NFL

Simms shows why he’s best

Four more reasons — back to front from yesterday’s Jets’ 17-14 upset of the Chargers — why Phil Simms is football’s best analyst:

1) All the silly stats CBS yesterday threw at us during Jets-Chargers, and he ignored every one of them!

2) In the second quarter, rather than make a bad guess — and being stuck with it — Simms waited, along with the rest of us, to see tape before judging a second-quarter pass-interference call on Jets’ CB Lito Sheppard. We watched together: good call.

3) At the top of the telecast, Simms went out of his way to tell the audience that Mark Sanchez throws very well on the run. And that’s how the Jets took a fourth-quarter lead, with a Sanchez on-the-run TD pass (shown).

4) Late in the first quarter, Simms, after noting that the Jets did not yet have a first down, said the Jets don’t need first downs to keep it close and then win the game.

How’d he do?

BOX SCORE

CBS’ DIERDORF OFF BASE ON JETS-COLTS REMATCH

Look at me! No, thanks

Look at me! No, thanks

If you didn’t know that Cards-Saints was loaded with sensational plays, you’d have thought, judging from the slo-mo replays, that the biggest moments came after plays, when players showboated their great self-regard.

At one point, as Fox cut to commercials, the slo-mo replay selected was of Saints RB Lynell Hamilton celebrating. Why not? He’d just scored from the 1. That same kiss-the-sky shot of Hamilton — the 11,598th such shot seen this season — would appear again later, thus Fox must have regarded it as essential, unforgettable game action.

Yesterday, personal fouls for excessive me-firstism, cost the Chargers plenty.

The problem with replay

The NFL replay rule, applied again yesterday in a way that was never intended — at 7-0 Chargers, a San Diego catch and fumble that once would have been a quickly made call to the objection of no one — led to confusion, no immediate call and then a replay-rule stoppage, turning it into an incomplete pass.

* So maybe one in every 10 NBA games shown here (Knicks, Nets included) is worth your full attention. But 10-1 shots do come in. Friday’s Suns-Hawks on ESPN, won at the buzzer on a Jamal Crawford three, was as good as it gets. And Hubie Brown, at 76, was as good as he gets.

* ESPN 1050’s Brandon Tierney will spend the next few weeks hosting his weekday show from local campuses on basketball game days, Seton Hall, St. Peter’s, Columbia, Hofstra, Fordham, Iona, St. John’s and his alma mater, Marist. Neat idea.

* One would think that after selling NBC on the XFL — the greatest primetime embarrassment in TV history — and just days after assigning Joe Theismann to try to destroy a Jets’ playoff game, NBC Sports boss Dick Ebersol would twice bite his tongue before calling Conan O’Brien “an astounding failure.”

* The Cards were down 24 in the third when LaRod Howling-Stephens chose not to return a kickoff caught on the fly in the end zone. Although we’ve often seen similar, one question: Why?

Down big, second half and you’ve got the ball, no defender near you. Don’t you have to try to bust one starting in an open field? What difference does it make, at that point, if you’re tackled at the 15 or if the touchback puts you at the 20?

Boselli right on

Ex-Jags’ offensive lineman Tony Boselli, Ian Eagle’s analyst on Westwood One’s radio of Ravens-Colts (heard here on WFAN), was superb over the final minutes of the first half.

With 1:38 left and Indy up 10-3, Ravens’ RB Ray Rice dropped a third-down pass from the Ravens’ 22. Boselli jumped on it, noting that the drop stopped the clock; had he caught the ball and been short of a first down — even had he been tackled for a loss — Rice still would have forced Indy to use its second of three timeouts. And that saved timeout could now be used in Indy’s last possession of the half.

Bingo, the Colts used their remaining timeouts to score on a short Peyton Manning pass with seven seconds left. Now that is analysis.

Similar circumstances existed yesterday in Cowboys-Vikes — on third-and-three, 1:58 left in the half, Dallas stopped the clock with a short, incomplete pass — but nothing was said.

Word from the woozy

Come On, Fellas, Part I: Saturday, Cards’ QB Kurt Warner, wiped out and groggy after trying to make a tackle following an interception, was shown sitting blank-eyed on the bench when Fox returned from commercial.

Fox’s Moose Johnston took it from there: “Warner up and to the sideline; it looked like he was OK. It might’ve just been the force of the hit.” Ya think?

Part II: Yesterday, after Brett Favre threw a TD vs. Dallas with 1:55 left to give the Vikes a 31-point lead, Fox’s Troy Aikman seemed surprised, as if the Vikes were running it up — a highly legit thought. But when Joe Buck brought it up again, Aikman said, “I’m surprised by what Minnesota did there, but I don’t think there was anything wrong with it.”

Then why bring it up? And why was he surprised?