View from America: 16 teams are sitting pretty at the NFL's half-way point, says Simon Veness

Psychologists will tell you there are two types of people in the world, those who see things as a glass half full, and those who seem them as a glass half empty.

AFC North: Cincinnati have suddenly leapt into the position of full-ness behind an impressive salvo of passing dexterity from Andy Dalton, with ELEVEN touchdowns in his past three games (even Peyton Manning only has nine in that spell). Baltimore will also feel there is a certain half-full nature to their season with at least six games left that they will feel are very winnable. For Pittsburgh and Cleveland, there is extremely little reason for optimism at this stage. Despite stout defensive performances (both in the top 10 for yards per game), their offences simply haven't turned up this year, hence it is back to the drawing board. AFC South: There's no doubt this division has been the big surprise so far, with Indianapolis playing with the half-full maturity we expected of Houston, who have simply disintegrated in just about every category. The Texans are playing purely for pride at this stage, unlike Tennessee who know that, with a fully-fit Jake Locker, their wild card hopes remain positively half-full. Jacksonville would love to be simply half-decent at this stage, but we all know the reality here. They don't even HAVE a glass at all. AFC West: Here's a whole DIVISION with reasons to be thinking half-full. Denver we were pretty sure would be certs to pick up where they left off last season, with lots more entries in the 'W' column. No surprises there (although, for a while, we wondered if Peyton Manning might set a record for most TD passes - by the half-way stage). But if anyone expected Kansas City to be sitting atop the pile at this stage they were absolutely silent in pre-season. The Chiefs don't believe in doing anything by halves just now, and could easily be 9-0 before they face the meat of their schedule - Denver, San Diego and the Broncos again in Weeks 11-13. Split the series with Manning and Co and beat the Chargers and they'll fancy a serious post-season glass raising. Equally, the Chargers are better-placed than most predicted and could yet be the big spoilers, while even the 3-4 Raiders have confounded predictions that they would be contending with the Jaguars for this year's wooden glass, ahem, spoon. OK, I can avoid it no longer, it's time to peer into the murky depths of the Division of Shame. NFC East: At a combined 11-20 and with no team boasting a winning record, it is easy to see this quartet as all half-empty. Only it's worse than that. Six of those 11 wins came in intra-division battles, which means they are 5-14 against the rest of the league. The only 'signature' victory you might claim among those five would be Washington's last-gasp ambush of Chicago. Yet one of this sorry bunch WILL qualify for the play-offs and, amazingly, no-one is more than two games out of first place. Conversely, some Wild Card team is going to fancy their chances in January. A lot.

STATS OF THE WEEK Calvin Johnson had the second-best game for a wide receiver of all time in Detroit's stunning 30-31 victory over Dallas, amassing 329 yards on 14 catches, with one touchdown. It was just seven yards short of Flipper Anderson's total for the Los Angeles Rams against New Orleans in 1989 - but Anderson had 40 of his yards in overtime. Megatron didn't catch a ball until the 2:44 mark of the first quarter - but then it went for 87 yards. He also had receptions of 54, 29, 26, 22, 21 and 21 yards. It was his shortest, just two yards, that ended in the end zone. It WASN'T a perfect gamer for Johnson, though. He fumbled under a tackle by Barry Church in the third quarter and it led to a Dallas field goal. The Cowboys scored 16 of their points off the Lions' FOUR turnovers. And still lost. PS: Memo to Jerry Jones - No, the 6ft 1in, 190lb Deion Sanders would NOT have stopped the 6ft 5in, 236lb Johnson. As sharp and opportunistic as Sanders was, he would have been just as helpless as the rest of the Cowboys' secondary on Sunday. It was football from a different planet.