Week One Injuries Tackle an 18 Game Season

Over the past few years there has been a push to turn the last couple of each NFL Team's preseason games into part of the regular season. One argument in favor of the addition is that players don't need the time anymore . The off-season programs that the players participate in, and the team OTA's and training camp give them plenty of time to stay in shape and learn a playbook. Why not make more serious competition? Also fans are tired of having to pay regular season prices for games that do not count. It just doesn't have that same energy or experience as when players that you have actually heard of are on the field for more than a few plays.

Over the same period of time there has been some minor opposition to the conversion of those final preseason games. What if a coach needs those contests to devise their game plans? Have they had time to set depth charts? Have all necessary cuts been made? All of those questions have floated around but have had minimal impact on the support of the topic. I agree that the NFL should change to an 18 game season, or at least I did until now.

My whole view on the issue turned completely around after witnessing what happened during the first week of the season. During the course of the games, multiple players went down with injuries that can affect their careers, and even their lives after football. From suffering concussions that can keep them out 1-2 weeks (Eagles QB Kevin Kolb) to a second straight season with an ACL Tear (Jets DT Kris Jenkins) each and every injury that happens weekly in the NFL can devastate one's life.

Concussions, even minor ones have been a serious concern to the NFLPA lately. Former players have popped up left and right with diagnosed brain damage because of the violent head jarring, injury causing hits that they fell victim to on a weekly basis during their playing careers. ACL tears are one of the most serious injuries in all of sports. In it, a ligament behind your knee is ripped and requires extensive surgery plus an 8-10 month recovery. This huge recovery time causes the player not just to suffer the huge pain of the injury, but also causes them to miss the whole rest of their season. Although after an ACL injury, players are usually fine, there are quite a few former players with serious trouble walking as result of these injuries.

If an 18 game season is put in place it will involve even more serious injuries because of the high level of competition that will be going on for an extra two weeks. This shows that an 18 game season is bad for the NFL because I would rather see 2 preseason games than see my favorite player miss the whole season with an injury suffered that could have been avoided without the change.

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Brett Favre to Return to Vikings for 20th season in NFL

Brett Favre, Quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings has announced that he will return to the NFL for a twentieth season. Favre, who turns 41 in October is coming off of off season ankle surgery and was heavily contemplating retirement, but since his ankle is holding up he feels he owes the Vikings another season. A season he says will be his last. That's when I cracked up. Everyone knows that Brett won't retire until he decides his ego has been fed enough, so if he doesn't win a Superbowl I am sure we will see this exact same thing next season.


Favre led the Vikings to the NFC Championship game last season but nobody should expect the same because he had one of the best years of his career. He passed for over 4200 yards and 33 touchdowns. He also had a career low 7 interceptions and shattered his own mark for quarterback rating with an amazing 107.2. Vikings fans have very high expectations coming into this season for both the team and Favre but there is no reason to expect a season anything like last year. Favre is an old man first and foremost, let alone an old man that is coming off of major ankle surgery. Also last season he had major surgery before training camp. So what the Vikings have is a beat up quarterback who thinks he has something left in the tank.


All I have to say that expect a big disappointment Vikings Fans.


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Redskins Fans Show New Life

The Washington Redskins have a long and victorious past that is overshadowed by several bad seasons in a row. Have Redskins fans lost hope? The answer is no. While spending the day at Redskins training camp this past weekend, I learned what it meant to be a true football fan. Although the Skins ended 4-12 last season, there was upwards of 200 people at training camp to watch their beloved Redskins.

As the players took the field at 8:30 in the morning, fans lined the walkway and did nothing but cheer. I heard “welcome to Washington” from fans as Donovan McNabb took the field and “Cooooooooooley” echoed throughout Ashburn as Chris Cooley strapped up for practice, but no other player was welcomed as much as Albert Hanseworth. Fans started yelling congratulatory remarks to him since he had recently passed his conditioning test.

As head coach Mike Shanahan took the field, a long and loud round of applause arose from spectators because we all knew that he was the one man that was going to take our beloved Redskins back to the top where they belong.

- Michael Sensenig (Guest Writer)

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NFC East Preseason Predictions

The Dallas Cowboys are the obvious favorites in the NFC East and should win the division with ease. The ‘Boys offense promises to one of the most explosive in the league with stars such as Quarterback Tony Romo, Half Back Marion Barber, and Tight End Jason Witten, and Wide Receiver Miles Austin, who broke out last year with 1,320 receiving yards. The Cowboys also have a very strong Defense led by sack master DeMarcus Ware and shutdown corners Mike Jenkins and Terrance Newman.

The Washington Redskins have improved a lot this offseason through trades and the draft. After firing Jim Zorn, now the Baltimore Ravens Quarterbacks Coach, they inked the proven Mike Shanahan as their new Head Coach and Jim Haslett, who coached the UFL’s Florida Tuskers to a 6-0 season and a championship game appearance, is their new defensive coordinator. The ‘Skins also drastically improved their offensive line drafting Tackle Trent Williams out of Oklahoma with the 4th overall pick in the draft and trading for All- Pro Tackle Jammal Brown. Now that former All- Pro Defensive Tackle Albert Haynseworth has passed his conditioning and is trying to learn the new 3-4 D the Redskins can focus on winning. Although they probably won’t compete for the Division Title this season, they could contend for a wild card spot.

The biggest splash that the Philadelphia Eagles made this season was trading star quarterback Donovan McNabb in the Division to the Washington Redskins. They also released running back Brian Westbrook cutting ties with what were their two best known players. They have a good, young receiving corps lead by DeSean Jackson. Quarterback Kevin Kolb, who takes over for McNabb has shown lots of potential but if he slips up Michael Vick is waiting for his chance to snap up that job. The Eagles are a good team in a good division with a shot at a playoff spot.

Someone has to be predicted last in this very tough division and I’m going to go with the New York Giants. As always, Quarterback Eli Manning will be good and he has very good receivers in Steve Smith, Mario Manningham, and Hakeem Nicks. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Manning throw for over 4,000 yards again and even improve on his 27 Touchdown Passes. The Giants also have a strong ground game led by running back Brandon Jacobs who hits as hard as any linebacker in the league. As any team in this division, the Giants have a shot at the playoffs and look for their motors to be running all season long.

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Brett Favre to Retire... Again????

According to multiple reports, 19 year NFL veteran quarterback Brett Favre is set to retire from the NFL for the third time.  Favre is argueably the greatest Quarterback in the history of the NFL and is definatly the the best player in the history of the Green Bay Packers.  Although he is no longer the posterboy for the franchise and many Packer's Fans still feel betrayal over his backing out of retirement to join the rival Minnesota Vikings, we will all have a small place in our hearts for what he did to turn around the team when he took over the reins in 1992. 


Favre every significant career passing record and no one is even close to him in any of the categories.  He retires with 69,329 passing yards, 6,083 completions, and 497 career touchdown passes.  His longevity in the game and his gunslinger mentality has done one bad thing for him, he holds the NFL record for career interceptions with 317.  He won a Superbowl with the Green Bay Packers in 1997 but failed to win another, but came close many times including the next season where th Pack lost to the Broncos in the Big Game.  What is most suprising about this retirement is that Favre is coming off of his best player in years with 33 TD passes, over 4200 passing yards, and a career low 7 picks and this loss hurts the Viking's playoff hopes consideribly.  This comes as ahuge shock to everyone that follows the NFL but lets all just hope the third time's the charm and he finally hangs it up for good.


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Jets Revis Misses first day of camp

The Contract Dispute between All- Pro Corner Darrelle Revis and the New York Jets the superstar to hold out of the first day of camp. After being told in the off-season by Coach Rex Ryan and GM Mike Tannenbaum that he was the best corner in the NFL Revis decided that he wanted to be the highest paid. After receiving a contract extension himself Tannenbaum stated that he had made two large offers that would have made Revis the "Jet for life" that he wanted to be. As it’s easy to tell, Revis rejected both, but rumor has been floating around that the contract would pay only 5.3 million this year and had no guaranteed money in it all. Although I am not a big fan of guaranteed contracts I do believe that he should be paid more than that [5.3 million] and defiantly more than the one million he is set to make under the rookie contract he signed four seasons ago.

On this case I agree with and I encourage him to continue to hold out until he gets part of the money pie. He is one of the best players, let alone defenders in the league and he should be compensated as such, not be one of the lowest played defensive backs on the Jet’s roster. So Darrelle, continue to hold out, get your money, or at least until after the Jets play Green Bay in week eight.


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Rookie Salaries in the NFL, How Ridiculous will they Get?

Just yesterday Sam Bradford, Rookie Quarterback for the St. Louis Rams and the number one overall pick in this past year's NFL Draft signed a 6 year 78 million dollar deal with a chance for it to be worth as much as 86 million. That’s way too much to be paying any player let alone a guy who missed his last college season with a shoulder injury and who also has never thrown a pass in the League. The worst part though isn't just the amount he is going to be paid over the short span but that 50 million of that is guaranteed. Sam Bradford now can have a career ending injury 2 games in and be set for life and what can the team do about it? Nothing! Look at WR Dez Bryant, the number 24 overall pick by the Dallas Cowboys. He signed a 5 year deal worth 11.8 million dollars, 8.3 mil of that guaranteed and now just a couple of days into camp he is out 4-6 weeks with an ankle injury.


I think everyone knows who the financial burden for these huge contracts fall on. The Fans of Course! What type of penny pinching owner would even think about digging into their own pickets to fuel a championship contender? Not any that I know. Ticket prices have increased at an extremely fast pace and player salaries have done the same. I don't know anybody that needs to be making 14 million a year. If I had their talent I actually wouldn't want that, so my team could go and spend the extra cap space to bring in players to make the team a championship caliber team. What needs to happen in the next CBA is a set salary for rookies at each draft spot.


In no way should an unproven QB such as Bradford or even last years number one pick, Matt Stafford ( 5 year, 72 mil 41.7 guaranteed) be making as much, or more in a lot of cases as some of the better signal callers in the NFL. Joe Flacco, QB for the Ravens took his team to the playoffs in both of his first two seasons while becoming one of the best in the game. His salary, 5 years 11.9 million dollars seems like nothing when you compare it to what these kids are going to make. You never see him complaining though because he is a class act and he knows that he is getting paid more than fairly to play a game.


The NFL and commish Goodell needs to come up with a set system for rookie pay days because before long we will see a 100 million dollar rookie turn into a bust and send a franchise into disaster status for years to come because of one bad investment.


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Where Will T.O. play next season

Free Agent Wide Reciever Terell Owens, known more commonly as T.O. is looking for a new team after not reupping with the Buffallo Bills after having his worse season in years.  Most people would think that Owens, a pretty much a surefire Hall of Famer would have every team in the league ringing his phone off the hook.  Unfortunately for him his ego is well known throughout the NFL and country so even though he is still a very good reciever he would be a locker room cancer, a turn off for a lot of fans, and he wouldn't be a very good influence on the young players on the team.  Luckily For him though there are still two teams that are reportedly interested in him, the St. Louis Rams who are desperate for talent at all positions, and the Cincinnati Bengals, who seem to sign every troubled player in the NFL. 

Yesterday the Bengals seemed like they had all but locked up Owens from the Rams when TMZ reported that they were "very close to a deal," but after two sources "very close" to the situation falsified the reports the negotiations, if there are any are  back up in the air.  After the reports were denied, the Rams showed that they were extremely interested by intesifying talks and a  high ranking official with the Rams said a contract could be offered to Owens as early as Monday.  This huge push from the Rams comes from the fact that although Owens could end up as a bad influence, there is a lot he could teach to the Rams young recieving corps.  Also adding T.O.'s presence will take pressure of te running game and will give rookie Sam Bradford a clear cut number one reciever to throw to.

The Bengals are still very interested in Terrell tough and Starting Quarterback Carson Palmer who when healthy is one of the best in the NFL is pushing hard for the Bengals to bring Mr. Owens in.  The Bengals though, before they bring in anyone want to see how their young recievers cando and how Antonio Bryant's knee holds up.  If they do add T.O. though they will have a very dangerous vertical game, adding Terrell's speed to home run threat Chad Ochocinco.

Right now though, I believe Owens will be in St. Louis next season teaching and preaching to the young guns while helping Sam Bradford's adjustment to the NFL be a smooth one.

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