Credit Tom Brady with this season's friskiest pre-snap audible.
During New England's epic comeback win over the Denver Broncos on Sunday night, the Patriots quarterback issued an at-the-line play call that made Belichick completists perk up.
"Cougar! Cougar!" and "Linda!" Brady screamed before tossing a third-quarter touchdown strike to tight end Rob Gronkowski that brought the Pats within three of the Broncos.
Was it a nod to Ms. Linda Holliday, Bill Belichick's girlfriend and the muse of Foxborough?
"Well, since it was obviously a good call and a well-executed play, I'll take a tiny bit of credit -- but only for a well-named play," Linda told the Boston Herald. "Seriously, the whole team played hard and we all couldn't be happier, right?"
Pressed for details on Monday, Brady remained robotically vague:
"We've got a lot of calls at the line of scrimmage," Brady told WEEI-FM. "Some are protection calls, some are calls where we're directing guys, we got run calls, we got pass calls, we got protection calls, we got dummy calls, so you don't get locked into one or two things ... we ended up using them all."
Here's where we pause to clarify that Holliday, who turned 50 this summer, doesn't technically meet the "cougar" definition while dating a man in his 60s -- but that's probably a discussion for another website.
The latest "Around The League Podcast" previewed all three of the big Thanksgiving games on the schedule.