There's an old adage in sports that great players rarely make great coaches.
Bumping his head while walking through the doorway. Trying to get comfortable in a coach seat on an airplane. Crouching lower, (lower, lower) to get his face in the picture frame.
Did the NFL and its teams secretly impose a salary cap of $123 million in the uncapped 2010 NFL season? Were teams threatened by the league with "serious consequences" if they exceeded the secret cap? The NFLPA asserts yes to both questions, and earlier today filed Reggie White, et al. v. NFL, a collusion lawsuit against the league in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota. The players contend they lost $1 billion because of the secret salary cap; as stipulated by collectively-bargained language, such damages, if proved, would be automatically trebled to $3 billion.
PHILADELPHIA -- The late March trade that brought middle linebacker DeMeco Ryans to Philadelphia has a chance to be one of the shrewdest moves of the NFL's offseason and should help solidify the middle of the Eagles defense, which got gouged repeatedly in 2011, especially during Philly's stupefyingly bad 4-8 start.
For the second time in 17 months, the Players Association has filed a collusion claim against the NFL, alleging that owners sought to suppress wages in 2010 when there was no salary cap.
While the entire NFL world has been fixated on every detail and development in his year-plus battle with his neck issues, Peyton Manning wasn't the only player who had his 2011 ruined by injury. His lost season just happened to generate more media coverage than the plight of all other injured players combined, given that his absence set off a chain of events that rendered it the most impactful injury in league history.
The NFL is both beloved and exalted in the pantheon of spectator sports because absolutely no one knows what will unfold from week to week. But that doesn't stop us from predicting up a storm when it comes to the season just ahead. More than two months away from the full-scale opening of training camps, here are seven strong hunches we're willing to share in a bold foretelling of 2012's storylines to come:
Jacob Bell doesn't hate football. He doesn't want to discourage players who love the game from playing it. But Bell, who walked away from the game last week healthy and able to play at 31, eschewing a job on the Cincinnati Bengals offensive line after starting 100 NFL games in Tennessee and St. Louis, wants players to know the risks.
"I want to make sure Eric is a part of what we do, somehow. Eric's always going to be a part of my life." -- Tampa Bay coach Greg Schiano to me, upon being named coach of the Bucs in January, about the fate of Eric LeGrand, the former Rutgers defensive tackle who suffered a spinal-cord injury in a 2010 game.
With the draft and free agency having reordered depth charts around the league, it's time to take stock of the positional battles that will be worth watching unfold once training camps open. Here are 10 intriguing depth-chart competitions that warrant our attention this summer:
First up this morning: A history lesson. We'll never see two months like we've just seen in any offseason. Ever. To recap:
At the very least, Junior Seau's shocking suicide this week raises the stakes all the more when it comes to what might be on the line in the controversial and much-debated effort to increase player safety in the NFL. We don't know for sure yet if the league's two biggest headlines in recent days were connected on any level, and if Seau's long and distinguished football career led to the kind of brain injury that contributed to him taking his own life, but there is ample reason -- and far too much recent history -- to support suspicion on that front.
More than 100 former professional football players, including former Atlanta Falcons Jamal Anderson, Chris Doleman, and O.J. Santiago, are adding their names a growing list of players suing the NFL.
The 1994 Chargers were the only team in franchise history to go to a Super Bowl -- they lost, 49-26, to Steve Young and the 49ers in Super Bowl XXIX -- but over the years a sobering series of tragedies has cast a pall over that achievement.
Grieving for a fellow player is, sadly, nothing new for members of the 1994 San Diego Chargers. Legendary linebacker Junior Seau, who was found dead Wednesday of an apparent suicide, is now the eighth player from that team to die.
Former NFL linebacker Junior Seau died from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound Wednesday, according to police. He was 43.
Two months to the day after this bombshell of a story first exploded across the NFL, the final shoe finally dropped Wednesday in the Saints bounty scandal. And predictably, it landed with another loud, reverberating thud.
Saints bounty scandal 77, Patriots Spygate scandal 0.
Four past or present New Orleans Saints players were suspended Wednesday by the National Football League for their roles in the "bountygate" scandal involving bonuses for trying to hurt opponents.
Out of the rubble of a 4-12 season in 2010, Bengals coach Marvin Lewis headed south to Mobile, Ala., to coach a group of NFL prospects in the Senior Bowl.
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