Ross says Dolphins “are going to stay in South Florida”

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Dolphins owner Stephen Ross hopes to renovate SunLife Stadium via a project that relies in part on taxpayer dollars.  But he lacks the leverage of an express or implied threat of relocation, which has helped plenty of other teams shake taxpayer dollars out of the tree.

Ross says he won’t be using that leverage.

Specifically, Ross told Monday’s Pro Football Talk that he won’t be expressly or implicitly threatening relocation in order to get a public contribution toward the renovation effort.

“Having been brought up in South Florida and loving the Dolphins I would find that very hard to do,” Ross said.  “I mean, some times when you’re dealing with adversity and people are giving you a hard time you say, ‘Hey I’m not bound to stay here.’  But really I’m not threatening anybody.  The Dolphins belong in South Florida and they are going to stay in South Florida?”

That’s good news for Dolphins fans, but perhaps bad news for the effort to get Dolphins and non-Dolphins fans alike to support the effort to raise local hotel taxes by one percent.  Ross obviously believes they should.

“We are the only stadium in the country I think, especially in the NFL, that doesn’t have one penny of public funds and the only stadium that pays full real estate taxes,” Ross explained.  “In fact, I think all the rest of them pay no real estate taxes at all, and we’re paying full taxes.  So that sets us behind and makes us less competitive in that standpoint.

“I’m prepared to put a lot of money into it,” Ross said of the renovation effort.  “But I think everywhere you see a new stadium you see the public supporting it.  And that is one thing Miami has not been supported in Miami.  They did the Marlins stadium and that’s probably one of the major reasons we’re having problems.”

Ross is referring to the fact that the local MLB team finagled public funds in part with a promise to make and keep the team competitive — and then the Marlins embarked on a major fire sale only one year in the new building.  So how can the Dolphins overcome that?

“It’s about jobs, it’s about economic development, and you can see all the great events that would otherwise come to Miami,” Ross said.  “The NFL wants the Super Bowl to come to Miami.  It’s the warmest weather at that time of the year.  You know, with a great stadium they are going to want to come there more and more.  The financial impact of that whole community of South Florida with a Super Bowl is enormous.  Then you add to that the BCS Bowls and we’re going to be announcing several other types of events, soccer and other types of events this year that we can bring if we had a first-class stadium.”

Meanwhile, Ross is working toward putting a first-class team into his current second-class stadium, via several big-money free agency signings.

“I bought the team because I wanted to win,” Ross said.  “I’ve always listened.  I don’t go out there and say I want this guy I want that guy.  You listen to your football people.  They thought this was the time, and they put a great plan together and I’ve encouraged them.  I said, ‘Guys let’s make some moves, it’s time to win.’  I think the results you’ve seen.  You could see from the interviews, from the free agents that we have kept and signed and the new ones of how they felt about Miami.  It’s kind of like a new beginning if you will and it makes it somewhat exciting.”

Excitement is the key to getting people to come to the current stadium and to support the efforts to renovate it.  Ultimately, putting a consistent winner on the field is the best way to finagle long-term excitement.

As the NFL continues to try to make the Pro Bowl worth watching, the league is considering some ideas inspired by TV game shows.

Albert Breer of NFL Network reported that the league is considering elements that would make the game more like a game show, such as
having incentives paid out during the game. Breer said the league would like to “make it so every single minute of the game has some sort of thing that’s going to keep fans interested and engaged.”

Breer added that the NFL doesn’t “feel the need to keep the integrity of what a normal football game is.”

Personally, I think a good football game is more fun to watch than any game show, and I don’t think adding game show gimmicks to a football game makes the game more fun to watch. The problem I see with the Pro Bowl is that the players don’t take it seriously, and adding “game show” elements seems likely to compound that problem. I don’t have a problem with the NFL’s idea of naming two team captains and letting them pick the teams, but I don’t think we need to have Monty Hall telling Peyton Manning to pick a receiver behind one of two doors, only to find out that Calvin Johnson is behind Door No. 1 and Titus Young is behind Door No. 2.

If the NFL really wants to make the players play hard, the best “game show” element to incorporate would be large cash prizes for the winners. Currently, players on the winning Pro Bowl team make $50,000 and players on the losing team make $25,000. The difference between getting paid $25,000 and $50,000 is a lot to most of us, but it’s peanuts to most Pro Bowlers. Until that changes, don’t expect the players’ effort to change.

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PFT Live was supposed to make its return on Monday, but technical difficulties got in the way of what we hoped would be a smooth transition.

So we’re going to do it all over again on Tuesday. Mike Florio will check in with Kevin Acee of the San Diego Union-Tribune about what’s going on with the Chargers. The big news is on the defensive side of the ball, where they didn’t waste any time signing longtime Colts pass rusher Dwight Freeney after losing linebacker Melvin Ingram to a knee injury. We’ll hear more about how the Chargers will use Freeney and see if there’s going to be a veteran left tackle like Max Starks joining him in the locker room.

Former Chiefs General Manager Scott Pioli will also be on hand to talk about the other big stories around the league as most of the 32 teams gear up for a week of OTAs.

You can watch it all live at noon ET.

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Later today, NFL owners will vote on the location for Super Bowl L.  (For those of you complaining about the use of the letter “L” to designate the 50th Super Bowl, do you forget that we’ve already endured a “Super Bowl XXX”?)  Then, the NFL owners will vote on the location for Super Bowl LI.

South Florida faces an uphill climb in both votes (one against San Franciscoclara, and then one against Houston, barring an upset win over San Franciscoclara) because the powers-that-be failed to secure public funding for upgrades at Sun Life Stadium.  The NFL’s “no Super Bowls without an improved stadium” threat/promise comes off as weak if the owners give South Florida a Super Bowl anyway.

One of the most influential owners believes that public money should have been used to renovate the stadium, even though he’s one of the only owners who built his stadium exclusively with private funds.

“If we’re doing Super Bowls, the community should pitch in,” Patriots owner Robert Kraft said, via Jarrett Bell of USA Today.

The point is that, when a city enters the Super Bowl rotation, the stadium becomes something more than the place where the local football team plays its games.  If the Super Bowl is coming to town once every five years (or, as it happened for Miami most recently, twice in the three-year window from February 2007 through February 2010), the stadium has a different level of value for the place where it’s located, because hosting a Super Bowl brings significant money and worldwide attention to the place where it is played.

Still, with the Marlins debacle and the current mood against what has been described persuasively as “welfare for billionaires,” the citizens and politicians have a hard time seeing the investment of public dollars as a benefit to the region.

Even if, you know, it is.

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It’s a good thing Texans linebacker Brooks Reed is healthy enough to work in OTAs, because he has some extra work to do.

According to Tania Ganguli of the Houston Chronicle, Reed is working inside, in case the Texans need him there this year.

“I’m not 100 percent switching positions, but I’m trying to learn another position,” Reed said. “It’s coming along. I’ve been in the playbook a lot, picking up little things. Cush [inside linebacker Brian Cushing] played the position, so I’m always asking him things. But I’ll get the hang of it.”

He’s a natural outside linebacker, though his production hasn’t been astounding (8.5 sacks in two seasons).

“We know that Brooks can line up outside and play tomorrow if we opened the season,” Texans coach Gary Kubiak said. “So we’re very concerned about getting him his reps inside from that standpoint.”

To move him inside would indicate they think one of their draft picks, either Sam Montgomery or Trevardo Williams, was ready to start opposite Whitney Mercilus.

Mercilus, last year’s first-rounder had 6.0 sacks as a reserve, but that’s a lot of faith to put on a lot of young guys.

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During the spring and summer of 2012, Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson was taking one-third of the first-team reps at Seahawks practices.

Things are very different this year. Tarvaris Jackson is in Buffalo, Matt Flynn is in Oakland and Wilson is the only man running with the starters during Seahawks workouts. That is going to mean a lot more snaps during practice and a high likelihood of improvement as Wilson spends more times at the controls of the team’s offense. According to coach Pete Carroll, that improvement is already readily apparent.

“He threw a couple of balls today, things that we talked about over the offseason that he’d like to take a shot at, and he did it today just to see what would happen with full awareness of why he was doing it,” Carroll said, via Eric Williams of the Tacoma News Tribune. “We were talking about trying to throw the deep ball last year over guys’ outside shoulder; we’re just a million miles ahead of where we were. He’s the kind of player that will affect other guys — he affects everyone around him — and hopefully that will help everyone play better and faster.”

Wilson agrees with his coach that he’s ahead of where he was last year, although he points out that the key is to keep improving. That’s an unknown at this point, obviously, but what we’ve seen from Wilson thus far makes it hard to bet against him.

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The Browns were reportedly interested in quarterback Brian Hoyer long before they signed him, which meant that his arrival in Cleveland last week became fodder for discussions about increased competition for Jason Campbell and Brandon Weeden this offseason.

Offensive coordinator Norv Turner did his best to play up Weeden’s qualifications for the job recently by saying that he doesn’t think many quarterbacks could have succeeded in Cleveland during the 2012 season and he did his best to downplay the import of Hoyer’s arrival at a banquet on Monday night. While Turner said he like Hoyer’s skills, his comments painted a picture of a team taking a look at a player with some intriguing raw materials than a case of signing a player the team thinks can start for them this year.

“I think there have been more stories written about Brian Hoyer being a Brown over the last four months than probably any player in history,” Turner said, via the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “He was released. He was available. He’s a guy that has been with some good teams in backup situations. He’s played very little football, but I do think we like his skill set.”

That wasn’t the only signal that Turner sent about who might be the team’s starter in 2013. Turner also said that he thought there was more value in Weeden taking the majority of reps with the first team this spring and summer than there was in keeping things even with Campbell, who Turner said “doesn’t need as many reps” as younger players. More exposure could certainly backfire for Weeden if he’s not up to the task, but it still seems likelier than he’s the starter in Week One than any one else on the roster.

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Jets running back Mike Goodson faces gun and drug charges that could, under the weapons portion of the case, put him behind bars for a mandatory minimum sentence of three years.

For the Jets, the challenge becomes what to do with Goodson while the court process plays itself out.

On Monday, owner Woody Johnson tiptoed around the crux of the problem.  If they cut Goodson now, he walks away with a $1 million signing bonus that can’t be recovered.  They can get some of the money back, and in turn can obtain cap relief, only if they let the process play out.

The key date in the process comes on June 12, when Goodson will have a pre-trial hearing.  As pointed out by Manish Mehta of the New York Daily News, that falls in the middle of the team’s mandatory minicamp.  If Goodson misses practice to attend the hearing, the Jets could penalize Goodson, at a minimum with a fine.

The problem for the Jets would be the plain language of Article 4, Section 9 of the 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement.  While the revised terms expand the situations in which all or a portion of a player’s signing bonus can be recovered, the provision makes no reference to partial reimbursement arising from a missed mandatory minicamp practice.  Instead, the forfeiture process begins in training camp, and applies more forcefully in the regular season.

But the Jets can’t recover money from Goodson unless he’s still on the roster.  That’s why the Falcons never released Mike Vick after he was incarcerated for dogfighting in 2007; to recover bonus money paid to Vick (and to get the cap credit that goes along with it), the Falcons had to hold their nose and refrain from cutting Vick.

For the Jets, the far better approach to the Goodson conundrum would be to stop channeling Clark Kent and explain in blunt, candid terms that there’s only one way to make a player answer financially for off-field misconduct — by keeping him on the roster while the legal process unfolds.

Of course, that kind of candor could open the Jets up to criticism that they’re more concerned about money than doing the right thing.  But if the plan will be to keep Goodson around in order to eventually recover money from him, why not remove the confusion regarding the reason for not cutting him loose?

AP

When Eagles coach Chip Kelly was trying to downplay the significance of offseason snap counts, he joked: “Someone charted them, I would imagine.”

That they have, and it’s obvious that Kelly’s trying to keep his quarterback job competitive for as long as possible.

According to Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Nick Foles took 21 snaps to Michael Vick’s 15 in seven-on-seven and team drills Monday.

That’s more than a sprinkling, and continues to point to the competitiveness of the situation.

While any quarterback would prefer most of the work to get ready for a season, there’s no reason for Kelly to make a decision now. He hasn’t been able to work with either of them long enough.

For the record, Matt Barkley apparently has the lead for the third-string job, with 21 snaps to five for Dennis Dixon and two for G.J. Kinne.

Now that that’s been documented, we can return the reporters covering the Eagles to their crucial other duty — documenting the songs on Kelly’s practice playlist.

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The Ravens traded Anquan Boldin to the 49ers earlier this offseason, leaving them to sort through the rest of their roster to find receivers to play alongside Torrey Smith and Jacoby Jones this offseason.

Boldin led the team in both catches and receiving yards last season, so there’s a big hole to fill even if Torrey Smith takes the expected step up after catching 99 passes over his first two seasons. Jones’ kick and punt return responsibilities mean that he’s only going to be able to do so much so that leaves a relatively inexperienced crew vying for expanded roles in the Baltimore offense.

According to Mike Preston of the Baltimore Sun, Deonte Thompson is standing out in that group ahead of Tandon Doss, David Reed and LaQuan Williams. Preston reports that the Ravens think Thompson, who had five catches in his rookie season, has the “inside track” on a starting job across from Smith because he is the most complete option of the group. Coach John Harbaugh didn’t go that far in his assessment, but he did give a positive review of the second-year player.

“[Thompson] could sneak in there, he looks different, is fast and catches everything,” Harbaugh said. “But the other guys like Doss and Reed have done well and worked hard during the offseason. As I’ve always said, the best player will play.”

There’s been so much focus on the changes to the Ravens defense this offseason that Boldin’s departure and the ensuing gap in the depth chart have been relatively small topics of conversation. That figures to change in OTAs and training camp as the team tries to put together an offense capable of repeating as Super Bowl champions.

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On Monday, Bills defensive lineman Mario Williams tried to explain text messages that had been released to the media by the lawyer representing Williams’ ex-fiancée.  It could be the first of many times that Mario must respond or react to things said and done by Tony Buzbee.

Buzbee is employing a common, and effective, litigation tactic.  Williams has sued Buzbee’s client on grounds Buzbee deems to be frivolous and unwarranted, and Buzbee will do everything he can to make Williams regret that decision.

For more proof of Buzbee’s plan, look no farther than his recent comments to Tim Graham of the Buffalo News.  Buzbee justifies an aggressive reaction to the Williams lawsuit by explaining that the lawsuit he filed contains serious allegations against Buzbee’s client, Erin Marzouki.

“He called her a thief in a public pleading,” Buzbee told Graham.  “He said in a public pleading that she never had any intention of marrying him.  He said in a public pleading that she had been the one to break off the relationship.  He said in a public pleading that the only reason she was with him was to get his money.

“He swore that to be true.  Those are some pretty damaging things to say about someone when you know good and well the pleading that you filed is going to be picked up by the press.”

And so Buzbee is fighting fire with hellfire, releasing text messages that have limited relevance to the potentially key question of whether Williams or Marzouki broke off the engagement.  While the text messages arguably prove that Williams was moody and erratic, which could perhaps support a finding by a jury that Williams ended the engagement and permit Marzouki to keep the $785,000 engagement ring, that’s just cover for what Buzbee is really doing.

It’s the Reggie Hammond “let’s see what we can f–k with next” approach.  And it often works.

In some cases, however, the approach serves only to piss off the other party.  Here, it could cause Williams to dig in and spend more than $785,000 in an effort to retrieve the ring.

The only good news is that the couple apparently hadn’t registered at Bed Bath & Beyond.

AP

Mike Smith is obviously a good football coach, but he’d have probably been a pretty good salesman as well.

The Falcons coach talked about the return of Tony Gonzalez, and it’s clear that he had a strategy for coaxing him back for another season after Gonzalez spent last year saying he was 95 percent sure he was going to retire.

“I told Tony, ‘I’m not going to talk about it after this day. I’m just hoping for that 5 percent, but I’m not going to address it through the season and nor should you’ and he didn’t,” Smith said, via the team’s official website. “He went through the rest of the season. The season ended, not quite what we wanted to get accomplished, and Tony was still intent on not playing anymore.”

But after the season, Smith was willing to slow-play things, to let the sting of an NFC Championship Game loss subside.

When it was time to talk to Gonzalez, he made sure to get on a plane and fly to his home in California, rather than doing business over the phone.

“I said ‘Tony, I’ll tell you what, I don’t want to do this on the phone. Let me hop on a plane, come out and have dinner with you and let’s really talk about this,’ ” Smith said. “So we went out and had dinner and had an opportunity to talk. The chances of him playing were kind of bending a little bit.”

Whether the meeting helped change Gonzalez’s mind about coming back, it showed a commitment on the part of the Falcons, who made bringing him back a specific focus during an offseason which saw them make a few precise moves.

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The moment when Darrelle Revis went down with a torn ACL last year, Buccaneers General Manager Mark Dominik recognized an opportunity.

Dominik told NFL Network that he immediately thought about the possibility that the Jets might decide to trade Revis, and that the Bucs’ front office started thinking about what Revis could mean to Tampa’s future during the 2012 season.

“Quite frankly, it started when he blew out his knee,” Dominik said. “I actually went into our director of player personnel Dennis Hickey’s office and I said, ‘That could be a reason why he could leave the Jets.’ Because I knew what his contract situation was, and so when he hurt his knee, I thought, ‘That’s going to be an out possibility’.”

Dominik said all indications are that Revis is making big strides in his recovery, and that he’s going to be the same Revis who was a three-time All-Pro for the Jets.

“I think we’re getting the No. 1 cornerback in the National Football League,” Dominik said.

If Dominik is right about that, he was smart to start thinking about Revis the moment he went down.

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Good news about Seahawks defensive ends is getting harder to find than stores renting VHS tapes.

Chris Clemons is rehabbing from a torn ACL and the team isn’t sure when he’ll be able to get back on the field. Michael Bennett has a torn rotator cuff, which doesn’t require surgery but is still something he’ll have to deal with over the course of the season. And Bruce Irvin will be serving a four-game suspension to start the year after violating the league’s performance-enhancing drug policy.

The last thing they really need at this point, then, is an injury to Cliff Avril. When it rains in Seattle, it pours. Avril injured the plantar fascia (the connective tissue on the bottom of the foot) in his foot about a month ago and will be out at least another couple of weeks as he tries to recover.

“Well, it hurts. You could ask him about it. The plantar fascia thing is a real uncomfortable thing. You just have to wait it out,” coach Pete Carroll said, via Eric Williams of the Tacoma News Tribune. “It’s something that you can come back from. It’s not a problem. But you just have to wait it out. He’s real anxious to go, and he’s doing very well in his rehab. And he runs some this week for the first time. So it will take another couple weeks at least.”

OTAs aren’t vital for a veteran player like Avril, certainly less important than making sure his foot is 100 percent come training camp and the regular season. It wouldn’t be surprising at all if Avril was held out for the remainder of the offseason work, including next month’s minicamp, in hopes of avoiding the run of bad luck at defensive end that calls to mind Spinal Tap’s problems finding a permanent drummer.

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Bengals cornerback Leon Hall missed OTAs last season as he recovered from an Achilles injury and he’s going to miss at least a portion of the team’s organized team activities again this year.

Geoff Hobson of the Bengals website reports that Hall tore a ligament in his thumb while lifting weights. As a result, Hall is going to be on the sideline when the team starts this year’s set of OTAs on Tuesday.

According to the report, Hall is expected back at some point during OTAs so this isn’t nearly as serious an injury as the Achilles issue from last year. Given Hall’s status as a veteran foundation of the defense and the team’s need to keep such a player in the lineup, it wouldn’t be surprising if he took things easy until at least the team’s mandatory minicamp next month.

Dre Kirkpatrick, who also had injury issues in 2012, isn’t expected to do any team drills until training camp as he rehabs from knee surgery performed in hopes of keeping him on the field this season. Should everyone be healthy at cornerback come the start of the season, the Bengals secondary should be better than it was last season and that should keep them in the hunt for a third straight playoff berth.

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Kyle Love made the Patriots roster as an undrafted rookie.

And he left the roster in kind of the same way, learning a lesson that no player (at least one not named Tom Brady) isn’t replaceable.

That’s why he wasn’t surprised when the Patriots released him after he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes this offseason. The Jaguars quickly claimed him.

“That’s how they run their business up there; veteran guys who have been there for years and put in a lot of work get treated like rookies,” Love told Ryan O’Halloran of the Florida Times-Union.

Love said that both his parents have diabetes, which made him expect to receive a similar diagnosis. He said he had worked out regularly at Patriots facility, and any weight loss resulting from the disease wasn’t dramatic.

“It’s not like I lost 30 pounds,” he said. “I was never out of shape — I participated every day so I don’t know where that came from.”

Love has a chance to help the Jaguars immediately, but coaches met with the team’s medical staff before putting in a claim to make sure he’d be able to do what he does best.

“They reviewed it and felt good about the situation and felt like we can get him the care he needs,” coach Gus Bradley said. “We went through a preliminary meeting [Monday] to talk about what he can and can’t do and the number of reps. We’ll bring him along slowly and get a chance to see him.”

Love said he’s had to cut out a lot of desserts and carbohydrates from his diet, but that’s something he’s willing to do to manage the disease.

“My wife asked me how I felt after the whole thing went down and it was bittersweet,” Love said. “You’re sad, but then you’re happy at the same time. I’m just trying to move on and not really worry about what happened.”

If they can manage the disease, the Jaguars likely found an upgrade at a position of need. And if that happens, they can thank the Patriots for making a cold calculation that helped them.