INDIANAPOLIS -- Sure, they seem unbeatable now. Dare we say, even super. The Patriots enter this week with a league-best 10-game winning streak that began in mid-November, and the Giants are on yet another improbable and magical postseason run, with five consecutive elimination-game victories to their credit and a world of mojo in their favor.
Now that Alabama and LSU have officially put an end to the college football season, all attention will start turning toward the prospects who are leaving school behind for a chance to play in the NFL and how the draft's first round might go.
You want to know why it is so darn tough to win fantasy football titles: The sure things never are. And sometimes the lost ones wind up becoming your leaders.
Conventional wisdom in the NFL holds that at any given time, about a third of the teams in the league have a quality starting quarterback in place, while the other two-thirds are constantly searching for one. Those seemingly never-ending quests continued this week in NFL venues as far flung as Washington, Minnesota, Denver and Oakland, with quarterback changes that dominated the news in recent days.
Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we absorb an unforgettable, and in some cases unfathomable, Week 6 in the NFL.....
The San Diego Chargers are 4-1 and heading into a bye, but that doesn't stop them from dominating your interest in this week's fantasy mailbag.
BALTIMORE -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we take in a Week 4 that made the state of Texas feel like the center of the NFL universe, with Houston winning a biggie to get to 3-1 and Dallas gagging away its shot to build a three-game winning streak with a historic (and horrific) second-half collapse....
LANDOVER, Md. -- The realities of their roster alone combat the notion that these are the same old Redskins, with all the inherent baggage that phrase implies. After all, head coach Mike Shanahan this summer kept only 27 players who were on Washington's Week 1 roster from a year ago, and a whopping 38 of his 53 players weren't even in the organization when he arrived in January 2010.
ASHBURN, Va. -- Even if the Washington Redskins really are as set at quarterback as they believe they are with the unheralded John Beck and the lightly appreciated Rex Grossman on the top two rungs of the depth chart, this is a team that has to run the ball, and run it with authority if it's going to compete with the quarterback-led offenses that dominate the NFC East (see Michael Vick, Eli Manning and Tony Romo).
SI.com has dispatched writers to report on NFL training camps across the country. Here's what Peter King had to say about Redskins camp in Ashburn, Va., which he visited on Aug. 1. For an archive of all camp postcards, click here.
NEW YORK -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we wrap up day three of the NFL draft and the entire seven-round pick-fest at Radio City Music Hall ...
Brandon Banks, a kick returner for the Washington Redskins, was stabbed in the side early Saturday outside a nightclub in Washington, after coming to the aid of a friend, his agent said.
Musings, observations and the occasional Week 16 insight as the NFL's 12-team playoff field continues to come into focus ...
CHICAGO -- Musings, observations and the occasional Week 14 insight as we take in the wild winter carnival between the cold-weather Patriots and the cold-weather Bears at the big snow globe known as Solider Field ...
BALTIMORE -- Musings, observations and the occasional Week 13 insight as we await the Steelers-Ravens bi-annual bare-knuckle slugfest in the AFC North at M&T Bank Stadium Sunday night....
Reaction to Donovan McNabb's contract extension with the Redskins Monday afternoon: Are you kidding me?
On a night when Donovan McNabb signed a potential $78 million extension with the Redskins, Eagles counterpart Michael Vick played like the quarterback more deserving of a megadeal.
Musings, observations and the occasional Week 8 insight as we take in an NFL Sunday chock full of both tricks and treats ...
PHILADELPHIA -- Maybe in the end it had to be the strange, mixed-bag sort of day it was Sunday afternoon at Lincoln Financial Field.
FedEx Field was closing in around the Texans last Sunday. Trailing by 17 with less than two minutes to play in the third quarter, Houston had a 24-yard completion to Andre Johnson negated, then saw Matt Schaub sacked on the next play to set up third-and-15 from its 44.
If one is so inclined, he can visit the Washington Redskins' website and order a replica Albert Haynesworth jersey for $89 plus tax.
SI.com is previewing all eight NFL divisions, beginning today with the AFC East and NFC East. The AFC South and NFC South follow Wednesday, AFC North and NFC North on Thursday and the AFC West and NFC West on Friday.
For the sake of tradition, we present the ultimate guide for Points Per Reception leagues. Every section -- minus the salute to Tommy Kramer/Ahmad Rashad -- has one singular focus: To help you dominate your PPR drafts, which should occur after Week 3 of the preseason. But in case you've already scheduled a draft, here's the good word on PPR stars such as Andre Johnson, Brandon Marshall, Jamaal Charles, Reggie Bush, Percy Harvin, Dexter McCluster and the other Steve Smith, to name a few.
SI.com has dispatched writers to report on the 32 NFL training camps across the country. Here's what Don Banks had to say about the Redskins camp in Ashburn, Va. For an archive of all camp postcards, click here.
ASHBURN, Va. -- You could clearly see the makings of a peace accord between the Washington Redskins and their $100 million headache named Albert Haynesworth taking shape here Wednesday afternoon.
Every NFL season starts with a host of unanswered questions, and this year it's even more so. With the opening of the first training camp less than 10 days away -- Dallas, on July 24 in San Antonio -- here are 20 pressing questions, in no particular order, that begged to be answered as the 2010 preseason looms:
If the 2010 NFL offseason were given a moniker it would be called the "Year of the Trade." Never before have so many trades taken place in general, and involving big-name players in particular. From Donovan McNabb to Santonio Holmes to Brandon Marshall, the ability to trade players without any cap consequences in the uncapped year has kept the NFL hot stove cooking over the past three months. Already this week, former first round picks Byron Leftwich, Adam Carriker and Ernie Sims have been dealt.
Five observations about Philadelphia's Sunday night trade of Donovan McNabb to Washington:
When rumors get thrown out at this time of the draft year, you have to take them with not a grain of salt, but with a salt-shaker. I usually do. But not when Gil Brandt speaks. He is money on the draft, and he knows things the rest of us don't. And he said something today on our Sirius NFL Radio show that made my eyelids hit the ceiling regarding Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford, who most of the western world has already assigned to St. Louis with the first pick in the April 22 first round.
PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. -- Monday was the first day of the NFL Draft. That's because rehabbing Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford took the field to throw a 50-pass script that the NFL world -- particularly St. Louis, picking first in the April 22 first round, and Washington, picking fourth -- had been awaiting. By all accounts, he looked wonderful, which means he moved much closer to becoming the first pick in a very deep draft.
Almost one week of the NFL's free agency period is in the books, and that means some of what we thought we knew about the first round of this year's draft is already painfully out of date. Here's a look at 12 teams that have had their draft wish list impacted in some way by key gains or losses in free agency, or in the case of the Jets, a key trade just before it began: (Editor's Note: A full mock draft is scheduled for Tues., March 16).
There's a running theme so far in free agency -- familiarity. Everywhere you look, players have been reuniting with former coaches.
With the demise of the NFL's salary cap dramatically changing the landscape, free agency is such an unknown this year that one club executive told me this week the only thing he knows for sure is Washington will throw money around like it's playing Monopoly.
The Shanny and Danny Show opened to rave reviews in Washington this week, and there's a real buzz around town that the Redskins might have finally gotten it right this time. Mike Shanahan, we were reminded, is a proven winner, and again and again we heard about his track record and his ability to bring leadership to the organization.
WWSD? What Would Shanahan Do? That's the question on the minds of so many Redskins fans with former Denver head coach Mike Shanahan reportedly agreeing to a deal, and I thought I'd tell you the four things I think he'll do early in his regime:
With only Washington and Buffalo making moves on the coaching front, Black Monday in the NFL passed far quieter than anticipated, and certainly was less eventful than last year's day-after-the-season-ends blood-letting.
Things we learned from the Giants' 45-12 demolition of Washington Monday night at a fed-up FedEx Field in Landover, Md. ...
Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we stare down both the holidays and the final 32 games of the NFL's regular season.....
1. Randy Moss to the Patriots from the Raiders for a fourth-round pick; April 29, 2007 On draft weekend, the team-minded Patriots shocked the NFL by dealing for Moss, whose talent as a game-changing receiver had supposedly atrophied during his two mostly desultory seasons in Oakland. But Moss, as it turns out, was merely disinterested in losing, and his reemergence in New England coincided with the team's history-making Super Bowl season. Moss caught 98 passes for 1,493 yards and had a single-season NFL record 23 touchdowns. All in all, not bad production in exchange for a fourth-round pick that Oakland used to select little-known University of Cincinnati cornerback John Bowie.
GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight from a spectacularly lucky Week 13 when it comes to doses of late-game drama, huge upsets and scintillating finishes.
The Washington Redskins (3-6) are struggling this season, but the organization got a break Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Native Americans calling the pro club's trademark "disparaging."
It's all about him now. Whether Dan Snyder secretly wanted this when he bought the Washington Redskins a decade ago is less intriguing a question than why it took so long to become clear, but then, there were so many distractions along the way. There was so much free-agent cash thrown about, year after year, and the rise and fall of Steve Spurrier, and the return of Joe Gibbs, and the slew of forgettable quarterbacks, and the strange hiring of Jim Zorn -- so many high-drama ideas gone wrong -- that it was hard to cut through and see that maybe this was the real plan all along.
The general consensus among fans in our nation's capital is that Jim Zorn is not the problem. It's not that they think he's a good head coach, because they don't. It's more that firing Zorn is like putting a band-aid over a gunshot wound. It may cover up the hole momentarily, but the problem is still there. Namely in team owner Daniel Snyder.
Football Insiders: Check out Stewart Mandel's College Football Overtime column.
My weekly look at key matchups and storylines to watch in one game at each time slot. (All times Eastern).
Watching the slowly unfolding debacle that is the end of the Jim Zorn era in Washington, with the Redskins floundering head coach being stripped of his authority, his dignity and maybe a good bit of his sanity in this painfully incremental termination, one damning question keeps coming to mind:
One would think that there would be a palpable buzz in an NFL locker room before a prime time game on national TV. A heightened sense of anticipation, at the very least. Instead, our locker room was the flattest I had ever encountered in all my years of football, and everyone in there, from coaches to players to the equipment and training staffs, looked as if they had seen a ghost.
MINNEAPOLIS -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we try to fathom the latest comeback miracle, and undoubtedly one of the greatest, in Brett Favre's long and eventful 19-year NFL career....
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Fun, rewarding and exhausting, all at the same time, being back out on the road for training camps. Travel-mate Ross Tucker and I got into Ithaca last night around 11:30, and I immediately began cleaning out the notebook from a remarkable first week of camps as we head toward the NFL's 90th season. Off we go:
SI.com has dispatched writers to report on the 32 NFL training camps across the country. Here's what Peter King had to say about the Redskins' camp in Virginia.
Stop me if you have heard this before. NFL veteran with an unbelievable streak of consecutive starts finishes the 2008 season on the field, even though he's injured. This player appears determined to play in 2009, even though some people, including me, think it would be better if he called it a career.
"I like the angle,'' former USC quarterback Mark Sanchez said to me a little after 11 Eastern on Sunday night. "I hope it still looks good Saturday. I hope it doesn't blow up on you.''
Do you swing a trade for Braylon Edwards or Anquan Boldin? That's the question wide-receiver needy teams are pondering a week before the draft, and there are plenty of them. Count the New York Giants, New York Jets, Oakland Raiders, Chicago Bears, San Francisco 49ers, Tennessee Titans, Baltimore Ravens and Philadelphia Eagles among those teams looking for an elite receiver.
The NFL recently released the seven-round, pick-by-pick order for the April draft. We'd known the first-round order, and we could divine the second-round order, but because of undisclosed draft-pick trades, it always got murky beyond that. Expect the compensatory picks -- choices awarded to teams that lost quality free-agents in the 2008 free-agency pool -- to be announced sometime during the league meetings in California later this month.
ASHBURN, Va. (AP) -- After signing a contract with an NFL-record $41 million in guaranteed money, Albert Haynesworth made a guarantee of his own.
The 2009 NFL season officially begins Friday at 12:01 a.m. when free agency opens. What follows is a rundown of the game plans for every NFC team heading into free agency and the draft. For the AFC teams, click here.
One of the tests of a good young coach is how he handles his first rough patch. Jim Zorn was in the middle of it last week, the Redskins having lost two games in a row, when he told his team, in these exact words: "Keep going in the direction you're going.''
Two months down, two months to go in a NFL regular season that has defied conventional wisdom even more than most. You know the drill. It's midseason review time...
For all the knocks on Reggie Bush, his dazzling performance against the Vikings on Monday, and his overall performance this season, have given those who like his game some well-needed ammunition.
Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we witnessed the bruising heavyweight fight that the Titans-Ravens game morphed into on Sunday, before a demoralized M&T Bank Stadium throng ....
From the day they were hired, they faced questions about their lack of NFL head coaching and coordinating credentials, but I'd say it was a pretty good first month of work for the league's four rookie head coaches. Care to quibble?
Every Monday, SI.com's Michael Lombardi will hand out five letter grades to deserving NFL parties...
Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we take in a Week 4 that turned into a veritable points-palooza in so many NFL locales (six of Sunday's early eight games saw the winner score 30 points or more) ...
Top-of-the-head hunches as we stare down Week 4...
Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we behold maybe the grittiest, guttiest Colts comeback victory in the entire 11-year points-apalooza that has been the Peyton Manning era, that 18-15 slugging match with the shellshocked Vikings....
With all the excitement surround the first weekend of fantasy football, AP has this buzzkill report:
There is nothing better than the start of "real football," but with the beginning of the NFL season comes the usual predictions of which teams will get to the Super Bowl. And with all due respect to my colleagues here at SI.com, 99.9 percent of the time those predictions are wrong.
Forgive me if this is a mumbling, disjointed mess. Check that... if this is a column not quite up to its piercing penetration, and uh... folks, it is late at night and I just did the 30-mile number from Giants Stadium west on Route 3, thence US 80, Cherry Hill Road, Rte. 46 and Lakewood Drive, where a candle and holly wreath were waiting in the window. Oh yes, got stopped on good old Rte. 46 in Wayne.
Musings, observations and the occasional insight from the Giants' season-opening 16-7 throttling of the low-octane Redskins, which strangely had all the intensity of a preseason game after the first half ...
It's that dangerous time of the summer for NFL starting quarterbacks. With the regular season less than 10 days away, keeping or getting your No. 1 QB healthy becomes every team's most vital objective. All else pales by comparison.
SI.com has dispatched 10 writers to report on the 32 NFL training camps across the country. For the complete schedule of postcards, click here.
ASHBURN, Va. -- To be sure, the Redskins' blockbuster acquisition of Jason Taylor late Sunday was a move born out of first-day-of-training-camp desperation. But it was also an acknowledgment that if you want to thrive in the rough and tumble NFC East, you better be able to rush the passer.
I am very bullish on this Jason Taylor trade, Miami dealing the unhappy defensive end to Washington for a 2009 second-round pick and a 2010 sixth. It's a better trade for Washington than Miami, but a good recovery-deal for Bill Parcells and the Dolphins.
The good news is that one way or another, the end appears to be in sight.
The Washington Redskins achieved one of their major goals of what is it expected to be an unusually quiet free agency period for them, re-signing veteran backup quarterback Todd Collins to a three-year, $9 million contract, a league source told SI.com on Friday morning.
A pair of veteran backup quarterbacks who out-shone the starters they replaced in 2007 are in high demand as the agency period prepares to open early Friday morning.
Now that Washington's bizarrely conducted coaching search has concluded with perhaps the fastest promotion in the history of the NFL -- Jim Zorn went from newly hired Redskins offensive coordinator to head coach in a couple weeks -- the theme behind this year's crop of coaching hires is: The cleaner the better.
You can hold off on the notion that Redskins assistant Gregg Williams is a slam dunk to replace the re-retired Joe Gibbs in Washington, in light of the news that Redskins owner Daniel Snyder started his coaching search Thursday by interviewing Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz.
Tennessee Titans defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz became the first person to interview for the Washington Redskins' coaching vacancy Thursday as the team stepped up its search for a successor to Joe Gibbs.
Now that it's done, four years and one day after it began, Joe Gibbs' second act in Washington never looked like much fun, did it?
In the moments before kickoff, some players listen to metal and some listen to rap. Some talk to God and some talk to themselves.
SEATTLE -- The Seattle Seahawks won the NFC West, but make no mistake, they were the ultimate wild card. No one knew quite what to make of them. They had not beaten a playoff team since the opener against Tampa Bay. They had not even faced a playoff team since traveling to Pittsburgh in October. They were division champions, but that is no great accomplishment, considering their division is regarded as the worst in football.
For a league that has always prided itself first and foremost on knowing how to make the savvy public relations move, the NFL's decision to allow both NBC and CBS to simulcast the NFL Network's broadcast of the New England-New York game was a master stroke.
NEW YORK -- We'll have time later to dissect the Cowboys taking over the NFC, the Colts icing their fifth straight AFC South title, the once (LaDainian Tomlinson) and future (Adrian Peterson) rushing kings and Eli Manning saving himself from another week of the New York tabloid gallows. But we'd be doing the game, and Sean Taylor's memory, a disservice by not focusing on the late Washington safety first this week.
Will the Jags ever win a big game under coach Jack Del Rio? It's a question that must be asked after they fell to the Colts 28-25 on Sunday.
A fourth man arrested in the shooting death of Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor appeared before a judge via video phone Sunday.
MORE GAME PLANS: Detroit-Minnesota | San Francisco-Carolina | Buffalo-Washington | Houston-Tennessee | Atlanta-St. Louis | Seattle-Philadelphia | San Diego-Kansas City | N.Y. Jets-Miami | Denver-Oakland | Cleveland-Arizona | Tampa Bay-New Orleans | Chicago-N.Y. Giants | Cincinnati-Pittsburgh
Conclusions regarding the circumstances surrounding Sean Taylor's death early Tuesday morning are still premature. We may try to connect the dots in order to make some sense of the senseless, but we don't know much.
CLEVELAND -- Ran into Alfredo Roberts, the tight ends coach of the Browns, around dinner time last night, and he knew his visit with Kellen Winslow later in the day was going to be tough. "He'll be taking this hard, very hard,'' Roberts said. "He was tight with Sean.''
• The Cowboys exploited the Redskins' inexperience at safety by attacking down the middle of the field. With the Redskins sitting two-deep and some three-deep zones, Tony Romo manipulated the safeties by looking outside before hitting Terrell Owens repeatedly down the seams. Two of Dallas' three second-half scores were the result of Washington's young safeties being out of position and unable to recover before the ball arrived.
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight in a Week 10 that can't possibly produce any Patriots-related controversy. Can it? Bill Belichick and his guys are on their bye week ...
In 18 years covering the league, I've reported from 43 different NFL stadiums. Here are my top 10 favorites:
The thing to understand is that this is a work in progress, ever changing throughout the season. Of course, barring an unforeseen disaster, either Tom Brady or Peyton Manning will be my All-Pro quarterback in the end. But at midseason some positions aren't close to being set. Here's where I stand.
In 1991 I was covering Atlanta-Washington in the playoffs. I talked to the Falcons' defensive end, Tim Green, and he said, "Ask Glanville about Joe Gibbs throwing the out and up in the fourth quarter when they were ahead, 42-17. He's been using that as a motivational tool all week."
• The Patriots continue to get off to quick starts by using a mixture of spread formations to keep the defense off balance. By spreading the field with various empty backfield and four-receiver looks, New England is able to dictate the type of coverage that defenses use and Tom Brady exploits the soft coverage most teams go to. This gets Brady into a good rhythm early with high-percentage passes and keeps defenses from attacking the Patriots with an assortment of blitzes for fear of leaving their defenders in single coverage against New England's dangerous receiving corps.
Adrian Peterson, RB, Minnesota: The rookie superstar amassed 361 total yards from scrimmage against the Bears. He had a 224-yard, three-touchdown performance as a runner and keyed the winning touchdown drive with a 53-yard kickoff return. They brought him in to be a big-play guy, and he's even more dangerous than they imagined.
Andre Carter, DE, Washington: The Redskins were able to derail the Lions' high-powered offense thanks to the pressure of their front four. Carter sacked Detroit quarterback Jon Kitna twice, including once for a safety.
Browns-Patriots | Jags-Chiefs | Panthers-Saints | Lions-Redskins | Cardinals-Rams | Jets-Giants | Dolphins-Texans | Falcons-Titans | Seahawks-Steelers | Bucs-Colts | Chargers-Broncos | Ravens-49ers | Bears-Packers
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