Entering Sunday's game in San Francisco, New England had never won a game on the road against the 49ers, while the Patriots had gone four consecutive games scoring fewer than 20 points. Both streaks would come to an end, as New England came from behind on two separate occasions to pull out a 30-21 win on the road, keeping pace in a suddenly competitive AFC East division.

In the process, backup quarterback Matt Cassel had his best game as a pro, completing 22 of 32 passes for 259 yards and a score. He did a throw a pair of picks in the first half, but helped to overcome those mistakes by throwing a 66-yard strike to Randy Moss for the teams first score, and averaging over eight-yards per pass attempt in the win.

49ers Quarterback J.T. O'Sullivan threw two touchdowns in the first quarter -- one to Frank Gore, the other to Isaac Bruce -- giving San Francisco a pair of seven point leads, only to see the Patriots quickly respond and erase each deficit.

Elie Seckbach, the Embedded Correspondent, brings his exclusive video reporting to FanHouse. Check back regularly for more videos.

San Fransisco 49ers' tight end Vernon Davis might be struggling this season, but he has plenty of other interests to keep himself balanced. From his surprisingly impressive talents as an artist, to his unique outlook on what he'd be doing if he weren't playing football, Davis is a true renaissance man. In this video we catch up with the Bay Area footballer. Watch the interview after the jump.

Brandon Lang, whose life as a professional sports handicapper was depicted in the 2005 movie Two For The Money, offers picks that he says can turn a profit over the long-term for his clients. His full picks are available exclusively at his web site, www.BrandonLangExperts.com, and he's also offered us three picks for free here at FanHouse.

Brandon Lang, whose life as a professional sports handicapper was depicted in the 2005 movie Two For The Money, offers picks that he says can turn a profit over the long-term for his clients. His full picks are available exclusively at his web site, www.BrandonLangExperts.com, and he's also offered us three picks for free here at FanHouse.

Give the Lions credit, they didn't fall down by 21 points this week. Baby steps, gentlemen. Baby steps. Though, in the end, it didn't matter as Matt Millen's hapless bunch of misfits fell, 31-13, to Frank Gore and the 49ers.

Mike Martz was looking for some revenge this week against some of his former players, and he got it as J.T. O'Sullivan finished the game 16 of 23 passing for 186 yards and a pair of touchdowns. O'Sullivan continues to be an early season surprise, and is doing quite a bit to make Martz look like a genius for having faith in him, and proclaiming that he might be the best quarterback he's ever coached. I still think that's a bit much, but, hey, so far so good.

Meanwhile, Frank Gore ran all over the Lions' defense with 130 yards on 27 carries, while also hauling in four passes for 32 yards.

Remember last week, how I noted that the Detroit Lions had developed a new habit of falling behind 21-0 at the start of games?

Well, I've got good news, Detroit fans: The Lions are getting better. Instead of falling behind 21-0 at the start of games, they're down just 21-3 right now, in the second quarter of their game at the San Francisco 49ers. At this rate, the Lions should be playing competitive football some time around Week 16.

And, of course, while I'm kidding about Lions President Matt Millen signing a 10-year contract extension, it actually would make perfect sense: Millen says the Lions simply need to stay the course, and Lions owner William Clay Ford has made clear that he has complete confidence in Millen's leadership. This team will be this terrible as long as Ford is alive.

It's already been discussed around here how 49ers offensive coordinator Mike Martz has a habit of making his quarterbacks cry. But what about his ability to take a journeyman starting quarterback and morph him into a combination of Kurt Warner and Marc Bulger's greatest assets? That's kind of what he did in a conversation with Fox announcers Kenny Albert and Daryl Johnston when discussing his current quarterback, J.T O'Sullivan. From Kevin Lynch of the San Francisco Chronicle:

One more item about Martz and O'Sullivan, Martz told the broadcast team of Kenny Albert and Daryl Johnston that O'Sullivan sees the field like Warner and has the quick release of Marc Bulger. Then he said that O'Sullivan could be the best quarterback he ever coached. Even for someone who tends towards bombast, that's a bold statement.

Bold statement? The only thing that could have possibly been bolder is if he added in the scrambling ability of Young, the arm strength of Favre, and the leadership of Montana.

Let's go ahead and get the good news out of the way first. Julius Jones rushed for 127 yards and a touchdown on 26 carries, flashing the revamped running game that Mike Holmgren had mentioned bringing back around the Northwest.

As for the rest of the news (all bad), the Seattle defense allowed: San Francisco to score 33 points, J.T. O'Sullivan to throw for 321 yards, and Isaac Bruce to catch 153 yards worth of passing. Yipes. On offense, John Carlson seems nice ... which is good because he's all they've got in the passing game. Courtney Taylor -- fresh off bemoaning his potential release -- was nonexistent, and Seneca Wallace didn't catch a single pass. That could be because he got hurt before the game, joining Logan Payne, Nate Burelson, Deion Branch and Bobby Engram on Seattle's Red Cross list.

Also, Matt Hasselbeck was a horrid 18 of 36 for 189 yards and two interceptions, probably because he has no receivers.

So, yeah, Seattle is more or less finished at this point, in all honesty. The crazy thing is that if 'Beck can somehow manage to get kind of healthy and Branch can come back, they could still win the NFC West.

Why's that? Because the Niners, who needed two shots at victory (Joe Nedney whiffed the potential walk off field goal) to topple these pathetic 'Hawks. And they're the second best team in the division. Epic fail indeed.

The 49ers today signed free agent quarterback Jamie Martin, according to Matt Barrows of the Sacramento Bee. The team needed another quarterback after Alex Smith suffered a shoulder injury heading into week one.

The addition of the 38-year old Martin likely means Smith, the No. 1 pick of the 2005 draft, is headed to injured reserve, ending his season, and perhaps his career as a member of the San Francisco 49ers.

San Francisco general manager Scot McCloughan has already made it clear the only way Smith will be a member of the team in 2009, is if he were a clear-cut, no-doubt-about-it starter heading into the season. And to me, the only way that could happen would be if he somehow reclaimed his starting job before the end of this season, and led the team to many, many victories. Since his season is likely over, there's absolutely no chance that can happen now.

Hindsight is always 20/20, of course, but that No. 1 overall pick is looking pretty bad right about now.

When the NFL schedule came out several months ago, the San Francisco-Arizona game in week one should have been a matchup between two former first-round picks at quarterback, with Alex Smith lining up under center for the 49ers, while Matt Leinart barked out the signals for the Cardinals. Instead, what we ended up with was an eight-team-in-six-years journeyman, J.T. O'Sullivan, taking on a 37-year old Kurt Warner. Crazy game, this NFL.

In the end, it was the ageless wonder and the Cardinals pulling out a 23-13 win in San Francisco.

O'Sullivan, making his first NFL start, had a mixed bag of good and bad, as he managed to complete 14-of-20 for 195 yards (that's good), but was also intercepted once and fumbled twice (that's bad). As a team, the 49ers were guilty of five turnovers and only managed to run 40 plays on offense while the Cardinals controlled the ball for over 37 minutes of clock-time, none of which was all that pleasing to 49ers head coach Mike Nolan.

The game looked even worse than it was to embattled 49ers coach Mike Nolan, who kept insisting his team had made six turnovers after losing four fumbles and an interception.

"I feel, had we played more of our type of game, we had every right to win the game," Nolan said. "Obviously, Arizona came out better prepared from the turnover standpoint. Last year, we beat them twice (because) we won the turnover battle twice."