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Would LT be a Viking under old rules?

There was a time when June 1 was a big time for teams to re-load and re-tool on the fly.

Considered the start of the business year in the NFL, veteran players with fat contracts and contract ramifications were often cut loose after June 1 because teams could spread out the salary cap hit over two years by releasing such players. as a result, teams that didn’t fill their needs in free agency or the draft had one last chance to add veteran talent. Often times, June 1 would be a big time in the NFL. Those days, at least for now, are done.

Thanks to the lack of a salary cap, veterans with big contracts are no longer held onto until June 1. With no salary cap, there are no ramifications to dump them earlier in the years.

Players like LaDainian Tomlinson likely wouldn’t have been available until now because the Chargers would have wanted to avoid a big one-year impact on their salary cap. But, without a cap, he was simply released in March and the Vikings lost out on a bidding war with the Jets. One has to wonder if Tomlinson’s decision may have changed if he had the assurance that Brett Favre would be coming back in 2010.

There is little incentive anymore for teams to hold on to players they intend to part ways with until June 1. There is no intrinsic benefit to keeping them and allowing the players to enter belated free agency. One of the first ramifications of the lack of a salary cap was that the market got flooded with veterans in March, not June. while June 1 was a day for teams to make moves and add talent or rid themselves of it, this June 1 looks to be pretty quiet around the NFL.

TUESDAY NOTES

while June 1 no longer holds the importance it did with respect to releasing people, the same can’t be said for restricted free agents. There is a June 1 RFA provision for some players tendered offers by their teams. The real drop-dead date for RFAs to sign their deals isn’t until mid-June, but, depending on what kind offer that was tendered, some RFAs either have to sign or could become unrestricted. Ray Edwards does not fit in that category, however, so Vikings fans don’t have to panic.

former Viking Randy Moss is looking for a new agent. He is expecting that this will be his last year with the Patriots and, despite preparing for his 13th season, he isn’t looking at retiring any time soon.

An on-line auction running through June 10 includes a piece of Vikings history. One of the items being auctioned off by SCP Auctions is the Vikings jersey worn by Fran Tarkenton when he broke the touchdown record for quarterbacks.

It’s hard to imagine that someone could claim to be Bryant McKinnie and get away with it. But, according to McKinnie’s Twitter account, someone claimed to be him at a club and was not only allowed into the club, but was comped bottles of champagne for him and his table.

Would LT be a Viking under old rules?

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Posted by - June 1, 2010 at 6:00 pm

Categories: ny jets schedule Tags: chargers, jets, nfl, salary cap, veteran players

New York Jets, Not Vernon Gholston, to Blame for “Bust” Label

Are the Jets to blame for misusing Gholston?

The experimentation with players going on in the NFL today is out of control. Sure, there’s nothing wrong with trying to move a receiver with only decent hands to defensive back. or maybe moving a running back who isn’t quite big enough to run between the tackles to receiver.

However, teams must be smart about how they experiment and with whom. for some, the switch from 4-3 defensive end to 3-4 outside linebacker has worked very well (see: DeMarcus Ware). However, for most, a position change is met with a much higher learning curve than they would have originally faced and can really set back their careers.

And unfortunately, that’s what is happening right now with 2008 sixth-overall pick in the draft, a defensive end out of Ohio State, Vernon Gholston.

The Jets took a huge gamble by drafting him sixth overall considering they were not asking him to play a position he had ever played before. it might not seem like a big difference (from 4-3DE to 3-4OLB), but their is a huge disparity in the way the game is played with your hand on the ground or standing up.

Gholston had made his living at OSU as a hand-in-the-ground type of player. They drafted him based on his production as an outside speed-rusher, but clearly didn’t do a good job scouting him standing straight up.

Gholston is playing defensive end now in the 3-4, but he’s simply not big enough at 260 pounds. Those guys playing that position, in that scheme, must be strong enough to hold up two blockers but also ditch those blockers at any time and make a play at the line of scrimmage.

At this point, it seems like it might be time for the Jets to admit they were wrong to draft him so high without a defined position. They should trade him to a 4-3 team with a downhill type of mentality on defense and allow him to get after the quarterback from his natural position.

I’m not so sure the word “Bust” would be thrown around in the same context any longer.

New York Jets, Not Vernon Gholston, to Blame for “Bust” Label

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Posted by - May 30, 2010 at 1:00 pm

Categories: ny jets schedule Tags: 3de, disparity, game, jets, linebacker, position change

Super Bowl in New York? No Thanks

It was rainy and cold in New York City and in East Rutherford, N.J., on Wednesday — more than three months after the Super Bowl was played in sunny Miami where it belongs. so as players and officials from the Jets and Giants held a news conference to unveil the NY/NJ area’s bid to host the Super Bowl in 2014, the unseasonable spring weather helped lead the rational observer to the only possible conclusion.

These people are out of their minds.

Having the Super Bowl in northern New Jersey in early February is flat-out nuts. Winters here are rotten. We have snowstorms, ice storms, high winds, power outages, frigid temperatures — all made worse by the fact of so many people living on top of each other in a small amount of space. Why the New York area would want the NFL to bring the signature event on the sports calendar here is an impenetrable mystery. Why the NFL would want to do the bringing is even more baffling.

And yet, it appears as if that’s exactly what will happen. the NFL will announce the site for the 2014 Super Bowl in a couple of weeks, at the owners meetings in Dallas. Tampa remains in the running, officially, as does South Florida. But while either of those pleasant, tried-and-tested, warm-weather sites would make infinitely more sense than New York/New Jersey does, every indicator points to the inevitability of the game being played at the New Meadowlands Stadium.

Which is lunacy.

Some point out that the Super Bowl has been held in cold-weather sites before. But that doesn’t mean it was a good idea to do it. it was a ridiculous idea to have the game in Detroit, a ridiculous idea to have it in Minneapolis and it’s a ridiculous idea to have it in Indianapolis, as they will in 2012 (assuming there’s a 2011-12 season, which is an entirely different issue).

The Super Bowl, you see, isn’t just about Super Bowl Sunday. It’s about the whole week leading up to it. It’s about all of the people from all around the country and the world who come for all of the festivities. the parties. the events. the general hoopla surrounding the game. That’s all part of the Super Bowl now, and the NFL embraces it. makes a lot of money off it. you would think that the NFL would, therefore, want to make it as pleasant as possible for people. when they have it in a cold-weather site during a cold-weather time of year, they’re doing just the opposite.

Having the game in New Jersey incorporates all of the unpleasantness of the other cold-weather sites, adds in New York/New Jersey traffic and, as a bonus, throws game day into question as well. Because while it was silly to have the Super Bowl in Detroit, Minneapolis and Indianapolis, at least those stadiums had domes. at least the NFL could be sure the game would be played. And not just that it would be played — but that the weather wouldn’t have a hand in determining its winner.

Given there’s been so much hand-wringing and fear over the past few years that the whimsy of an overtime coin toss might have a hand in determining the NFL’s champion, then why would the NFL want to invite the possibility of weather playing a part? Why would the NFL want to court the slightest chance that the teams in the Super Bowl can’t play their best because there’s snow on the ground? or that a team has no chance to come back in the second half because the weather conditions turned brutal sometime in the second quarter?

Now, on Wednesday, everybody at the Meadowlands put a brave face on this possibility. to hear these guys talk, they wish every game could be played in sub-freezing temperatures and snow. Giants quarterback Eli Manning said his favorite game of all-time was the NFC Championship Game he won in Green Bay, where it was 23 degrees below zero at kickoff.

“Those experiences make a game more special, they make it memorable for players and fans,” Manning said. “Friends of mine who went to the Super Bowl and went to that game in Green Bay still talk about the Green Bay game more than the Super Bowl.”

That may be, but at the risk of underestimating the number of friends Eli Manning has, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that a lot more people worldwide remember David Tyree’s catch and the Giants beating the Patriots in the Super Bowl two weeks later than remember that the Giants won in freezing cold weather to get there. the Super Bowl is much bigger than the conference championship games. It’s much bigger than the World Series, the NBA Finals, the Daytona 500 and UFC 6,741 or whatever number they’ll be up to by then. It’s the Super Bowl. to pretend it’s OK to play it in sub-optimal conditions because it’s cool to see a player’s breath shooting out of his face mask on the line of scrimmage is to ignore how important it has become as a spectacle. And to schedule it in New Jersey in February is to invite major logistical problems.

Think about this. It’s early February 2014. the night before the Super Bowl. It’s been snowing for eight hours. There’s more than a foot on the ground. the forecast says it’s going to snow right on through Sunday. They’re calling for something between two and three feet of snow. It’s the kind of night and day (happens at least once a winter here) when local officials tell you not to leave your house. But … the Super Bowl’s in town! And you have tickets! so you’ve got to go, right?

But how are you going to get there? the roads are closed. And even if they re-open, well, they’re trying like crazy to plow the parking lots but there’s no place to put all the snow so where’s everybody going to park? And will the field be in any kind of reasonable playing condition by the 6:18 p.m. kickoff? And what about the seats? can they get all the seats cleared out in time? And where will they put that snow?

Oh my goodness. can it be possible that we might have to postpone the Super Bowl until Monday night?

Why would the NFL want even a one percent chance of that possibility?

As long as it’s still a winter event, the Super Bowl should be played in warm-weather sites or under domes. Having it in New Jersey not only throws the 2014 event into question, but it opens up a major can of worms. Chicago will want one, for sure. And why not Green Bay? How about Buffalo? Goodness knows they could use the help up there. once the NFL breaks this seal and decides it’s OK if the Super Bowl looks like the NHL Winter Classic, it’s going to have to be OK with doing it again in the future.

And that may be all right with the NFL. But I can’t see why. Way too much to risk and far too little to gain. Personally, I think they’re nuts.

Super Bowl in New York? No Thanks