Archive for March, 2009

The Vikings finally awoke from their free agent spending slumber on Saturday, signing defensive back Karl Paymah to a one-year deal.  Paymah last played for the Broncos and is viewed by some as an untapped talent.  At the very least, he gives us a little more depth at corner and helps shore up the special teams.  He does have a tiny bit of an issue hanging over his head though:  Last year he was convicted of DUI over an incident from 2006 where he was found passed out behind the wheel of his Range Rover.  Not a big deal, obviously, [...]

It might be a mistake to read anything into this, but it is nevertheless a provocative item given all the rumors swirling around Jay Cutler and his future with the Denver Broncos: With off-season workouts scheduled next week at Dove Valley and uncertainty about whether Jay Cutler will show up, the quarterback on Thursday put his multi-million dollar Parker house up for sale. According to records found by The Denver Post, Cutler’s 7,516-square-foot house on nearly 1-1/2 acres is advertised for sale at $2 million, the real estate listing says. Cutler bought the house in 2006 for $1.34 million. Earlier [...]

Torry Holt asked the Rams last week to be released, and now the team has granted the veteran wide out’s request, sending him packing the same way they just did former Pro Bowl left tackle Orlando Pace.  Holt immediately becomes the most attractive receiver left on the market, unless you have a huge jones for Bobby Engram.  The points against him:  Age (32 – still younger than T.O. though); speed (not what it used to be); questions about whether he would make a good over-the-middle complementary-type receiver; bad knee.  A number of teams are believed to be interested in Holt, [...]

PFT says the Cardinals have officially placed Anquan Boldin on the trading block.  Speculation has the Cardinals asking for at least a 1st, 3rd and 6th round pick for him, plus whichever team got him would have to give him a new contract worth at least the $10 million/year Larry Fitzgerald is getting.  Boldin is a fine player and a tough hombre but is he worth all that?

Mel Kiper and Todd McShay don’t agree on much, but they’re on the same page when it comes to which position the Vikings will address in the first round of this year’s draft.  They both think it will be receiver – they just disagree on which receiver the team will select.  Kiper thinks it will be Hakeem Nicks of North Carolina, while McShay projects Florida‘s Percy Harvin to become a Vike.  Another guy lots of people like after his blazing fast time at the combine, Darius Heyward-Bey (who always makes me think of Turhan Bey), is projected by both men [...]

Tarvaris Jackson told Sirius NFL Radio that he expected (via Access Vikings) the team to make a quarterback move, and therefore wasn’t taken off-guard when the Sage Rosenfels trade was completed: It wasn’t really a big surprise. I kind of figured they were going to make a move somewhere. I really didn’t know exactly if it was going to be in the draft or wherever but I knew I was going to have to compete with somebody sometime this year. So it really doesn’t matter exactly. I just know the only thing I can do is just take care of [...]

Yesterday I reported that disgruntled (it’s officially right to call him that now) Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler had not yet had the promised air-clearing face-to-face with coach Josh McDaniels.  Now it turns out that, though I was technically right about them not actually meeting in person, they did have a parlay…via conference call, with Broncos owners Pat Bowlen, several Denver executives and Cutler’s agent Bus Cook joining in.  And how did this little electronic pow-wow turn out?  That depends on who you ask.  Some inside sources characterized the meeting as a disaster, but the Broncos themselves are saying it turned [...]

T.J. Houshmandzadeh made it clear that he chose Seattle over the Vikings partly because of the quarterback situations of each team, but now thanks to an email tip sent to ESPN’s Kevin Seifert, we have a better idea of Housh’s specific feelings about the Vikings’ QBs.  The email as reprinted by Mr. Seifert: I’m a HUGE Vikings fan living in Los Angeles. One of my employees and his brother know T.J. Houshmandzadeh. When asked why he passed on Minnesota, he told them that it was all good until they brought Tarvaris Jackson into talk to him (and basically signal to [...]

Remember all that fence-mending Broncos coach Josh McDaniels was supposed to do with his quarterback Jay Cutler after it came out that McDaniels wanted to move Cutler in exchange for Matt Cassel and Cutler got all mad about it?  Well it still hasn’t started, according to the Denver Post.  By now coach and player were at least supposed to have had a sitdown, but even that preliminary gesture has yet to occur.  And until it does, people like me are going to continue trying to guess what this all means for Cutler’s relationship with his coach and organization. Given the [...]

Former Vikings head coach Dennis Green has been named to serve in the same capacity with the San Francisco entry in the new four-team UFL, a pro football league that plans to play games beginning in October of this year (until someone comes to their senses).  Green’s last actual coaching job was with the Arizona Cardinals, as anyone who enjoys video of coach meltdowns will readily recall, and since then he was been doing analyst work while fending off the occasional rumor that Al Davis meant to offer him the Raiders job.  Green’s career record as a pro coach stands [...]