Strahan and Favre can hug again

by | Jun 9, 2008 | NFL Breaking News

Congratulations to Michael Strahan for he is doing what every player dreams of – he’s going out on top.

And ironically he’s going out the same year as Brett Favre, who looked ridiculous in taking a dive when Strahan broke the single-season sack record.

Strahan’s retirement seemed more and more likely as the weeks passed – I’d almost started to believe he really didn’t even want to play last year. But he goes out with a ring and still at or near the top of his game. And despite weird ass teeth, he is extremely well-spoken and has a good personality for television – which is where he likely will end up.

While he goes out after having won the Super Bowl I’d forgotten just how good the rest of his career was. He went to seven pro bowls and had 141.5 career sacks, 140.1 not counting the Favre dive.

What better way to go out. Congratulations, for real, to Strahan. One might wonder if he and Favre might not get together and re-live old times sometime this fall. More power to them – we at Zoneblitz have mocked Favre and we still think his soap opera-ish offseasons have gotten old. But the NFL is losing two extremely interesting personalities heading into the 2008 season and they will be hard to replace.

McFadden signs? Already?

by | Jun 7, 2008 | NFL Breaking News

What’s wrong with this picture? We’re almost two months from training camp and three months from pre-season games starting and three of the top four picks have signed already.

Darren McFadden signed a six-year deal with $26 million in guarantees, according to media reports. The deal leaves Chris Long of the Rams as the only unsigned pick among the top four.

What happened to holdouts? Contract disagreements? Especially with the Raiders, who didn’t sign JaMarcus Russell until it was too late for him to have an impact last year. Are teams really negotiating earlier with their draft picks?

In an ideal world these clowns would come to the realization that they are already making way too much money out of the gate as rookies and they should be grateful to be set up for life. But almost assuredly these are exceptions and in reality the rule of a holdout or two a year will again hold true.

Tyree fighting for roster spot … duh

by | Jun 4, 2008 | NFL News, NFL Random Thoughts

There are some rumblings from the east coast that Super Bowl hero David Tyree might be in a fight for his roster spot this season. Hopefully those reports are correct because he should be.

Don’t get me wrong. Tyree had a great Super Bowl making one of the finest plays you’ll ever see in crunch time, and he also caught a touchdown pass earlier in the fourth quarter. His place in history will be secure for his play in that game, as it should be…

But David Tyree is not an elite NFL wide receiver, or at very least, he still has a lot to prove if he is. In five years with the Giants he has played in 73 games and caught 54 passes. Outside the playoffs last year he rocked the league by catching four passes for 35 yards, nary a one for a touchdown, in 12 games.

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Kevin Jones healing fast

by | Jun 4, 2008 | Fantasy Football, NFL News

Kevin Jones is five months into rehabilitating an ACL reconstruction and a doctor says he is as much as seven months ahead of schedule. All he needs, according to mlive.com (what the hell is mlive.com?), he’s motivated and looking to show teams he is worth more than a minimum-level salary.

Now, Jones has always been injury prone. He hasn’t played 16 games in his four-year career and just last year came back early from a Lisfranc surgery on his left foot.

But when he is in there he’s shown flashed of brilliance as a runner and the ability to catch the ball out of the backfield. He’s motivated by the opportunity to show the Lions coaching staff they made a mistake by cutting him.

I think someone is going to take this guy to either split carries (Paired with Laurence Maroney in New England? Maybe he fits as another cog in Seattle in case Julius Jones is mediocre?) or as insurance (Rudi J in Cincy and Edgerrin James in Arizona have been trending downward) against an aging back sliding.

He could end up being a pretty good fit in Chicago too as Cedric Benson continues to disappoint and you never know with rookies, although Matt Forte is reportedly a guy the Bears staff is legitimately excited about.

I like this option the best. If the Bears were to bring in Jones and give him a chance to get some real carries, it still wouldn’t make the Bears a contender this year. But with the motivation of playing against the Lions twice, Jones would become a sleeper running back to watch out for in fantasy football drafts in the next couple of months.

Packers’ Herron wings home intruder

by | Jun 4, 2008 | NFL Random Thoughts

In one of my favorite Packer-related stories ever, backup running back sent an intruder in his home to the hospital by whacking him with a bed post.

That rocks.

As it turns out the whackee and a partner who was apprehended outside Herron’s home in Howard, Wis. are now suspects in more than 20 break-ins in De Pere, Howard and Bellevue, Wis. The one guy, at this point, is still in the hospital.

More power to Herron. I try not to be too big a fan of materialism and I have no idea what Herron had that these miscreants wanted. But I have no time for and get so tired of reading about people who decide they want something enough to take it from others rather than working hard and getting it on their own.

Herron should have whacked the guy a couple more times just for good measure and the cops should have looked the other way after they cuffed the other guy so Herron could have whacked that one too.

I tip my cap to this Packer.