Mike Brown returned this interception for the game-winning TD in overtime against the 49ers.

Don't try telling Chicago Bears free safety Mike Brown or Dallas Cowboys weakside linebacker Dexter Coakley that the trend toward increased defensive scoring in the NFL, initially examined by ESPN.com after Week 5 games, has slackened just a bit the past three weekends of the schedule.

Both players scored touchdowns via interception returns each of the last two Sundays, and Brown, whose pickoffs abruptly ended a pair of overtime victories in electrifying fashion for the surging Bears, reiterated Monday that defenses leaguewide remain more aware of the potential for taking scoring matters into their own hands.

"When a defense scores (a touchdown)," Brown said, "it's usually a backbreaker. I mean, it really does turn the momentum around quickly. It's the fastest way I know to knock the air out of an offense."

And in the case of Brown and the Bears, an expeditious way to end an overtime session, and send the Soldier Field fans into a instant frenzy.

Only 13 overtime games have been ended by an interception return for a touchdown since the NFL installed the extra period in '74. That it has happened each of the last two weeks, with the same team and the same player, is nothing shy of mind-boggling.

	Downtown Brown
	Mike Brown has joined some very select company with his overtime touchdowns in the Bears' last two games. Brown is now only the fourth player in NFL history with two career overtime touchdowns and is the first defensive player ever to score two career touchdowns in overtime. With those scores, the Bears become the first team in NFL history to win consecutive overtime games with touchdowns. Brown, a second-year player from Nebraska, now has three career touchdowns. Here are the four players with a more than one overtime TD.
		TDs	Pos.
	Mike Brown	2*	S
	Jerome Bettis	2	RB
	John Jefferson	2	RB
	Michael Timpson	2	WR
	* Scored in consecutive weeks

Such a logic-defying accomplishment does reinforce, however, that defensive scoring continues at a record pace in 2001. Brown acknowledged that his two big overtime plays were in part fortuitous but the fact is, defenders are scoring with incredible regularity. Rarely a week goes by now without an interception or touchdown return playing a large part in determining at least one or two contests.

There were five interception returns for touchdowns Sunday and, in his first appearance since a preseason knee injury, Cleveland Browns defensive end Courtney Brown had a 25-yard fumble return for a score. That increased the number of defensive touchdowns in 2001 to 47, with 29 on interception returns and 18 on fumble runbacks, in 112 games.

Projected over the course of a whole season, that represents a 104-touchdown pace, down four from when ESPN.com first quantified the trend three weeks ago but still very much on course to smash the NFL record of 92, established in 1999.

The 18 fumble returns for touchdowns are already three more than were recorded for the entire 2000 season. Last season, there were only 66 defensive touchdowns by way of an interception or fumble return. Only 10 years ago, there were just 57 touchdowns scored by the defenses, and the league average for the 1990-2000 stretch was 72.

"The whole idea of this defensive (role) reversal is stressed so much more now than when I first came into the league," said Baltimore Ravens free safety Rod Woodson on Sunday. "Players are more conscious of it now. Even a (defensive) lineman, for instance, seems to know what to do now if he gets a hop and a fumble bounces up to him."

Indeed, no one had to draw a directional arrow to the end zone for Brown on Sunday when he picked up a fumble by Bears quarterback Shane Matthews on the second play of the game. A fifth-year veteran who had scored a touchdown on an interception return in 1999, Coakley added that most defensive players immediately thinking "score" now when the ball bounces into their hands.

"It's like a little siren goes off in your head and you just start looking for the end zone," Coakley said.

Len Pasquarelli is a senior NFL writer for ESPN.com.