2008 was a top year for the Arizona Cardinals, both as an organization and as a team. Kurt Warner proved that he still has it. Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin were shown to be two of the best players in the league in catching. This is where the team stands. There haven’t been too many changes this offseason, which suggests that the team feels better keeping with the plan that worked last season rather than changing the formulation in some way. The defense was shaky, but improving. The offense is outstanding. Don’t miss a single game this year, and see your favorite team in person. Arizona Cardinals tickets are already on sale, so make sure that you are ready for a fun time!
This is practically a breaking news item. Flash the red logo and play the exciting music. The NFL and its long-running lawsuit with American Needle Inc will be heard in the US Supreme Court at the end of this year or the beginning of the next. The lawsuit deals with an accusation of trust-building in an agreement the NFL reached with Reebok that ended the exclusive deal the company had with the NFL for various apparel before. The NFL says that this isn’t a monopoly situation because they always have this kind of agreement with companies and it’s never been questioned. Anyway, the SCOTUS will be hearing the case soon and it will certainly be interesting to see what ends up happening. It will set a trend for several different sports that have similar deals with different groups.
The New York Giants are going to have a stellar defense this year, especially their defensive line. You can expect this group to inspire concert for offensive coordinators around the league. Not only are their linemen big, but they are also strong and fast. So they will first use their size to bash their way through the line and then they will push forward really quickly with their speed. In other words, all opposing quarterbacks should watch out. This means that a lot of plays are going to feel like they are rushed. This can throw an offensive timing off and make the receivers sit in the wrong place for the entire game. Sometimes it doesn’t take much for a team to throw the other’s offense off, but the teams will need to get themselves ready to go. The season is coming up!
Brett Favre is in the discussion again, because the rumors are that he might actually be under contract with the Minnesota Vikings. This might well be against league rules, because contracts need to be filed with the league offices. This would make the information public immediately and then it would be out there. But if they’re keeping it secret, it would make a lot more sense that Favre keeps referring to the Vikings organization as “we”. It’s not clear why they would keep it secret, unless there’s a possibility that they will renege.
In other news, 13 year defensive tackle La’Roi Glover is retiring. He played with the Rams, Raiders, Cowboys and the Saints over the course of his career, having played with the Rams the last three seasons. He was not re-signed after last season, so he’s going to go into retirement and rest up a little bit.
Donte Stallworth just had the book thrown at him. The Cleveland Browns player plead guilty to a DUI in a Dade County courtroom and was sentenced to 30 days in prison, lost his license for life and must do a lot of community service. What happened was that he hit a construction worker who was rushing to catch a bus and killed him. His blood alcohol level was over the legal limit and he was driving too fast. He took full responsibility for it in his pleading and will face the consequences. The family of the killed person There will also be consequences from the NFL. He has been suspended indefinitely without pay from the team. There will be a meeting later on to determine how long he is suspended for. This is a sad event, but hopefully all the parties will be able to move on with their lives.
Rex Grossman will be entering the world of the Houston Texans in the NFL. He had previously gained fame as a possibly incredible quarterback for the Chicago Bears, but unfortunately, it didn’t work out for various reasons. One of his problems was with injuries and his consistency was always in questions. But with the Texans he can get a new chance with a new crowd. The fans in Chicago didn’t like him very much anymore and so he didn’t have much time to stay there anymore, it seemed. His playing suffered and it just became a vicious cycle. He definitely has the potential, but not when the home and away crowd is set against him. We’ll see how well he ends up competing against the other quarterbacks in the Texans’ system.
This week, there is still speculation as to whether Brett Favre will be coming to Minnesota this season as part of his big comeback to stick it to the Green Bay Packers. He’s been flirting, flirting with the Vikings for weeks now. There were some rumors that Brad Childress, the Vikings’ coach, had made a final deadline for Favre of the end of the week for him to make a decision. Childress, however, has denied these reports and says that he’s not going to comment futher, because Favre is still retired. Officially. Apparently fully. It’s going to be fun to see what happens. Whenever the Favre soap opera begins, there will always be some football news to talk about. Any thoughts? Let me know if you think he’s going to come back or if this is all just unreal!
Michael Vick will be trying to make his big comeback in the NFL after his two or three years in the desert following his conviction on dog fighting charges. He’s working to repair his PR image and try to convince people that he’s learned his lesson. Part of this is that he met with Tony Dungy recently to discuss his situation, a meeting out of which Dungy said that Vick is a promising young man who could well still be at the top of his game. It’s hard to tell where he might end up, though. There are a lot of teams who simply don’t want to see this kind of character come to town. Some of the speculation is that Seattle might want to see him come up there. It would be a media circus, at least for awhile, but it might be a good way to start out and get himself back into the good graces of the fans.
Football Night in America now has its full crew ready to go. One of the main members of the staff is Tony Dungy, the former coach of the Indianapolis Colts. He retired at the end of last season and it’s going to be fun hearing his take on the NFL issues of the day. He’s already done a few interviews, but he’s going to continue doing them for quite awhile moving forward. Another is Rodney Harrison, who has been one of the best defensive players on the New England Patriots for several years. He retired at the end of last season as well and will be providing some great commentary as well. They’re both talented at football, so we’ll see how good they are at talking about football, though they’ve probably gone through a battery of auditions to make sure that they are coherent and interesting.
The 61st annual Emmy Awards were originally scheduled for September 20th of this year. But the NFL just released its TV schedule for the season and it turned out that the 20th has a double-header on, which usually messes up the official Emmy Award scheduled start time and delays the entire spectacle for awhile. Instead, the people who schedule and run the Emmys decided that they would just move the scheduled event back to the 13th of the same month. This will keep them from having to deal with Football and allow them to just keep themselves in their normal timing. There will be football on the 13th, but it wont be a double header, at least not on the Emmy’s network.
