Still plenty of optimism for votes today

AP

You could get whiplash following the news of the last 24 hours in the NFL lockout, with alternating reports that today is the day it all comes to an end, or that it could be two full weeks.

But while it would be easy to get discouraged by the fact that there’s so much uncertainty heading into what was advertised as the day the lockout ends, there’s still plenty of optimism that today really will be the day the lockout ends.

Sal Paolantonio of ESPN reported that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has at least the 24 votes he needs from the owners to get a deal done. And Chris Mortensen of ESPN reports that NFLPA sources sound upbeat.

So pessimism from Chester Pitts aside, a lot of people on both sides still seem to think today is the day that both sides approve a new agreement. Let’s hope that optimism doesn’t dissipate over the next 12 hours.

AP

In an interview with Sirius XM NFL Radio last weekend, Bills quarterback E.J. Manuel said that he found the Bills offense was easier to learn than the one he was in at Florida State and he’s picking it up quickly as a result.

If that’s the case, it’s the one thing Manuel can rest easy about when it comes to his transition to the NFL. Bills offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett didn’t address that claim directly on Tuesday when he spoke to reporters, but he did make it clear that he thinks Manuel has plenty of work to do in order to get himself ready to play at the professional level.

“Everything,” Hackett said, via the team’s website. “He’s a young man that’s got to work on a lot of things from footwork to progressions to plays to formations, everything. Defenses in the NFL are obviously a little different. He’s got to work on that too. He’s got to work on everything.”

There’s no great reason for concern about Hackett’s assessment of the first-round pick nor are Hackett’s thoughts reason to suspect Manuel won’t be the starter this year. You wouldn’t expect any player to come from the college ranks as a finished product, especially not a quarterback who is going to be dealing with faster defenses capable of showing more looks than he was exposed to before coming to the NFL. You’d expect even less to hear one of his coaches say that all was well before a significant time has been spent working with the rookie.

If Hackett’s saying the same things about Manuel in August, there will be more of an impact but, for now, it sounds like Manuel’s pretty much where he’s supposed to be in his progression to the NFL game.

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Hundreds of players will get cut by NFL players before the start of the regular season, and most of those players will keep working out and hoping for another chance at making it in professional football.

But some of those players may try to make it in professional wrestling.

Jim Ross, who works with World Wrestling Entertainment in talent development, has a meeting scheduled with the NFL Players Association today in which he’ll make the case that football players who lose their jobs on NFL teams should be informed that a second career in pro wrestling may be available to them.

“Everybody doesn’t make the 53-man roster,” Ross told Alex Marvez and Jim Miller on SiriusXM NFL Radio. “Some guys are going to be looking for work, and we’ve got some job openings. Maybe we can put the synergies of those two entities together and create something wonderful some day.”

From the WWE’s perspective, it’s easy to see why this makes sense: Pro wrestling needs big, strong, agile athletes, and football produces lots of those. And some of the guys cut by the NFL would bring name recognition from their playing days into the wrestling ring.

There’s also a long history of athletes dabbling in both wrestling and football, from Bronko Nagurski to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and dozens of others in between. If you’re a football player who couldn’t quite make it in the NFL, you could do worse than turning to wrestling.

Reuters

Colts owner Jim Irsay can be quirky.  At times, unpredictable.  At other times, a little belligerent.  And he’s taken a few shots at yours truly, who has taken a few shots at him.

But when there’s a cause that would benefit from the donation of funds, he’s typically at the front of the line.

Irsay has pledged to donate up to $25,000 to the tornado relief effort in Moore, Oklahoma, matching contributions made by the general public.

Donations can be made through the Colts’ official website or the Colts’ page on the American Red Cross site.

Before anyone complains that $25,000 is a drop in the bucket for a billionaire, keep this in mind:  It’s still $25,000.  How many other billionaires out there aren’t giving 25 cents to the effort?

So we applaud Irsay’s efforts, we encourage other billionaires, millionaires, thousandaires, and hundredaires to do what they can, and we’ll be glad to publicize other efforts by other NFL teams to raise money to help folks whose insurance policies will take them only so far through this time of intense crisis.

AP

Browns owner Jimmy Haslam has been engaged for more than a month in the intricate task of saying enough to protect and advance his business interests, but not saying things that would undermine and jeopardize his legal interests.

That balancing act entered a new frontier on Tuesday, when Haslam addressed his fellow owners at the quarterly meetings in Boston.

As Gantt pointed out, Haslam also offered to provide private explanations to any owner who wants more than the five-minute presentation Haslam made to the full league ownership.

Before any owner takes him up on that offer, the owner needs to consider the possibility of becoming a potential witness, at some point down the road.  Since no one outside of federal law enforcement currently knows the contents of files and computers seized last month at Pilot Flying J headquarters or communications secretly recorded by a company employee that weren’t included in the 120-page affidavit in support of the issuance of the search warrant, it’s unknown whether the Justice Department has or will have enough evidence to target Haslam personally.  If Haslam is indicted, anything Haslam has said to anyone — including privately to other owners — can be used against him.

This means that other owners could find themselves being interviewed by federal prosecutors and, possibly, being subpoenaed to testify.

The chances of that happening are slim, but the lawyers currently on retainer for Haslam and the other 31 owners are compensated handsomely to keep an eye on every possible worst-case scenario.

Thus, if Haslam wants to keep his fellow owners out of this mess, he’ll not make good on the offer to provide private explanations.  And if his fellow owners want to stay out of this mess, they won’t accept.

AP

Apparently, Bears linebacker Lance Briggs is still getting used to the new look of his defense.

For the first time, he’s out there without a number of long-time co-workers, particularly linebacker Brian Urlacher.

And when he was asked about missing another unsigned free agent, Israel Idonije, Briggs replied “I miss everybody, you guys,” and he walked away from the media, according to John Mullin of CSNChicago.com.

Prior to that, in his first interview of the offseason, Briggs talked about the challenges of trying to fill in as a leader and a signal-caller for the defense for Urlacher, something he admitted was “very different.”

“It just means continue to be me. I’m just vocal now,” Briggs said. “I didn’t call the plays before and now I’m calling the plays. I just have a lot of respect, . . .

“I’ve been spoiled for the last 10 years.”

The on-field adjustment shouldn’t be hard for Briggs, but reading between the lines makes it seem like he’s still not 100 percent on board with the absence of Urlacher, a stance management seems to be fine with. That said, stepping into a leadership role was a significant move for Briggs, which should help eventually allow them to move on.

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When the Steelers hired Todd Haley as their offensive coordinator last year, many people predicted that he and quarterback Ben Roethlisberger would get along about as well as oil and water.

There were a few moments where things were less than placid, but the two men were able to play nice in the public eye for the most part as the team finished 22nd in the NFL in points per game. That doesn’t mean they saw things eye-to-eye, however, and Roethlisberger admits that he made some requests for changes to the offense in 2013. Others made similar requests and Roethlisberger says that it has resulted in an offense that everyone’s excited about.

“There’s been some changes this offseason in some of the offensive philosophies, playbook and some things that I think are good,” Roethlisberger said, via Alan Robinson of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “It’s some compromise from all the different position coaches, the running back coaches, the line, and quarterback coaches. I think we’ve taken a little bit of everything and made it a lot better. You can ask anybody on offense that, including coaches, and they’ll tell you that we all like the way the offense is and where it’s going.”

The departures of Mike Wallace and Rashard Mendenhall guaranteed a different look on offense in Pittsburgh before we even heard anything about larger schematic changes. Roethlisberger didn’t get specific about any of the changes, though we suspect it is safe to rule out any talk of him running the read option once the regular season rolls around. Whether or not it means less dinking and dunking, though, is a question that we’ll have to wait to have answered.

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During a wide-ranging and entertaining (except when I was talking) segment of Tuesday’s PFT Live, former Patriots V.P. of player personnel and Chiefs G.M. Scott Pioli reacted to the recent comments from former Dolphins assistant coach Tim Davis regarding former Dolphins head coach and current I’m-not-going-to-be-the-Alabama-coach Alabama coach Nick Saban.

Davis called Saban “the devil,” and Pioli called Davis out on that.

Reminded that Saban said in response that he was “terribly disappointed” by the comments, Pioli agreed.  “I’ve got to be honest, I was terribly disappointed,” Pioli said.  “You know, I know Nick Saban, I’ve worked with Nick Saban for a number of years back in Cleveland.  First of all, I didn’t like it for Nick.  I know Nick is a tremendous coach and he’s a tough worker and he’s a tough boss but I know a lot of people who are tough bosses.

“I’ll say this about Nick, though:  I think he’s tough but he’s fair. He doesn’t ask anything of people that he hasn’t done himself or that he won’t do himself.”

Pioli also pointed out the inconsistency between the subsequent claim from Davis that it all was a joke to the lack of an apology from Davis.  There’s another inconsistency that undermines the comments; Davis worked two years for Saban at Miami, and then later accepted another job with Saban at Alabama.

“[Davis] spends a year out of football, can’t get a job, Nick creates a position at the University of Alabama to help a guy who’s been unemployed he shows his loyalty to the guy, brings him in, creates a position, pays him. This guy made the choice to come work for Nick and now a couple years later, he’s bashing a guy who really helped him,” Pioli said.  “And to me this is something within the industry that I really struggle with, Mike, because I’ve see it happen to Bill Belichick, I’ve seen it happen to Bill Parcells, I just don’t understand the mentality of people who are given opportunities, they seize the opportunity, they get paid, and then some time in the future they start to air dirty laundry or their hard feelings toward someone. I just don’t understand why people can’t keep their mouths shut and move on.  So, to me, it’s one of these trends in sports that I see, that I just, truly
disappoint me.”

Looking at it that way, it really is disappointing that Davis would fire public shots at Saban, in jest or otherwise.  If Saban was “the devil” or something close to it, Davis knew it based on their time together from 2005 to 2006 — and yet Davis signed up for another tour of duty in 2008.

And if it was all a joke, it was a bad joke from a guy who benefited from Saban’s willingness to hire him not once, but twice.

The ultimate message is fairly simple.  If you have a problem with your current boss, find a new one.  And if you had a problem with a former boss, try not to accept another job offer from him.

AP

The Titans start their OTAs next week and it looks like they’ll get full participation from quarterback Jake Locker at the sessions.

Locker has spent the offseason recovering from shoulder surgery after suffering multiple dislocations of his left, non-throwing shoulder during the 2012 season and says that he has healed up enough that he expects to have no limitations when he joins his teammates on the field next week. While Locker stopped short of the rave reviews about his physical condition that we’re accustomed to hearing at this time of year, he made it clear that he feels ready for everything the Titans will throw at him.

“I don’t know a whole lot about it as far as if it’s supposed to be better or stronger, but I can tell you it feels better and just the same as it did before I got hurt,” Locker said, via Terry McCormick of Titans Insider. “I haven’t had any problems with it. I haven’t had any moments with it where, I’m like, ‘Aw, man, I can feel that,’ or ‘it slipped a little bit.’ It feels great. It feels normal and I’m excited about that.”

Any growth for the Titans as a team this season will likely require growth from Locker as an individual. It’s helpful, then, that he won’t have anything holding him back physically as he takes on the full leadership role for the team’s offense in his third NFL season.

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Though it wasn’t on the agenda — between rubber-stamping Super Bowl sites and giving each other money — yesterday’s NFL owners meeting also included an apology.

According to Jarrett Bell of USA Today, new Browns owner Jimmy Haslam offered an explanation to his business partners about the recent federal investigation of his trucking business, and told them about steps he was taking to fix the problem.

“I thought it was important,” Haslam said. “We’re partners in the NFL. I wanted to address them face-to-face.”

His fellow owners were apparently touched by the five-minute talk, in which he apologized for any negative attention he brought to the league.

“I know he feels a sense of embarrassment,” Patriots owner Robert Kraft said. “He said they’re going to do everything they can to get it under control and put it behind them, and that he felt bad for the attention that it brought to the Cleveland franchise and the NFL, and he was going to make it right.”

“He is the new kid in town in terms of NFL ownership,” Giants co-owner Steve Tisch said. “And to sort of deal with an issue like this in the first quarter is impressive.”

The league passed him through a vetting process before he was allowed to buy the Browns, and nothing came up then. And it sounds like his business partners were impressed by his willingness to open up to them, which included an offer for private explanations if anyone needed them.

AP

Said Bills offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett of his work with rookie QB E.J. Manuel, “Footwork is tied into everything. Everything is within your footwork. It’s a very big learning process. For us, we use our footwork, we use our progression, and we move up in the pocket.”

Dolphins QB Ryan Tannehill says he has made significant progress: “Last year at this time my head was spinning. I was just trying to figure out how things worked. I didn’t really know how the day went, how the offseason went, how practices went.”

Patriots QB Tom Brady is getting plenty of work with WR Danny Amendola.

Jets RB Mike Goodson is charged with a gun crime, but his lawyer says he’s confident he’ll be able to show that the gun wasn’t Goodson’s.

Former Ravens and Browns owner Art Modell could get a clearer path to the Hall of Fame.

Bengals WR Mohamed Sanu had his first full-speed practice since recovering from a stress fracture in his foot.

Browns QB Brian Hoyer got $250,000 guaranteed on his new contract.

Steelers S Troy Polamalu is looking trim and fit at OTAs.

Texans QB Case Keenum is pushing T.J. Yates for the No. 2 quarterback job.

Indianapolis wants to host the 2018 Super Bowl.

Said Jaguars DL Brandon Deaderick of adjusting to his new team after being cut by the Patriots, “It’s going well. I’m getting adjusted to the new system they have here. That’s all I’m focusing on. I’ve got to get better every day.”

Titans QB Jake Locker says he has a greater leadership role this season.

Nate Irving will get the first crack at being the Broncos’ starting middle linebacker.

Chiefs GM John Dorsey has been impressed with S Eric Berry.

Fans in Oakland put out the welcome mat for Charles Woodson.

New Chargers LT Max Starks is expected to start, and King Dunlap will likely be the swing tackle behind Starks and rookie D.J. Fluker.

Said Cowboys K Dan Bailey of tornado devastation near his family’s home in Oklahoma, “I can’t do much as far as going up there. I wish I could go up there. But I’m going to see what I can do financially or just anything I can do to help.”

Giants WR Hakeem Nicks is becoming more of a leader.

Eagles S Kenny Phillips says his knee feels fine.

Said Redskins General Manager Bruce Allen of the new rookie salary structure, “I think the new system has simplified everything. I’ve never had a rookie holdout. I’ve never worried about the holding-out part of it. [But] it has simplified everything and I think it’s made [Redskins chief negotiator] Eric Schaffer’s life much, much easier.”

Bears LB Lance Briggs has inherited Brian Urlacher’s leadership role.

Lions WR Calvin Johnson admits he was a little uneasy at first about having a new position coach this season.

Packers coach Mike McCarthy is disappointed not to have CB Sam Shields at OTAs.

The Vikings have waived undrafted OT Mark Jackson.

A contract worth more than $100 million appears to be coming soon for Falcons QB Matt Ryan.

The Panthers’ website offers five things to watch at OTAs.

Saints coach Sean Payton is pleased to have 100 percent participation at OTAs.

Buccaneers DE Adrian Clayborn says a knee injury taught him not to take anything for granted.

A change in defensive philosophy has the Cardinals’ defensive ends feeling excited.

Rams coach Jeff Fisher shares his philosophy on the offseason schedule.

Aldon Smith says he can only do “a little bit” of work with the 49ers after labrum surgery, but he’s watching lots of film.

A year ago he was just a rookie trying to make it, but Seahawks QB Russell Wilson is now the clear leader of the whole team.

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It’s not that Joe Namath thinks Geno Smith’s a bad player.

He just thinks the Jets didn’t need to draft him in the second round.

“No, I don’t think they needed a quarterback,” Namath said, via Ebenezer Samuel of the New York Daily News. “They needed the other positions filled. Possibly offensive line. They got some defensive line. The safeties are still questionable. The outside linebackers are still questionable.”

There are many things about the Jets which could be described that way.

Namath blamed the recent poor play of quarterback Mark Sanchez to “distractions” — which I suppose, by extension, means they just added another. But Namath generally supported the incumbent starter, leaning on his early record as evidence he can play sufficiently well to start somewhere if not in New York.

“I am pulling for him,” Namath said of Sanchez. “I know that he can do better than he’s done. And we saw him lead a team to two AFC championship games, right? I also know what it’s like not to necessarily have the weapons you’d like to have, not to necessarily have the time you’d like to accomplish. . . .

“I know it’s a team game and I know Sanchez is going to play better. I promise you you’ll see a different guy [this year]. I believe you’ll see a different guy. Mark’s not a puppy anymore. He’s gone through some things, growing process. As far as Sanchez goes, even if he’s not with the Jets, he’s going to play as long as he wants to. He’s that good. As long as he wants to, he’s going to be in the NFL.”

Unless Sanchez can put the distractions behind him this year, he’s likely to get a chance to find that new address.

AP

Plenty of skeptics believe that the league’s intent to alter its calendar, moving the draft from April to May and the Scouting Combine from February to March, arises not from a desire to expand the league’s footprint during the offseason but to lay the foundation for an expansion of the season.

On Tuesday, Commissioner Roger Goodell gave credence to those concerns by once again pointing out that the 18-game regular season remains a possibility.

“[The options] are all on the table,” Goodell said at a press conference that concluded the quarterly ownership meetings in Boston.  “As I have said before, I think the structure of the season is something that we consistently reevaluate.  I have been quite open about [indicating that] we have to address the quality of the preseason.  I hear from fans consistently that they want to make every NFL event more valuable.  They see the preseason as being less valuable to them because they don’t see the best players and the games do not count.  We have to address that, whether we are looking at 18 [regular-season games] and two [preseason games] or 16-and-two and expanded playoffs.  They are all on the table and things we are going to evaluate.”

Nudging the draft and the Scouting Combine deeper into the calendar would help accommodate a Super Bowl played two weeks later, which would in most years put it on President’s Day weekend.  But the shift of the start of free agency from the middle of March to early March would arguably put too much of a pinch on the Super Bowl teams, which will have less time to negotiate with their looming free agents before they hit the market — or before the deadline for using the franchise tag.

Of course, the crowding of the Super Bowl and the start of free agency could be aimed at persuading the NFLPA eventually to say, “You know, we should move the start of free agency to April,” which the NFL reportedly wanted when talk of adjusting the calendar first emerged.

The bigger challenge for the league remains getting the NFLPA eventually to say, “You know, we should just play 18 regular-season games.”  Two years ago, the thinking was that, if/when the league exercised its unilateral ability under the new CBA to shrink the preseason from four to two games, the union would calculate the impact of the lost revenue on the salary cap, compare it to the influx of revenue with the addition of two regular-season games, and not just agree to but insist on a move from 16 to 18.  Since then, it has become harder to reconcile player health and safety with adding two games that count, and it’s hard to imagine the NFLPA accepting 18 games unless the league adopts the idea that every player would be limited to 16 appearances.

For those (like us) who think 18 games would be overkill, it’s encouraging that Goodell mentioned the possibility of 16-and-2 plus expanded playoffs as an alternative.  Expanding the postseason would potentially replace the revenue lost by scrapping half of the preseason.  Sure, it would mean one more game — but only for either four (if the field expands to 14) or eight (if the field grows to 16).

The league may be years away from resolving the issue.  With each passing season, however, it’s harder to tolerate a four-game preseason — especially since Goodell has made it clear in recent years that the quality of those games is unacceptable.

AP

You hear about players having breakout seasons all the time, but you rarely hear anyone talk about someone having a breakout offseason.

Cowboys wide receiver Dez Bryant had a breakout season in 2012. After two years of inconsistent performances and injuries, Bryant played in all 16 games for the Cowboys and turned in 92 catches for 1,382 yards and 12 touchdowns. Those were the kind of numbers that the team hoped to see when they took Bryant in the first round of the 2010 draft and numbers they likely worried about seeing after a chaotic offseason that culminated with an arrest for allegedly hitting his own mother.

Just as things came together for Bryant on the field last season, they seem to have come together for him off of it this year. Bryant’s name has only come up when people are talking about how focused he’s been on football and how much he’s grown up since the start of last season. Bryant took some time Tuesday to talk about his changed approach.

“I found myself,” Bryant said, via ESPNDallas.com. “I’m comfortable with my life. I’m enjoying being in the NFL. I wish it could’ve been a couple years back, but I had to go through a couple of things to figure it out. I think I got it and I’m just more focused on my job and doing what I love to do and that’s playing football.”

After Bryant’s arrest last summer, there was a lot of talk about a set of behavioral guidelines that Bryant had to follow to remain a member of the Cowboys. The Cowboys denied putting them in place, but owner Jerry Jones said Bryant had to change his lifestyle to stay in Dallas. One doesn’t count their chickens before they hatch, so we’ll say only that all those efforts have paid off to this point and produced the best Bryant we’ve seen on and off the field since he entered the NFL.

Reuters

At first blush, it looks like an unequivocal commitment.  Like so often when it comes to the Los Angeles leverage game, however, careful inspection of the words suggests that the door is open — even if only a little bit.

Chargers owner Dean Spanos, speaking to Albert Breer of NFL.com at the quarterly ownership meetings in Boston, explained that the Chargers want to remain in San Diego.

“I’ve said this the last 10 years,” Spanos said.  “The Chargers belong in San Diego.  That’s where we want to be.  We’re going to continue to try to get something done in San Diego.”

At some point, however, the Chargers’ wants will give way to their needs.  The combination of San Diego’s unwillingness to help build a new stadium and the looming possibility of one — and possibly two — NFL teams moving in just 90 miles up the road could at some point prompt the Chargers to become at least one of the teams to make the fairly short jaunt.

The Chargers are one of the few teams with the annual ability to abandon their lease via a payment that reduces each year.  Spanos made it clear that, to get something done in San Diego, a payment from the public coffers will be needed.

“It’s very difficult to get public money in the state of California, but in our marketplace, we need a public contribution to get something done,” Spanos said. “Everybody’s aware of it.  We just need to find the right formula that works for everybody, and it has to be fair for everybody.  The politicians know what needs to be done. We just need to get something and make it work.”

Perhaps Spanos feels optimistic because the 49ers have found a way to ditch one of the worst stadiums in the NFL for a swanky new venue that will host Super Bowl L.  Still, at the current rate of governmental action, the Chargers could eventually get that new stadium and host another NFL title game when the it’s time to play Super Bowl C.

Reuters

San Francisco 49ers head coach Jim Harbaugh has been involved with the sport of IndyCar Racing ever since his playing days for the Indianapolis Colts in the late 1990′s. Now he gets a chance to play a part in one of motor racing’s greatest spectacles.

According to Curt Cavin of the Indianapolis Star, Harbaugh will drive the pace car to lead the 33-car field to the green flag Sunday morning for the 97th running of the Indianapolis 500. Harbaugh will be in front of the field in a 2014 Corvette Stingray leading the way to the green flag.

“I know my heart is going to be beating out of my chest,” Harbaugh said.

Harbaugh played for the Indianapolis Colts from 1994-1997. During his time in Indianapolis, Harbaugh became a co-owner of Panther Racing and has been involved with the sport ever since. The team has used Harbaugh’s No. 4 from his playing days with the Colts as the number for their car. J.R. Hildebrand starts 10th Sunday for the team in the No. 4 National Guard car. Panther racing is also providing rides for Oriol Servia (13th) and Townsend Bell (22nd) in the race.