Category: NFL (Page 1133 of 1282)

Over the past few weeks, ESPN.com columnist KC Joyner has been conducting position-by-position lists of the most overrated/underrated NFL players in the league. His latest installment was on safeties and at the very top of the overrated list was Ed Reed of the Baltimore Ravens.

Reed’s metrics were terrible last year. His 14.9 combined YPA was the fifth-worst in the league among coverage safeties. He gave up the third-highest number of total yards. He had the fourth-most bomb passes thrown his way and the third-worst YPA at that depth level.

Joyner also writes how Carson Palmer has figured out some of Reed’s tendencies and has exploited them in the past.

In the intro to his piece of crap, Joyner comments on how he doesn’t take run support into account when determining these rankings – just coverage skills. Well KC, safeties are about defending both the run and pass or else they’d call the position “cornerback”. And actually, he goes on to mention how he splits safeties into the “run” and “coverage” categories, yet never elaborates throughout the rest of the column.

I’m so sick of these columnist and their overrated/underrated lists. All they do is trot out a bunch of overrated stats and don’t account for if the guy actually makes the freaking play or not. After all, isn’t that what sports is all about – making plays? I don’t need a mathematician telling me how who’s overrated or not. Who the frick cares that Reed has some flaws, doesn’t everybody? Maybe if he didn’t have to make up for Samari Rolle’s mistakes all the time, he wouldn’t give up so many yards himself. Ask Peyton Manning if he thinks Reed (who picked off Manning twice in the AFC Divisional playoffs last season) is overrated.

In my opinion, you can’t get any more overrated than Roy Williams of the Cowboys, considering he has no coverage skills whatsoever, yet still gets credit as one of the best at his position.

The NFL has decided to regulate online media outlets from showing more than 45 seconds a day worth of video coverage on websites, unless the league owns the sites of course.

The new policy covers everything shot by news organizations within team facilities. In addition to the 45-second-per-day limit, news organizations must also provide a link to NFL.com and a team’s Web site for any team-related footage shown on those Web sites. The league also prohibits news outlets from selling advertising tied to video gathered at a team’s facilities.

The reason the NFL is doing this is to generate more traffic to official team websites, which is crap in my opinion. Some of the worst coverage is done by official team websites because it’s mostly propaganda. There are some team sites that have message boards where fans can comment on various topics, but the sites remove anything said that’s even remolty negative. So, we as fans go to various other sources – like online newspapers – to get better information, but now the league is restricting these sites from even having a mintue worth of vido coverage. I know this doesn’t factor beat writers from doing daily write ups, but still, some sites do a nice job with video interviewers.

There’s an extremely funny video by the Houston Chronicle which takes a dig at this new relguation. You can check it out here.

Michael Silver ranked all 32 NFL owners in his latest column for SI.com, with No. 32 being a small surprise.

I think the first owner to come to mind as being one of the best is the Patriots’ Bob Kraft, which Silver promptly ranks No. 1. However, most might assume the Lions’ William Clay Ford Jr. would rank dead last due to his franchise’s decade worth of losing and terrible management, but he comes in at No. 29. Tom Benson (Saints) and Mike Brown (32) rank 31 and 32, respectively, which isn’t too big of a surprise with Benson’s horrid management of the Hurricane Katrina situation (i.e. wanting to move the team to San Antonio) and Brown’s turning a deaf ear to the criminals on his team repeatedly acting up.

On the whole, I think the rankings were pretty spot on.

Word out of Browns camp is that Brady Quinn has a chance to start this year, which raises the age old question: should rookie quarterbacks line up behind center or carry a clipboard? In my latest column for Bullz-Eye.com, I take a look at past examples like Peyton Manning, Daunte Culpepper and Tim Couch for answers.

According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the lawsuit defensive tackle Grady Jackson filed against the Falcons in March has been resolved. Atlanta restructured his contract, adding a year onto the three-year deal he got from the team last offseason, as well as roster bonuses for 2008 and 2009.

Jackson had filed the suit in late March of this year for invasion of privacy and defamation over the alleged release of his medical records pertaining to last offseason. Jackson claimed Atlanta leaked information that he had a bad heart, which supposedly scared off other teams from getting into a bidding war with the Falcons over his services.

Either way, this is just a little ray of sunshine in a massive cloudy offseason for the Falcons. Remember, Rod Coleman may miss the first four to six games of the season, so if this issue with Jackson wasn’t resolved, there would have been two gaping holes in Atlanta’s defensive line. And I mean, gaping holes.