NFL Pressing Issues

There are plenty of reasons to expect the gossip to flow from the many players in the soap opera that is the Dallas Cowboys this offseason. The fact that they may or may not be considering the release Terrell Owens being the primary reason.

And Jason Garrett, hanging out at the Senior Bowl to watch prospective draft picks, only added more fuel to the fire when asked by reporters yesterday what he thought of the polarizing wide receiver.

Rumors abounded quite frequently near the end of the 2008 NFL season as to where Bill Cowher might or might not coach next year. It turned out, he was just fine and dandy hanging out in the CBS booth, kicking it with Boomer Esiason and Dan Marino, even with the wonderful opportunity to coach Brett Favre dangling out there.

That's not entirely surprising though. What is surprising is that rumors about Cowher's potential employement for 2010 have already gotten a kickstart. From Adam Schefter, it appears that his buddy Boomer is already discussing on his WFAN radio show the possibility of Cowher as a replacement for Herm Edwards in Kansas City following 2009.

Willis McGahee and Ryan Clark were both injured last night; obviously McGahee's injury was worse, as he spent significantly more time on the carpet than Clark and subsequently had to leave on a stretcher. Because he was on the ground so long, the sound operators at Heinz Field chose to fill time with some music, including, oddly, "Down on the Corner" by Creedence Clearwater Revival and "Smooth" by Santana and Rob Thomas. And, according to a "league source" that emailed PFT last night, people aren't too thrilled about it.

The Arizona Cardinals are famous in 2008 because Kurt Warner, Larry Fitzgerald (currently an unstoppable force), and Anquan Boldin comprise a ridiculous aerial attack. But the truth is that the Cardinal defense deserves a lot more credit than they're getting.

Look at the score, folks: it's 24-6. That's not just because the Cards offense is good and the Eagles are struggling. Troy Aikman keeps mentioning "missed opportunities" for the Eagles offense (right before Adrian Wilson comes tearing off the corner to smother McNabb), and I distinctly remember everyone (guilty as charged) blaming the totality of the Panthers' loss on Jake Delhomme and not the Cardinals defense.

Drew Rosenhaus is known for making outrageous claims. It's partly why he's got such an extensive client list, and it stems from his pre-draft talk re: Willis McGahee. His McGahee chatter ended up being correct, of course, but that doesn't mean he's right every time.

Rosenhaus has come forward to refute the rumor that the Dallas Cowboys are going to release Terrell Owens. Oh, and he doesn't think Adam Jones can still play cornerback at a decent level.

Tony Dungy, by all accounts, is a good guy. People who've met or know him constantly stress his character, his amicable personality, his overall likability. In the cutthroat NFL coaching world, where reputations are there to be broken down by those looking to climb the ladder, nobody has a bad thing to say about him. Also, he's a great football coach.

But while you're being inundated with retrospectives, glowing portrayals, and an avalanche of goodwill now that Dungy has retired from coaching; while it's easy to let the media make you believe that Dungy is, just like deity he worships, infallible; it's important to remember that he is in fact a human, and humans are flawed. Dungy is no exception.

The 0-16 Lions have officially done it. This is 0for08, FanHouse's eye on the Detroit Lions and their quest for a winless season.

It had to end this way.

That is, to say, if this is actually the end.

The Lions are addicted to bad football. I've tried coming up with a justification for so many years of substandard play as well as faulty personnel moves on and off the field, and I've come to the conclusion that they're simply addicts. It doesn't make them bad people, it simply means that they've embraced what we deem destructive as suitable to their way of life. They are a gigantic failure of an organization comprised of hundreds of individual enablers.

This isn't to trivialize or poke fun at addictions of a much more serious nature -- addictions come in all shapes and sizes, from manageable to fatal, from heroin to Starbucks. This is a unique variety, and the Lions are deep in it. Those close to the team, as is always the case with addiction, have suffered the most, and they've tried all they could -- walkouts, websites, effigies -- to pull the Lions out of their hole. But the thing about addicts is that they have to recognize their problem, and that only usually comes when they've bottomed out, when they've fallen so far that they have to choose to embrace recovery.

As the first team to finish a season 0-16, it seems obvious that this Lions era has officially bottomed out. But do they think so?

Chris Johnson (and his wallet) have already met the wrath of Roger Goodell this year -- Johnson celebrated an early season touchdown by wailing on some bongos and got fined. It followed then, that he would get slapped with a similar monetary amount after pulling out a flag attached to his waist and waving it around during a touchdown celebration.

But he won't, and PFT found out why, after emailing NFL spokesman Greg Aiello:

"It was a towel that is legally part of his uniform," Aiello said. "There is not a violation of rules."

"Due to past inappropriate acts while on the ground," Aiello wrote, "the player demonstration guidelines were modified two years ago to prohibit celebratory actions while on the ground. So it's a blanket rule (not a snow-angel rule). You can't go the ground to celebrate a play."

Of course, this also explains why Wes Welker got stuck with a $10K fine for being creative. But more than that, it points out what a rigid, Spanish Inquisition style of discipline Goodell is taking with the NFL. The logical thing to do with touchdown celebrations is review them case by case -- although admittedly that leaves a lot more room to wiggle on the appeal process -- and just say "at your own risk of being fined."

Then, when something funny humorous, quick and original -- like bongo playing or snow angel making -- happens, it becomes a "no harm - no foul, let's move on" scenario. And when someone behaves stupidly, they get slapped with a fine. Hard to see how too many people would be upset by that.

Matt Lepsis is a fairly forgettable football name. He suited up as a Denver Bronco for 10 years before retiring last season. And his biggest claim to fame was probably winning a Super Bowl ring. At least until recently, when he told the Colorado Springs Gazette that he did a bunch of drugs while he was playing football, only to leave the sport and follow a higher calling.

"For the first six games of the year, I was high," Lepsis said of the 2007 season.

[...] "The first thing I did when I woke up in the morning was get high, and I would try to stay that way all day long," said Lepsis, who won't say what drugs he used.

"I look back on it, and it was really foolish of me," Lepsis said. "There were definitely times when I wasn't even really there. I was physically there, but I was in another place mentally."

The scary part is that the NFL's drug testing didn't uncover Lepsis' problems with illegal substances. Oddly enough, he doesn't discuss exactly what drugs he was doing -- presumably the notion of being "high" would indicate marijuana but, according to what science says pot does to your body and brain, repetitively getting groped, grabbed, knocked around and pushed on the ground sounds pretty miserable.

The story in the Gazette immediately smells like a memoir of some sort, which has already been done by Jason Peters, but the good news is that he is in seminary, seeking to become a preacher. That, hopefully, should keep his message from being any sort of awkward public relations-filled fiasco. But that doesn't mean the media won't be all over this. And Roger Goodell's testing policies.

Via PFT