Just this past Sunday night, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had to have been pretty pleased with how things were going for his league. The Patriots - Eagles game turned into a surprisingly competitive football game (Eagles were 24 point underdogs) and NBC earned a 15.6/24 overnight Nielsen rating for its “Sunday Night Football” broadcast, marking the best overnight in the two-year history of the "SNF" franchise, and also the best overnight for a game on the NFL's primetime broadcast package since a 15.8/24 for the Steelers-Colts "MNF" matchup on ABC in '05. The Patriots remain undefeated and even the casual fan will continue to follow the progress of the team as they chase history.

Then things started to unravel for Goodell and his league. We thought the Michael Vick story would be the league's biggest story of 2007. That was until an intruder broke into the Florida home of Washington Redskins star Sean Taylor and fired shots that left him fighting for his life. Taylor eventually died this morning and its one of the darkest days in the 75-year history of the Redskins franchise. Taylor, by all accounts, had turned his life around and was becoming a more responsible father and teammate. He was one of the best defensive players in the NFL and played for one of the league's most high profile franchises. This story will not go away any time soon.

(Sidenote on the Taylor story: Is it just me or should the NFL be alarmed that they've lost Taylor and Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams to shootings in the last 12 months? Williams was killed in a drive-by shooting following an argument at a Denver nightclub on Jan. 1. Then in another strange irony, University of Miami defensive lineman Bryan Pata was shot to death in November 2006 several miles from Taylor's home in an unsolved killing. Taylor played college football at the University of Miami. Maybe I'm overthinking things here and have watched one too many episodes of Law and Order, but I find it hard to believe that these three killings were "random" acts of violence. Could the Taylor and Pata shootings in Florida be related? Again, both played at the University of Miami. where players have been known to find their share of off the field run-in's.The police certainly have their work cut out for them here. Whomever fired the shots killing Williams and Pata have still not been found. And the NFL may need to address their security procedures more thoroughly. Yes, there are people murdered every day in the world, but if you're a high profile athlete with lots of money and you or the friends in your circle have some run in's with bad people, you're going to be a target. Only eight days before the attack that killed Taylor, someone pried open a front window, rifled through drawers and left a kitchen knife on a bed at Taylor's home, according to police. Again, maybe I'm overthinking things, but I find it hard to believe that Taylor was the victim of two "random" burglaries in the past two weeks. There's something more here. And I'm not sure I have a ton of faith in the authorities to solve this crime. They still haven't figured out who shot Tupac in September of 1996 right in the middle of the Las Vegas strip. Williams and Pata's deaths are still unsolved. This also seems a bit strange to me).

And watch how this home invasion causes pro athletes and celebrities alike to re-think their current home security systems. Security companies will use this as "Exhibit A" when convincing already paranoid celebs that they need to spend big bucks to protect themselves. And maybe these security companies will have a point.

So the Sean Taylor story is a true tragedy and overshadows anything else that I will mention during the rest of this column, but the point of this column is that the NFL has their hands full this week.

Last night's Steelers - Dolphins game in Pittsburgh was atrocious and should have never been played. Heinz Field looked like a mud bog for monster trucks. The league and the teams are very lucky that nobody tore up a knee or was seriously hurt because the field was uneven and had huge divots in it. How bad were the conditions? Check out this video courtesy of Awful Announcing. The football looked like my golf ball on a soggy winter day on the golf course. It plugged.

Jeff Reed's 24-yard field goal with 17 seconds left Monday night gave Pittsburgh a 3-0 victory over winless Miami, the first time in 64 years an NFL game went that long without any points. It was the league's lowest-scoring game since Dec. 11, 1993, when the New York Jets beat Washington 3-0 and it was the lowest scoring game in the history of Monday Night Football.

I'm all for seeing some football in the rain, mud and snow, but this was dangerous after torrential downpours turned the already torn up field into a mud bog. After five high school and college games were played at Heinz Field last weekend, crews hurriedly put down a new layer of sod atop the chewed-up turf for Monday night's game. Many in Pittsburgh have clamored for artificial turf and players have voted Heinz Field one of the worst fields in the NFL. Maybe last night's debacle will finally lead to artificial turf with a much better drainage system.

Last issue on the plate of the NFL honchos this week - the two best teams in the NFC will meet on Thursday night when the 10-1 Packers face the 10-1 Cowboys. That's the good news. The bad news is that only 30% of the country will see the game because its going to air on the NFL Network. The league this week is unleashing its PR machine in an effort to pressure cable companies to add the network, but the cable companies (mainly Time Warner and Comcast) aren't budging. And the cable companies have unleashed their PR machines and have informed fans that the NFL Network wants .70 cents per subscriber to carry the network........more than double what networks like CNN and Fox News charge. Others are saying that if the NFL really cared about its fans, it would put this game on free TV for all to see, instead of using the marquee game as a bargaining chip in its fight with the cable companies.

Call me crazy, but I don't think the NFL Network will reach any kind of a deal with the cable companies until the NFL offers these cable companies an ownership stake in the network. Then the cable companies will become vested partners and have a much greater interest in carrying the NFL Network on basic cable. Instead, the NFL wanted to keep complete ownership of the network, as well as the $3.5 billion it gets from DirecTV for an exclusive deal for its own out-of-market package, Sunday Ticket.

Now I'm about to say something I've never said and may never say again. The NFL should have done what Major League Baseball has planned for its new 24/7 offering is set to go on the air in 2009. Yes I said it, MLB actually played this one better than the NFL.

MLB-TV will debut to about 47 million households, including the majority of cable homes. That's more households than the NFL Network has ever had.

The way MLB was able to achieve wide distribution was by using Extra Innings, its subscription package of out-of-market games, as leverage with the cable companies. The league also reached an agreement to have cable and satellite take an ownership stake its new network.

The NFL Network is a solid network and I am one of the lucky ones who receives the network because I have DirecTV. But I don't see the cable companies caving to the demands of America's most dominant sports league unless they receive an ownership stake in the NFL Network.

So if you're NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, its only Tuesday and these are the major issues you're already dealing with this week. Again, the Sean Taylor tragedy overshadows everything else by a longshot, but the NFL certainly has its plate full with several high profile issues this week.