National Football League Today

Orlando Pace has missed much of training camp in the past. So the seven-time Pro Bowl lineman has an idea what it’s like for Steven Jackson, absent as he seeks a contract extension.

Pace missed two training camps and most of a third due to contentious negotiations. He missed being with the team, but definitely didn’t miss a routine that can be numbing. “I was kind of bored,” Pace said Saturday. “I worked out and you watch TV, you look at it and see what’s going on around other training camps.

Jackson’s agent turned down the Rams’ latest offer last week and the Rams responded by cutting off talks until the running back was in camp.

Jackson’s absence has put the Rams’ biggest training camp issue in the background.  Rams fans are glad because they have had few reasons in the past years to  cheer and show off their St. Louis Rams merchandise and now that’s sort of changed.

The Rams plan on easing Pace into full duty, although thus far he’s seen more practice field time than perhaps anticipated. After the team’s first full-pad workout on Saturday morning, Pace said he had to get his body used to contact again.

There’s also a hurdle to overcome, trusting that he won’t get hurt.

Compounding the doubt, Pace missed the second half of the 2006 season with a torn left triceps muscle.

I don’t know what to say really.
Three minutes
to the biggest battle of our professional lives
all comes down to today.
Either
we heal
as a team
or we are going to crumble.
Inch by inch
play by play
till we’re finished.
We are in hell right now, gentlemen
believe me
and
we can stay here
and get the shit kicked out of us
or
we can fight our way
back into the light.
We can climb out of hell.
One inch, at a time.

Now I can’t do it for you.
I’m too old.
I look around and I see these young faces
and I think
I mean
I made every wrong choice a middle age man could make.
I uh….
I pissed away all my money
believe it or not.
I chased off
anyone who has ever loved me.
And lately,
I can’t even stand the face I see in the mirror.

You know when you get old in life
things get taken from you.
That’s, that’s part of life.
But,
you only learn that when you start losing stuff.
You find out that life is just a game of inches.
So is football.
Because in either game
life or football
the margin for error is so small.
I mean
one half step too late or to early
you don’t quite make it.
One half second too slow or too fast
and you don’t quite catch it.
The inches we need are everywhere around us.
They are in ever break of the game
every minute, every second.

On this team, we fight for that inch
On this team, we tear ourselves, and everyone around us
to pieces for that inch.
We CLAW with our finger nails for that inch.
Cause we know
when we add up all those inches
that’s going to make the fucking difference
between WINNING and LOSING
between LIVING and DYING.

I’ll tell you this
in any fight
it is the guy who is willing to die
who is going to win that inch.
And I know
if I am going to have any life anymore
it is because, I am still willing to fight, and die for that inch
because that is what LIVING is.
The six inches in front of your face.

Now I can’t make you do it.
You gotta look at the guy next to you.
Look into his eyes.
Now I think you are going to see a guy who will go that inch with you.
You are going to see a guy
who will sacrifice himself for this team
because he knows when it comes down to it,
you are gonna do the same thing for him.

That’s a team, gentlemen
and either we heal now, as a team,
or we will die as individuals.
That’s football guys.
That’s all it is.
Now, whattaya gonna do?

Minnesota Vikings coach Brad Childress has watched from afar — across the border in Minnesota and from Florida during his vacation — as the rival Green Bay Packers and Brett Favre appear headed to a messy divorce.

“It’s kind of interesting to watch, isn’t it?” Childress said Tuesday, referring to the back-and-forth sniping between Favre, who wants to be released, and the Packers, who say they do not plan to oblige that request.

NFL guidelines prohibit Childress from commenting on players under contract with other teams, and the coach said he remains committed to third-year quarterback Tarvaris Jackson going into this season.

Last year, Jackson threw for 1,911 yards, nine touchdowns and 12 interceptions in 12 games. The team went 8-4 in Jackson’s starts, but he also missed four games because of injuries.

One of the interesting subplots to arise from the crumbling relationship between Favre and the Packers is the suggestion that the three-time MVP could join the Vikings for one more run at a title.

Favre told Fox News on Monday night that he “never fully committed” to retiring and felt pressured by the Packers to make a decision back in March. The Packers have denied that, telling The AP that they wanted to bring him back and didn’t make the decision to move on until Favre assured them his decision to retire was final.

Childress has experience dealing with testy splits between team and quarterback. When he was hired in 2006, he butted heads with franchise quarterback Daunte Culpepper, who was coming off a severe knee injury. Culpepper was dealt to Miami and the Vikings chose Jackson in the second round as the quarterback of the future.

This time, Childress is on the outside looking in at Green Bay, which no doubt would like to prevent Favre from joining a team in its division. It would be quite strange for Brett Favre fans to have anything other than Green Bay Packers merchandise with his name on it. It also would be strange if he was on a divisional rival’s team and playing at Lambeau Field.

The Tennessee Titans and Albert Haynesworth failed to reach an agreement by the deadline earlier this week.

Chad Speck, Haynesworth’s agent, talked most of Monday and up to Tuesday’s deadline without a deal. Both sides can keep talking, but no long-term contract can be signed until after the football season is over.

The Titans have already have signed Michael Roos and David Stewart to contract extensions this offseason along with Justin Gage and Ahmard Hall.”By league rule, he will play under a one-year contract this year,” Reinfeldt said in a statement.

Titans fans are glad about Haynesworth staying. Some have his jersey as part of their Tennessee Titans merchandise.

“Albert is a player whose abilities we value and respect, which is evidenced by the one-year contract that makes him the highest-paid defensive tackle in the NFL in 2008. We have great expectations for his play this year and what his play can mean for our defense and our team.”

Reinfeldt said the Titans intend to stay in contact with Haynesworth’s agent through the season and see if they can agree on what he called “a fair number on a long-term agreement for a player with his qualities.”

Haynesworth is coming off his best season, registering six sacks, 23 quarterback pressures and earning  Bowl honors for the first time in his career. He has yet to play an entire season.

Kevin Jones recently went through a workout while four NFL teams watched the running back sprint and cut just five months after he had major knee surgery.

Dr. D.S. Ping, who has been helping Jones rehabilitate his right knee.

The Lions cut their former first-round pick in March with one year left on his contract after he injured the knee last season. Lions fans don’t want to see another injury because they had a turnaround season last year. They also don’t want to go hide and put up their Detroit Lions merchandise because this team has been embarrassed time and time again.

Jones missed the first two games last season recovering from a foot injury that also sidelined him for the final three games of 2006.

“Sheldon said what impressed him was Kevin’s burst after standing still,” Ping recalled. “He also liked how Kevin picked himself up and finished a drill when he slipped on the grass that was really slick because of a lot of rain.”

Dr. James Andrews performed the surgery on Jones’ right knee in January and told him it would take up to 10 months to get back on the field.

“I honestly feel like I’m ready to play right now,” Jones insisted earlier this month.

Mike Martz’s new players don’t know him quite well enough to be sure when he’s joking and when he’s serious.

Yet even in a practice at minicamp in Martz’s tenure as offensive coordinator, his handiwork is already easy to see.

In January, Mike Nolan hired him to fix an offense that’s been bad for most of Nolan’s three years in San Francisco.

Martz seems eager to show he can be much more than a creator of prolific passing attacks. Gore’s running has been the 49ers’ only constant in the last few years.

“The offense I like to run is to take what we have and analyze what they do extremely well, and take advantage of it,” Martz said. “There’s different personnel here than what I’m accustomed to. We’ve got a whole stable of really good runners. It will be different than perhaps what you’ve seen us do in the past, but we’ve got some guys that can really help us win.”

Even after being fired twice in a two-year span, Martz’s self-confidence has seemed intact since the day he took over as San Francisco’s sixth offensive coordinator in six years.

Though some Niners fans already are worried Martz will neglect the running game, they forget Marshall Faulk had some of his best seasons under Martz’s tutelage, including his MVP campaign in 2000. Having Martz as their coach should help the fans bring back out the San Francisco 49ers merchandise.

As much as the trade that brought him back to Tampa is a return to familiar surroundings for quarterback Brian Griese, there are still a handful of new places and faces to which he must get accustomed.

Griese has to get used to the Buccaneers’ state-of-the-art practice facility. This practice facility is a new-and-improved place that is very different than the old one.

“I was just talking with one of the groundskeepers about that,” Griese recounted. “I said, ‘It’s easy to grow grass over here.’ I want see them grow grass over at the old One Buc. It’s beautiful. It’s awesome. A lot of these guys don’t know where we started with this whole thing, but it’s a nice facility.”

Griese finds himself amid a new group of quarterbacks on the practice field and in the meeting room. While Chris Simms played alongside Griese in his last stint in Tampa and is still on the Buccaneers’ roster, Griese has been getting familiar with the man currently sitting atop the depth chart at the position – returning starter Jeff Garcia.

“I’m looking forward to playing with Garcia,” Griese said. “I’ve watched Jeff, obviously, competed against Jeff, and have a lot of respect for him. I think he’s a heck of a player. We both bring a lot of experience to the table and hopefully that adds to the room and adds to the team. I think that’s probably why they brought me in.”

Griese is also going through the process of getting in synch with quarterbacks coach Greg Olson, also in his first year with the club. The two are actually in a similar situation, striving to master an unfamiliar playbook and getting to know the new players surrounding them.

“I’m just getting to know Coach Olson,” Griese said. “I really didn’t know anything about him, but I’ve been impressed with the way he’s picked up the offense quickly. He’s not unlike a quarterback coming in here. He has to learn the system and the verbiage and all that, so it’s a process for him too. He’s done a good job.”

So while Griese’s return to the Buccaneers may surely be a walk down memory lane in some regards, there are still plenty of new challenges in store as he dons the pewter and red for a second go-round. Griese’s fans loved him in Chicago and they certainly will welcome him back to Florida as the fans show their appreciation by wearing Tampa Bay Buccaneers merchandise.

Washington Redskins second-round draft pick Fred Davis did not show up for minicamp practice Sunday, having overslept on just his third day in the NFL.

The team sent security officials to track down the tight end after he failed to arrive as scheduled from a local hotel, where the rookies were housed during the three-day minicamp.

“Everybody was scouring,” coach Jim Zorn said after the practice. “Nobody heard from him, so there was one of two scenarios: either there was some real trouble and we needed to find him, or he screwed up. I haven’t even got to talk to him yet. I know he has been found. I believe it is more in the ‘I screwed up’ category.”

Davis eventually arrived at Redskins Park and met with Zorn in his office.

“He just had a setback,” the coach said. “Hopefully everybody will learn from the lesson that he is having to learn right now about what it is going to take to get to a place on time, to be responsible.”
Davis was the 48th overall pick out of Southern California in last weekend’s draft.

Redskins fans hope this is not the beginning of a bad year. Washington Redskins merchandise will still be selling because he is not a top prospect but it’s still a valid concern for their program.

Boldin says he’s not upset about contract. Anquan Boldin says it’s news to him that he’s unhappy and wants out of Arizona. People in the Arizona area love their players and also their mediocre team. They show their love by buying Arizona Cardinals merchandise.

To the contrary, the two-time Pro Bowl wide receiver says he wants to remain with the Cardinals and is not upset that he has yet to get a new contract on par with teammate Larry Fitzgerald.

“I’ve always wanted to be in Arizona,” Boldin said Friday, the first day of the Cardinals’ minicamp. “This is the only place I’ve known professionally. I don’t want to uproot my family and leave. I’m happy here. I have great rapport with everybody around here, coaches included.”

Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt repeated the team’s intention to sign Boldin to a new contract.

“We’ve said to Anquan as well as publicly that we fully intend to redo his contract the first window that we have,” Whisenhunt said.

In March, Fitzgerald signed a four-year, $40 million contract with $30 million guaranteed.

The team wanted to restructure Fitzerald’s incentive-laden rookie contract because he had reached many of the benchmarks and was to receive $14.6 million in 2008 and just under $17.4 million in 2009.

Boldin’s deal, which runs through 2010, averages $4 million a year. He is to receive about $2.5 million this season.

Andy Reid was right. Anything can happen. Anything did happen on Day One of the NFL draft for the Eagles, who made three trades, drafted two players, acquired a valuable reserve running back.  The Eagles have nine more draft picks on Sunday.

It was a strange and extremely productive Day One in the draft for the Eagles. For the second consecutive season they traded out of the first round.

That was just the start of a wild series of moves before the Eagles even picked a player.

Reid dealt Bill Parcells a fourth-round draft pick to Miami for running back Lorenzo Booker. The Eagles traded out of 43, moved back to 47, picked up another fourth-round draft pick in the process, and then waited until 47 rolled around.

With the 47th pick, the Eagles took defensive tackle Trevor Laws.

Reid is perhaps the most unpredictable head coach in the league during draft weekend.

The Eagles loved the deal with Carolina. They could not turn down the offer. 

There is much more to come. The Eagles were left standing with a package they couldn’t even imagine when the draft started. Reid didn’t know how it would all work before the draft, but he spearheaded an effort to remain as flexible as possible. It paid off.

The Eagles are glad of all the negotiations that their head coach are making. They will possibly have another face of their franchise for this upcoming year. Also, more Philadelphia Eagles merchandise will be sold because of it.