ORLANDO, Fla. â In an effort to have teams use their top players through the final games of the season, the NFL is considering making the last week â and possibly weeks â consist of all divisional matchups.
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âPotentially, Week 17 will all be divisional games,â commissioner Roger Goodell said Wednesday during his closing remarks at the NFL Annual Meeting. âThat will address this to some extent. It will not necessarily eliminate the issue.â
Goodell said the league actually is considering pairing division rivals in the final two weeks of the season. Last season, just 11 of the 32 games played in the last two weeks were divisional matchups.
While teams that clinch playoff berths routinely rest key players late in the season, an uproar of sorts erupted last season when the unbeaten Indianapolis Colts sat many starters in the second half of a Week 16 game that they eventually lost to the New York Jets.
The rationale for sitting players is to minimize injury risks and have key starters as healthy as possible for postseason play. But by scheduling teams against division opponents in the final week (or weeks), it could force teams to use those key starters because a division title â and a playoff berth â might hang in the balance.
I watched one of those ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries last night. The one about the Baltimore Colts band. Man they know how to put a documentary together. Next one on the list for me is the one about the demise of the USFL.
yeah theyâre good alright in fairness. the colts one was class, as you say, well put together. the ones coming out in next couple of months should be good too, looking forward to the LA one.
they should make a documentary about that one too alright. Vince McMahon eh, what an idiot. The USFL sounded like an interesting move that never paid off. havent watched the espn thing on it yet tho.
Eagles have traded McNabb to Redskins so presumably are holding on to Vick and that other Kolb lad.
Eagles obviously decided theyâd gone as far as they could with McNabb and the end of season performances werenât good enough. Still itâs a bit strange trading him to divisional rivals.
Resdskins traded 3rd and 4th round picks in next yearâs draft. Theyâre keeping their draft picks this year.
In truth, I donât know whatâs going on at our organisation. Iâm very much on my gridiron off-season and will only delve back into it on draft weekend. Perhaps you could do an internet search and let me know the reasoning behind it? Otherwise we may be reliant on Gman, CLD or Flano shedding some light on matters.
What we learned from McNabbâs stunning trade to Washington
Five observations about Philadelphiaâs Sunday night trade of Donovan McNabb to Washington:
Phillyâs not afraid of No. 5.
McNabb being moved after 11 seasons as an Eagle was something that had started to feel inevitable in the past 10 days or so. But McNabb being dealt to division rival Washington, where he could conceivably haunt his former team twice every season, thatâs the stunner.
Obviously, the Eagles arenât worried about McNabb rubbing their face in it the same way Green Bay was desperate to not play against Brett Favre as a Viking. The Packers made sure to deal Favre away to the AFC-based Jets in the summer of 2008, believing the further away he got from the NFC North, the better. When the reports surfaced that Oakland was the leader in the McNabb trade talks last week, it looked like the Eagles were thinking roughly the same thing: Donât let No. 5 come back to beat us.
But apparently not, which speaks volumes about either Philadelphiaâs level of respect for new starting quarterback Kevin Kolbâs game, or its lack of respect for where McNabbâs game is headed as he enters his 12th NFL season. Either way, the Eagles didnât worry about the revenge factor when it comes to McNabb, they were just after the best possible trade partner. And with the 37th pick in a very deep 2010 draft to dangle, that proved to be the Redskins. NFC East, or not. That makes Redskins at Eagles this seasonâs must-see game of the year, akin to Favreâs return to Lambeau in 2009. And Eagles at Redskins wonât be too shabby, either.
Washingtonâs in win-now mode with new head coach Mike Shanahan.
You donât go after a starting quarterback who turns 34 in November because you see yourself in the early stages of a rebuilding program. You get McNabb because you think he still gives a team a window of Super Bowl opportunity, and youâre intent on seizing it.
Dealing for McNabb says the Redskins donât have to feel pressured to take a quarterback like Jimmy Clausen with their No. 4 overall pick this year, or make an even bolder move by trading up in the Ramsâ No. 1 slot for Sam Bradford. They can sit tight and go in whatever direction they feel best, perhaps adding the starting offensive left tackle they so desperately need in Oklahoma Stateâs Russell Okung.
Come what may, McNabb gets 2010 to show where he can take the Redskins, and then we find out how long the relationship might last. Washington probably winds up extending McNabb before he ever takes a snap as a Redskin, because having him play out the final year of his contract isnât the signal youâre trying to send with this move. Youâre getting him because you think heâs still one of the best quarterbacks in the game, and heâs got another two or three years of playing at a high level left in him.
Does McNabb preclude the Redskins from taking a quarterback of the future in this draft? Definitely not. But it probably isnât good news for Clausenâs shot to go fourth overall, unless Washington trades down out of that slot. The Redskins could still trade the 28-year-old Jason Campbell and draft a quarterback to develop behind McNabb for a while. But if they do that, McNabb would ironically be right back in the same situation he faced in Philadelphia, with Kolb drafted in 2007âs second round with the expressed intent to eventually take his job.
For the Redskins, the move seems to underline the belief that Shanahan, 57, is not interested in having a long tenure in Washington, just a three- or four-year run with a hefty salary, before hopefully turning things over to his son, current Redskins offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan. First and foremost, this is a trade for 2010. Like in the old days when head coach George Allen first hit town almost 40 years ago, the future is now again in Washington.
McNabb will be hailed in D.C., but not greatly missed in Philly.
With his track record of accomplishment, and Washingtonâs long drought of legitimate Super Bowl contention, McNabb will get, and certainly deserves, a bit of the rock-star treatment from the Redskins. Heâs played in five of the past nine NFC title games, and that must sound like nirvana for Washingtonâs frustrated fans, who have endured the likes of Patrick Ramsey, Danny Wuerffel, Gus Frerotte and Heath Shuler in the past two decades.
McNabb makes the Redskins instantly better at the gameâs most pivotal position, and maybe the last time Washington had a QB approaching his expertise was when Joe Theismann was in his prime (and yes, we know Mark Rypien won a Super Bowl in Washington).
But, know this, too: The belief that McNabbâs departure will leave a giant-sized leadership void in the Eagles locker room simply isnât true. Sources close to the situation in Philadelphia have told me in recent months that McNabb does not have close relationships with the younger Eagles play-makers like DeSean Jackson, LeSean McCoy and Jason Avant. Those players are actually tighter with Kolb, who came to Philadelphia in 2007. So many of McNabbâs closest friends on the Eagles are now ex-Eagles. As a tight veteran group, they won a lot of games in Philadelphia and went to a Super Bowl together, but many of them have moved on in the past two or three years.
"Itâs not going to be the huge leadership hole in the locker room that some portray,ââ a club source said. "I think guys will miss him to some degree, but itâs not as if he was beloved by this particular group of his teammates. The younger guys have only played with him for a year or two, and theyâre not as close to Donovan as they are to Kolb.ââ
The Redskins are still the Redskins.
Theyâve been painfully quiet this offseason so far, way more quiet than weâre used to seeing the Redskins be under the 11-year ownership tenure of Daniel Snyder. But even after they sat out most of free agency, the Redskins still found a way to make the kind of splash theyâre known for in acquiring McNabb.
Iâm not ready to say that McNabbâs arrival changes the calculus in the NFC East, where I still see Dallas, New York and Philadelphia all having more pieces of the puzzle put together as we await the 2010 draft.
But if nothing else, Washington has to be taken more seriously, having added two proven commodities like Shanahan and McNabb in the past three months. Coaching and quarterbacking are two keys to success in the NFL, and how can anyone not acknowledge the Redskinsâ have upgraded both areas dramatically since their 2009 season ended? McNabb and Shanahan bring relevance back to the Redskins.
Philadelphia had to make this move.
In the NFL, they say youâre either rising or falling, and thereâs no in between. But I donât know if I buy that, because the Eagles are one franchise where the status quo was locked in place â and it had become synonymous with failure of a sort.
Which team in the NFC wouldnât have traded places with Philadelphia in the past nine years, with the Eagles going to five conference championship games and one Super Bowl? But McNabb had come to personify Philly being consistently good, but never great. And it was hard to see the storyline ever changing dramatically with him still under center for the Eagles.
Yes, McNabb was the greatest quarterback in Philadelphia franchise history, and Kolb faces huge shoes to fill in that respect. But in the end I think AndyReid made this deal because he couldnât stomach one more season that held such promise, but ended in disappointment.
The 2009 Eagles were the perfect example of the maddening pattern that seemingly never ended in Philadelphia. Late in the year, the Eagles looked unstoppable on offense and were easily the NFCâs most dangerous team. But then, with a No. 2 seed on the line, the Eagles fell flat in Week 17 at Dallas, dropped to the NFCâs sixth seed, and wound up losing again the following week to the Cowboys in the first round of the playoffs. One and done.
Maybe in time the Eagles will regret this trade and miss McNabbâs winning ways in the regular season. But I understand why something had to change in Philly. The Eagles may not be better right away with Kolb. But it was time to be different. The status quo, as good as it was, wasnât enough anymore.
The New York Jets, continuing a win-now pattern that will delight their fans but test the coaching skills of coach Rex Ryan, traded their fifth-round pick in this monthâs NFL draft to Pittsburgh for Super Bowl XLIII MVP wide receiver Santonio Holmes.
Itâs a stunning fall from grace for Holmes. Fourteen months ago, he stood atop the football world after making a circus catch in the corner of the end zone to lift the Steelers to a record sixth Super Bowl victory. But with the news Saturday that he will likely be suspended for the first four regular-season games of the 2010 season â profootballtalk.com reported the story â Holmes will be eligible to play only 12 games for New York.
Add to that the fact that Holmes is playing the last year of his rookie contract, and the deal essentially is this: The Jets have Holmes for a 12-game trial. They could re-sign the talented 26-year-old wideout to a new contract, but itâs likely theyâll let the season play out and see how Holmes behaves, and how he fits in with quarterback Mark Sanchez and the young set of Jets playmakers.
the Jets, the cunts, are making some decent moves. Jason Taylor highly likely to go there too, and tho he is past it, has good experience, despite rightly hating the cunts.
not long til the draft and Tebow countdown. Cowboy stadium was demolished there last week too, always strange looking at massive buildings collapsing in seconds. 20,000 people turned up to see it knocked down.
Eh you have it wrong there Mac, this is Cowboys Stadium:
It would be a massive shock if they blew it up having just spent a billion dollars to build itâŠ
