and there goes Brandon Carr

If Peyton is healthy, this is a move that vaults whoever signs him into superbowl contention, not to mention there is a whole list of Colts who may come with him.

Heres the link for the Branch tag:

http://blogs.nfl.com/2012/03/01/raiders-apply-franchise-tag-to-branch/?module=HP11_headline_stack

I'm honestly surprised. Did not expect Jackson to be playing in Philly next year.

They talk about Rogers, FInnegan and Carr. I found this article very informative, like most of KC Joyner's work.

Though I'm a fan of Rogers, and they leave out in their contract discussion that he has had great years in the past (I believe he was a stud in 2007), I would worry about age with him and I'm not in favor of signing the guy. We are not one year away barring a significant pass rush upgrade, why sacrifice the cap?

Finnegan I'd be down for. I agree, Finnegan would own those Philly wrs. I also don't think we can be beggars and choosers - not many wrs are capable of shutting down a healthy Nicks. If our criteria is "he needs to shut down Hakeem Nicks", well that limits the nfl talent pool to under 15 and the FA talent pool to 0.

This is after Clint Sintim got hurt earlier in the week.

I'm not sure I agree with him that the lack of FA impacted the top 8 teams from 2010, but this serves as a good refresher for those that have forgotten.

It sounds like cuts are going to be made. Columbo and Barber are almost certainly gone. But I'm not sure how we can get ourselves in good cap position unless we are able to cut Newman and Roy with no salary cap in place (which seems very possible at this point).

the hits just keep coming. This ones for over 600K.

His contract was for 5 years, 11 million. Something tells me hes going to want a bigger contract well in advance of the end of his rookie deal

The second big name safety goes off the market. It appears we are going to stay put at safety, barring some ridiculous trade up for peterson. In fact, we may get a downgrade if Sensabaugh leaves

The worst news possible (from a sports perspective) for out of state Cowboys fans today. The government has seized channelsurfing.net and adthe.net.

Direct TV is going to make a boatload of money off of this.

I thought this was an interesting article by Yahoo's Jason Cole. Its probably one of the first times I've seen YPA written about in the mainstream media.

He looks at the Chargers, who have a YPA difference of +1.5, an absolutely ridiculous number.

Even more strange is this:
"This has been an odd year statistically around the league. Among the eight division leaders, three of them (Jaguars, Falcons and Rams) have negative differentials."

After we all saw what a disaster their wr core was last night, this is very bad news. Manningham will be their #1 next week and the majority of the rest of that group will be guys picked up off the street. The injury bug is hitting the Giants again in December.

With the players union including it in their most recent proposal, its hard to see this not being a part of the new CBA.

Fewer workouts, fewer practices with pads in training camp, 2 bye weeks...this screams of a watered down league. Camp Cupcake will be the norm.

Mickey makes a lot of good points in this article, especially with the celebration penalties which have to be two of the most biased penalties I can remember. Especially after watching CJ and AP celebrate the last two weeks and not get penalized.

Anyway, not surprisingly given how many times I've watched our pass rush and thought "thats a hold", our opponents are on their way to the lowest penalty total in our history.

Adam Shefter believes that Jerry will look for a big name if this season continues to unravel.

Personally, I don't buy it. A big name coach would have to actually want to come here, which would mean Jerry would have to hand over the reins.

According to the Rob Phillips Blog, Jerry also wanted to move up for Iutapi and Thomas, but only Dez fell "within striking distance".

So pretty much no surprises here, and we apparently did a terrible job concealing which players we coveted.