I miss the room.

I should rephrase that. I miss "the room." That's what sitcom writers call the conference room where they would all gather every day. All day, every day, you are in "the room." Pitching jokes, breaking stories, rewriting scripts -- it can be exhausting, but it's awesome. You just laugh and laugh all day long.

Because you are stuck in the same small room with the same people every day -- often for 10 hours or more a day -- pretty much everything goes. It's a creative environment, so ideally everyone should feel free to pitch whatever idea or joke, no matter how outlandish, because you never know what will spark something or lead down the path to where you need to go.

One of the many failed sitcoms I wrote on was called "Union Square," and it was one of those terrible Thursday night sitcoms between "Friends" and "Seinfeld." There were a lot of reasons it failed, and I learned a lot about what not to do on a sitcom there (that's a whole other column). But it didn't fail because the writing staff wasn't funny. There were some hilarious guys on that staff, including a writer/actor named George McGrath. George has done tons of things, including writing and producing with Tracey Ullman on "Tracey Takes On," but he is probably best known for co-writing a ton of the old "Pee-wee's Playhouse" stuff with Paul Reubens. He was also the voice of Globey among others.

Anyway, George is hilarious, and I loved working with him. And he would often pitch the most outlandish things. Most of them are unprintable here, and what is printable I've forgotten in the many years it's been since that show. But one thing that has always stuck with me was his attitude. He'd pitch something insane -- like, I'm making this up now, but something like:

George: What if Gaby discovers she was actually born a man?

(Rest of room stares at George. George stares right back.)

George: You heard me.

Both playful and defiant at the same time, I loved how he just owned it. Most times, when a pitch falls dead, writers would quickly backtrack. My go-to after I pitched a joke that bombed was to say, "Or we could do something funny. That's another way to go."

George never backed down. He just owned it.

"You heard me."

As regular readers of this column know, I have hijacked that phrase and embraced that attitude for my bold predictions column. You are now reading the seventh annual football edition.

Now, to truly be a bold prediction, it needs to be, well, bold. Peyton Manning will throw over 40 touchdowns this year is not only not bold, it's actually much more likely to happen than not. A bold prediction would be to say Peyton Manning will play all 16 games and yet throw for only 20 touchdowns. That is very unlikely to happen.

I've made a ton of predictions this preseason and, while the odds say it's unlikely all of them will come true, they are steeped in research, scouting and facts that suggest they are much more likely to happen than not.

The idea for this column is not to nail low-percentage outrageous predictions, but rather to highlight players I have strong feelings about, one way or the other. These are scenarios that are not likely to come to pass, but they aren't impossible, either. And frankly, it's not important whether I get it right. You heard me. For your consideration: In last year's edition, I said Matt Forte would gain over 2,000 all-purpose yards and score double-digit touchdowns. I got the scores right (12), but he finished with 1,933 all-purpose yards, so technically, I got it wrong. But considering Forte went in the third round and finished as the No. 3 running back, folks who were bullish on Forte like I was made out pretty well on that pick.