Author: Anthony Stalter (Page 534 of 1503)

T.O. to wind up in Cincinnati with Ochocinco?

Chad Ochocinco shared an interesting nugget with FOX’s Jay Glazer down in Miami this week.

From Glazer’s Twitter page:

chad ochocinco just told me on The Jay Glazer Pre-Party on FSN that he thinks T.O. will be a Bengal next year. he said he’s sure of it

Owens is an unrestricted free agent and after spending one aggravating year in Buffalo, the chances of him re-signing with the Bills are slim to none. (Not that the Bills would want him back anyway.)

At least on paper, a T.O.-Bengals marriage works. Cincy needs to boost their passing game in the offseason and could stand to add a receiver opposite Ochocinco. That said, at 36, Owens isn’t exactly the playmaker he used to be. He’s slow getting off the line of scrimmage and doesn’t always work back to the ball, although he still uses his size and speed to his advantage in one-on-one match ups and he’s still an excellent all-around athlete. And it’s not like the Bengals have to worry about him destroying a locker room that has already been destroyed countless times before.

Granted, I think Marvin Lewis’ head just exploded thinking about the possibility of having to deal with the Ocho and T.O. in the same locker room.


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Super Bowl XLIV Preview: 5 Factors the Colts must overcome

As part of the ongoing coverage leading up to Super Bowl XLIV, here are five factors the Colts must overcome to beat the Saints.

1. The potential loss of Freeney.
Come kickoff on Sunday, there will be no bigger hurdle for the Colts to overcome than if defensive end Dwight Freeney can’t play, or is limited due to an ankle injury. He’s undoubtedly Indy’s best defender and is a game-changer in every sense of the word. If he can’t play, the Saints don’t have to worry about keeping extra blockers in to protect Drew Brees and can focus most of their attention on slowing down Robert Mathis. Pressure is the key to disrupting any offense and the same can be said for the Saints’ high-powered attack. As it stands now, Freeney wants to play and should dress. But considering he’s a speed rusher and has a tear in his ankle, how effective does anyone think he’ll actually be? Barring the ankle being completely healed, the Colts have a serious problem on their hand.

2. Slowing down Brees.
For all that is said about Drew Brees, he still doesn’t get enough credit for being able to read a defense and deliver timely, accurate passes. What makes him unique is that he has accuracy on all three levels, in that he can complete the short to intermediate route with as much ease as he can the deep pass. Another thing Brees does well is scanning the field and throwing away from the coverage. Over the last half of the season, nine quarterbacks threw for two or more touchdowns against the Colts, who gave up big plays in the AFC Championship Game to the usually offensively challenged Jets. Brees has a plethora of weapons to use at his disposal and Indy doesn’t have the personnel to go toe-to-toe with all the Saints’ receivers. The best way to slow down Brees is to pressure him, but as was noted above, that could be a problem for the Colts if Freeney is limited.

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John Mayer: “Tiger Woods’ problems come from him being married.”

Tiger Woods apparently didn’t need to go to sex counseling; he could have just asked singer John Mayer to solve all his problems.

From the New York Daily News:

“Tiger Woods’ problems come from him being married. The end,” Mayer said to the U.K.’s The Independent newspaper. “If Tiger Woods was single and he texted a girl and said ‘I wanna wear your ass like a hat’, why would that ever hit the news?”

“I write a lot of dirty text messages to girls, and you’ve never seen any of them,” said Mayer, whose famous past girlfriends include Jennifer Aniston, Jessica Simpson and Minka Kellly.

“Why? Because if a girl brought a dirty text message from me to the newspapers, they’d say ‘I don’t have an angle here. Someone wants to wear your ass like a hat? Big deal. He’s 32 years old. He’s a single guy. If John Mayer has a wife and sends dirty texts, then we got a story,” he explained.

First of all, I’d like to nominate Mayer’s “I wanna wear your ass like a hat” line as quote of the year. I know it’s only February, but I see that quote having staying power throughout 2010.

Secondly, I’m officially setting the over/under on total times Mayer has said that to a girl at 21.5. And this might be one of those times when you don’t over think it and you just go with the “over.”

Lastly, I couldn’t agree more with Mayer, although I wouldn’t have used the same terms as he did. How many times do sports fans say around the water cooler that Player X shouldn’t have gotten married during his playing days? That he should bang as many broads as he wants and then go get married when his career is over? I know I’ve said it a dozen times about athletes and that’s all Mayer is essentially saying himself. Woods’ is “problem” is that he was married and he was doing horrible things behind his wife’s back. That’s the real issue here – he’s a womanizer that was cheating on his wife.

And Mayer’s point about the media is right on, too. The media does look for angles in stories and love it when someone screws up. Tiger screwed up and the media was all over it. If Mayer did the same thing, it might be a story but it wouldn’t have staying power. (At least not like that fantastic quote of his above.)


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Brees in line for a contract extension

According to ESPN.com’s Adam Schefter, the Saints are planning to reward quarterback Drew Brees with a contract extension in the offseason.

The Saints intend to redo Brees’ deal later this year to bring his salary more in line with the game’s top quarterbacks. This season Brees was the 17th-highest paid quarterback in the league, yet he finished second in the league in MVP voting and led New Orleans to the first Super Bowl in franchise history.

New Orleans considered extending Brees’ contract last offseason, but opted to wait another year. Now that it has, the price only has risen with Brees performing the way he has. Should the Saints win Super Bowl XLIV, Brees practically would be able to name his price.

Good for the Saints and for Brees, who is the 17th-highest paid quarterback in the league, which means he’s well underpaid for NFL standards. It’s nice to see a team be aggressive with a player that deserves a raise.

Tom Condon, who represents both Brees and Peyton Manning, is going to have himself one hell of an offseason. As the article notes, he’ll single-handily re-establish the salaries for top quarterbacks in the league.


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Umenyiora suggests he’d rather quit than be a backup

In an interview Wednesday on sports radio WFAN, Giants’ defensive end Osi Umenyiora said that this is the worst offseason of his life and indicated that he’d rather stop playing football altogether than be a backup player.

From the New York Daily News:

“I’m not going to be a back up player, I can promise you that,” Umenyiora said. “I’ll stop playing football before I do that ever again. This has been just the worst offseason of my entire life. I can’t even think of a time when things were this bad during the offseason. You’re supposed to be relaxing, but I can’t relax because all I can think of is the things that took place last season, you understand? So for me it’s not something that I’m going to do. If I’m asked to come back there and do that then I’ll just stop playing football.”

Umenyiora, of course, is coming off a tremendously rocky season which began with a one-day walkout after a dispute with former defensive coordinator Bill Sheridan, and continued as he struggled to regain his form after missing all of 2008 following knee surgery. His play slipped so far, especially against the run, that he was replaced in the starting lineup by Mathias Kiwanuka for the final weeks of the season.

He was so frustrated, in fact, that he thought his time with the Giants was just about over.

“Did it go through my mind? Obviously, yes,” he said. “Obviously you come through a situation where you’ve been here for a long time and you’ve won Super Bowls, you’ve been to the Pro Bowl a couple of times, then things like that start happening, you start being benched and they say you’re coming in on the third down rush, I think it almost seemed like the writing was on the wall at that particular time. I felt like I had worn out my welcome, because for certain people, no matter what happens, they’ll never take them out of the lineup, you understand what I mean?

Umenyiora also said in the interview that he hopes that things will get resolved and he can stay with the Giants, who hired Perry Fewell to be their new defensive coordinator.

These types of situations seem to work themselves out in the end, but Fewell and the Giants are going to have to do some damage control if they still feel that Umenyiora is a full-time player. If they don’t, then this would be the perfect time to trade him and get some kind of compensation for him. After all, it doesn’t make sense to pay a part-time player over $4 million, which is what Umenyiora would make in 2010.


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