AP

Colts wide receiver Reggie Wayne wasn’t a fan of the postgame “squirrel” dance Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis did on the field at the end of last Sunday’s Wild Card game, calling it “disrespectful” during a radio interview this week.

Lewis responded to Wayne on Tuesday and, to no surprise, had a decidedly different take. Lewis said the dance had nothing to do with the Colts, but was about “honoring my team and honoring my city” after what will be the final home game of Lewis’ career unless he reverses course on retirement.

“That was about capping off a heck of a legacy of 17 years. When he was in Pop Warner playing football, I was in Baltimore. To salute my city that way, I guess the trot around the field was disrespectful too. No. It wasn’t even about them. The game was over,” Lewis said, via the team’s website. “I didn’t go towards their sideline or make no big issue of that because I’ve never been that type of player. But [it was] to salute my city, knowing that people love to see that.”

That’s certainly the way the dance came across on Sunday afternoon, although one can understand why a player from the losing team might have a different read on it. As Wayne said, they were celebrating Lewis all day long and that was one final moment for a player who has been the face of the Ravens franchise since there has been a Ravens franchise.

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The final diagnosis appears to be in for Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III.

According to Chris Mortensen of ESPN, Griffin will undergo “total reconstruction” surgery early Wednesday morning to repair complete tears to his ACL and LCL. Dr. James Andrews will perform the surgery and he is expected to miss six to eight months. Mortensen reported at 1:03 a.m. ET that the surgery would take place in “about six hours” placing the actual time of the surgery somewhere around 7 a.m. ET.

Griffin left Sunday’s Wild Card game against the Seattle Seahawks in the fourth quarter after his right knee bent awkwardly trying to reel in a poor snap. It was already expected that Griffin was going to undergo surgery for at least partial tears of both ligaments but the extent of the damage appears to be greater than first thought.

The timetable of the injury could mean Griffin is ready to go in time for training camp in late July or that he could still be sidelined when the season begins in September.

AP

The bounty case is over, for the most part.  But with the NFL soon descending on New Orleans for Super Bowl XLVII, plenty more will be said about the situation — especially since Saints coach Sean Payton remains suspended as the franchise is preparing for the 2013 season.

NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith said plenty more about the situation on Tuesday, during an appearance on ESPN’s First Take.

“Sometimes in this business everybody sort of looks at the end,” Smith said, via the New Orleans Times-Picayune.  “Very few people today it seems to me have time to look at the process.  Here was the process, the process was if you remember, the league started out on a P.R. campaign where they said that there were dozens of players involved in a scheme to injure players.  It turns out that while they talked about dozes of players by the time we got through the process it was a smaller number of players.

“You had people talking about email talking about bounties that the league didn’t even rely on when they were held accountable to the process.  And as a person who sat there and read every page of the transcript, whether it was from Joe Vitt, Gregg Williams or other people involved in that bounty.  What I was shocked by from the process was none of the words that came from their mouth substantiated the league’s P.R. machine.

“So it seems to me, while all of you haven’t been privy to the transcripts — we certainly don’t have a problem with those transcripts becoming public — what I champion and what all of our players champion is we are able to force a process that ultimately resulted in the fact that those players didn’t lose their games.  Now frankly I will tell you, do I think the fans in New Orleans got the raw end of that deal?  Yes they did.  Do I know that Sean Payton got the raw end of that deal?  Yes he did, because I know from reading each and every page of that transcript that what the National Football League said occurred never occurred.”

That’s a strong statement, as we’d love to hear more about why Smith believes that.  And we’d love even more to see the transcripts — all of the transcripts.  The Saints undoubtedly were doing something they shouldn’t have been doing, and the non-players suffered significant consequences because they apparently covered it up.But, yes, a disconnect existed between words and actions.  And, yes, the facts as initially sold by the league didn’t completely mesh with the reality.Moreover, and as former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue explained in his 22-page ruling overturning the players’ suspensions, the NFL ultimately attempted to implement culture change by taking a sledgehammer to the last team to be caught dangling cash to get players to do things they already had an incentive to do, from generating turnovers to applying clean, legal hits in a manner that rendered opposing players unable to continue.Meanwhile Payton remains suspended.

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Bill Cowher, who coached the Steelers for 15 seasons but has seemed content working in television since leaving Pittsburgh after the 2006 season, says he expects to return to the sidelines eventually.

Asked by Neil Best of Newsday if he plans to coach again at some point, Cowher answered, “Yes.”

Cowher also said that being out of the NFL for several years wouldn’t preclude him from being a successful coach again when he wants to return. Cowher noted that until he left the Steelers, he had worked for an NFL team as either a player or coach for his entire adult life, and he still follows the game closely as a studio analyst for CBS.

“I think it’s a non-issue,” Cowher said of his time away from coaching. “I did it for 27 years. You don’t just forget things overnight. One thing about this job is it’s been really good because it allows me to study the game and do features on the game. I want to know what I’m talking about so I’m watching tape. It’s not like I’m out of it. I know how the game is changing.”

There’s precedent for coaches returning to the sidelines after years in broadcasting. Most notably, Dick Vermeil retired as the coach of the Eagles in 1982, spent most of the next 15 years working in television, and then returned to coach the Rams in 1997, eventually winning a Super Bowl in St. Louis.

The 55-year-old Cowher thinks that he’ll someday follow in Vermeil’s footsteps.

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Given how long he’s played alongside Ray Lewis in the Ravens defense and how often he’s played Hamlet about retiring in the last few offseasons, it was inevitable that safety Ed Reed would be asked about his own football future in the wake of Sunday’s 24-9 victory over the Colts.

Reed said he wasn’t any more emotional before or during the game because he and Lewis had spent a lot of time talking about this day in the past. According to Reed, they aren’t doing any talking about the possibility that Sunday could have also been Reed’s last home game as a member of the Ravens.

“I am not thinking of that right now. I’m going to complete this year, and, like I always tell you, I will assess it every year,” Reed said. “I assess myself every year physically. If you’re in football and you don’t do that, then something is wrong. I’m not worried about that. I’m not focused on that. Right now, it’s playoffs and it’s Denver. And, it’s football.”

Reed doesn’t have a contract for next season so it’s possible that it could have been his final home game as a Raven without his career coming to an end. That seems like an unlikely way for things to play out, but anything’s possible at this point in time. Which means we shouldn’t be expecting Reed dancing his way out of a victory formation if the Ravens find themselves in such a position during their playoff run.

AP

The last time Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III injured his knee, the team whisked him to an MRI tube and announced promptly that he had no structural damage in his knee.

This time around, there’s a much different vibe.

Via Jim Corbett of USA Today, Griffin sounds far less confident than he did four weeks ago regarding the question of whether he suffered an injury to the ACL in his right knee.

“Honestly, it’s up in the air right now.” Griffin said.  “I know coming off the field I thought it was just the same thing [a sprained LCL].  But right now, we’ll see what it is.

“No matter what it is, our season’s over right now, and I’ve just got to make sure that I get back healthy no matter what the injury is.”

Right, but a mild sprain to the LCL can heal on its own, with rest.  An ACL tear requires reconstructive surgery.

For Griffin, it would be the second torn ACL in his right knee of his career.

Whatever it was, it didn’t look good.  After his limping became more noticeable throughout the game, the knee gave out while Griffin was trying to recover a low snap on the first drive after the Seahawks took their first lead of the game.

It reminded me of the way Dennis Dixon’s knee gave out several years ago at Oregon, when as it turned out he was actually playing with a torn ACL.  While we’re not saying or suggesting or hinting or even speculating that Griffin may have been playing with a torn ACL, the circumstances of this situation are sufficiently weird to make us at least wonder whether Griffin’s actual condition was worse than anyone had previously admitted.

Regardless, it’s clear that Griffin wasn’t right on Sunday.  Even if he wanted to be on the field, the NFL’s desire to eliminate the “warrior” culture when it comes to concussions can’t apply only to concussions.  Teams and doctors must have the ability to remove a guy from the field, or no player will ever want to come out, whether he has a head injury or a knee injury or any other condition that could be aggravated by playing.

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We’d never seen this before, a playoff Sunday with three rookie quarterbacks starting, and if you were hoping for one of them to put up spectacular passing numbers, you turned off your TV feeling disappointed. But one of those three rookie quarterbacks, Seattle’s Russell Wilson, was anything but a disappointment.

It really is amazing, thinking back over the last year, to consider that Wilson now stands head and shoulders above the rest of this year’s fantastic class of rookie quarterbacks. Andrew Luck, the can’t-miss prospect drafted first overall by the Colts, had a phenomenal rookie season that came to an end with a tough loss to the Ravens. Robert Griffin III, the Heisman Trophy winner drafted second overall by the Redskins, hobbled around on a bad knee against the Seahawks until it buckled underneath him and he limped off the field, ending his own phenomenal rookie season.

But there’s Wilson, the allegedly too-short quarterback drafted 75th overall by the Seahawks, still alive heading into the divisional round, where he’ll lead the Seahawks against the Falcons next weekend. And Wilson was better than either of his fellow rookies on Sunday, completing 15 of 26 passes for 187 yards with a touchdown and no interceptions, and adding 67 rushing yards on eight carries.

Wilson was good all season, but he really arrived on Sunday. It’s not just that he’s got the arm and the feet to threaten any NFL defense, it’s the way he commands an offense and leads a football team. It’s the way he runs out in front to throw blocks to spring Marshawn Lynch for big gains. It’s the way he knows when to tuck the ball under his arm and take off running, and when to stay in the pocket and scan the field for an open receiver. It’s also the way he knows — and this is important — when to take a sack and when to throw the ball away when there are no plays to make, as he wisely did a few times on Sunday.

I don’t know how Wilson will compare to Luck and Griffin when we’ve had several years to compare their careers, but I do know this: Russell Wilson has arrived as a legitimate NFL star. Not bad for a rookie who was supposed to be too short.

Wilson was my favorite player on the field Sunday. Here are some other observations:

Line judge Mark Perlman made the call of the playoffs. Seahawks receiver Sidney Rice made a sensational 27-yard catch along the sideline in the second quarter, but the first official on the play ruled that Rice didn’t get his feet down inbounds. Perlman was the official who correctly came in and overruled his colleague, calling it a catch. The NFL uses all-star officiating crews during the playoffs, meaning these officials haven’t been working together all season, and sometimes postseason officiating is criticized because the officials don’t work well together as a unit. But Perlman did his job perfectly on that play.

We narrowly missed one of the all-time great playoff moments. When Colts quarterback Andrew Luck had a pass deflected at the line of scrimmage in the second quarter, it bounced right into the arms of Ray Lewis, playing in Baltimore for the last time. It would have been an easy interception, and given how much daylight he had in front of him, Lewis might have taken it back for a touchdown. That would have been an amazing way for Lewis to go out in style in Baltimore, but unfortunately he dropped the pass. “I’ll never live that down,” Lewis said after the game. Actually, everyone in Baltimore will gladly overlook it. But it would have been some great moment.

The Colts need to revamp their offensive line. It was amazing how often Luck would take the snap, drop back and have three Ravens in his face before he could set his feet in the pocket. The offensive line has been a major problem for the Colts all season, and it’s a testament to Luck’s toughness that he managed to stay healthy the entire year. Luck is going to be a great quarterback for a long time, but the Colts can’t let him get killed back there.

Colts receiver T.Y. Hilton had my favorite play of the day. With the Colts facing third-and-26 with 12 seconds left in the first half, Luck found Hilton open about 20 yards downfield. Luck’s throw was too high, but Hilton leapt up and caught it, then raced past three Ravens defenders (picking up a nice block from tight end Coby Fleener) to get the first down and then get out of bounds with three seconds left, setting up Adam Vinatieri’s 52-yard field goal as time expired in the first half.

Who says fullbacks are dead? The fullback position isn’t used as often in NFL offenses as it once was, but all four teams that won this weekend got key plays from fullbacks. Seahawks fullback Michael Robinson and Ravens fullback Vontae Leach both scored touchdowns on Sunday. Packers fullback John Kuhn scored two touchdowns on Saturday. And Texans fullback James Casey had a 20-yard catch and also did an outstanding job as a lead blocker for Arian Foster in the weekend’s first playoff game.

Reggie Wayne is building his Hall of Fame resume. It should come as a surprise to no one that the NFL record for all-time postseason catches is owned by Jerry Rice. But I bet a lot of people will be surprised to learn that Colts receiver Reggie Wayne is No. 2. Rice had 151 catches in his 29 career playoff games, a record that may never be broken. But on Sunday Wayne played his 18th career postseason game, and his nine catches against the Ravens moved him ahead of Michael Irvin and Hines Ward, into second place on the all-time playoff receiving list, with 92.

The story of the day is the injury suffered by Robert Griffin III. A day that started with a report that the Redskins had disregarded medical advice to rush Griffin onto the field ended with Griffin exiting with a knee injury. Redskins coach Mike Shanahan has to be regretting his decision to let Griffin play on a bad knee. Here’s hoping bad knees don’t slow Griffin’s progress. We should be seeing him square off with Wilson in the NFC playoffs for years to come.

AP

A decade ago, Cyrus Mehri and the late Johnnie Cochran demonstrated that the NFL was doing a poor job of giving African-American coaches fair opportunities to progress to the highest levels of the sport.  Mehri and Cochran made such a compelling case that the NFL installed the “Rooney Rule,” which requires at least one minority candidate to be interviewed for every head-coaching vacancy.

Today, only a minority of head coaching jobs are filled by members of minority groups, with five African-American head coaches (Marvin Lewis, Mike Tomlin, Romeo Crennel, Lovie Smith, Leslie Frazier) and one Hispanic head coach (Ron Rivera).  That’s six, out of 32.

As Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports explains, only one of 32 teams has an offensive play-caller who also is African-American.  And as of a few weeks ago, the number was zero; Jim Caldwell inherited those duties in Baltimore once Cam Cameron was fired.

“We are very, very conscious of this issue, and it’s something that needs to be addressed,” John Wooten, chairman of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, told Silver. “We have alluded to it and spoken to it directly, and we feel our only course of action is to push more people up the pipeline.”

And that seems to be the biggest problem.  African-American coaches aren’t being positioned to naturally mature into the role of play-caller on offense.”Really, the reason why there aren’t a lot of guys calling plays is that you have to have people ascending to quarterbacks coach and jobs that lead to coordinator positions.  And that’s simply not happening,” Bengals coach Marvin Lewis told Silver.  “There are a lot of good coaches who aren’t getting those opportunities.”

As Silver points out, only two NFL quarterbacks coaches are African-American:  Karl Dorrell of the Texans and Craig Johnson of the Vikings.  Curtis Modkins serves as offensive coordinator in Buffalo, but head coach Chan Gailey calls the plays.

“This is the biggest travesty that’s taking place in this league, and every black coach is well aware of it,” an anonymous African-American assistant for an AFC team told Silver.  “They don’t promote you from running backs coach or receivers coach to offensive coordinator.  When guys do get coordinator titles, they have to be position coaches at the same time, and they don’t get paid as much as other coordinators, because they’re not the play-callers.  And in a lot of cases, guys believe they’re really there for locker-room reasons, to ‘take care of’ the minority players.”

Eventually, the absence of a pipeline of African-American offensive minds will make it hard to find viable African-American head coaches, since all current minority head coaches have defensive backgrounds.

“The whole thing we have to do in terms of building this pipeline is make teams more conscious of the fact that [position coaches] want to get involved,” Wooten said. “I tell these running backs, receivers and quarterbacks coaches, ‘Go to the head coach and general manager and tell them you want this as an opportunity to learn.’  You learn by being in game plan meetings, when plays are being installed.  You listen and learn.”

Real change may come only if the Rooney Rule, which since its adoption has been extended to G.M. positions, is also applied to coordinator jobs.  However, Wooten isn’t recommending that.

“I just feel that the head coach has to have the right to select his people,” Wooten said.  “If they can’t see who’s the best out there for them, they’re gonna perish anyway.”

Wooten is right, but the Rooney Rule doesn’t require minority candidates to be hired.  It only requires them to be considered, an important reality given that head coaches immediately tap into their network of friends, cronies, and (sometimes) family members when filling out their staffs.  If nothing else, requiring coaches to interview at least one minority coordinator candidate will help position coaches become better prepared to interview for coordinator positions — and eventually to get them.

In the end, it’s a simple analysis.  If the NFL believes the Rooney Rule remains viable ten years later when the number of minority head coaches has expanded to six, the NFL should take a hard look at whether the Rooney Rule should be applied one level lower, given that the number of minority play-callers is one and, as of the first of the current month, it was zero.

AP

Redskins coach Mike Shanahan was the head coach of a Broncos team that had a Hall of Fame quarterback in John Elway, and he was the offensive coordinator of a 49ers team that had two Hall of Fame quarterbacks in Joe Montana and Steve Young. But Shanahan says he has never seen anything like the quarterback he’s coaching right now.

Shanahan told reporters on Thursday that Griffin’s array of talents is unprecedented in NFL history.

“I don’t think anybody in the history of the league has played at his level,” Shanahan said. “At least over the last 40 years, when I take a look at the numbers and what he has done, I don’t think anybody has played at his level. As we’ve talked about before, he’s got a unique skill set — his ability to throw, drop back, play action, put a threat on a defense with his running ability — and he will just get better and better. He’s just scratching the surface. And the reason I say that is because he works at it.”

It may be premature to talk about Griffin in such lofty terms, but Griffin’s rookie season really has been unprecedented: He has a chance to break three NFL rookie passing records (highest passer rating, highest completion percentage and lowest interception percentage), and he also has 752 yards and six touchdowns on the ground. He’s playing the quarterback position like no one has ever played it.

AP

It’s obvious the Giants defense isn’t what it once was.

But if you ask their defensive coordinator why, he makes it clear it’s not the coaching.

“We’ve prepared better than what we’ve played,” Perry Fewell said, via Ralph Vacchiano of the New York Daily News. “I think if you look at the tape we’re in position to make plays. We haven’t made plays.”

While coaches default into self-preservation mode this time of year, it’s hard to pin the blame for the Giants’ precipitous slide on one man.

They were seventh in the league in total defense in 2010, and won a Super Bowl a year ago. This year, they’re 30th in total defense.

But mostly, they’ve been awful when it counted most, allowing 67 points in their last two must-win games, which leaves them only a slim conditional chance at the playoffs heading into the final weekend.

“We’ve been in position,” Fewell said. “We haven’t made a football play for the last couple of weeks. We’ve been in position to make football plays, but it hasn’t gone our way.”

If there’s a sign that players know Fewell’s right, it’s that there’s no open or indirect grumbling about him yet.

“We won a Super Bowl in this system — I think that’s the main thing,” linebacker Mathias Kiwanuka said. “We had the same system that we did last year.”

“There’s a lot of support for Perry,” defensive end Osi Umenyiora added. “I’ll just say that.”

Of course, the Giants were trending this direction defensively last year, finishing 27th in the league. But their play late in the year was much of the reason they won a title, so that fades from memory. That’s added some insulation for Fewell, and any offseason changes should rightly begin with personnel.

He’s had chances to interview for head coaching jobs in the past (and the Panthers may have made a significant mistake picking Ron Rivera over him), and will likely continue to. But until he gets one of those jobs, he’s left trying to scheme for an aging cast which needs a re-tooling.

AP

For much of a lost season, the Steelers looked surprised by the fact they were losing.

And for veteran safety Troy Polamalu, he hopes it was a wake-up call for the team, which can no longer roll out of bed and take a winning season for granted.

“I hope this is a humbling process for a lot of guys here,” Polamalu said, via Alan Robinson of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. “Hopefully it will make us a better team in the future.”

Of course, one of the problems the Steelers had was the simple absence of Polamalu, who missed more than two months with injuries. He wasn’t the only old hand who spent a lot of time watching, either.

“It‘s amazing to me how much little things really matter, the personnel and the personality of the team, how much all that matters in camp and what you put in in the offseason,” Polamalu said, adding, “(It‘s) how you treat your teammates in the offseason, how you prepare them.”

That’s an obvious call for leadership, something the Steelers never lacked in the past.

“James Farrior was a great leader here for a long time. So was Hines [Ward], Jerome [Bettis]; so was Joey [Porter],” he said. “James was not Joey, and Hines was not Jerome, but they definitely led in their own ways. So I think when you look for a leader, there‘s no need to look for the same cast those guys are built out of. You just look for someone who will step up that someone respects, and some of that is really natural.”

“When I look at the personnel that you lose, and I say, ‘Can we actually win a Super Bowl without them? Could we win a Super Bowl without Hines? Could we win a Super Bowl without James Farrior?‘ I think it‘s obvious that we can. But it took us a while to adjust when we lost Jerome. So I think this is kind of that adjustment period.”

Of course, his being healthy and on the field would be a significant part of that. But watching James Harrison struggle this year (5.0 sacks in 12 games) is another sign that the Steelers need new players to step up, because they can no longer assume the old ones are going to get it done.

AP

When the Jets went 1-15 under Rich Kotite in 1996, they reached out to Bill Parcells to take over the team’s football operation and get them headed back in the right direction.

Parcells did that, taking the team to the AFC Championship Game two years later and setting the team on a path that’s saw the team post losing records just three times before this year. The Jets aren’t quite at the Kotite level of hopelessness, but change is in the air around the franchise again and Brian Costello of the New York Post thinks he knows just the man to get them headed back in the right direction.

It’s Parcells, as you’ve probably put together by yourself by now. Parcells didn’t respond to Costello’s text message looking for comment on the possibility that he could serve as a consultant who helps them find a new General Manager, so this is nothing more than the idea of a writer at this point in time. It’s one that makes a certain amount of sense, especially if a report from Jason LaCanfora of CBSSports.com is correct. He reports the Jets would like to keep current General Manager Mike Tannenbaum around in a cap management role while bringing in someone else to oversee the personnel decisions.

LaCanfora points out that few strong candidates would agree to those circumstances given Tannenbaum’s close relationship with Jets owner Woody Johnson and the lack of clear authority. What’s more, Tannenbaum’s cap management led to guaranteed salaries for players like Wayne Hunter, Mark Sanchez and Bart Scott that have hamstrung the Jets roster this season as well as the long-term deal with wide receiver Santonio Holmes that seems destined to become another albatross. If the Jets really want to change their fortunes, they can’t do it through half measures and can’t act like those with a hand in their poor record bear no accountability for their role.

The Jets need all the help they can get. Whether or not it is Parcells, they can’t rely only on the people that got them into the mess for help getting out of it.

AP

During Sunday’s edition of Football Night in America, Peter King reported that former 49ers and Lions coach Steve Mariucci is interested in coaching the Chargers, if the Chargers are interested in Mariucci coaching the Chargers.

So King supplied it, and Mariucci has denied it.  Sort of.

“I would never comment on a coaching job where there’s a coach in place, and the coach down there in San Diego happened to be a very good friend of mine, Norv Turner,” Mariucci said during an appearance on NFL Network.  “There’s no way I would ever discuss this right now, I don’t know where it comes from.  Let’s just stop the nonsense, OK?  Please.”

Note that Mariucci never says that he’s not interested in the job.

So, frankly, it’s nonsense to suggest that King is anything other than right on the money.  He wouldn’t pull such an outside-the-box possibility out of thin air if there wasn’t something to it.

From Mariucci’s perspective, he’s saying what he has to say.  It’s bad form for coaches to sniff around jobs that already are filled.

Still, I’ve been around King long enough on Sundays to know how he works and how he gets what he gets.  He’s got no reason to embellish or exaggerate or fabricate.

None of it means that Mariucci will be hired by the Chargers.  After all, he’s been out of the business longer than even Bill Cowher.  And Mooch, while a very good coach, a great guy, and a fine analyst, hasn’t been on the “A” list since former Lions CEO Matt Millen fired Marty Mornhinweg and made a Rooney Rule-breaking beeline for Mooch.

Still, there’s no way King would say Mariucci is interested in the job if King didn’t have clear and credible reasons for believing that Mariucci is interested, regardless of whether Mariucci is willing to talk about the job while someone else still has it.

AP

If Titans owner Bud Adams had been there in person, he might have told his team they were number one.

Since he was at home in Houston, all he could do was grab the remote and turn the television off, as many of his customers doubtless did during the 55-7 drubbing at the hands of the Packers.

“I was pretty upset,” Adams told Jim Wyatt of the Tennesseean. “I just didn’t want to watch any more of that mess.”

Asked whether that anger was enough to make him make a coaching change, Adams said the results were such he might consider setting aside his personal feelings for coach Mike Munchak.

“I like Mike, I really do. But liking him and getting the job done are two different things,” Adams said. “If he is not getting the job done, that is what I have to find out. Right now, we are not looking very good. Something is wrong and I want to find out what the problem is and what needs to be done to fix it.”

Munchak has a contract through 2014, and was 9-7 last season. But that was with quarterback Matt Hasselbeck at the wheel, because Jake Locker wasn’t deemed ready. He doesn’t appear that way now, leading Adams to question the future of his team.

“I want to sit down with Mike and our guys and discuss the whole thing with them and see why we are not doing better,” Adams said. “It is not against the law to check with my people. Mike will tell me what he thinks is wrong. . . .

“I want to find out how he feels why we can’t win more games. The way we played today — my God, I wouldn’t even want to come and watch that.”

Adams might be 89 years old, but you can’t say he doesn’t have a handle on the feelings of his customers.

AP

In June, receiver Percy Harvin asked the Vikings to trade him.  He later changed his mind.

Now, his mind could be changing back again.

In the aftermath of a report this week from Tom Pelissero of 1500ESPN.com that Harvin and coach Leslie Frazier engaged in a “heated exchange” before Harvin’s placement on injured reserve, there is plenty of scuttlebutt regarding the question of whether Harvin will ask again to be traded — and whether this time the Vikings will decide to grant his request.

Though he is one of the best offensive players in the league, Harvin has been a headache for the Vikings for most of his career.  He battled with former coach Brad Childress, and the fact that Harvin has gotten under the skin of current coach Leslie Frazier, who is as even-keeled and low key as any coach at any level of the sport, speaks volumes to the problems Percy has caused.

Then there’s the fact that he surely will want to be paid huge money before his rookie contract expires after the 2013 season, and that’s an investment the Vikings may not want to make.

Harvin’s salary expectations won’t make it any easier to trade him.  At a minimum, what the next team will have to pay Harvin likely will reduce whatever package is available to Minnesota in the form of pick(s) or player(s).

As the Vikings push toward the postseason without Percy, they may decide that, in the long run, they’re better off without him.