Rosenhaus Tweeting To Cause Problems with Teams?

by | Aug 4, 2009 | Business of Football, NFL Breaking News

Drew Rosenhaus (@RosenhausSports) has quickly become a big fan of Twitter, updating his 23,000+ followers of the status of several of his numerous NFL clients, like announcing his firm’s signing of Bryant McKinnie or that Mike McKenzie is healthy, has worked out for the Seahawks, and expects to sign somewhere soon.

I wonder, though, how teams will start reacting to his updates, when they may impact their attempts to improve their team.  For instance, this morning, Rosenhaus tweeted:

“The Vikings have informed me that they will be waiving receiver Aundrae Allison by 5pm today if he isn’t traded first.”

As far as I can see, this tweet effectively eliminates whatever little leverage the Vikings may have had in a trade situation–after all, why would a team that’s short on WR and kick return talent give up a late round draft pick for a guy who’s going to hit the waiver wire in a little more than 7 hours?

It makes sense from Rosenhaus’ perspective–if his client is traded, he has no control over the team he lands with, and there is no new contract signed, meaning Rosenhaus doesn’t get another commission.

But if you’re the Vikings, would you put up with Rosenhaus announcing their intentions to the world?  They may have informed Allison/Rosenhause merely in good faith, so it was clear why he wouldn’t be on the practice field today, since they wouldn’t want him getting hurt after the roster decision had been made.

Now, if I were the Vikings, I would consider not waiving him until the end of camp, merely to spite Rosenhaus.

Randall McDaniel: Class of 2009

by | Aug 3, 2009 | Hall of Fame

We’ve been quite vocal about our belief that Randall McDaniel not only should be in the Hall of Fame, but that he should have been a first ballot guy.  In a little less than a week, McDaniel will finally be honored by the Hall–and, of course, we’ll be there for it.

In advance of this weekend’s festivities, we’re going to be looking for a lot of the local profiles that are being written by the inductees–starting with McDaniel.  The Star Tribune ran an impressive story about him Sunday, that illustrated many of the reasons that I’ve always found him to be one of my favorite players–from the quality of his play, to what an outstanding & humble person he is off the field, where today he works full time teaching kids with special education needs at a local Minnesota school.

Unfortunately, in their effort to make people buy the print edition of the paper, it appears that they have not put it on their Website (at least yet)–so I can’t link to it.  We’ll update this story with a link when (if) they get around to it–but in the mean time, here’s a video interview that they did with him.

UPDATE: This article isn’t the same one that appeared in the paper Sunday (despite a very similar headline), but it’s decent.

Steve McNair: Hall of Fame?

by | Jul 8, 2009 | Hall of Fame

Well, Tony P. already asked for it–and to be honest, I thought about putting it up, but my thoughts on the matter are fairly straight forward, and I wasn’t sure it was worth the post.

Plus, it’s come up before, here and here (and before we go all cynical on Tony P. for saying yes in one place, no in another, I believe the no is in reference to him being a first year guy).

But now ProFootballTalk.com has posted the question, and since we do seem to talk a lot about the Hall of Fame here, I figured we better do it here too–especially since frankly I think we’ve got a better group of Hall of Fame minds discussing Hall of Fame matters.

So the question is–is Steve McNair worthy of the Pro Footabll Hall of Fame?

If my math is right, he’ll be eligible in 2013–the same year as Michael Strahan, Warren Sapp, Jonathon Ogden, Larry Allen and more.

McNair’s stats include 31,300 yards, 174 TDs vs. 119 Ints, 82.8 career rating, 60.1% completion percentage, and 37 rushing TDs.  He appeared in one Super Bowl, was a 3-time Pro Bowler, was not ever a 1st team All-Pro, and won one co-MVP in 2003.

Non-tangibles that may come into play, whether they should or not, would be his reputation as a gritty player who would play through pain, although he also did miss a lot of games (at least 28 after becoming the full time starter, by my count), the fact that he was the first highly drafted black QB from a smaller, traditionally black school, who had a team built around him (there were teams that had been built around black QBs before [Warren Moon], and black QBs drafted in the first round [Doug Williams], but none that were drafted as high as #3).

Information forthcoming around the circumstances of his murder could also be on the minds of some voters. Like I said, these are non-tangibles that probably shouldn’t be considered, but the voters, although members of the media, are also (mostly) human.

So what say you, OUR voting members?  Leave your rationale in the comments below…

Yahoo! and NFLPA Settle Fantasy Football Lawsuit

by | Jul 8, 2009 | Fantasy Football

The Associated Press is reporting that Yahoo! settled the suit it filed against the NFL Players Association over licensing fees for player stats for fantasy football purposes last month.

A previous licensing agreement had expired in March of this year, and the NFLPA has argued in the past that such information is proprietary–but a similar suit brought last year was decided in favor of CBS  Interactive, although the NFLPA is appealing that decision.

In the mean time, Yahoo! apparently has decided that the licensing fees would cost less than the legal fees–and the NFLPA apparently has decided that they should take what they can get now, rather than possibly miss out on it all down the road.

Mission Competition Tries to Save Fantasy Leagues

by | Jul 7, 2009 | Fantasy Football

Every fantasy league seems to have one–the owner that doesn’t prepare, drafts his team (or maybe let’s the computer do it), and then checks out as soon as the team hits the loss column in week 1.  Injuries pile up, bye weeks come and go, and their lineup never changes.  It’s all fine and good when you face him, but when a couple teams get the advantage of playing the dead team twice–maybe once with a playoff spot on the line late in the season–that’s when it really sucks.  I mean REALLY sucks.

That’s where Mission Competition comes in.

(more…)