnson, it should be noted, has been accused four times of assaulting females in the last five years alone.

With NFL commissioner Roger Goodell handing down suspensions left and right for every reason under the sun, he shouldn’t waste any time hitting up Johnson with a suspension of his own. What type of precedence is set when a player can get virtually expelled from the league for smoking marijuana but won’t even get a slap on the wrist for repeated assaults on women?

If Goodell doesn’t want to hand down the suspension, then the Chiefs should step up and do it themselves. To their credit, they are holding Johnson out of this week’s game. However, the Chiefs have made it abundantly clear that Johnson hasn’t been suspended and that he will get paid as usual. That doesn’t sound like a punishment, that sounds like a paid vacation. Does hitting women deserve a reward? Of course not.

While Larry Johnson figures out what makes him a women beater, he needs to be on the sidelines. Whenever he’s ready to show respect towards females, then maybe it’ll be time to let him back into the NFL. We here at Steamy Sports simply do not want Johnson assaulting the beautiful (and even the not-so-beautiful) women of Kansas City any longer.

Roger Goodell and the Kansas City Chiefs should be right with us.

Dallas quarterback Tony Romo didn’t show up on the field on Sunday for the Cowboys due to his broken finger, but he did show up at his girlfriend Jessica Simpson’s concert last Friday night.

Fans who were at Jessica’s concert in Dallas said Tony sang along to all of the songs throughout the show. And as you know, Tony likes to sing.

In case you missed this last year, here’s Tony Romo along with Metal Skool and Mr. Belding singing Journey’s Midnight Train!!

Cowboys fans hoped that their quarterback would be back on the field this Sunday as Dallas takes on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but it looks like Romo will be out for a couple more weeks.

Everyone loves Tom Brady (apart from Eli Manning and Co.) and one reporter showed her love for the 8–year Patriots veteran quarterback by asking him to unconditionally marry her.

Fielding questions—some comical, others serious, most of them pertaining to his injured right ankle, apparently injured in the third quarter of the Chargers game, Brady seemed relaxed and undisturbed by the fact that his model girlfriend, Giselle Bundchen wasn’t there to ward off neither the evil spirit nor the swarm of potential brides.

One reporter, a petite young woman from TV Azteca proposed to Tom Brady in no mild terms in front of a packed room of some 4,000 media members.

“Tom, I’m in love with you! Will you marry me please?” Gomez Mont shouted above the racket.

“What’s your name first? Ines? Wow, beautiful name, Ines,” Brady said, egging the woman on; making sure she would remember him—if not for the game at least for his gamesmanship.

“I’m the real Ms. Brady,” she answered bluntly, perhaps trying to avoid a mental scenario in which Giselle shows up at the event and does a choke-slam, knocking both the ring and the thought of cuddling up to the real Mr. Brady from her imagination.

Brady, still smiling and contradicting himself (football players can’t seem to remedy this sickness): “I’ve got a few Ms. Bradys in my life. I’m a one-woman man.”

Ines proceeded to hand Brady a t-shirt with the inscription “The Real Ms. Brady.”

So the beat goes on…Brady will without a doubt play in Superbowl 42, there will be more Ms. Brady’s in stock than Tom is willing to share with us at this point, and Superbowl Media Day ’08 will go down in the annals of history as a show stolen by a sexy reporter.

10.) The first sighting of Ahmad Bradshaw. Bradshaw, the Giants’ backup running back, is by far the team’s most exciting player. Jacobs is a big bruiser but Bradshaw is lightning in a bottle.

9.) Tom Brady sleeping in the pocket. Have you ever seen a quarterback so secure in the pocket? He can drop back, take a nap and then find the open receiver.

8.) Tom Coughlin getting pissed. When Coughlin gets mad, it’s tough to tell whether he’s going to start crying or going on a cursing tirade.

7.) The halftime show. The best part of the halftime show is usually when it’s over and then everyone can talk about how horrible it was.

6.) Michael Strahan’s gapped tooth smile. He loves showing off that gap, doesn’t he?

5.) The Rodney Harrison cheap shot. You know it’s coming. It’s just a matter of time.

4.) Eli Manning pouting after a dropped pass. No Giants game is complete without pouting from Peyton’s brother.

3.) Tom Brady to Randy Moss. There will be a Brady to Moss touchdown. I guarantee it.

2.) That fleeting moment when you think the Giants have a chance. There will be a moment at some point in the game where it will look like New York can pull off a win. However, that moment won’t last long.

1.) The commercials. This will become especially true if the Patriots get up big early on in the game.

Speaking of the Super Bowl commercials, look out for the Victoria’s Secret Valentine’s Day commercial during the big game: