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Around the NFL
Don Banks, SI.com
It's understandable that everyone wants to christen the Arizona Cardinals as a team on the rise in 2006, what with all that offensive talent on display and the buzz generated by the team's new stadium and thriving ticket sales.
But has anyone noticed that the Cardinals Achilles' heel, its offensive line, still has a huge problem in the running game? True, star running back Edgerrin James has only four carries in Arizona's first two games, an output he'll top by the Cardinals' second series of its regular-season opener. But James has gained only three yards on those four rushes, and there has been absolutely nowhere to run thus far.
It's only preseason, but so far in the desert there are no signs of progress in the running game. Arizona rushed for only 57 yards on 32 attempts (1.8-yard average, with a long gain of eight) in a win over Pittsburgh. On Saturday night in Foxboro, the Patriots held Cardinals non-quarterbacks to 26 yards on 11 runs, a whopping 2.4-yard average, with a long gain of five.
Recognizing that their bedraggled O-line needed help, the Cardinals, whose running game ranked dead last in the league in 2005, traded a conditional '07 draft pick to New England on Monday in exchange for tackle Brandon Gorin. He figures to walk right into the starting lineup on the right side and hold down the fort at least until veteran Oliver Ross returns from arthroscopic knee surgery in Week 2 or so.
We knew the Cardinals could throw and catch the ball, because their passing game led the NFL in yardage last season. But even with James on board, we didn't know if they could move the chains enough on the ground to keep defenses honest. And we still don't.
• Funny, but Pittsburgh receiver Hines Ward missed 2½ weeks of training camp due to a lingering hamstring injury and it barely registered a blip on the NFL radar screen. You might also have heard that Dallas receiver Terrell Owens sat out about two weeks with a nagging hamstring pull of late. That saga, of course, has led the national news for 20 days in a row. Or at least it seems that way.
• If you still think NFL head coaches aren't doing enough to protect their stars and starters from injury in the preseason -- and Clinton Portis, we're looking in your direction -- check out the league leaders through the first two weeks of the exhibition-game schedule:
Baltimore's Musa Smith is your top rusher with 116 yards. New England quarterback Matt Cassel has a league-best 421 yards passing. Green Bay rookie receiver Greg Jennings has rolled up 183 yards receiving, and Eagles defensive end Juqua Thomas has a gaudy 4½ sacks, just one-half sack less than he totaled in his first five NFL regular seasons. Those are your boys of August.
• I'm starting to get the feeling that Carson Palmer is no more than 50-50 to be under center for the Bengals' Sept. 10 opener at Kansas City. But those numbers will tip one way or the other depending on whether Palmer plays -- and functions capably -- when Cincinnati takes on visiting Green Bay in a preseason game next Monday night.
• Peerless Price goes absent from Bills camp on Sunday because he fails to correctly read the team's practice schedule? Some would say Price hasn't really shown up since he signed that lucrative free-agent contract in Atlanta in 2003.
• Am I the only one who thinks the feel-good trend to have players sign one-day contracts with the team they spent their glory years with -- in order to retire as a 49er, a la Jerry Rice this week -- is about as empty an honorific as there is in sports today? Rice hasn't been a 49er in six years. It was his choice to wear the uniforms of the Raiders, Seahawks and Broncos after he left San Francisco, and no meaningless gesture can alter the facts of his story. Give him his day at Monster Park. Give him his due as one of the all-time 49ers greats. But don't pretend his retirement didn't really begin last September when the Broncos made it clear he wasn't going to make their team.
• After spending 30 years in a building that was undersized and outdated almost from the day it opened, the Tampa Bay Bucs have at long last moved into a new team facility, leaving old One Buc Place behind. And absolutely no one is going to miss it. I spent many days hanging around One Buc in the six seasons I covered Tampa Bay (1990-95), and it was the tenement building of NFL team facilities.
"There's probably a room for every player here,'' Bucs head coach Jon Gruden said of the new 145,000-square-foot complex, "and there's not a room for any player at One Buc. I don't know that we had [a film room there]. The [players] would go in and use coaches' offices when they weren't using them. You'd come into your office and there'd be three guys sitting in your chair and a guy hanging on your drapes. A guy's eating lunch at your table. You made do with what you had.''
• Here's how to read Deion Sanders' decision to join the NFL Network as a studio analyst: Prime Time's woefully tired act failed to elicit any interest from ESPN, NBC or CBS.
• Browns linebacker Willie McGinest isn't crazy about Junior Seau wearing his old number 55 in New England, even though he admits he wore 55 in the first place because Seau wore it before him at Southern Cal. McGinest said the Patriots' front office should have intervened and not even let it get to the point where head coach Bill Belichick called him to ask for his permission to let Seau wear the number.
So it was OK for McGinest to once wear Seau's number at USC, but it's not all that OK for Seau to wear McGinest's number in New England. See why it's hard to take professional athletes seriously sometimes? So many of them assign significance to the trivial.
• Adam Vinatieri turns his left ankle and misses the Colts' second preseason game. Mike Vanderjagt strains his groin and sits out the Cowboys' exhibition against the Saints in Shreveport, La. That's not the way the story is supposed to go for this season's two major free-agent kicking acquisitions, now, is it?
• Saturday night wasn't the best of times for Deion Branch in terms of generating contract leverage. The Patriots sure didn't look like they missed their top receiver in drubbing visiting Arizona 30-3. Starting quarterback Tom Brady completed passes to eight receivers and led New England to 13 points in less than two quarters of work. That's why Brady remains the only indispensable man in Foxboro.
• I've lost track. Is Ron Dayne heading up or down the depth chart in Denver? It seems to change every week.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news;_y...?slug=cnnsi-aroundthenfl&prov=cnnsi&type=lgns
Don Banks, SI.com
It's understandable that everyone wants to christen the Arizona Cardinals as a team on the rise in 2006, what with all that offensive talent on display and the buzz generated by the team's new stadium and thriving ticket sales.
But has anyone noticed that the Cardinals Achilles' heel, its offensive line, still has a huge problem in the running game? True, star running back Edgerrin James has only four carries in Arizona's first two games, an output he'll top by the Cardinals' second series of its regular-season opener. But James has gained only three yards on those four rushes, and there has been absolutely nowhere to run thus far.
It's only preseason, but so far in the desert there are no signs of progress in the running game. Arizona rushed for only 57 yards on 32 attempts (1.8-yard average, with a long gain of eight) in a win over Pittsburgh. On Saturday night in Foxboro, the Patriots held Cardinals non-quarterbacks to 26 yards on 11 runs, a whopping 2.4-yard average, with a long gain of five.
Recognizing that their bedraggled O-line needed help, the Cardinals, whose running game ranked dead last in the league in 2005, traded a conditional '07 draft pick to New England on Monday in exchange for tackle Brandon Gorin. He figures to walk right into the starting lineup on the right side and hold down the fort at least until veteran Oliver Ross returns from arthroscopic knee surgery in Week 2 or so.
We knew the Cardinals could throw and catch the ball, because their passing game led the NFL in yardage last season. But even with James on board, we didn't know if they could move the chains enough on the ground to keep defenses honest. And we still don't.
• Funny, but Pittsburgh receiver Hines Ward missed 2½ weeks of training camp due to a lingering hamstring injury and it barely registered a blip on the NFL radar screen. You might also have heard that Dallas receiver Terrell Owens sat out about two weeks with a nagging hamstring pull of late. That saga, of course, has led the national news for 20 days in a row. Or at least it seems that way.
• If you still think NFL head coaches aren't doing enough to protect their stars and starters from injury in the preseason -- and Clinton Portis, we're looking in your direction -- check out the league leaders through the first two weeks of the exhibition-game schedule:
Baltimore's Musa Smith is your top rusher with 116 yards. New England quarterback Matt Cassel has a league-best 421 yards passing. Green Bay rookie receiver Greg Jennings has rolled up 183 yards receiving, and Eagles defensive end Juqua Thomas has a gaudy 4½ sacks, just one-half sack less than he totaled in his first five NFL regular seasons. Those are your boys of August.
• I'm starting to get the feeling that Carson Palmer is no more than 50-50 to be under center for the Bengals' Sept. 10 opener at Kansas City. But those numbers will tip one way or the other depending on whether Palmer plays -- and functions capably -- when Cincinnati takes on visiting Green Bay in a preseason game next Monday night.
• Peerless Price goes absent from Bills camp on Sunday because he fails to correctly read the team's practice schedule? Some would say Price hasn't really shown up since he signed that lucrative free-agent contract in Atlanta in 2003.
• Am I the only one who thinks the feel-good trend to have players sign one-day contracts with the team they spent their glory years with -- in order to retire as a 49er, a la Jerry Rice this week -- is about as empty an honorific as there is in sports today? Rice hasn't been a 49er in six years. It was his choice to wear the uniforms of the Raiders, Seahawks and Broncos after he left San Francisco, and no meaningless gesture can alter the facts of his story. Give him his day at Monster Park. Give him his due as one of the all-time 49ers greats. But don't pretend his retirement didn't really begin last September when the Broncos made it clear he wasn't going to make their team.
• After spending 30 years in a building that was undersized and outdated almost from the day it opened, the Tampa Bay Bucs have at long last moved into a new team facility, leaving old One Buc Place behind. And absolutely no one is going to miss it. I spent many days hanging around One Buc in the six seasons I covered Tampa Bay (1990-95), and it was the tenement building of NFL team facilities.
"There's probably a room for every player here,'' Bucs head coach Jon Gruden said of the new 145,000-square-foot complex, "and there's not a room for any player at One Buc. I don't know that we had [a film room there]. The [players] would go in and use coaches' offices when they weren't using them. You'd come into your office and there'd be three guys sitting in your chair and a guy hanging on your drapes. A guy's eating lunch at your table. You made do with what you had.''
• Here's how to read Deion Sanders' decision to join the NFL Network as a studio analyst: Prime Time's woefully tired act failed to elicit any interest from ESPN, NBC or CBS.
• Browns linebacker Willie McGinest isn't crazy about Junior Seau wearing his old number 55 in New England, even though he admits he wore 55 in the first place because Seau wore it before him at Southern Cal. McGinest said the Patriots' front office should have intervened and not even let it get to the point where head coach Bill Belichick called him to ask for his permission to let Seau wear the number.
So it was OK for McGinest to once wear Seau's number at USC, but it's not all that OK for Seau to wear McGinest's number in New England. See why it's hard to take professional athletes seriously sometimes? So many of them assign significance to the trivial.
• Adam Vinatieri turns his left ankle and misses the Colts' second preseason game. Mike Vanderjagt strains his groin and sits out the Cowboys' exhibition against the Saints in Shreveport, La. That's not the way the story is supposed to go for this season's two major free-agent kicking acquisitions, now, is it?
• Saturday night wasn't the best of times for Deion Branch in terms of generating contract leverage. The Patriots sure didn't look like they missed their top receiver in drubbing visiting Arizona 30-3. Starting quarterback Tom Brady completed passes to eight receivers and led New England to 13 points in less than two quarters of work. That's why Brady remains the only indispensable man in Foxboro.
• I've lost track. Is Ron Dayne heading up or down the depth chart in Denver? It seems to change every week.
http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news;_y...?slug=cnnsi-aroundthenfl&prov=cnnsi&type=lgns