Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Lockout? No Chance - Why the NFL Will Have a New CBA By March 4th

There will be football next year. Neither side is willing to admit it, but both the NFL Owners and the NFAPA know that a deal is going to get done on time.  There is too much money on the table for this to not work out and the owners know that the players can't afford to not come to the negotiating table.  The players union knows that it is going to agree to the deal in the end, but the union also knows that it's better for them to wait until March 3rd to finally agree.

How can I say all of that with certainty?  I've done the research and connected the dots that no one is talking about.  Rather than harp over what the Union and Owners say every day, I've gone back and looked at the current expiring CBA to understand why the Owners opted out to begin with.  

People believe the NFL and the Union are fighting over stuff they really aren't as concerned with.  The eighteen game season is something the players aren't happy about, but it will add in the end add cash to their pockets.  It's not the line in the sand people would have you believe it is.  Also unimportant is the debate over the proposed rookie salary scale, as the players and owners alike agree that the rookie salaries are out of control.

So what is the arguing really about?  Cash, obviously.  The owners did a bad job negotiating the last agreement and haven't been making enough money.  The players, I'm sure, know that the last CBA doesn't work but aren't going to just freely give the money back to the owners.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Tennessee Titans' Five Biggest Player Decisions: Free Agency Starts at Home

Assuming they get a new collective bargaining agreement done, NFL Free Agency is scheduled to begin on March 3, 2011.  I'm going to go through every team between now and then and identify their top five free agents and try to determine what should be done with each player, be it resign them or let them walk.  I've been going team by team in draft order and am at the team with the eighth pick in the draft, the Tennessee Titans.

The Titans are the hardest team to forecast for going forwards.  When they were the Jeff Fisher Titans, it was fairly easy to predict their personnel moves and their strategy because Fisher had been the longest tenured head coach in the league.  Fisher liked to control the ball on offense and stop the run on defense and was willing to take chances on guys with questionable character.  Now with Fisher out and Mike Munchak in, I don't really know what to expect.

Munchak is a hall of fame former lineman and spent fourteen years as the Titans offensive line coach.  It would be easy to assume Munchak wants to do similar things with the football team to what Fisher did, but if Munchak wanted to do the same thing as Fisher, he likely wouldn't have fired offensive coordinator Mike Heimerdinger.

The new Mike Munchak Titans figure to me much different from the Jeff Fisher Titans, which makes writing about what the team will do with it's free agents pure speculation.  So instead of judging whether or not the I think Titans will bring each guy back, I'm going to simply evaluate each player as a player and whether or not he's worth bringing back.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

Super Bowl 45 - The Pick

At this point, there is no need for me to write a Super Bowl column because all of the angles have been dissected more than once at this point.  So I'm just gonna give my pick with a quick bit of reasoning.

Pick - Steelers +3 or Steelers ML if book is only offering Steelers +2.5

1. While the Packers' defense deserves all the credit it has been getting, they aren't built to play the Steelers. Their 3 down lineman are all big power rush guys, but Pittsburgh's o-line has trouble with speed rushes.  Assuming they do a good job scheming Heath Miller to block Clay Matthews, they shouldn't have a big problem.

2.  The Packers are getting credit for being a fast team, but they aren't as fast as the Steelers are.   Because Mike Wallace is just that fast, the Steelers will improve more playing on the nice field down in Dallas than the Packers will.

3. Ben Roethlisburger and the Steelers offense will put points on the board.  They scored 31 against the Ravens and then 24 on the Jets.  They will get to at least 20 points against the Packers defense.  The Packers put up a bunch on Atlanta, but they were less impressive against the Bears, only putting up 14 offensive points over the whole game.

4. I'll take Mike Tomlin over Mike McCarthy any day of the week when it comes to game management.

5. After a full two weeks, no one has come up with a huge mismatch for either side this game.  It's pretty even.  So I'll take the team from the better conference who played two tough games already and came out on top rather than the team who almost let the Eagles and Bears (featuring Caleb Hanie) back into it.

Final Score Prediction - Steelers 31  Packers 20

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

San Francisco 49ers' Five Biggest Player Decisions: Free Agency Starts at Home

Assuming they get a new collective bargaining agreement done, NFL Free Agency is scheduled to begin on March 3, 2011.  I'm going to go through every team between now and then and identify their top five free agents and try to determine what should be done with each player, be it resign them or let them walk.  I've been going team by team in draft order and am at the team with the seventh pick in the draft, the San Francisco 49ers.

Once again this year, people expected the San Francisco 49ers to be the best team in the NFC West and once again, the 49ers failed to live up to expectations because of poor quarterback play.  Mike Singletary went back and forth with the quarterbacks all year but no matter who the 49ers put in at quarterback, they failed to sustain drives.

Mike Singletary was fired and the 49ers brought in Jim Harbaugh as their new Head Coach.  This hiring isn't a coincidence. Harbaugh is a former quarterback, a former quarterback coach, and is credited with the development of Andrew Luck, the likely number one overall pick in 2011.  The 49ers organization expects to have better quarterback play next year.

The question facing them is whether or not that better quarterback play will come from someone already with the organization or an outsider.  They have multiple quarterbacks with pedigree on the roster, but none have ever produced.  Two of those quarterbacks contracts are up, and the organization needs to how important it is to bring them back, or if that money would be better spent on their free agents on defense.