"Did you catch the way Jon Gruden was practically panting on "Monday Night Football" a couple of days ago with his praise of Panthers RB DeAngelo Williams?

Gruden said, among other things, that DeAngelo may be the best back in the NFL.

Gruden said there's a "debate" about that title in the NFL, but then left the unmistakable impression that he thought the Panthers' No.34 was indeed the best. When fellow MNF announcers Mike Tirico and Ron Jaworski teased Gruden about it, asking if his "sources" had ever heard of Minnesota's Adrian Peterson, Gruden stuck to his guns. He also said that while coaching Tampa Bay he kept thinking DeAngelo was getting stopped behind the line on a first-and-10 and all of a sudden it was instead second-and-10 or second-and-5.

Gruden also sounded almost lovestruck when he said that in the crew's pregame meeting with DeAngelo he "hated to say goodnight."

And MNF also put up some statistics during the game to illustrate how great DeAngelo's 2008 season was, comparing it to one season apiece by Jim Brown and O.J. Simpson (even though DeAngelo didn't make the Pro Bowl team announced in December, which we all know was a joke).

In other words, DeAngelo ain't flying under the radar anymore, although he often says he'd like that to be the case.

When you lead the NFL with 20 TDs (18 rushing) and rush for 1,515 yards (third in the NFL behind the Vikes' Peterson and Atlanta's Michael Turner), you're a big jet airplane, and everyone is going to see that on the radar.

Now this much is true: DeAngelo had the best season of any RB in the NFL last year, bar none. I firmly believe that. Here's why. He scored more times than Turner and Peterson, and most importantly, he fumbled ZERO times."