Former NFL star quarterback Joe Montana believes that Brett Favre will wear back NFL jerseys to continue his football career and his hesitation to give a promise is simply because of his unwillingness to go to the training camp.
Montana, at Pierce College filming a television commercial, said he believes it’s only a matter of time before Favre returns to play for the Minnesota Vikings, the team he led to the NFC Championship Game last season.
“He says he’s not sure [about playing] because he doesn’t want to go to training camp. He’s smart,” Montana said. “I’m sure he already has that agreement with them. Nine chances out of 10 they already know and they’ve already had this whole conversation and they should just let everybody know because they know he’s going to come back.”
Favre has not made any decision on whether to return or retire, but judging from the Vikings’ patience in waiting for his decision, it’s reasonable to believe in Montana, who, at age 48, wishes he could have played a couple of more seasons just as Favre has done before the real retirement.
There was as coin toss as it was guessed earlier this week, and both of the New York NFL teams will open the 2010 season in the new Meadowlands Stadium with Giants being the first team to host and play their first game on Sunday afternoon, Sept. 12 while the Jets will host their season opener on the next day.
“After extensive discussions with both teams, we have come up with what we believe is a unique approach for celebrating the opening of the new Meadowlands Stadium,” commissioner Roger Goodell said.
It was the Jets who announced first on their website that a coin toss will decide which team to use the new stadium first but the league had never confirmed such a decision until Monday, when it said Goodell did flip a coin for which team would play Sunday and the Giants won while the Jets was disappointed with the process.
“An NFL coin toss has a few fundamental elements that are missing here, most notably the presence of the teams involved,” Jets owner Woody Johnson said in a statement. “That’s how it’s always done in the league, whether it’s determining the order of the draft or deciding who’s going to kick off the game.”
The Jets and Giants split the cost on the replacement for Giants Stadium, which they both called home since 1984, and they have only played a regular season opener one on the same weekend at the same stadium, in 1991 with the Jets against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sept. 1 and the Giants against the San Francisco 49ers on the next night.
The Miami Dolphins made a somewhat surprising announcement on Tuesday saying that they have re-signed nose tackle Jason Ferguson, who received an eight-game suspension for violating the NFL’s policy on performance-enhancing substances.
The Dolphins did not make any reference to Ferguson’s suspension during Tuesday’s news release. However, remaining active in the free agent market may just indicate that the Dolphins do not plan to offer Ferguson a starting job as a starter at the position is the team’s very target in the open market. After all, Ferguson is not allowed to play in any of the first eight games in 2010 season, and a starter in the first half of the season could have confirmed his starting role by the time Ferguson wears back his Dolphins jersey for the second half.
Ferguson was acquired by the Dolphins in a 2008 trade with the Dallas Cowboys. During his entire career, he has started 128 games. At age 35, he used to believe that he should retire after suffering a season-ending quadriceps injury that required surgery in last November. The suspension depletes his value even more, but his existence just still improves the Dolphins’ roster depth.
Sunday’s game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Anaheim Ducks was Ducks center Saku Koivu’s first to face his former team since putting on Ducks jersey. However, it did not become a happy memory to the center that spent his entire fist 13 seasons with the Canadiens.
The Canadiens rallied with goals by Brian Gionta and Andrei Markov in the final 1:50 of the third period, and Tomas Plekanec added the shootout winner in the fourth round for an improbable 4-3 victory over the Ducks. Coincidently, the Ducks were shut out by former Anaheim goalie Ilya Bryzgalov twice on Saturday night in Phoenix, and it seemed that either former team or former player is nothing good to the Ducks.
The Ducks began a seven-game homestand by taking a 3-0 lead in the first period on Sunday night and Koivu was confident that the team could get the next goal and win the game, but to all the Ducks’ disappointment, they did not make it.
On Friday, the first day of free agent, the New England Patriots’ first action was not to pick free agents from the open market, but to sign $40 million, five-year contract with defensive tackle Vince Wilfork, who was already designated with franchise tag last month.
The contract includes an $18 million signing bonus and $25 million guaranteed money, proving again the Patriots’ biggest offseason priority is to keep the tackle in Patriots jersey for a long time as the 21st overall pick in the 2004 NFL Draft has been an anchor in the middle of Patriots’ defense since his rookie season.
The Patriots followed the San Francisco 49ers to be the second team placing franchise tag on nose tackle on Feb. 22, saying that a long-term agreement was still under negotiation. If no deal is done in time before the season, Wilfork will still play with the Patriots for one season under the franchise tag, which would allow him to earn $7.003 million in 2010 season.
On the eve of free agency, the New York Giants took their final actions to retain players who would become free agents the next day. On the same day, the Giants tendered one-year contracts to nine restricted free agents and three exclusive rights players before they may choose to take off Giants jerseys to join another team.
According to the announcements the Giants made on Thursday night, defensive linemen Barry Cofield and Dave Tollefson and receiver Domenik Hixon received second-round tenders, safety C.C. Brown received a right of first refusal tender, and the Giants tendered original round offers to all of the other five restricted free agents, who are receivers Sinorice Moss and Derek Hagan, linebacker Gerris Wilkinson, and offensive linemen Guy Whimper and Kevin Boothe.
The three exclusive rights players receiving one-year contract tender are running back D.J. Ware, tight end Scott Chandler and defensive back D.J. Johnson.
After tendering the offers, the Giants will have the right of matching any offers from another team to acquire one of the free agents. If they choose not to match, they then can receive the appropriate draft picks from the other team as compensation for losing a free agent.
With only two days left before the March 5 deadline, the Green Bay Packers are among the several teams who began to take actions to retain free agents. They have tens of free agents to deal with and on Wednesday only, they offered tenders to eight of the restricted free agents.
Two of the eight restricted free agents are starters at safety: Nick Collins and Atari Bigby. The other six include defensive end Johnny Jolly, cornerback Tramon Williams, offensive lineman Jason Spitz, guard Daryn Colledge, fullback John Kuhn and cornerback Will Blackmon. The Packers also offered a one-year tender to an exclusive-rights free agent, tight end Spencer Havner.
By so far, the Packers have kept nose tackle Ryan Pickett from joining free agent market by placing the franchise tag and may also keep most of the nine free agents above in Packers jerseys with the tender offers. But they still have a group of UFAs to deal with. OTs Chad Clifton and Mark Tauscher and de Aaron Kampman are all included in the group.
After spending all the last four seasons with the Cleveland Browns, lineman Hank Fraley was surprised to find Wednesday that he was released by the team, who used him at different positions from center to tight end.
After being traded from the Philadelphia Eagles, the versatile 10-year veteran helped the Browns a lot in 2006 when center LeCharles Bentley was injured. He started 52 games of the 63 games in which he played, including the 48 consecutive starts from 2006-2008 after Bentley ended his career with a knee injury. However, Fraley failed to keep his starting job last season as the Browns got rookie Alex Mack with a first-round draft pick. Without complaints, Fraley then made all his effort to help mentor Mack, who had a solid first season. He did not hesitate either when the team needed him to start at guard or tight end. But still the team released him; no wonder he said he was shocked.
“I just wish they would have told me a few weeks ago,” Fraley said. “But I guess I was no longer part of their plans. That’s this business.”
At age 32, Fraley is actually not with much value to any team, but he still hopes to sign with a new team, saying that his body still feels good enough to play football. Or in other words, he not yet ready to take off NFL jerseys for the end of his career.
The Green Bay Packers tight end Jermichael Finley is expected to be one of the top five tight ends in 2010 season; at least he has convinced the Packers Coach Mike McCarthy to name him the team’s starting tight end for 2010 season.
“Yes, he (Finley) is (the starter),” McCarthy told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel during the NFL Scouting Combine. “He played very well. What’s exciting about him, he gets better every week.”
The third-year player out of Texas showed flashes of potential in 2009, posting career bests across the board while becoming a reliable option in the passing game for Aaron Rodgers. Starting only 10 of the 13 games he played in Packers jersey, Finley managed to record an impressive 55 receptions for 676 yards and score five touchdowns. That production is the very base of his success in gaining the starting job.
His value is not limited in the numbers. The three-year veteran is athletic and has ability to be a play maker. Plus his tremendous rapport with Rodgers helped him record an amazing six receptions for 159 yards in a 51-45 overtime loss to the Arizona Cardinals.
The Atlanta Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan is still in his recovery from the turf-toe injury that hampered him late last season, but the Falcons head coach Mike Smith seems eager to see him in Falcons jersey again, expecting him to return on March 22 for the team’s offseason conditioning program.
“We think that Matt will be ready to go on March 22 when we open up our offseason conditioning program,” Smith said. “Matt had a significant toe injury there at the end of the season. They talked to us initially about him missing six weeks. He came back in two weeks. I think that says a lot about the type of man that Matt is. He’s a tough guy. We know that playing quarterback in the NFL is one of the most difficult positions. Matt had a very good second season. It was a learning experience. But we don’t anticipate him having any setbacks between now and when we start on the 22nd of March. He’s actually back to running.”
Ryan sustained the turf-toe injury early in a Week 12 game while playing against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and missed two full games afterwards. He finished the 2009 season with 22 touchdowns and 14 interceptions and convinced the coach that he had improved his accuracy.
