Tom E. Curran • E-mail

Knee-jerk reactions and drawn-out conclusions on a Sunday so unusual that a quarterback not named “JaMarcus” went 2 for 17. And won.

Gosh, Josh was right
Another week, another emotional catharsis in Denver. This time, the cleansing moment belonged to Broncos head coach Josh McDaniels. For months on end, he’d been told he was going to be spoiled fruit off the Bill Belichick coaching tree.

And while he’d served up four plates worth of shut th e hell up in wins over Cincinnati, Oakland, Cleveland and Dallas, going up against the Senior Hoody himself in Denver, McDaniels was no doubt feeling that this was his benchmark game.

Which helps explain McDaniels’ fist-throwing, rotator-cuff threatening exuberance after the Broncos knocked off New England 20-17 in overtime. As Belichick searched in vain to find McDaniels for a postgame handshake, lest he be painted a sore sport, McDaniels was firing up a Denver crowd which would have delighted in throwing a blanket party for him back in July.

Last week, Brandon Marshall had his cleansing touchdown in Denver’s win over Dallas. This week, it was McDaniels. Who next? Perhaps Kyle Orton, the quarterback mocked and derided as a nobody when he came in exchange for Jay Cutler in that deal with the Bears? Maybe Mike Nolan, deservedly canned by the 49ers as their head coach last year but now the man responsible for putting a backbone in the Broncos spineless defense from last season?

Video   Orton not surprised Broncos are 5-0 Oct. 11: Denver quarterback Kyle Orton tells Bob Costas that the Broncos' wins are due to a total team effort every week.

Early last month, before the season began, McDaniels told me in a phone call from Denver he really believed his team was buying in despite the hurricane of negativity. He nailed that one. And now he’s nailed his former team too. Remarkable.

Bills still the Bills
Bills COO Russ Brandon said after the Bills 6-3 loss to the previously winless Browns that he had no comment on head coach Dick Jauron’s status. “Obviously, this is a low point for us,” Brandon said for the second straight week. The Bills will be seeking to avoid reaching a new low for the third straight week when they visit the Jets next week.

Forget about 49ers?
It’s probably best to give it a week or two before you start parachuting off the Niners bandwagon. Yeah, a 45-10 loss to the Falcons might have you fumbling for the ripcord but this is more likely an instance of a young team unfamiliar with success getting their face rubbed it in a little bit. And there’s an excellent chance the face-rubbing will continue throughout this week as head coach Mike Singletary gets a hold of this team. Or maybe, just maybe…it’s the Crabtree Diva effect taking root.

Rest assured
Need your quarterback to get a little bump in his performance level? Break a couple of his ribs, have ‘em take a couple of weeks off then watch what happens when he returns. Both Seattle’s Matt Hasselbeck and Philly’s Donovan McNabb came back from broken ribs this week and ripped it up. Combined passing numbers for the veteran franchise QBs? How’s 34 for 51, 505 yards and seven touchdown passes. Hmmmph.

Ironic Play of the day
With the Patriots driving for what figured to be a game-winning field goal in the final minutes, Tom Brady was strip-sacked by Denver’s Vonnie Holliday. Holliday was a player the Patriots kicked the tires on earlier this season, having him in for a physical but taking a pass at that time. And Holliday delivered the key play.

Houston and Jacksonville
Ye are not to be trusted.

Do the refs hate the Ravens?
The puff of steam visible on the Eastern Seaboard late Sunday afternoon? It was rising from Baltimore, Maryland where the Ravens got burned for the second straight week by the zebras.

Fan ranker Who’s on NFL’s ‘hot seat’? The Bears are out of the playoff chase. What does that mean for Lovie Smith? How hot is his seat? Here’s your chance to rank all the NFL coaches. NBCSports.com

Three times on the Bengals final drive the Ravens were flagged — first on an illegal contact, then on an unnecessary roughness call on Ray Lewis and finally on a pass interference call on third-and-16 — paving the way for Cincinnati’s 17-14 forehead slapper. On the Bengals’ other touchdown drive, a third-and-8 sack of Carson Palmer was wiped out by an illegal contact penalty. If he didn’t already have the biggest persecution complex this side of Al Davis, Ravens coach John Harbaugh certainly has it now.

The problem for Baltimore is that the officials appear to be looking for it with them. Generally speaking, the calls that are game-changers aren’t wrong. And the ones that were much-discussed from last week’s loss to the Patriots last week weren’t wrong either. They are just exceedingly ill-timed judgment calls. You know how sometimes you look at a play and say, “That call could have gone either way”?

Every call right now is going against Baltimore. The officials miss nothing the Ravens do.

Nothing surprises any more
The Bengals, Niners and Broncos are alone in first place in their respective divisions. You can call it a world gone crazy, but before you do remember that, for each of the past 13 seasons, there have been at least five new playoff entrants. The guard-changing is to be expected.