The NFL pre-season kicked off tonight with the annual hall of fame game in canton, Ohio. The Bengals took on the Cowboys in a fairly typcial pre-season game.

The X-factor that made it interesting was Terrell Owens. His sudden departure from the Cowboys a little over a year ago  made headlines and surprised no one but T.O. (he even said after the game he still thinks he should be a Cowboy).

T.O. is now catching Carson Palmer’s passes in Cincy alongside Chad OchentaCinco.

Say what you want about T.O. and his antics, but if you are one of those people who think he has lost two steps and doesn’t still ahve a top 15 WR game, you are wrongly mistaken. He put up pretty good numbers for a losing team with the most untalented batch of QB’s I’ve ever seen.

T.O. and OchoCinco will be impossible to cover, and will help Carson Palmer come back from a year that saw the Bengals be the 26th ranked passing team in the NFL. Strange enough, the Bengals had their worst passing year, and had one of Carson Palmer’s two best years.

It is just pre-season and no one really cares except head coaches and 4th string defensive backs. But the excitement is back and the NFL season is just on the horizon.

Check out the game’s Box Score.

You know how some people just “Get It”? Well the Knicks are one of those ‘people’. They are just so in tuned to whats going on and so well run, it’s no wonder they keep winning championships. They make strong hires from the get go.  They are great at the draft. Always get their guy. Oh, and they play great defense with their coach.

Wait, that’s Spurs, or… The Lakers.  Or really anyone but the Knicks.

Isiah Thomas is BACK!! great news for everyone named Isiah Thomas.

Isiah Thomas cost the Knicks over 200 million dollars whlie he was with the team via his contract, absurd luxury tax costs due to high payroll, and his 12 million dollar sexual harassment lawsuit that they settled on with an intern.

Playoffs were never even really an option, even though they had double the salary that anyone else did.

No question Thomas is one of the greatest players of all time, and no one can forget his sprained ankle quarter where he put up like 30 points in a quarter in the playoffs. But he will also go down as not only the worst coach, but also the worst GM in NBA history (Kahn is making a hard push for it though).

Thomas will be hired as a “consultant” which means to me that they’ll eventually give him GM-ship and then the coaching reigns once again.

Isiah was just coaching FIU (and will “stay there”) last year. They put up a solid fight in UNC”s opener last year (which made me realize off the bat how bad UNC was going to be). But he had to coach for free, no one would touch him. I guess he needed money, and the Knicks have plenty of that. I’m sure he’s had a positive impact at a non-existant college basketball program with recruiting. But come on, Knicks, are we really going down this road again?

This is definitely the #1 reason Lebron James made the right decision to not go to the Knicks…. They sent Isiah to represent their team during the recruiting push.

Nothing adds more ESPN content year after year over the summer than the Favre retirement sagas. Yesterday, all reports indicated that Favre was calling it quits. The report first said that Favre had texted a bunch of players “this is it” indicating that he wasn’t comign back.

ESPN obviously ran with it, making up sources and blowing the story out of proportion. The news took over ESPN radio and ESPN news all day and night.

But there just weren’t any facts associated with the data. There were reports of the text messages, but Visanthe Shiancoe didn’t get it, Childress didn’t get it, and Favre’s longest teammate Ryan Longwell didn’t get it. I was skeptical all day, and didn’t understand why ESPN had run with the story without being able to name anyone who had gotten these texts. Read the rest of this entry »

All reports seem to indicate that Favre is retiring from football and will not be returning to the Vikings.

Now, some of you might be saying, “Finally, now we don’t have to hear about this every day for the next 12 months. Well, it probably only fuels speculation about him coming back throughout the season. But the NFL gets huge ratings boosts from Favre, and so does ESPN and EPN radio by just talking about Favre (and Lebron) 24/7. You might not like either of those players, but you are always intrigued to hear about them and watch them play. It’s just a fact.

Do we buy it? Not really. But let’s assume it’s true and see the implications for other players outside of Mississippi. Peyton Manning’s record hunt and Tarvaris Jackson stand to gain the most from Favre’s departure.

Tarvaris Jackson

Tarvaris Jackson stands to be the only person in the NFL to not lose money and fame from Favre retiring. Favre brings a lot of attention to the NFL and makes everyone richer. Except his back-up QB. Tarvaris Jackson will now start the season for the Vikings. If he has a crappy year, he’ll be in the same exact position he was 2 days ago, a back-up making back-up money.  But if Tarvaris has a pretty decent season with all that talent around him, he stand to make some good money on his next contract.

Tarvaris Jackson may actually not like this announcement.  He might be such a professional that he wanted the team to win, and knew Favre was about 62% better than himself, and was happy with his back-up role in exchange for a winning atmosphere. But the competitor in everyone makes this unlikely, and Tavaris probably wants to play. I don’t think he’ll be great but he’ll probably lead the team to 9 or 10 games as opposed to 12 or 13 with Favre.

Peyton Manning

Manning will finally have some numbers to shoot for, and won’t have to keeping adding years onto his own career just to outlast Favre. Let’s look at the numbers manning has to beat.

Note: Wins/Losses taken from career W/L Avg. TD, Yds, INT, Comp, Att, and Sacks will be projected from the WORST year Manning has had since 2003.

So Peyton is right on his way to take down most of Favre’s records in the next 5 years (at least the good ones). Note that these projections are projected from Mannings WORST year of the last 7 years. Comp, Att, and Yds were all taken from 2005. Int projected from 2009, sacks from 2007, and TD from 2008.

Within 4 years he could break the TD, Wins, Comp and maybe even yards if he has stellar seasons. If his career winds down like most players’ do, hell do it in 5.

If Favre comes back for another year, you can add 1 full year onto each of those projections.

There are some records Manning will never (probably) break. For sacks, the most extreme case, would take 220 games, or 13+ years to get to the Favre sack mark. Also interceptions, will take 9 years to break, and would probably be even longer. Losses are on point with interceptions, would take 8.5 years to break that one, rather than 4.6 years for wins.

So all in all, there are only 2 beneficiaries from Favre retiring. Hopefully he comes back, so we can all be enthralled watching Favre during the season. And that way he won’t have to end on a terrible interception in the playoffs last year.

Sam Bradford just agreed to a ridiculous contract that makes Jamarcus Russell look like a bargain. Bradford agreed to a 6 year, 78 million dollar deal, with 50 million guaranteed. 50 MILLION!!!

How ridiculous is this contract for a player who has been continuously injured in college and didn’t even play for his team much this season? Well, Tom Brady, coming off his third Super Bowl victory in February 2005, signed a 6-year, 66 million dollar contract similar to the extensions Vick and Manning received around the same time.

This made Brady one of the top 10 highest paid players in the game. He also restructured his contract a few years later to save the patriots money to sign Randy Moss and others, so he didn’t even see that much.

Bradford is getting 13 million more base, and can make up to 86 million total.  That 86 million is very close to what Philip Rivers just got, and he’s a top 5 QB in the league, and was at the time, too.  It is 12 million more than Aaron Rodgers got after his first year of starting in 2008.

The NFL has gotten out of control.  The #1 pick is a curse money wise, and there absolutely no way Bradford can live up to that contract short of a 14-2 season and a Super Bowl NEXT YEAR.

These kinds of things make me want a lockout next summer.  If the players really think rookies are this valuable, I can almost guarantee there isn’t going to be a new CBA deal done.

The Jets and coach Rex Ryan have clearly overdosed on reality television. It’ being reported today that the Jets are now in the mix for T.O. and are considering the opportunity of signing him.

If they do one thing is for sure, Hard Knocks on HBO is must see TV. Adding Terrell Owens would give them 4 potential #1 wide receivers: Braylon Edwards, Santonio Holmes (4 gm suspension), Jerricho Cotchery, and Owens.

All four have the talent to be #1 receivers (Cotchery proved this with Favre at the helm). Braylon Edwards was traded away from the Browns to the Jets last year in advance of a suspension amid character issues and knocking out Lebron’s little buddy.  Santonio Holmes was traded to the Jets this offseason for a 5th round pick, because of a 4 game suspension for violating the leagues substance abuse policy (a.k.a character issues).

Owens has never been arrested, or even really considered for any misconduct off the field. On the field and in the locker room is another question.

T.O. blew up a great situation in San Francisco with Jeff Garcia insinuating Garcia is gay saying “If it looks like a rat, and smells like a rat, must be a rat”. Owens was traded away to the Ravens (where he refused to go and play with Kyle Boller) and eventually landed in Philly.

He killed it with McNabb, but still had trouble keeping his ego in check and his mouth shut.  After a huge performance in the Superbowl, he blamed McNabb for being soft and quitting, and was cut by the Eagles the following season.

In Dallas, he fared much better, but still was yapping on the sideline all day.  He eventually was cut by the Cowboys and picked up by the Bills. He finally kept his mouth shut and played some good football last year with the Bills considering the QB talent and weather.

Owens is still talented and still a top 10 WR in the league despite popular opinion. But do the Jets really need to add another potential problem at the WR position alone? They’ve also got the uber-complaining Tomlinson, Revis holding out, and a bunch of other washed up veterans trying to revive careers.

This may all be a smoke screen created by Drew Rosenhaus (T.O.’s agent) since Owens has already been offered a contract to play with Carson Palmer and the Bengals. This could just be a negotiation tactic to get a million or so extra bucks from the Bengals.

If he lines up in either Cincy or New Jersey, be ready for a super reality show with Ocho’s reality show and T.O.’s cry fest to be combined, or Jets’ Hard Knocks and T.O.’s cry fest to be combined to create ultimate celebrity sports reality shows that everyone can laugh at.