This weekend’s games mark the mid-point of the season, and the winner of the Colts-Patriots mega-game will determine which team is best. At least halfway through the season.

Well, what exactly does that mean?

Last year, the Colts were the best at mid-season, and they won the Super Bowl. But they stumbled through the second half of the year, so it was anything but a smooth ride to the top.

For several years before that, however, the team that was the best at mid-season failed to win the championship at the end. In fact, prior to the 2006 Colts, Denver in 1998 was the last team even to reach the Super Bowl after being the best in the league at mid-season.

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Wow. Getting Alex Smith back into the lineup really made a difference, didn’t it?

The thrashing the 49ers took on Sunday was mildly surprising in that the team almost always seemed to play hard under Mike Nolan. This one didn’t look like it.

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Someone with the Raiders told me something on Sunday that is really true. He said that when the offense plays well, the defense does not, and when the defense plays well, the offense does not.

That is the classic definition of inconsistency, which is the classic affliction of bad teams.

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Top 5:

1. New England (8-0). Tom Brady is having a pretty good year, don’t you think? It’s not 30 touchdown passes in a half-season; the record is 49. Randy Moss has 11 TD catches in a half-season; he had 11 in two years with Oakland.

2. Indianapolis (7-0). Peyton Manning starts slow and Marvin Harrison is out. No matter. Didn’t look like Reggie Wayne (7 catches, 168 yards) missed Harrison on the other side.

3. San Diego (4-3). The Chargers have won their last three games by a combined score of 104-27. They have plenty of time to establish themselves as legitimate challengers.

4. Dallas (6-1). This might be too high; the Cowboys are still an NFC team, after all. And I’m not convinced they won’t be challenged before it’s over.

5. Pittsburgh (5-2). I like the balance in the offense, with Ben Roethlisberger playing well and Willie Parker doing a better than good Jerome Bettis imitation.

Bottom 5:

32. St. Louis (0-8). They blew a 14-0 lead against Cleveland. That’s hard to fathom. So we’ll drop them down below Miami.

31. Miami (0-8). The Dolphins’ defense gave the Giants a tougher game than anyone would have expected.

30. N.Y. Jets (1-7). They raised so many expectations with last year’s playoff run, but now they’re playing like the Rich Kotite team of years ago,.

29. Atlanta (1-6). This was one of the Falcons’ best weekends of the year. They didn’t play.

28. Cincinnati (2-5). You have to wonder if the Bengals’ accumulation of off-field problems now is hurting them on the field.

One note: The 49ers and Raiders both are on the verge of moving into this bottom five, with the 49ers closer to it, because of what happened on the opening two weekends when the Raiders lost games they had a chance to win, and the 49ers won games they should have lost.

Player of the week: Let’s do something different here and go with linebacker Mike Vrabel of the Patriots. I know we could go with Tom Brady. We almost always could; this time he carved up a top-5 defense against Washington. But Vrabel made three sacks and now has six and a half, a career high at age 32. Just for good measure, he caught a touchdown pass, his second of the season (on two receptions) and 10th of his career, counting playoffs (on 10 catches). Nice scoring percentage there.

It’s often referred to as a post-Super Bowl jinx, but it’s really nothing of the sort. What is happening to the Chicago Bears this season has nothing to do with a jinx and everything to do with some basic issues surrounding the team.

In recent seasons, the Bears used first-round draft choices on quarterback Rex Grossman and running back Cedric Benson. Grossman has been benched and Benson is struggling.

Chicago was able to gain only 255 yards on Sunday against Detroit, which has the NFL’s 30th-ranked defense. The Lions beat the Bears for the second time in five weeks, 16-7. At 3-5, including three home losses and three division losses, the Bears appear likely to be the sixth Super Bowl loser in seven years to miss the playoffs the following season.

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We’re going to find out if New Orleans has gotten it back together, and if the 49ers can move the ball on a very bad defense.

Opposing passers have riddled the Saints for a 104.3 passer rating in the first six games of the season, worst in the league. Sounds like an invitation for Alex Smith, if he’s healthy enough. But the 49ers’ offensive passer rating, 60.6, is the league’s third worst.

So, something has to give.

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The New York Giants and Miami Dolphins will play a regular-season game on Sunday in London. It is the NFL’s second out-of-country game, following the 49ers-Arizona in Mexico City two years ago, and the league hopes it is the start of regular, overseas competition.

For most of us, this is no big thing. We get it on TV, like most games. But the league is putting on a full-court blitz with promotions in England.

If you don’t know the reason why, you haven’t been paying attention.

It’s the money.

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It remains to be seen what they will do, but it’s about time for the Raiders to be getting JaMarcus Russell ready to play quarterback.

While all the talk is about whether Josh McCown should go back into the lineup supplanting Daunte Culpepper, the real issue for Oakland is its future, and that means Russell.

But I don’t believe it should be this week. A road game against Tennesee, which has a good defense and should get an emotional lift from Vince Young’s return as its quarterback, is not the place or the time. But with back-to-back home games coming against Houston and Chicago, both of them in the bottom half of the league on defense, Oakland should be getting the kid ready to play.

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Used to be that the Bay Area was the hub of the NFL in January. The 49ers and Raiders were regular playoff participants. You need a good memory for that, but it’s the truth.

From the time the Raiders joined the NFL in the merger in 1970, through the 2002 season – a total of 33 years – there were only three seasons in which neither team qualified for the playoffs and no years in which they both had a losing record.

Nice memory.

Barring a turnaround, 2007 will become the fifth consecutive season in which both teams had losing records and failed to qualify for the playoffs.

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Top 5:

1. New England (7-0). We’re starting to run out of adjectives to describe Tom Brady’s work. With six more touchdown passes against Miami, Brady now has thrown for 27 TDs in seven games. It’s going to be hard to keep that pace up when the weather turns bad later in the season, but if the Patriots remain relatively healthy, their offense is going to be very, very hard to stop.

2. Indianapolis (5-0). Tonight is a very big game for the Colts, who either will leave Jacksonville with a two-game lead in the AFC South or tied for first place. The Colts are well aware of what happened to them there last year (44-17) but their defense is playing closer to the level it reached in the playoffs that the way it played through the season a year ago.

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