A caller to KFAN Radio this morning told hosts Paul Allen and Paul Charchian that a friend of his in the south had an order for 50,000 purple Brett Favre jerseys.

Okay, it would be preposterous to assume that the Vikings are officially signing Favre based on the musings of a guy who may or may not have a friend in the south who knows anything about pending jersey orders.

But the combination of that coupled with a Pioneer Press report that Favre has put a deposit down on a condo in suburban Edina and another from WCCO.com indicating that a contract has already been signed contingent upon Favre’s arm being alright are enough of an indication that it’s likely that this transaction has more like a 95/5 chance of happening than a 50/50 chance.

So someone should look at the fantasy football ramifications of this potential deal. First, not that you can help Adrian Peterson’s draft status much – he’s number one on most lists and top two in almost all projections. But Favre, even with not much left in the tank, has to be taken more seriously than teams have taken Tarvaris Jackson in the passing game.

So anyone who weirdly didn’t have Peterson in the top two should definitely make that change now.

Even with the substandard-to-average quarterback play last season, tight end Vicente Shiancoe started looking like a legitimate threat in the passing game during the second half of last season as well. Favre has always liked tight ends, from Mark Chmura to Bubba Franks to last season when he started turning rookie Dustin Kellar into a legitimate threat. So Shiancoe has the potential to gain some status under Favre’s watch as well.

The Vikings lack an elite receiver. But they have a plethora of solid guys with potential. I don’t think Favre has the arm left to be winging Hail Mary’s like he used to. But guys like Percy Harvin and Bernard Berrian would have been on draft lists anyway and Favre’s ability to read defenses and almost will spectacular things to happen from time to time will likely make people consider those deep threats a little higher.

I really like Sidney Rice this season. He’s struggled to stay healthy. But he’s big and has had some success as a goal line threat. Favre has a history of spreading the ball around, as well, so it’s not at all unlikely that Rice’s numbers could rise the most dramatically of the quartet of receivers (Bobby Wade being the fourth) I expect to see playing the most.

Now, what about Favre himself? While he opens up opportunities for the others around him, this is still going to be a run-first team. If this team runs as it should, Favre will be a supplementary player and Adrian Peterson and Chester Taylor will be the main weapons on this offense. Favre will make the passing game more legitimate, but if the team puts games in Favre’s hands often, they’ll suffer rather than succeed.

So I’d stay away from him as a fantasy starter. If you need a bye week fill in and the Vikings have a good matchup, Favre might be a good fill-in. But he’s not a guy I would rely upon to take your team to fantasy glory.

Well, Tony P. already asked for it–and to be honest, I thought about putting it up, but my thoughts on the matter are fairly straight forward, and I wasn’t sure it was worth the post.

Plus, it’s come up before, here and here (and before we go all cynical on Tony P. for saying yes in one place, no in another, I believe the no is in reference to him being a first year guy).

But now ProFootballTalk.com has posted the question, and since we do seem to talk a lot about the Hall of Fame here, I figured we better do it here too–especially since frankly I think we’ve got a better group of Hall of Fame minds discussing Hall of Fame matters.

So the question is–is Steve McNair worthy of the Pro Footabll Hall of Fame?

If my math is right, he’ll be eligible in 2013–the same year as Michael Strahan, Warren Sapp, Jonathon Ogden, Larry Allen and more.

McNair’s stats include 31,300 yards, 174 TDs vs. 119 Ints, 82.8 career rating, 60.1% completion percentage, and 37 rushing TDs.  He appeared in one Super Bowl, was a 3-time Pro Bowler, was not ever a 1st team All-Pro, and won one co-MVP in 2003.

Non-tangibles that may come into play, whether they should or not, would be his reputation as a gritty player who would play through pain, although he also did miss a lot of games (at least 28 after becoming the full time starter, by my count), the fact that he was the first highly drafted black QB from a smaller, traditionally black school, who had a team built around him (there were teams that had been built around black QBs before [Warren Moon], and black QBs drafted in the first round [Doug Williams], but none that were drafted as high as #3).

Information forthcoming around the circumstances of his murder could also be on the minds of some voters. Like I said, these are non-tangibles that probably shouldn’t be considered, but the voters, although members of the media, are also (mostly) human.

So what say you, OUR voting members?  Leave your rationale in the comments below…

Check out our baseball site at BrushBackPitch.com.

The Associated Press is reporting that Yahoo! settled the suit it filed against the NFL Players Association over licensing fees for player stats for fantasy football purposes last month.

A previous licensing agreement had expired in March of this year, and the NFLPA has argued in the past that such information is proprietary–but a similar suit brought last year was decided in favor of CBS  Interactive, although the NFLPA is appealing that decision.

In the mean time, Yahoo! apparently has decided that the licensing fees would cost less than the legal fees–and the NFLPA apparently has decided that they should take what they can get now, rather than possibly miss out on it all down the road.

Every fantasy league seems to have one–the owner that doesn’t prepare, drafts his team (or maybe let’s the computer do it), and then checks out as soon as the team hits the loss column in week 1.  Injuries pile up, bye weeks come and go, and their lineup never changes.  It’s all fine and good when you face him, but when a couple teams get the advantage of playing the dead team twice–maybe once with a playoff spot on the line late in the season–that’s when it really sucks.  I mean REALLY sucks.

That’s where Mission Competition comes in.

Mission Competition is a service that provides leagues with dead teams an option to re-level the playing field, with an army of fantasy enthusiasts who can assume coaching duties for dead teams, as well as several computer programs that allow us to automate the process with certain league manager sites.

Founder Robert Levens, who launched the June 18th, said that he is also in talks with several league-management sites and high-stakes fantasy outlets about potential partnerships, and that his company is already affiliated with the World Championship of Fantasy Football–although I would like to think that in the case of high stakes games, that owners are less likely to drop out.

At the same, the service, which costs $12.99, probably doesn’t make a lot of sense for free leagues or a league of friends each throwing in $10 as an entry fee, meaning the company is probably starting with a smaller potential audience of leagues that start with entry fees of $50 to maybe a couple hundred dollars.

Still, with my fantasy experience, I can imagine that Mission Competition could be a highly successful venture–especially if the service proves to provide competitive solutions for leagues with deadbeat owners.

Peter King is currently on his annual four-week vacation–because apparently penning a 4,000 word essay each week about coffee and travel annoyances [along with a few football tidbits], tweeting up a storm, and appearing on NBC sports means you need four weeks off–and is having some NFL players guest write his regular columns while he’s out.

First up was Matt Birk, who posted his Monday Morning QB column yesterday.  Our advice to Birk?  Don’t quit your day job…although not because it’s bad writing, it’s just that making millions to drive people into the ground is probably a lot more glamourous (and financially rewarding) than penning a regular football column (or penning a football blog, for that matter).

While not nearly as long winded as King, Birk provides a couple of solid pages, including a full on ‘10 Things I Think I Think.’  He touches briefly on the Brett Favre/Vikings saga, leading that into a topic near to Birk’s heart–current players needing to take care of former players financially and medically.  While it’s a bit deeper than your average King column, and maybe a bit more of using the column as a forum to further his own agenda on the matter than a regular columnist would be ok with, it’s something we actually agree with Birk on.  He also touches on the Steve McNair situation, without going into too much detail.

In fact, the only area that we think Birk really missed the mark on is with his #1 on his list of 10 Things He Thinks He Thinks, where he says:

“I think Favre will play for the Vikings this year. This will start a civil war between Minnesota and Wisconsin. A truce will be reached in this epic border battle after it is discovered at a tailgate party that Johnsonville Brats (Wisconsin) and Grain Belt Beer (Minnesota) are perfect complements for each other.”

As a true native of Minnesota, Birk should know better–there is no way that Wisconsinites would give up their paint thinner and Miller Lite for the goodness of Grain Belt Premium, and while I acknowledge that Johnsonville makes a decent brat, if it really came down to it, I’m sure that Minnesota’s own Hormel must make a line of brats that is as good (or better) than anything Wisconsin could provide.

People have lost their jobs and their houses. The country has been at war for what seems like an eternity. The news is filled with reports of international threats from North Korea and Iran.

So what exactly were we supposed to feel when “MJD” posted this column about how NFL players are “poor” compared with other professional athletes?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a capitalist, just like the next guy. But I’m not going to feel sorry for Peyton Manning or Tom Brady - or any NFL-er making today’s NFL minimum wage - because they get paid less than basketball players, baseball players, golfers and whoever else happens to hit the jackpot.

And I don’t think Manning or Brady would ask us too either, … if they are as reasonably intelligent as they seem to be most of the time. Seven figures, eight figures - at some point it becomes just a number or to the exclusive restaurant where you can try to one-up your buddy who also makes seven figures.

MJD has written some interesting, informative stuff in the past. But this was one of the most pointless columns I’ve ever seen published. MJD, I think even though they are making less than the NBA-ers of the world, unless they snort it up their nose or find some other way to piss it down their leg, they are going to be alright.

I guess one of the downsides of the Internet is that there is room for almost anyone to write almost anything they want.

Michael Vick’s attorney shared “highlights” of a revised bankruptcy plan he intends to file by the end of the week, according to a wire service story posted on several sites.

As part of the plan, the embattled former quarterback would pay 10 percent of the first $750,000 he makes off of his annual salary to creditors and 25 percent of earnings between $750,000 and $2.5 million.

Those numbers are an improvement over the first “plan”, which called for him to keep all of the first $750,000 and pay 20 percent of the amount between $750,000 and $2.5 million, and increasing percentages on amounts above that. He gets so generous that after $10 million he will pay between 33 percent and 40 percent.

How about this for a plan. He keeps enough off of the first $750,000 to live on - say $100,000. Everything from $750,000 on up goes to creditors until they are paid off.

This guy spends a couple years in custody, and then wants to have his cake and eat it too. Vick filed for protection under the U.S. Bankruptcy code in July 2008 after killing dogs and gambling got him in trouble with the law. He reportedly listed assets of $16 million and liabilities of $20.4 million.

It astounds me some of the financial issues professional athletes get themselves in. But with bad business deals, crooked advisors and other bad luck, I can see how it can happen sometimes. Vick, however, brought his troubles upon himself.

If he’s got $16 million in assets, as the filing claims, he should be liquidating those to pay the creditors first - the new plan does call for him to liquidate a $2 million home under construction and sell one of two Virginia homes.

Maybe I should be satisfied. It’s a better deal that the original plan, which called for Vick to keep ALL of the first $750,000 he makes. At least this extracts something from him. But to me this doesn’t seem like nearly enough.

What happens if Vick doesn’t get back to the NFL? It’s not unthinkable, given that while he was a fantastic athlete he never was a great passer. What if he is unable to ever earn a salary that gets to a level where the creditors’ bills are paid? And what is a guy coming off of a federal prison sentence and under bankruptcy protection doing building a $2 million house?

This is wrong. Vick needs to satisfy his creditors first. Then and only then should he be able to go and rebuild his own bank accounts.

He made bad decisions. He went to prison. But paying the people he is in arrears to should be part of the penalty for those decisions.

So, the attorney representing a committee of Vick’s unsecured creditors may claims in the CBSSportsline story that the committee supports the plan. I don’t. I realize individuals and companies file bankruptcy all the time in this country and creditors end up getting pennies on the dollar if anything.

This is a different case. This is a guy who A) has a ton of assets already, B) has the potential to get back into a lucrative game and make several millions more, and C) brought any financial problem he faces upon himself. This is a case where creditors can be made whole.

And as such I think this is a case where a message needs to be sent. You make mistakes and lose a bunch of money? Fine. Mistakes happen. But you don’t get off easy for making them. You pay them off first. Then you can worry about yourself again.

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]]> http://www.zoneblitz.com/2009/07/01/revised-bankruptcy-plan-hints-that-vick-still-doesnt-get-it/feed/ http://www.zoneblitz.com/2009/07/01/revised-bankruptcy-plan-hints-that-vick-still-doesnt-get-it/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Zoneblitzcom/~3/kgJXNJm-12c/ http://www.zoneblitz.com/2009/06/24/espn-copies-zoneblitzcom-releases-all-decade-team/#comments Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:01:37 +0000 Tony http://www.zoneblitz.com/?p=980

OK, we don’t honestly believe that Zoneblitz.com inspired ESPN to release their All-Decade teams (offense) (defense) (special teams) for the ‘00 decade–but we did have our Zoneblitz All-Decade Team up almost a full five months before their’s.

Of course, Bill Williamson and the ESPN crew probably had a lot more time and resources to devote to their team than Andy and I did–assuming they spent more than the morning before the Super Bowl hashing their lists out.

And frankly, that makes the comparison that more interesting…

On offense, there were only a couple of differences–we didn’t name a fullback, given the under utilization of the position, but Neal would have been our logical choice.  We matched their selection at QB, RB, WR, G, and one of the two OT spots.  The only differences were their taking of Walter Jones over Orlando Pace–which is fair, as Jones was our #3–and Olin Kreutz over Kevin Mawae, which is also a fair choice.

On the defensive side, things changed up a little bit more.  We matched defensive ends, but they went with Kris Jenkins and Warren Sapp at DT, while we selected only Kevin Williams–who didn’t even get a mention in their list.  We strongly considered Sapp, and I remember Jenkins and La’Roi Glover coming up in our coversation, but in the end we left them all off–mainly due to inconsistencies that we felt each had in the decade.

At linebacker, we matched on Derrick Brooks and Ray Lewis at our top two spots, but ESPN went with Brian Urlacher, who we (somewhat grudgingly) placed 5th, after Zach Thomas and Joey Porter.  I still believe Urlacher is one of the more overrated players in the league (as in, I think he’s a solid, not great player).

We matched our top CB in Champ Bailey, who seems like the only no-brainer CB out there for the decade.  We went with Ronde Barber as our second choice, mainly boiling it down to him or Ty Law, with Patrick Surtain and Sam Madison also making our consideration set.  I don’t think Troy Vincent came up–probably because we’ve been hearing so much about his role with the players association over the last year that we figured he’d retired too long ago to warrant consideration.  And frankly, based on his stats for the decade, I think we were right–only twice in the decade did he play full 16 game schedules, and in his last four seasons he missed 32 games.  Not sure how that warrants All-Decade.

At safety, we agreed 100% with their selections–although while we included Brian Dawkins in our mix, we left John Lynch out, arguing that while he gained some notoriety for big hits, he really never seemed to us to be that great of a player.

ESPN is announcing their specialists today–we’ll update the post if we remember and are inspired, but in the end, it’s just kickers and punters and returners.

While playing on Twitter the other day, we noticed that there is a company that has set up profiles for each of the NFL teams, which I thought might provide some insight into which NFL franchise has the biggest fan base on Twitter.

We’ve seen numerous team related profiles in the past–a couple official, many more unofficial–but this appears to be the first time I’ve come across a single entity that has set up a matching account for each team.

So how did the teams stack up?

Dallas Cowboys - 12,737
Pittsburgh Steelers - 9,834
Chicago Bears - 7,515
New York Giants - 5,598
Philadelphia Eagles - 4,995
Washington Redskins - 4,762
Green Bay Packers - 4,712
Oakland Raiders - 4,263
Denver Broncos - 3,876
Indianapolis Colts - 3,704
Cleveland Browns - 3,460
New Orleans Saints - 3,454
Seattle Seahawks - 3,427
San Francisco 49ers - 3,419
Kansas City Chiefs - 3,183
Baltimore Ravens - 3,110
Atlanta Falcons - 3,062
Minnesota Vikings - 3,040
New York Jets - 2,943
Miami Dolphins - 2,942
Tampa Bay Buccaneers - 2,856
Carolina Panthers - 2,640
Cincinnati Bengals - 2,569
Buffalo Bills - 2,563
Houston Texans - 2,555
New England Patriots - 2,353
Arizona Cardinals - 2,037
Jacksonville Jaguars - 1,743
St. Louis Rams - 1,565
San Diego Chargers - 1,429
Tennessee Titans - 1,300
Detroit Lions - 916

Dallas leading the way probably isn’t surprising–but having a lead of nearly 3,000 followers over second place Pittsburgh is a bit surprising.

New York Giants being in 4th place, behind even Chicago, is a bit surprising–given the population of New York–and the Jets being at just under 3,000 followers is also a surprise.

Also, if you’re at all active on Yardbarker, the Philadelphia Eagles coming in 5th place would be a bit of a shock–although it probably is about right for their fan base, based on population.

Any surprises to anyone else?

It seems like Eli Manning is always following in big brother Peyton’s footsteps.  He chose to play quarterback, he chose to play in the SEC (following Peyton’s offensive coordinator at Tennessee to Ole Miss), and he was drafted into the NFL with the first overall pick in his class.

In 2008, just one year after Peyton led his Colts to a Super Bowl victory, nabbing the MVP trophy for his efforts, Eli led the Giants to Super Bowl glory–and nabbed an MVP trophy for his trophy case as well, making them the first (and so far only) brothers to play quarterback in the Super Bowl and win Super Bowl MVP awards.

Along the way, like brother Peyton, Eli has managed to whore himself for numerous products, even working with Peyton on spots for Oreo and ESPN–although at $5 million in endorsements, he still has a way to go to catch Peyton’s $13 million.

And now, as the 2009 season approaches, Eli looks to be following in Peyton’s footsteps again, as his rookie contract is set to close out–by requesting a potentially team crippling contract from the team that has turned him into a star.

In March of 2004, Peyton signed a then record seven-year, $99.2 million contract, which included a $34.5 million signing bonus.  The deal was supposedly done to be somewhat cap friendly, accounting for roughly 10% of the salary cap each season–but in the end, Manning had to restructure the deal in 2007 to free up cap space for the team–and coming into 2009, he was still carrying a cap number of $21.2 million.

Along the way, despite winning the one Super Bowl, the Colts struggled at times to put together a solid defense, were unable to keep their Super Bowl winning offensive line intact, and were forced (before the Super Bowl win) to let star RB Edgerrin James leave via free agency.

Now, brother Eli is looking to cash in, with his rookie contract expiring–supposedly asking for a salary in the $20 million/year range, and his agents pushing for him to be the highest-paid player in the game.

While many executives estimate Manning will end up in the $15 million/year range, the total contract could be worth as much as $120 million, with more than $40 million guaranteed.

While less of a risk than giving unproven rookie Matthew Stafford a guarantee of $42 million, one has to wonder if in the long run, signing Eli to that big of a deal will mean the Giants might be merely a decent team, rather than potentially a great one.

So far, the only quarterback that I can think of that has essentially turned down more money to make sure that his team could remain competitive–and with his three Super Bowl wins, two Super Bowl MVPs, an NFL MVP, $9 million in endorsements, and Gisele Bundchen waiting for him at home, I don’t think anyone would say that Tom Brady made the wrong call.