Archive for the ‘NFL’ Category

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.

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.

A lot has been made about where Terrell Owens might end up and whether he’s worth it for any team to pick up after a dismal 2009 campaign in Buffalo. Well, first of all, that dismal campaign wasn’t all that bad.

T.O. was being thrown to by 2 QB’s that probably wouldn’t make back-up for any other team in the league (except the Lions, of course). Ryan Fitzpatrick and Trent Edwards split the snaps about 50/50 due to injury and performance. Both had a 70ish QB rating and both had more INT than TD.

T.O. had pretty good stats considering those two guys being the signal callers. He pulled in 55 catches for 829 yards with 5 TD.  All of those are down relative to T.O. expectations and career averages, but he did have better numbers than the fast and very talented Lee Evans. T.O. Also pulled down a 9 catch 197 yard game with a 98 yard TD catch.

I think NFL teams know his value much better than the typically wrong media, and they also understand T.O.’s attitude weaknesses better than most NFL fans. But eventually Terrell will land on a team, and these are the ones that he can help the most. (Keep in mind T.O. wants a 4 million contract and to be in playoff contention)

Tennessee Titans

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Jamarcus Russell was arrested today for possession of a controlled substance in Mobile, Alabama.  The substance was codeine syrup, or cough syrup infused with codeine. Russell obviously didn’t have a prescription for it.  The arrest was part of a sting operation. Russell was arrested at his Mobile home (not mobile-home, in Mobile, AL) by police and was later released on $2,500 bail. JaMarcus was born and went to high school in Mobile.

The codeine cough syrup is commonly called ‘Purple Drank‘ in the Hip-Hop community. Codeine is a narcotic that in large quantities lead to sedation and altered states of consciousness. While codeine is a pain killer, this concoction is used more as a recreational drug in the Hip-Hop community than to cover up any real pain.

This pretty much ruins any chance of JaMarcus getting even a min contract for anyone this off-season. With training camp looming and his court date set for July 20th (will probably be pushed back), It’s doubtful any team will be as stupid as the Raiders were originally.  Russell will certianly go down as the worst #1 pick in NFL history, but I’d go as far to say he is the worst NFL player in NFL history.  He had a career QB rating of 65 and a career completion rating of 52% with 18 TDs and 23 INT including 70 sacks.

This is a win for Al Davis probably in his mind.  He probably thinks “Hey, I got rid of him just in time.”  Well, you were two years late on that one Al, but for any of you non-Raiders fans it’s a win for you, because you know your team probably won;t make the mistake on Him with a min salary and roster position that someone was likely to.

If you respond better to listening to rap than you do reading a boring Wikipedia page, here is Fraser Boy with Miek Jones and Paul Wall to explain it in a gospel hymn:

Chappelle Purple Drank: