Brett Favre has entered into the world of the NFL. He showed his throwing ability to the Vikings offensive coordinator, Darrell Bevell. It would have been a great place to be, just to be a fly on the stadium wall that day. Watching Favre throw about 100 passes, apparently, and see what he is able to do. There wasn’t any media there, so we don’t know if he was experiencing pain with his shoulder or anything like that. Favre and his reps, afterwards, said that they would probably be making their decisions a little bit later in the process. The Vikings start camp on the 29th in Mankato, but they might have to wait until the very last moment to make their actual decision. Favre is working hard to come back, obviously. It seems more and more likely that the only thing holding him back is his shoulder injury. And the Vikings wont be able to make any real decisions on their offense until they get that all figured out. Hopefully their offense isn’t too complicated for all their players to get onto the same page by the beginning of the season.

Steve McNair is being remembered today at his funeral. He was found murdered with a girlfriend last weekend and the NFL has been spending much of the last few days remembering him and wondering exactly how such a thing can happen. The celebrant at the funeral said that people should avoid throwing stones in the metaphorical sense, because he was human like the rest of us. We can expect a lot more speculation despite this, but at least he said it. McNair was a strong quarterback with the Tennessee Titans and Baltimore Ravens over the course of about a dozen years in the league. He came just a few yards short of getting a Super Bowl win at one point. We all at Football IMO offer our condolences to for him!

In the NFL, the popularity and pressure that quarterbacks get must be hard to handle. Some players are able to deal with it, but some have a lot more trouble. Lately, there have been troubles with some of the quarterbacks. For one, Brett Favre has been under a cloud of whether he’s going to come back once more to stick it to the Green Bay Packers. This has put him in a position where animosity seems high. Worse, Michael Vick was in prison for about two years due to his dog-fighting conviction and people were upset about it. It’s still not completely clear whether he will be able to come back well or not. Finally, Steve McNair, the retired Tennessee quarterback, was found dead at home last weekend, having been shot by someone, though it’s still not clear exactly whom. The NFL might want to start looking at the situations of their quarterbacks and try to get them back to earth, instead of this Icarian flight that they get stuck in sometimes.

The biggest new thing in the world is the website called Twitter, where a person can give their deep insights about the world in 150 characters or less. Even this blog entry would have been too long for 3 tweets by now. Twitter is one of the most popular pages on the web. But for some NFL stars, as well as those in other sports, it has become a thicket of impostors, where anyone can make a name like a celebrity. Davone Bess, a player with the Dolphins, was impersonated on Twitter and is now threatening to sue. Even though the tweeter person didn’t say anything particularly controversial, he did give answers as though he was on the inside of the Dolphins organization. Lawsuits against Twitter users have worked on occasion, but it’s a costly way to swat a fly.

There was an odd sponsorship deal struck this week by the Malaysian company Air Asia. It’s a little bit of a confusing deal, but they have become one of the biggest sponsors of the Oakland Raiders. The airline doesn’t fly to the United States. It only just recently started flying to the UK, but since this sponsorship deal went down, it’s easy to imagine that this company has it in their plans to fly into the US in the near future. The Raiders aren’t the best team, as we know, but that doesn’t matter to the company. It’s about creating a global image, global branding. They also have a plan to try to fly a thousand fans over to Oakland for the opener in September. Air Asia might have gotten in on the ground floor of something good.

A lot of people are telling the Dallas Cowboys to forget the issue with Terrell Owens. Yes, he’s gone, and it seems like a bit of a strange decision in a lot of ways. But a lot of people are telling them to just stop talking about it. As you might know, Owens was released from the Cowboys earlier this year in an attempt to make the offense more Tony Romo-friendly. Getting rid of Owens seemed like the first thing to do, and clearly he had been creating so many more distractions off the field that the on-the-field performance had trouble getting the attention. The Cowboys are hoping that they can put the Owens thing behind them finally and then move forward to get back into the playoff hunt for real.

Brett Favre is back in the news, because there are some odd reports that he is already signed with the Vikings. It’s not clear if league rules allow such a thing, but it’s probable that they do not. But there are a couple of people saying that he signed a contract that hasn’t yet been filed with the league office. This gives us the impression that he might well be there. And at the same time, Favre has been referring to the Vikings organization as “we” and he’s been seeing the team therapist for his arm and all these kinds of things. We will hope that they finally announce what’s going on, because they’re being even more secretive than James Bond!

One of the biggest changes in the NFL in the last few years is the shift to a lot of running back support. Before, a lot of people would have said that the quarterback is much more important than running backs. Obviously, they’re both very important, but people have finally realized that not everyone can have a major QB who can throw 110 yards while facing the opposite direction. As a result, the running game has become much more important than it was before. This is a way for a team to get more yardage if they don’t have the best throwers or receivers. There are many good runners all across the NFL right now. But every good offense inspires a strong defense, so it will be interesting to see what kinds of running defenses are devised in response!

On HBO last night, the live produced Joe Buck Show started off with a real bang! Brett Favre was, of course, on the show and didn’t say much. The most that he gave hints about, unwittingly, regarding his possible future with the Vikings was when he said that playing in Minnesota would really make sense and referred to the organization as “we” once or twice. But he didn’t actually give any details or let much slip.

Meanwhile, the real hit of the show was comedian Artie Lange, who came on and did an insane set. He laughed at a famous player’s DUI arrest video, used language on live TV that would make Nixon blush and you wouldn’t want your kids to hear it. Buck and Lange went at it at some points and it almost seemed like Lange was trying to torpedo the show. Said former Cowboys star Michael Irwin, “It’s just refreshing to see white-on-white crime.”

Michael Vick is in the process of trying to get himself back into the good graces of NFL fans all around the country. After the last couple of years with his dog fighting problems, he has become the veritable definition of villain in the league. People are a little bit more skeptical if he will be able to do this. But one person who thinks he should definitely be given the chance is his former coach Jim Mora. He did an interview this week and said that Vick should be given a second chance. It’s not clear what his angle is, except that he coached Vick in Atlanta before. He’s now the coach in Seattle, the team that people have been thinking might actually take Vick. What is clear, however, is that Vick clearly has a line of coaches, players and other league elders standing up for him right now, trying to get him some legitimacy in the sports again. We’ll see how that works.