In his 13-year career, Chicago Bears linebacker Brian Urlacher established himself as one of the greatest NFL players of the new millennium. And when he officially retired on Wednesday, it got people thinking about his legacy. A Super Bowl appearance, 180 regular-season starts, 41.5 sacks, 22 interceptions, 1,052 solo tackles, eight Pro Bowls, four First-Team All-Pro nominations, and his status as one of the few players to rack up the AP's Defensive Rookie of the Year (2000) and Defensive Player of the Year (2005) awards all will likely lead Urlacher to the Pro Football Hall of Fame sooner than later.

That said -- and this happens to every great player -- there are those moments one would rather forget. When Urlacher called into the Dan Patrick Show on Wednesday morning, Patrick went through many of Urlacher's great moments, and then got him to remember one of the goofier plays of the 2006 season -- which may have been Urlacher's best.

When Patrick asked Urlacher, "Who was the quarterback or running back you didn't get, and you really wanted to?" it didn't take Urlacher long to remember one particularly embarrassing play against Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. It was Week 12 of the 2006 season, and Brady -- who will hardly go down as the most mobile quarterback of all time -- managed to elude Urlacher in the open field on a fourth-quarter scramble. As you can see in the video above, it was an atypical play for several reasons.

"Brady always kicked our butts -- I don't think we ever beat [New England] when Tom Brady was the starting quarterback," Urlacher remembered. "He juked me out of my shoes in 2006."

As Patrick said, "Every white guy who couldn't move loved that play, because it was Brady who was doing it."

"Man, he really got me, and he's one of the best of all time," Urlacher concluded. "There were just some guys I had a hard time with."

Not too many, but Urlacher also remembered his first experience against Minnesota Vikings superstar back Adrian Peterson, which did not go well at all for the veteran linebacker. It was Week 5 of the 2007 season, and Urlacher said something that got up Peterson's nose. He soon found out that it was a bad place to be.

"We had decent games against Adrian, but the one game I wish I could take back was the first game of his rookie year. He rushed for, I think, 220 yards (224 yards and three touchdowns on 20 carries), and ran a kickoff back 70 yards. At the beginning of the game, I said something ... I don't remember what I said, but I think I pissed him off. I said something about being a rookie, and he had a good game. 'Rookie this, rookie that,' and that was a bad move."

And that's one of the things we like best about Brian Urlacher -- one of the things that has always made him a rare individual. No matter how great he was at his peak (and he was spectacular), he could always be honest about the foibles that even the greatest must endure.

San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree suffered a torn Achilles during the team's OTA practice on Tuesday and could miss the entire 2013 season, Mike Garafolo of the USA Today reports.

The severity of the tear (complete or partial tear) is currently unknown and should be the determining factor for how much time Crabtree will miss. As noted by Garafolo, two players — Baltimore Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers defensive end Da'Quan Bowers — returned to the playing field in 2012 after suffering Achilles injuries during the OTAs. Lindsay Jones of the USA Today notes that, in 2011, Denver Broncos wide receiver Demaryius Thomas returned to action seven months after tearing his Achilles.

However, losing Crabtree for even part of the season would be a major blow to the 49ers as the 2009 first-round pick out of Texas Tech is coming off a breakout season. Crabtree established career-highs with 85 receptions for 1,105 yards with nine touchdowns and his involvement in the 49ers' offense increased with the insertion of Colin Kaepernick at quarterback.

Over the final seven starts, Crabtree was targeted on 10 or more passes four times as he caught 41 passes for 595 yards with five touchdowns during that stretch. Crabtree was targeted by Kaepernick on 28 passes in the 49ers' three playoff games, resulting in 20 completions for 285 yards and three touchdowns.

Depth at the wide receiver position has been issue for the 49ers over the previous two seasons, but the team has taken steps to improve that aspect of their roster this offseason. The 49ers acquired veteran Anquan Boldin from the Baltimore Ravens in March and used a 2013 fourth-round pick on Quinton Patton, a 6-foot, 204-pound receiver who caught 183 passes for 2,594 yards and 24 touchdowns in a 25-game career at Louisiana Tech. The 49ers' preferred method of cushioning the blow from the loss of Crabtree would be for 2012 first-round pick A.J. Jenkins to have a strong offseason.

Jenkins was inactive for much of last season, appearing in just 35 offensive snaps in three regular season games, according to official playing-time documents. Jenkins dressed for two playoff games, but is still seeking his first meaningful reception at the NFL level. If Jenkins does not develop, the 49ers could consider bringing future Hall of Famer Randy Moss back in 2013. Moss, 36, caught 28 passes for 434 yards and three touchdowns in 40.4 percent of the 49ers' snaps last season and added seven receptions for 112 yards in the playoffs.

New York Jets second-round quarterback Geno Smith has decided on a new agent, telling reporters that on Wednesday that he will sign with "Roc Nation", the sports representation agency owned by rapper Jay-Z.

Smith parted ways with his original agents, Jeff Nalley and Erik Burkhardt of the Houston-based Select Sports Group, after falling out of the first-round of the 2013 NFL draft.

"When you talk about being in New York, from the standpoint of what they can do in the city, I think it's a good move," Smith said, via Connor Orr of The Star-Ledger.

According to the NFLPA agent database, the only certified contract advisor employed by Roc Nation is Kimberly Miale, a associate and civil litigator at the Boston-based law firm of Tucker, Heifetz & Saltzman. Miale has not negotiated an active NFL contract, but the 2011 collective bargaining agreement has removed much of the negotiations from the rookie signing process.

As the No. 39 overall pick in the draft, Smith will sign a four-year contract worth around $5 million with nearly $3 million guaranteed. Smith will earn $405,000 in base salary this season, will receive a signing bonus of $2,030,620 and will earn $600,000 in fully guaranteed base salary in 2014.

Smith parting ways with a highly-experienced NFL agency for an upstart group owned by one of the most successful hip-hop artists of all-time has led some to question whether or not the rookie was choosing style over substance when it comes to his representation. Smith disagrees with that assessment.

"That's perception, I don't worry about the outside world's perception when it comes to that kind of stuff," said Smith. "I'm strong in my faith, I know this isn't because of an image thing or marketing myself. It's more about being comfortable with the people representing me."

You've gotta feel for Joe Namath. The dude remains the absolute unquestioned high point of the Jets franchise, and he's stuck watching a team with its head so far up its own backfield that it's turning in a circle. What do you do if you're Joe? Gripe and moan about the state of the franchise and come off as a bitter once-was, or try — really, really TRY — to find something positive, even when you're flying in the face of reality?

Namath, to his credit, is taking the latter route. Speaking to a local coterie of football fans, Namath went all-in on supporting incumbent quarterback Mark Sanchez. “I know that Sanchez is going to play better,” he said. “He went through some major distractions last year. No matter how much you say, ‘It doesn’t bother me, that’s not a focus-breaker,’ bull. I promise you you’ll see a different guy this year."

And by "different guy," Namath means a different Sanchez, not an entirely different quarterback, though he allowed that's not completely off the table. "Even if he’s not with the Jets, he’s going to play as long as he wants to," Namath said. "He’s that good. He’ll get another job. As long as he stays healthy, he’s going to stay in the NFL."

Wait, Sanchez writing his own ticket? Really? Sure, the only time Sanchez doesn't make a bad move in the pocket is when he makes a worse one, but we'll give Namath credit for knowing more about quarterbacking than the rest of us.

Of course, even the all-knowing Broadway Joe can't figure the Jets' thinking behind drafting Geno Smith. Namath can't figure why the Jets would pick up yet another quarterback, but noted that Smith is a "sensational athlete" despite being "a little lean."

Bottom line: Namath managed the trick of supporting Sanchez while still leaving himself scrambling room to support Smith should the rookie, or someone else, win the starting quarterback slot. That's why Joe's the best, kids ... you can't lay a hand on him.

-Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee.-

New York Giants defensive lineman Justin Tuck has gone through two frustrating regular seasons in 2011 and 2012, amassing a total of 9.0 quarterback sacks after putting up 11.5 in his All-Pro season of 2010. Tuck did play the game of his life in the Giants' Super Bowl XLVI win over the New England Patriots at the end of the 2011 season, but more is expected of a man in the last year of a five-year, $30 million contract extension he signed in 2008. Giants general manager Jerry Reese recently said he had a conversation with Tuck about underperforming, and hoped that Tuck could "get back to his old form."

Tuck's held himself accountable about the whole thing, and to that end, he's found an unconventional way to try and get back on track. In March, he looked up well-known performance coach Tony Robbins, the best-selling author and successful motivational speaker who's perhaps best-known for his tactic of having people walk over hot coals to find a new level of potential.

"I realize I haven’t played my best the last two years," Tuck told Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN New York. "Whether it be injuries or the circumstances surrounding this team. Who knows? I knew it was time for me to try something different. I've had people telling me to get my butt to Robbins for two to three years now. I finally said if I am going to be dedicated to my craft and to being the best that I can be, then this has to happen."

So, Tuck and his wife, Lauran, attended one of Robbins' "Feel the Power Within!" weekend seminars, and Robbins gave Tuck some advice about some things that may have been holding him back. Living up to the reputation of Michael Strahan as the Giants' main man on the defensive line is no small task, and if you don't approach it the right way, failure can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Robbins has worked with other notable athletes -- everyone from Wayne Gretsky to Serena Williams -- so he understands the surprising fragility of the athletic temperament.

Robbins to Youngmisuk:

"He’s a really responsible guy. He is not the kind of guy to swat that off. He feels it. He feels like he is responsible to carry things to some extent. So he fails and he’s down in that state of frustration and failure and then not feeling appreciated for what he doesn’t do. And all that gets in the way of just doing your job!"

"My expertise is the human psyche, which is the very thing that [fans] were complaining about with him. Being beat up by the very people that he wants to please was definitely a conflict for Justin. It is like, 'I can't win.' That [becomes the] mentality. This happens to many athletes."

Robbins, who says that Tuck's passion for the game is now "off the charts," believes that Tuck "won't have some story [excuse] about whether or not he is appreciated or whether or not things are going his way or whatever the case may be."

And yes, Tuck did the fire-walk -- 12 steps over hot coals that registered at around 2,00 degrees.

"This ain't no gimmick," Tuck said. "They were hot. You felt the heat. Even when you come off of them, they spray you down and your feet are smoking and you feel the heat."

After that, racking up another season with 10 sacks or more should seem fairly simple.

Former Chicago Bears middle linebacker Brian Urlacher announced on Wednesday that he has decided to retire from the NFL after 13 seasons.

"After spending a lot of time this spring thinking about my NFL future, I have made a decision to retire," Urlacher said in a statement posted on Twitter. "Although I could continue playing, I'm not sure I would bring a level of performance or passion that's up to my standards. When considering this, along with the fact that I could retire after 13 year career wearing only one jersey for such a storied franchise, my decision became pretty clear.

"I want to thank all of the people in my life that have helped me along the way. I will miss my teammates, my coaches, and the great Bears fans. I'm proud to say that I gave all of you everything I had every time I took the field. I will miss this great game, but I leave it with no regrets."

Urlacher, who turns 35 on Saturday, was the ninth overall pick of the 2000 NFL draft. During his 13 seasons with the Bears, Urlacher was credited with over 1,300 tackles to go along with 41.5 sacks and 22 interceptions, including two that he returned for touchdowns. The 6-foot-4, 258-pound Urlacher was named to eight Pro Bowls, which is the third-most total in Bears' history, trailing only Mike Singeltary (10) and Walter Payton (nine). Urlacher was a five-time All-Pro and was voted the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year in 2005.

"I'd been thinking about it for a long time," Urlacher said of his retirement during an appearance on the Dan Patrick Show on Wednesday morning. "I gave it a couple months to make sure I wasn't going to change my mind, but it wasn't really that hard a decision."

Injuries had begun to creep up on Urlacher in recent seasons. In 2009, a wrist injury ended his season after just one game and a serious knee injury in the 2011 regular season finale caused Urlacher to miss most of last season's training camp. Urlacher missed the final four games of the 2012 season with a hamstring injury.

The Bears considered bringing Urlacher back for the 2013 season, but announced in mid-March that the two sides could not reach agreement on a contract. Urlacher took issue with the Bears' offer, which was reportedly worth $2 million and included just $1 million in guaranteed money. Urlacher, who earned $8 million in 2012, had been seeking a multi-year contract from the Bears.

Urlacher had been linked to the Arizona Cardinals and Minnesota Vikings, but neither team appeared to be too interested in signing the veteran, instead opting to go with younger options at the linebacker position.

"I don't know how much was out there, to tell you the truth," Urlacher told Patrick about the NFL's interest in him at this point. "The Bears offered me a contract, and if I had sat around and waited until training camp, something [else] might have happened, but I didn't want to do that."

Free agent defensive back Charles Woodson is returning to the Oakland Raiders as Jay Glazer of FOXSports.com reports that the 36-year-old has agreed to terms on a one-year contract with the team that selected him with the fourth overall pick of the 1998 NFL draft.

The one-year dealhas been confirmed by the Raiders. According to Josina Anderson of ESPN.com, the deal includes a signing bonus of $700,000 and is worth a maximum of $4.3 million.

Woodson, who won the 1997 Heisman Trophy while at the University of Michigan, was the 1998 NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year and was named to four Pro Bowls during his eight-year stint with the Raiders. Woodson joined the Green Bay Packers in 2006 and in seven seasons Woodson would twice lead the NFL in interceptions (2009, 2011). Woodson was named to four Pro Bowl squads and earned Defensive Player of the Year honors in 2009 before he was moved to safety during a 2012 season where he would nine games with a broken clavicle.

On Feb. 15, the Packers released Woodson and the two years and $20 million that remained on his contract. Woodson drew interest recently from the Denver Broncos and Detroit Lions. With Woodson at the tail end of his career, and the Broncos primed for playoff success, the prevailing sentiment was that the Raiders and Lions, two teams with salary cap room, were being used by Woodson's camp as leverage against the Broncos, who are nearly $10 million under the cap, in contract negotiations. Fans in Oakland were quite vocal about wanting their team to re-sign Woodson and turned out in large numbers to greet Woodson when he arrived at the team's headquarters for his visit.

By re-signing with the Raiders, Woodson not only returns to where his NFL career started, but he will be able to keep closer tabs on his Napa Valley winery, TwentyFour Wines.

More news from the Yahoo! Sports Minute:

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• San Francisco wins bid to host Super Bowl L
• Tiger Woods has some thoughts on RG3's knee recovery
• New NFL medical records system could change injury landscape
• Cowboys QB Tony Romo out until training camp

Recently, you may have heard that the Internal Revenue Service came under some considerable fire for targeting certain groups seeking tax-exempt status while green-lighting others (such as one run by the brother of President Obama), but did you know that the National Football league, an organization that currently rakes in about $10 billion per year in revenue, is also a non-profit organization in the eyes of the government? While you're trying to figure that one out, we've got another one for you. Did you know that the league has been a non-profit organization since 1966, when the NFL merged with the American Football League, and then-commissioner Pete Rozelle folded in the request for an exemption with the request for an anti-trust exemption?

Yes, it's all true. Technically, the NFL is a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization. That part of the Internal Revenue Code "provides for the exemption of business leagues, chambers of commerce, real estate boards, boards of trade and professional football leagues, which are not organized for profit and no part of the net earnings of which inures to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual."

It's an interesting wrinkle, because while the NFL's member teams essentially act as a group of individual entities with an overarching partnership governed by the league, the league itself has not always argued so when it was against its benefit. In the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission vs. National Football League et al dispute argued in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1983, the league argued that it was a single entity, thus exempting it from certain antitrust statutes. The Coliseum Commission (and the Raiders franchise on whose behalf the Commission was responding) said that the league was instead a group of legal entities that act independently. The Court agreed with the Commission and the Raiders, finding that Rozelle had acted in bad faith in Al Davis' attempted move out of Oakland.

When Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens ruled against the NFL in the American Needle case in 2010, he more specifically outlined how NFL teams actually operate in practice, as opposed to pure theory.

NFL teams do not possess either the unitary decision-making quality or the single aggregation of economic power characteristic of independent action. Each of them is a substantial, independently owned, independently managed business, whose "general corporate actions are guided or determined" by "separate corporate consciousnesses," and whose "objectives are" not "common." Copperweld, 467 U. S., at 771. They compete with one another, not only on the playing field, but to attract fans, for gate receipts, and for contracts with managerial and playing personnel ...

[...] The fact that the NFL teams share an interest in making the entire league successful and profitable, and that they must cooperate to produce games, provides a perfectly sensible justification for making a host of collective decisions. Because some of these restraints on competition are necessary to produce the NFL's product, the Rule of Reason generally should apply, and teams' cooperation is likely to be permissible. And depending upon the activity in question, the Rule of Reason can at times be applied without detailed analysis. But the activity at issue in this case is still concerted activity covered for [the ruling's] purposes.

While member teams obviously operate for profit, the interesting wrinkle here is that the league itself claims not to. And one way to avoid profitability is to pay your current and former executives up the wazoo, which the NFL has done. In 2012 alone, the league paid approximately $53.8 million to its big -ticket execs, including $11.6 million to Commissioner Roger Goodell and $8.5 million to former Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who replaced Rozelle in 1989 and ran the league until Goodell replaced him in 2006. In 2011, Goodell received a $22.3 million bonus after negotiating several enormously lucrative extensions with the television networks that provide the predominant percentage of the league's revenues.

Nothing about the league is non-profit, with the possible exception of its charities. How is the NFL able to pull this off? Well, the definitions of acceptable 501(c)(6) organizations are pretty broad, and one in particular may be the best match.

According to the Revenue Code, "A trust established for the purpose of monitoring and coordinating business league activities of its member business leagues and collecting, administering, and disbursing funds to the member business leagues for business league purposes qualifies for exempt status under IRC 501(c)(6). The trust was created pursuant to collective bargaining agreements between a labor union and several business leagues that promote the home building industry in a particular geographic area."

Dave D'Alessandro of NJ.com recently wrote about one way in which the league sets this up.

The league collects $6 million in annual membership dues from each team, the teams write off those dues as "charitable donations," and the NFL in turn takes that $192 million and puts it into a stadium fund that gives owners interest-free loans as long as they secure public financing for their new or renovated stadiums. That means we’re left with two bills: Not only do taxpayers lose out on federal tax revenue, we pay for new stadiums that generate profits which enrich only the owners.

As Andrew Delaney pointed out in the Vermont Law Review in 2010, those stadium funds don't do much to benefit the cities that house the structures.

Technically, the city owns the stadium. Personal seat licenses or PSLs are sold through a public agency, tax-free. Profits are then used to pay down the owner’s share of the NFL loan. The money from the PSLs never goes directly to the teams, though the teams save millions of dollars in taxes and the loan from the NFL is paid down significantly, providing a very significant benefit to the owners.

Now, it would appear that the government is reviewing how this all came about. On April 24, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn (R.) introduced an amendment to the Marketplace Fairness Act that would end the practice that allows professional sports leagues to qualify for tax-exempt status.

In his 2012 "Waste Book" tome, which chronicles government waste, Coburn outlined his theory.

The National Football League (NFL), the National Hockey League (NHL), and the Professional Golfers’ Association (PGA) classify themselves as non-profit organizations to exempt themselves from federal income taxes on earnings. Smaller sports leagues, such as the National Lacrosse League, are also using the tax status. Taxpayers may be losing at least $91 million subsidizing these tax loopholes for professional sports leagues that generate billions of dollars annually in profits. Taxpayers should not be asked to subsidize sports organizations already benefiting widely from willing fans and turning a profit, while claiming to be non-profit organizations.

Teams in the NFL especially would have a hard time meeting the standards of organizations that, per the Revenue Code, have a setup in which “[n]o part of a business league’s net earnings may inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual and it may not be organized for profit to engage in an activity ordinarily carried on for profit.”

Coburn's amendment makes an important delineation -- professional sports leagues are not out for the betterment of their sports as a whole; they're out for the betterment of their own leagues. Anyone familiar with the NFL's battles with the AFL and USFL, or Major League Baseball's fights with the Federal League and other rogue organizations, or any number of other antitrust-related bullyings in the last 100 years, could tell you that. By the way, Major League Baseball surrendered its own tax-exempt status in 2007, in part because it didn't want to reveal the salaries of its top executives.

It's also worth mentioning, as D'Alessandro reported, that NFL employees don't have to pay taxes on hotel stays and restaurants at the Super Bowl. Keep that in mind the next time you're asked to vote on a hotel/restaurant tax to fund an NFL-related mega-building in your municipality.

Would taxing the NFL in line with its actual profitable purpose impact America in a major way? Most likely not -- even if Coburn's estimates are correct, "at least $91 million" can be carved up rather quickly by any government. But fair is fair, and the NFL's claim that it operates as anything but a near-bulletproof money machine is ludicrous as best, and near-criminal at worst.

NFL owners voted on Tuesday to award Super Bowl L to the San Francisco/Bay Area and Super Bowl LI to Houston, Texas.

The Bay Area last hosted a Super Bowl in 1985 and was considered the heavy favorite to receive the historic 50th Super Bowl as construction is well underway on a new $1.2 billion stadium in Santa Clara, 44 miles south of San Francisco. NFL owners had to decide between the Bay Area bid and one from Miami, which has played host to ten Super Bowls.

The bid from the Miami group was considered a long shot for Super Bowl L after the Florida state Legislature failed to vote on a bill that would have provided funding for much-needed renovations to Sun Life Stadium. As the losing bid on Super Bowl L, Miami also bid for Super Bowl LI, but the same stadium issues that doomed the bid for Super Bowl L sunk their hopes of beating out Houston for Super Bowl LI.

Houston has hosted two Super Bowls previously, the most recent being Super Bowl XXXVIII between the Carolina Panthers and New England Patriots in 2004.

"Congratulations to San Francisco and Houston on Super Bowl L and LI," Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross said in a statement released by the team. "However, we don't think there's a better place in the country to host Super Bowl than right here in South Florida. I am grateful for the hard work and creative energy that the South Florida Super Bowl Host Committee showed in their bid.

"Today’s decision doesn’t dampen our enthusiasm to pursue Super Bowls in the future, since we are steadfast in our belief that those games are good for the South Florida community."

Both San Francisco and Houston were awarded Super Bowls on the first ballot, which means their bids received a "super majority", i.e. 24 of the 32 votes, over the competing bid from Miami. If a new stadium does not materialize in South Florida, or if major improvements are not made to Sun Life Stadium, it might be very long time before the Super Bowl returns to the Miami area.

Next year's Super Bowl will take place at MetLife Stadium, an open-air facility outside of New York City. If that game is a success, other cold-weather cities with outdoor venues could be viewed as possible host cities for future Super Bowls. New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, one of the more powerful owners in the league, will be keeping a keen eye on the New York/New Jersey game.

"We would love one day to hold it here if it's a good experience there," Kraft said from Tuesday's meeting in Boston, via Mike Rodak of ESPN Boston. "We're looking forward to seeing this experience in New York and New Jersey.

"It would be great. I sort of like Boston/Providence (as a regional site for the event). This is where it all started. Right here."

If cold weather cities do get the green light to bid on Super Bowls, cities with open-air stadiums like Boston/Providence, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Green Bay, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Denver and Seattle will enter the bidding process. Atlanta and Minneapolis are currently building new indoor stadiums and will certainly look to host a Super Bowl once those venues are completed. As the NFL looks to grow the game overseas, London could join the competition to host future Super Bowls, as could Los Angeles, if the league ever re-enters that huge market.

Dallas and Indianapolis showed in recent years that they're fully capable of hosting a Super Bowl and could join the rotation of cities —  Glendale, Arizona (who will host a fourth Super Bowl in 2015), Tampa (four Super Bowls) and New Orleans (ten Super Bowls) — to host the league's biggest event. Miami and San Diego (which has hosted three Super Bowls) both belong in that rotation, but both will continue to be shut out until they resolve their stadium issues.

Portis was traveling 80 miles per hour in a 60 miles per hour zone, and according to the arresting officer, performed poorly in field sobriety tests. He registered .092 and .078 in two breath tests. The legal limit in Washington State is .08. It was not a good time for Portis to mess up, given his shaky hold on a roster spot and the team's possible need to prove a point publicly. Portis, who transferred from Florida to Maryland to California (Pa.) in his collegiate career, made some strides as a backup with Seattle over the last few years by impressing coaches with his athleticism and deep arm, but he wasn't able to work that into a move up the depth chart, especially when Russell Wilson ascended as a third-round rookie in 2012, and Matt Flynn was relegated to the role of highly-paid benchwarmer.

Seattle waived Portis in November of 2012 off the practice squad, and brought him back in April after trading Flynn to the Oakland Raiders, but there was no good reason to hang onto him in the face of his arrest, and some pretty good reasons to make a statement. In addition, the OTA performance of Johnson, a 6-foot-5, 251-pound undrafted free agent from Texas A&M, may have sealed Portis' fate.

So, in a way, the Seahawks might be thanking Josh Portis for doing what he did -- and not being Marshawn Lynch, Richard Sherman, or Russell Wilson when he did it.

The New England Patriots, Dallas Cowboys and St. Louis Rams each spent over $100,000 in guaranteed money on their class of undrafted free agents this offseason, according to a source with knowledge of rookie salary data.

NFL teams could spend a maximum of $78,170 in signing bonuses on undrafted rookie free agents this offseason, but there are no limits to the amount of guaranteed money teams can include in the standard three-year contracts signed by undrafted free agents. Seven NFL teams have spent more than the $78,170 signing bonus maximum in guaranteed money, with New England leading the way by spending $140,000 in guaranteed money on their undrafted free agents.

The largest individual guarantee among the Patriots undrafted rookie free agents belongs to Missouri wide receiver T.J. Moe, who received an $8,000 signing bonus and will receive $22,000 in fully guaranteed base salary regardless of whether or not he makes New England's 53-man roster for a total of $30,000 in guaranteed money. The 5-foot-11, 204-pound Moe excelled in the three-cone drill at the 2013 combine, posting the second-fastest time among all invitees. As explained here by Christopher Price of WEEI.com, the Patriots have shown a tendency to target players who perform well in that particular agility drill, so that Moe was a "priority free agent" for the Patriots does not come as much of a surprise. (Had Moe played at Rutgers, the Patriots might have requested that Foxborough officials award him the key to the town or make him an honorary selectman.)

Behind Moe on the Patriots' list of large guarantees is Nevada tight end Zach Sudfeld, who received the team's largest signing bonus ($12,000) and also has a $5,000 base salary guarantee for a total of $17,000 in guaranteed money. Sudfeld, who a month older than Rob Gronkowski and a few months older than Aaron Hernandez, caught just two passes in his first five seasons at Nevada catching 45 passes with eight touchdowns after being granted a medical redshirt for the 2012 season. Offensive lineman Elvis Fisher, Moe's former teammate at Missouri, received $15,000 in guaranteed money from the Patriots, while guard Josh Kline ($14,000), fullback Ben Bartholomew ($10,000) and linebacker Kanorris Davis ($10,000) also received five-figure guarantees.

The Cowboys ($104,500), Rams ($103,100), Tampa Bay Buccaneers ($94,670) and New Orleans Saints ($88,500) round out the top five in guaranteed money on rookie free agents. The Jacksonville Jaguars ($86,000) and Philadelphia Eagles ($82,000) have also exceeded the signing bonus limit. The Chicago Bears ($29,500) and Green Bay Packers ($35,500) are the two NFL teams to spend under $40,000 in guaranteed money on undrafted rookie free agents.

For the Patriots, Cowboys, Rams, Saints and Jaguars, committing larger-than-required amounts of guaranteed money to undrafted rookies is nothing new as each club spent $85,000 in guaranteed money or higher on undrafted free agents in 2012, as well.

The Cowboys, Patriots and Saints spent over $200,000 on undrafted free agents last season. Those guaranteed amounts were inflated as each team signed a single player to a contract with over $200,000 in guaranteed money. For the Cowboys, they paid undrafted offensive lineman Ronald Leary as if he were a fifth-round pick, guaranteeing him $214,000 ($9,000 to sign, $205,000 base salary guarantee). The Patriots' total was pumped upwards when they guaranteed Olympic silver medalist Jeff Demps $211,000 ($11,000 to sign, $200,000 base salary guarantee) following the London games.

As the first seasons of Leary and Demps show, large financial guarantees are not an indicator that the player will make an immediate impact in the NFL. Demps spent last season on injured reserve and was traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers during the third day of the 2013 NFL draft. Leary did not make the Cowboys' 53-man roster, spent 15 weeks on Dallas' practice squad and was inactive for the two games he was promoted to the team's active roster.

For the second consecutive season, the Cowboys handed out the largest individual guarantee, signing former Arizona State linebacker Brandon Magee to a contract that includes a total of $70,000 in guarantees, including $65,000 in fully guaranteed base salary. The second-largest guarantee on the Cowboys belongs to safety Jakar Hamilton, who pocketed a $10,000 signing bonus. The Rams' large guarantees were made to offensive tackle Braden Brown and safety Cody Davis, each of whom received $20,000 in guarantees. Linebacker Jonathan Stewart was third with $17,500, while linebacker Phillip Steward and running back Benny Cunningham received $15,000 in guaranteed money.

The largest signing bonus issued to an undrafted rookie this year belongs to UNLV linebacker John Lotulelei, who received $25,000 to sign with the Seattle Seahawks. Boston College offensive tackle Emmett Cleary received $20,000 to sign with the Indianapolis Colts, while Florida linebacker Lerentee McCray was third on the list with a $17,500 signing bonus from the Denver Broncos.

As is the case with guaranteed money, a large signing bonus does not improve a rookie's job security. Virginia Tech wide receiver Marcus Davis received a $15,000 signing bonus from the New York Giants after the 2013 draft and was waived after the team's rookie mini-camp. Davis was claimed the following day by the New York Jets. On Monday, the Philadelphia Eagles waived running back Miguel Maysonet, who had received a $10,000 signing bonus, which was the third-highest bonus that the Eagles paid to an undrafted free agent this offseason.

Players receiving small signing bonuses, or even no signing bonus at all, can have a major impact in their rookie seasons.

Last year, linebacker Vontaze Burfict, Magee's former teammate at Arizona State, led the Cincinnati Bengals in tackles (127) after receiving a $1,000 signing bonus. Burfict played in over 82 percent of the Bengals' snaps as a rookie, so it was not much of a surprise when he led the NFL in performance-based pay with $299,465. Baltimore Ravens kicker Justin Tucker was 30-of-33 on field goal attempts in the regular season, and four-of-four in the post-season (including two in the fourth quarter of a 34-31 win over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII) as a rookie who received zero guaranteed money when he signed with Baltimore last year as an undrafted free agent out of Texas.

Tiger Woods was in Washington, D.C. on Monday to promote the AT&T National tournament, so, of course, he was asked questions about Robert Griffin III. Because, why not? Woods, who had arthroscopic surgery to repair the ACL in his left knee in 2008, had some interesting advice for RG3 regarding the quarterback's own recovery process from off-season knee surgery.

“For me, did I have to be explosive when I came back? Yes, but only to a certain extent,” Woods told CSNWashington.com (via the Washington Post). “I could still hit the ball 30 yards shorter and still win golf tournaments. For him, losing a half a step is a big deal. And no one’s gonna be hitting me out there on the golf course. That would be fun, though. It’d be aggressive. We used to do that in high school — full-contact golf — but that’s a different story….

“I think what Robert’s going through, and we saw what Adrian [Peterson] went through and the year that he came back and had, and even Tom Brady. Those were lead leg injuries, too, at least for Tom. Robert, being a trail leg, hopefully he has the power back and explosiveness so he can push off and throw that ball.”

All indications are that Griffin, who injured his right knee multiple times late in his rookie season, should be ready for the start of the regular season. Redskins running back Alfred Morris recently told Shutdown Corner that Griffin appears to be ahead of schedule, and general manager Bruce Allen has said that there's a possibility (though it's premature to speculate) that Griffin might be able to see some action by training camp.

As for the full-contact golf idea ... well, we're in favor of that. Especially when it involves guys using those darned belly putters.

Related coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Redskins fans explain their RG3 registry shopping spree
• Raiders hat gets Chargers rookie in trouble with fans
• Modified NFL calendar could push draft into May

Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo will miss his team's OTA practices after undergoing a minor surgical procedure to remove a cyst from his back, Todd Archer of ESPN Dallas reports.

The Cowboys' three-week OTA period begins on Tuesday and end on June 6. The Cowboys have a mini-camp scheduled for June 11-13, but the report suggests that Romo will be on the shelf until the team opens training camp in Oxnard, California on July 19.

Romo, 33, had a career-high 4,903 yards and his 28 touchdown passes were the third-most in his seven seasons as the Cowboys' starting quarterback. Romo also equaled a career-high and led the NFL with 19 interceptions. Those turnovers.

This is a big offseason for Romo, who signed a six-year, $108 million extension that included $55 million in guaranteed money on April 1. Following the 2013 NFL draft, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said that Romo was going to be putting in "Peyton Manning-like hours" at the team's facility as Romo will have greater input in the team's offensive game-planning.

Romo, who cut back on the time he spends on the golf course in the offseason, can still put in that time at the facility, but the surgery means he will not get on-field work with the first-team offense until training camp.

With Romo on the mend, Kyle Orton will work with the No. 1 offense. First-year quarterback Nick Stephens, who went to training camp with the Tennessee Titans last season, and undrafted rookie Dalton Williams will get more work, as well. The Cowboys are currently at their 90-man roster limit and would need to release a player to add another quarterback for the OTAs and mini-camp.

RENTON, Wash. -- Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll may have been happy to have most of his players back on the field for the start of the team's 2013 series of voluntary OTAs, but that was not the first thing on his mind on Monday. Nor should it have been. Instead, when Carroll addressed the media after a spirited two-hour non-contact practice, his thoughts went immediately -- and comprehensively -- to the fact that six different Seahawks players have been suspended for violations of the NFL's substance abuse policies since 2010, and to the increasing perception that Carroll is leading a team that can't get out of its own way. Carroll was forced to address the situation this time because defensive end Bruce Irvin, the team's first-round pick in 2012, was recently suspended for the first four games of the 2013 season for reported Adderall use.

"This is a challenge -- it’s a challenge for us, and it’s a challenge for the league," Carroll said during a five-minute statement at the beginning of his press conference. "The league is doing everything they can to help guys make it through these young careers that they have, from teaching, to instructing, also the punitive side of it. They're doing a really good job and they’re in it for the right reasons, and we are too. We go beyond with what the league does. We go well past with what the guidelines ask us to do as far as working with our young guys trying to give them the direction, trying to give them the counseling. We have people on staff that are here specifically to work with our individual guys because I really see this as an individual challenge."

Right now, it's a collective challenge for the organization. Irvin's suspension followed the suspensions of cornerbacks Richard Sherman and Brandon Browner in 2012 (both for Adderall, though Sherman's was later overturned on appeal), and the earlier suspensions of guard John Moffitt, offensive tackle Allen Barbre, and defensive back Winston Guy. The NFL does not release the reasons for these suspensions, but Moffit admitted that he took Adderall before he knew he needed a medical exemption. Not even counting the overturned Sherman suspension, that still puts the Seahawks in the NFL lead when it comes to such suspensions since 2010.

And it's worth wondering, as some jokesters might, whether the Seahawks are now an Adderall team with a football problem.

Carroll is now saddled with the perception that he's lost control of the ship. Right or wrong, a team that many experts believe could represent the NFC in the Super Bowl has been pegged as a loose cannon. It's not something that he wants to deal with, especially when these perceptions are added to the scandals that contributed to his departure from USC in 2009. Can Carroll can maintain order in these more difficult circumstances? Can any NFL head coach, and how is that best done?

"We try to bring each kid as far along as we possibly can to make them available for the opportunity that they have," Carroll said. "Each one of them is a different story. Each one of them, there is a different road that they traveled. Even though we go together, they have to figure out how to do this right. [We want to see] why guys make choices and why guys will jeopardize their opportunity and their future. The league understands that, we understand it and have been working with it for years and years with young people, and we continue to still face issues that we want to try and deal with in a better way. It’s a very important opportunity in a sense for us to go ahead and figure it out, and then help these guys so that they can get what they deserve. Unfortunately if you go wrong, you get popped and that’s how this thing works, and I’m really disappointed that we have to deal with anything like this. But there are going to be other issues too, and we have to deal with them."

Irvin's suspension is particularly inexcusable, because he was in that locker room when Sherman and Browner were dealing with their suspensions last year, and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that no matter how many concentration-based benefits one may derive from the drug, the NFL is clearly on the warpath when it comes to this particular substance. Irvin did not speak to the media on Monday, but Carroll certainly had a lot to say about him.

"We're going to try and help him along as best as we possibly can. He made a mistake, and he admitted to it, and he owned up to it to his teammates, and he owned up to it to the staff, and he owned up to it to everybody. He wants to do right and show that he can, and we’re going to see that through and see if we can get that done for him. It’s no different than I would do with my own son. I do everything I can to teach them, to prepare them, to let them understand what the pitfalls are that are out there, and you hope and pray that your kids make the right decision when they’re faced with options. And when they make a mistake, you take them back under and you try to lead them along again and show them and hope that they can learn from the issues that they had to face."

One would of course wonder if this sensitive approach is the best way to go -- perhaps the Seahawks need to implement a bit more "tough love" in ways that players will understand. For whatever reason, the message is not getting through. Veteran fullback Michael Robinson, a longtime player rep and one of the most respected voices in that young locker room, put the problem on two causes -- the players' own lack of sense, and the NFL's incomplete message when it comes to what's illegal and what the consequences are. Robinson didn't excuse Irvin's mistake, but he did say, as he's said to me before, that the league's communication on these issues is frustrating at best.

"I think that definitely in this part of the year, they need to come in and talk to us. Don't wait until training camp. We get tested year-round, why don't we get educated year-round? The league will say, 'Well, we put lists out there, and you guys are still responsible.' We have a hotline we can call, but my only problem with that is that when you call that hotline, they don't really tell you what you can and can't take. They just say, 'Nobody's failed for it.' What does that mean? I think they could do a better job of giving us definite answers."

Robinson said that while an NFLPA representative does come in every year around training camp time to explain banned substances, he and other players wish that the NFL would do the same. "The league hands down the suspensions; maybe the league should do more education."

In the end, it may be up to the players in that locker room -- the ultimate safe haven for all NFL players -- to implement enough peer pressure for everyone to understand just how serious this issue is.

"I'm an older guy on the team, and the younger guys come to me and talk to me about a lot of different things," Robinson said. "And you know that guys aren't perfect. They make mistakes. We're a very, very young team -- still. I know people are picking us to do this, that, and the third, but we're still a very young team. You can't crucify a guy for one mistake.

"You have to know that when you walk outside this building, people are going to try and paint a picture of what this locker room is. We know what it is, and guys know they can talk to anyone about anything."

The league has the option to take additional measures against the Seahawks and other teams with multiple violations. NFL Spokesman Greg Aiello told NFL.com's Steve Wyche on Monday that per the league's remittance program, teams can be fined a portion of the fines given to the players based on a specific formula.

"There are financial consequences for a team that has multiple players suspended in a season under those policies," Aiello said.

In the end, that's small potatoes. The real problem for the Seahawks is that they're losing this war of perception and discipline, and if something doesn't change quickly, a gradually increasing issue could spiral out of control. The 61-year-old Carroll may see it as a parent-child issue, and that's admirable on a certain level, but things don't always work with that approach. Mike Holmgren, who coached the Seahawks from 1999 through 2008, took the same sensitive but indulgent tack with problem kids like Koren Robinson and Jerramy Stevens, and the results were less than ideal. Both players (and other players under Holmgren) failed to fulfill their athletic potential, and proved to be huge distractions along the way.

Robinson clearly understands who needs to be more responsible. But the ideal method for making that responsibility a consistent team focus seems to elude the Seahawks organization.

"It comes down to the player at the end of the day, and the player's responsible for what he puts into his body. Guys have to be smarter."

The NFL and NFLPA are closing in a deal that would make significant alterations to the league calender over the next three years, ESPN's Adam Schefter reports.

According to the report, the union is close to signing off on a deal allowing the league to move the start date of the new league year to before the annual scouting combine in Indianapolis. Historically, the new league year has begun in early-to-mid March, nearly two weeks after the final day of the combine.

An even bigger change, and one that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell does not need union approval for, is pushing the date of the annual NFL draft from late April to May. While the collective bargaining agreement allows for the commissioner to set the date at his or her discretion, Goodell would like to the NFLPA's approval before taking that step.

Schefter adds that the tentative dates for the 2014 draft are May 15-17, with the 2015 draft taking place from May 7-9 and 2016 draft on May 5-7.

In March, Albert Breer of the NFL Network reported that the NFL had sent a proposal to the NFLPA that would have pushed the combine back to March, the start of free agency to April and the draft to May. The period after the Super Bowl would focus on regional combines with the goal being that those events would increase the interest and viewership of the national combine in Indianapolis.

Veteran players, and their agents, were not too keen on the idea of delaying free agency until April since that financial frenzy is essentially their Super Bowl. Starting free agency earlier would be good news for veterans (and their agents), which should make it easier for the NFLPA to sign off on date changes for the combine and draft.

The job of a rookie quarterback was never what you'd call easy. But the sudden, meteoric splash of young talents like Robert Griffin III, Russell Wilson and Colin Kaepernick have meant that for new QBs, the learning curve is a ten-foot-high wall, and patience with their development is nonexistent. So it's got to warm the chilled hearts of Bills fans to hear that their latest prize acquisition, rookie E.J. Manuel, is acclimating well to the team's new offense under Doug Marrone and OC Nathaniel Hackett.

“The funny thing is it's easier to learn than the offense I had at Florida State,” Manuel said on SiriusXM. “It's a true West Coast-type progression offense. That's really what I wanted when I was coming through the pre-draft process. I wanted something that I could just go in and say 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, check it down and run it. That's it, it's that simple. I love it."

Now, the way that Manuel related it, the Bills' playbook sounds only slightly more complex than the "everybody get open" method of Thanksgiving Day football. We're betting there's a bit more to it than that. Still, Manuel is doubling down on the idea that he's got this thing knocked.

“The learning curve for me is a lot shorter simply because of what I had at Florida State," Manuel continued. "[FSU's offense is] more complex and a little bit harder to catch on and learn. This offense is very simple. I've done a great job with it.” Confidence, right?

Of course, understanding the playbook is only half the battle, if that much. Execution is key, and that's where Manuel will need to step up. As our own Doug Farrar wrote in previewing Manuel for the draft, "There are questions about his on-field decision-making ability, his ability to read defenses at an advanced level, how well he throws under pressure, and how able he is to throw with a sense of anticipation." Knowing what you have to do and actually doing it are two very different tasks, and perhaps it's to Manuel's benefit that he can get the sequence of plays in mind quickly in order to focus on, you know, actually running those plays.

Now, the Hot Sports Take here would be oh, the Bills offense is easier than a college one so the Bills must be worse than a college team!!! Wrong. Complexity is not necessarily a sign of genius, and simplicity does not necessarily equal simplemindedness. And yes, the Bills would destroy Florida State or any other ACC team they played.

SEC? Totally different story. Buffalo would be lucky to finish third in the SEC East.

Here's Mike Florio's take from Pro Football Talk:

-Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee.-

And it seems very silly because, as we know, by the time players get to the pros they know all the fundamentals in and out, right? Not so fast.

Michael Vick, the 32-year-old starting quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles, has played 10 seasons in the NFL, played two seasons at Virginia Tech, started three years for his high school team and probably played youth football for many years before that. And throughout those thousands of practices and hundreds of games, Vick says nobody taught him how to properly carry a football.

It is absolutely mind-blowing that Vick didn't know the correct way to carry a football before new Eagles coach Chip Kelly pulled him aside at a recent practice and taught him, but that's what he told PhillyMag.com:

“Chip told me how to run with the football the other day,” Vick said. “He taught me how to run with the football and how to carry the football, and I think it’s something that you just have to work on.”

The PhillyMag.com writer seemed to think Vick was being facetious, or putting him on, but he wrote that Vick answered a follow-up question earnestly:

“The other day, I broke out in the pocket, and the first thing Chip told me was to tuck the football,” Vick said. “So I showed him how I was running with it, and he looked at it and he knocked the ball right out of my hands. And he was like, ‘Hold it like this.’ And what he told me felt comfortable. I had a tighter grip on the football. That should secure that problem as long as I work on it. Like I said, you’re always a work in progress, and even when you think you know it all, sometimes you don’t. The people who feel like they know everything, they don’t.”

Vick has 791 rushing attempts in his NFL regular-season career, another 235 at Virginia Tech, and nobody ever thought to teach him how to properly carry the ball so he wouldn't fumble it. It's even more amazing considering Vick has been prone to fumbles through his career. He has fumbled 87 times in his NFL career, losing 39. He fumbled 32 times in the last three years alone, and turnovers are the major reason his star dimmed after what looked like a career rebirth in Philadelphia a few years ago. Maybe a simple "high and tight!" would have prevented some. Or Vick is exaggerating it all, because it does seem implausible that a 32-year-old who has played football nearly all his life had never been taught how to properly tuck the football when he runs.

But then again, there's a reason Lombardi began his Packers tenure by introducing his players to a football. You can't assume anything.

Beyond the usual Twitter beefs, Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio and Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution were two media pros who seemed especially irritated by the whole thing.

Dan Steinberg, the Big Kahuna over at the Washington Post's indispensable D.C. Sports Bog, got all investigative instead, and actually reached out to the fans who bought those gifts to see why they did it. As you'd expect, Steinberg got some interesting responses.

Patrick Dibert, a 24-year old Redskins fan who works in the non-profit sector for a Virginia group that fights hunger ... bought Griffin and his fiancée, Rebecca Liddicoat, a set of Brita water filters for $30 (including shipping), and he isn’t about to apologize.

“It’s not like that was money I’m not going to donate to charity; I’m just not going to go out to happy hour one time during the week,” Dibert told me on Monday. “I mean, it’s just kind of funny to say I bought RGIII a present.”

Wes Taylor bought RG3 and Ms. Liddicoat a pair of spoon holders for $8, and seemed surprised anyone was taking this so seriously.

"It was kind of a goof," Taylor told Steinberg. “I just saw something on there that wasn’t that expensive and was like ‘You know what, I might as well send that.’ It was off the wall, it was goofy and no one else had bought it.’”

And for John Short, buying a simple wedding gift was more about the goofiness inherent to the hardcore Redskins fan than any sort of "give to the rich" mistake.

“Everybody knows Redskins fans are crazy optimists who love RGIII,” he said, explaining why he and his wife spent $35 on a chip-and-dip set for a quarterback. “I think it’s just an indication of the way Redskins fans feel about the team. Yes, it’s crazy and illogical, but it was kind of a no-brainer once we thought about it. We love this team, and this is a unique way to support them; why wouldn’t we do it? You don’t see Jaguars fans buying their draft picks anything; that’s something that makes Redskins fans unique. It IS weird, but it’s something uniquely Redskins."

Some have criticized Griffin for not giving the gifted items to charity instead of keeping them, and in the long view, that's legitimate. However, 24-year-old Danny Kolta pointed out to Steinberg that while he spent seven bucks on a dish towel for the happy couple, he's also put down over $500 for an RG3 jersey at a silent auction for charity.

Kolta explained his thought process thusly:

“I’m only 24 years old, but he just gave me the most exciting Redskins season I’ve ever seen. He’s a normal person. Just because he’s rich he shouldn’t be able to receive gifts? That’s kind of stupid….With all the bad quarterbacks we’ve had, now we actually have something to be excited about. I just wanted to thank him. That’s the least I could do.”

And that's what this seems to be about -- a simple series of appreciative gestures for a player who has given Redskins fans hope they haven't had in a good, long while. it's also a way for the fans to feel involved, it seems. Dibert joked that the water filter he bought will help keep Griffin hydrated, and John Short advised Griffin and Liddicoat to use their new chip-and-dip set while watching the Dallas Cowboys lose during the Redskins' 2013 bye week.

“Congratulations, hope you have many happy years together, Hail to the Redskins,” Dibert wrote in the card that was sent with his gift.

What's so economically evil about that?

Rookie move, KA.

This past weekend, Allen was trying a little social-media outreach, recording himself on Vine visiting an In-N-Out Burger. And, as so often happens when athletes get unfiltered access to the public, things turned ugly.

Now, it's generally good form not to in any way endorse your competitors; if you're a Coke spokesman, you don't want to get caught drinking a Pepsi, for instance. But you can figure that Allen, who went to college at Cal, might be a Raiders fan from way back, and almost surely owned the hat before he was drafted in the third round by that bolt-oriented team to the south. Reasonable mistake, right? We can all agree that it was a simple oversight, can't we?

Of course not. This is NFL fandom we're talking about here. Chargers faithful saw the hat and absolutely went ballistic. Lob Shots compiled a few of the best Twitter responses. Some of the lines we can actually share:

"if that's post draft, that kid is an idiot. I won't be rooting for him." -@habitualistic

"Typical San Diego! If he wore that in Denver he would get destroyed!!!!!!!!!!!!!" -@dnel0780

"Welcome to San Diego. Now burn that Raiders hat" -@crackpotjack

You get the idea. Allen deleted the Vine and took to Twitter to express his regrets:

I apologize!

— Keenan Allen (@KAAdeuce1) May 18, 2013

I get it fans!!!! Won't happen again!

— Keenan Allen (@KAAdeuce1) May 18, 2013

Of course, the fans didn't let it go that easily, with one replying, "Shouldn't have happened in the first place." Another fanned the flames of the grassroots burn-the-hat movement, which would win Allen pretty much the entire city of San Diego but put a price on his head in Oakland.

Fun stuff, huh? When do we get to playing actual games again?

-Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee.-

We all thought Oxbow won the Preakness Stakes in Maryland on Saturday, but that's apparently because we weren't looking far enough in front. Ray Rice led the pack!

Well, at least he did on his own Facebook page, where he posted the above Photoshop. Rice's teammate Torrey Smith was actually at the race, and gave the "riders up" command — horse-racing's equivalent of "start your horses" — while wearing quite the tie:

And as for football players actually competing against their equine equivalents ... here, per Larry Brown Sports, is Ochocinco racing a horse. Giddyup.

On July 18, 2012, Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III signed a four-year, $21,119,098 contract that is fully guaranteed. That's commensurate with his status as the second-overall pick in the draft, and it pretty much insures that unless he really messes up the numbers, he'll never have to worry about money again.

Still, Redskins fans have decided to help RG3 out a bit with the expenses on his upcoming nuptials to the future former Rebecca Liddicoat by finding the couple's wedding registry on the Bed Bath & Beyond website ... and fulfilling all sorts of orders.

This was confirmed by Griffin on Twitter.

Thank you to the Fans who are helping buy ALL the items from our wedding registry at Bed Bath & Beyond … say.ly/MLw5Rbg

— Robert Griffin III (@RGIII) May 19, 2013

Now, before the expected outrage that fans of a player making this much money would pitch in to buy these things for the happy couple (who are tying the knot on July 6), Griffin has an answer for that. The fans found his registry without his prompting and threw down of their own volition.

I didn't ask the fans to buy me anything. They found it on their own and decided to get what they could. SMH at all these Debbie downers — Robert Griffin III (@RGIII) May 19, 2013

SMH, indeed. Now, it should be pointed out that according to the registry site when this was published, not everything had been purchased -- the most expensive item, a $499.99 Calphalon Contemporary Non-Stick 12-Piece Cookware Set, still had a "0" in the "Purchased" column.

However, those in RG3's thrall did apparently buy the $439.99 Palm Harbor 2-Piece Outdoor Wicker Seating Set, the $399.99 KitchenAid® 5-Quart Tilt-Head Designer Series Stand Mixer with Glass Bowl (in lovely Candy Apple), the $299.99 11-Foot Outdoor Round Cantilever Latte Solar Umbrella with Steel Frame, the $249.99 Calphalon® Precision Series 16-Piece Cutlery Knife Block Set, and the $199.99 Shark® Rotator™ Professional Lift-Away 3-in-1 Vacuum. There's also a programmable bread maker, wedding flutes from Vera Wang, and our personal favorite, the Nesco® American Harvest® Snackmaster® Encore™ Dehydrator and Jerky Maker.

In total, there are 203 different items on the couple's online registry, though a few more were unavailable for online purchase, so if you see Redskins fans storming the local Bed, Bath, & Beyond in search of a $399.99 Dream Chair Swinging Chaise Lounge or a $49.99 " WEDD 5X7 ORC/LIL INV" (whatever the heck THAT is), you'll now know why.

Last week, the Denver Broncos and quarterback Peyton Manning agreed to a renegotiated contract with the primary intent on adding insurance language for the 2014 season. The new contract, which was originally reported by Mike Klis of The Denver Post, was initially believed to have no cash or salary cap implications, but that was not the case, a source with knowledge of the contract details confirmed to "Shutdown Corner".

Under the new terms of the contract, Manning will still earn the $40 million in guaranteed money over the next two seasons, but the payouts of those amounts has been tweaked.

Instead of earning $20 million in fully guaranteed base salaries in 2013 and 2014, Manning received a $10 million salary advance and his base salaries in 2013 and 2014 have been lowered to $15 million in each season. The $10 million salary advance is treated like a signing bonus and will be prorated over the next four seasons, reducing Manning's cap number from $20 million to $17.5 million in both 2013 and 2014.

However, the downside to the cap savings the next two seasons is that Manning's cap number will increase by $2.5 million, going from $19 million to $21.5 million, in both 2015 and 2016 as the Broncos will have veered, slightly, from the "pay as you go" approach they had been taking with the 37-year-old quarterback.

With $2.5 million in additional cap space from the Manning renegotiation, the Broncos are now $9.9 million under their 2013 adjusted cap number of $139.76 million. That leaves plenty of room to land defensive back Charles Woodson, whose other suitors — the Oakland Raiders and Detroit Lions — each have less than $3 million in 2013 cap space remaining.

On Dec. 14, 2012, America's collective heart was broken by the school shootings in Newtown, Conn., when twenty children and six staff members were killed. Six months later, as a community tries to put things back together as only they will know how ... well, sometimes, it's just about having fun outside and trying to forget for a while. Sometimes, it's just about being a kid. On Saturday, the New England Patriots helped more than 500 kids, ages 6 to 14, do just that at Newtown's Blue and Gold Stadium, when they held a "Football For You" camp.

"As a part of the New England community, I think all of us were devastated when we saw what happened here," Patriots owner Robert Kraft told Richard Gregory of CTPost.com, "and if it can happen in the town of Newtown, it could happen in any city or town in America."

Kraft had just been covering a child in a football drill as a defensive back, while Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski threw the child a pass. Kraft got his feet tangled up with the child's, which caused Gronkowski to call a pass interference penalty. Kraft and Gronkowski were two of over 30 members of the Patriots organization on hand for the clinic.

"I hope they leave here with a good experience," Patriots linebacker Jerod Mayo said. "They've been through a lot these last couple months. It's the rebuilding process. They'll never be forgotten, but at the same time, these kids are very strong, their families are very strong, the parents out here in the stands are very strong. And hopefully we can come out here and provide a little temporary relief and some smiles."

Mayo has two children of his own. He talked about how the Newtown shooting just made him want to be closer to his own kids, and how he admired the strength of the Newtown community. Mayo also mentioned that such strength was similar to what he saw after the Boston Marathon bombings on Apr. 15.

"We saw it in Boston right after the horrible events on Patriots' Day, the same way the community came together."

At the end of the Clinic, Kraft presented Newtown Youth Football and Cheerleading president Sean Dunn with a Patriots jersey and tickets to one of this season's two games between the Patriots and AFC East rival New York Jets. Kraft made Dunn, who is a Jets fan, promise to wear the jersey when he attended the contest.

Newtown High football coach Steve George then gave Kraft a Nighthawks jersey.

"This is beyond anything I could've imagined," said Dunn. "What the Patriots have done is just fantastic."

Of course, football teams always have the game on their minds. Were there any future Patriots among the kids in attendance?

"We think so," Kraft said with a smile. "We had our scouts checking it out."

According to reports, Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick showed up to the first practices under new head coach Chip Kelly 'noticeably bigger' and very enthused about Kelly's high-tempo offensive system. Apparently, Vick also arrived with a point to prove, and a burr in his saddle when it comes to the criticisms levied against him regarding the sandlot nature of his game. On Wednesday, Vick went on Philly radio station 97.5 The Fanatic and laid it out to those who wonder if he'll ever play consistently and with the right kind of mechanics, as opposed to winging it and letting his athleticism rule the day.

“I’m really tempted right now to just say no comment to that because like I said a second ago, you don’t last 12 years in the NFL not being able to read the defense,” Vick told the station, via Sheil Kapadia of Phillymag.com. “Those people who are talking and saying that are just ignorant, and they know nothing about football. Unless they turn on the film and watch my game and see what goes on, then they’ll replace those comments with the right comments.”

But there are those who do watch tape, and are fairly informed on the subject, who believe that Vick holds on to the ball too long, fails to read defenses completely, doesn't correctly anticipate pressure, and runs himself into sacks that shouldn't happen. It's why Vick has started all 16 games in a season just once in his career, and it's why Vick was so turnover-prone in 2012, giving the ball up 11 times on fumbles. Vick led the NFL in fumbles in 2004 and 2010, but he doesn't want to hear the talk about the holes in his game.

“It’s incorrect. Without getting sensitive about it, it’s incorrect. So I’d rather not talk about it.”

Well, that's not entirely true. Vick also said that Kelly, the former Oregon offensive mastermind, recently taught him how to correctly run with the ball, which is a pretty amazing claim for a guy who's been in the NFL since 2001 and has 791 rushing attempts and 5,551 yards and 34 touchdowns in his career. You'd think someone would have taught him that before, but apparently not.

“The other day, I broke out in the pocket, and the first thing Chip told me was to tuck the football,” Vick said. “So I showed him how I was running with it, and he looked at it and he knocked the ball right out of my hands. And he was like, ‘Hold it like this.’ And what he told me felt comfortable. I had a tighter grip on the football. That should secure that problem as long as I work on it. Like I said, you’re always a work in progress, and even when you think you know it all, sometimes you don’t. The people who feel like they know everything, they don’t.”

One of the first things Kelly did when he took the Eagles job was to insure that he has Vick on the roster by restructuring his old six-year, $100 million deal down to a one-year, $7.5 million contract with a $3.5 million signing bonus. Vick is the projected starter at this point, but there's backup Nick Foles and fourth-round draft pick Matt Barkley to worry about. Vick would seem to have the ideal skill set for Kelly's offense, but Kelly doesn't generally tolerate a lot of sacks and turnovers from his quarterbacks. So, whether he likes it or not, and whether he thinks he has to or not, Vick will have to clean up a few things if he wants to go forward with his current team.

Greg Cosell of NFL Films and ESPN's NFL Matchup, who also contrubites to Shutdown Corner on a regular basis, watches as much tape as anyone in America who isn't working with an NFL team. His take on Vick, from May, 2012:

Vick is a transcendent athlete, capable of extraordinary throws and runs at any given moment. Yet he always leaves you wanting more. The reason, in simplest terms: Vick is not, to this day, an accomplished passer. He remains a week-to-week player with little stability or continuity to his game. He’s always dangerous, at times dazzling, but seldom consistent ... NFL quarterback is a highly disciplined craft. For those like Vick who are exceptional athletes, it requires more intellectual discipline to properly harness that athleticism than is necessary for those players predisposed to play in the pocket. Perhaps the most damning assessment of Vick is this: his frenetic, haphazard approach sabotages his ability to stay on the field.

Many with no specific agendas, who have watched Vick for years, would certainly agree.

As first reported by Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, former Indianapolis Colts defensive end Dwight Freeney has agreed to a two-year deal with the San Diego Chargers.

Freeney had a two-day meeting (Wednesday and Thursday) with the Chargers, who were in the market for pass-rush help after losing Shaun Phillips to free agency and Melvin Ingram to a torn ACL. Phillips led the Chargers with 9.5 sacks last season and his departure, to AFC West rival Denver Broncos, was expected to be cushioned by a larger role for Ingram, a 2012 first-round pick who suffered what will likely be a season-ending knee injury during the team's second day of OTA practices.

The 33-year-old Freeney spent the first 11 seasons of his career with the Indianapolis Colts, earning seven trips to the Pro Bowl while becoming that franchise's all-time leader in sacks with 107.5. Most of Freeney's production came during his first ten seasons as a defensive end in a 4-3 system. Last season, the Colts hired Chuck Pagano as head coach and, in a new 3-4 system, Freeney was moved to outside linebacker. Freeney posted just five sacks, his lowest total since notching 3.5 sacks in an injury-shortened 2007 season.

First-year Chargers GM Tom Telesco is very familiar with Freeney as he worked in the Colts' personnel department for 15 seasons before landing the San Diego job in January. San Diego's defensive coordinator is John Pagano, Chuck Pagano's younger brother, so the Chargers should have a good sense of how Freeney best fits their defense.

Seattle Seahawks defensive end Bruce Irvin has been suspended for the first four games of the 2013 regular season after violating the NFL's policy against performance-enhancing drugs.

Irvin, who is eligible to participate in training camp and the preseason, will miss games against the Carolina Panthers, San Francisco 49ers, Jacksonville Jaguars and Houston Texans before he is reinstated on Monday, Sept. 30. The four-game suspension will cost the 2012 first-round pick out of West Virginia $191,681 in base salary and could potentially void the guarantees on the $3,717,870 that remains on his four-year, $9.342 million rookie contract. The Seahawks could also seek to recoup a prorated portion ($307,902) of Irvin's signing bonus.

According to Dave "Softy" Mahler of 950-KJR in Seattle, Irvin's suspension is due to unauthorized use of Adderall, a substance that led to 2012 suspensions of Seahawks cornerbacks Brandon Browner and Richard Sherman. Browner served his four-game ban, but Sherman challenged his suspension, which was overturned.

"I want to apologize to my teammates, coaches and Seahawks fans for making a mistake when I took a substance that is prohibited in the NFL without a medical exemption," Irvin said in a statement. "I am extremely disappointed in the poor judgment I showed and take full responsibility for my actions. I will not appeal the discipline and instead will focus my energy on preparing for the season so I can begin earning your trust and respect again. I look forward to contributing to the team the moment I return."

Selected with the No. 15 overall pick in the 2012 draft, Irvin came off the bench in all 16 games and was credited with 16 tackles, including eight sacks, with 19 quarterback hits, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery in 43.41 percent of the Seahawks' defensive snaps. Irvin added another sack in the playoffs and was expected to play a larger role in the defense in 2013 as starting defensive end Chris Clemons is recovering from a torn ACL.

The Seahawks did cover their bases at the position this offseason by signing former Detroit Lions pass-rusher Cliff Avril to a two-year, $13 million contract on March 15.

NFL video on Yahoo! Sports:

Related NFL coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Jets RB Mike Goodson arrested on drug, weapons charges
• Patriots' Rob Gronkowski to have fourth surgery on forearm
• Jets rookie QB Geno Smith getting tips from former competitor

New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski will undergo a fourth surgery on his left forearm next week, but that is not the only medical issue that the two-time Pro Bowler is facing this offseason.

According to Mike Garafolo of the USA Today, Gronkowski recently underwent an MRI on his back and will visit with back specialist Dr. Robert Watkins to determine if surgery is required to repair a disc issue that has been bothering the 24-year-old since last season.

While at the University of Arizona, Gronkowski missed the 2009 season after having a disc shaved down and there were whispers prior to the 2010 NFL draft that Gronkowski had spinal stenosis, which both Gronkowski and his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, vehemently denied. The back surgery kept Gronkowski out of the 2010 combine and would be enough to drop Gronkowski out of the first-round in the 2010 draft as the Patriots selected him with the No. 42 overall pick.

Gronkowski answered questions about his durability by appearing in all 36 regular and post-season games in his first two seasons in the league. Over that stretch, Gronkowski emerged as one of the top tight ends in the NFL and last year signed a six-year, $54 million contract extension that included over $18 million in guaranteed money. Gronkowski missed five regular season games and one playoff game in 2012 after breaking his left forearm on two separate occasions.

The disc that is currently bothering Gronkowski is not the same one that was shaved down in 2009, Garafolo adds. Furthermore, the "hope" is that if back surgery is required, the recovery time would coincide with Gronkowski's recovery from the forearm surgery, which has been widely reported as being 11 weeks. That should have Gronkowski ready for the start of the regular season, which begins a little over 15 weeks after next week's surgery.

Free agent quarterback Vince Young is still looking for a team that will allow him to continue his NFL career, but the No. 3 overall pick of the 2006 NFL draft has crossed a major life achievement off his to-do list as he has graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in education.

Young places the achievement ahead of leading the Longhorns to a national championship win in 2005, Bruce Feldman of CBSSports.com reports.

"This will rank No. 1 because it is what I came to school for," Young said. "I came here to get an education, and to win a national championship. And now, I get to put that smile on my mom's face."

Young was a two-year starter for the Longhorns before declaring for the NFL draft following the 2005 season. In 60 games with the Tennessee Titans and Philadelphia Eagles, Young passed for 8,964 yards with 46 touchdowns and 51 interceptions, adding 1,459 yards and 12 touchdowns on the ground. Young last appeared in a regular season game with the Eagles in 2011 and went to training camp last year with the Buffalo Bills, but failed to make the team's 53-man roster.

"I'm about to be the first in my family to graduate," he said. "Just finishing what I started. That's why I'm trying to get back in the NFL. To finish what I started. That is the type of guy I am. I do work hard -- even when the times are good or bad. That's just how I was raised.

"My mom used to be strung out on drugs. The one thing she used to always be able to do, was be in the house to go to work the next morning. I don't know how she got up after she was doing the things she was doing, but she used to be right there making sure we were getting ready for school and she was going to work. I saw that."

Young, who turns 30 on Saturday, worked out for NFL talent evaluators at Texas' pro day in March, has yet to receive an offer, but remains hopeful that his phone will ring. If that doesn't happen, however, Young has taken a major step towards preparing for life after football.

New York Jets running back Mike Goodson was arrested on drug and weapons charges early on Friday morning, reports News 12 in New Jersey.

According to the report, Goodson and another man, identified as Garrett Evans, were found intoxicated in a parked SUV along Route 80 in Denville, New Jersey, which is about 15 miles northwest of the Jets' headquarters in Florham Park. A loaded .45-caliber handgun was found in the SUV and when the 25-year-old running back was transported to a hospital for evaluation, marijuana was discovered in his possession.

Both Goodson and Evans were released from the hospital and into the custody of State Police who transported the two men to the unit's Netcong's barracks. Mike Garafolo of the USA Today reports that Goodson was the passenger in the vehicle and that Evans has been charged with a DUI.

Goodson played his college ball at Texas A&M and was selected in the fourth-round of the 2009 NFL draft by the Carolina Panthers. Goodson spent three seasons with the Panthers before he was traded to the Oakland Raiders last offseason. In 40 career games, Goodson has rushed for 722 yards and three touchdowns with 59 receptions for 524 yards and one touchdown as a receiver out of the backfield.

The Jets signed Goodson to a three-year, $6 million contract on March 15 to compete for a starting job this season. Goodson's deal with the Jets included a $1 million signing bonus, which was the only portion of the contract that was guaranteed.

Former West Virginia and current St. Louis Rams receiver Tavon Austin recently said that he can't believe how many people are crawling out of the woodwork asking for money now that he's set up as the eighth-selected player in the 2013 NFL draft. "Everybody wants to be around you," Austin told the Rams' official website. "My phone doesn’t stop ringing now. It feels like they’re counting my bank account now. So that’s probably the hardest thing for me."

If Austin wants to know how tough it can really get, he should talk to Dallas Cowboys left tackle Tyron Smith, who was selected with the ninth pick in the 2011 draft out of USC. Smith signed a four-year, $12.5 million deal and went about becoming one of the best young blockers in the game. Considering what he was going through, it's amazing that Smith would be able to get his head together enough to find the field at all. As he recently told the Dallas Morning News, Smith agreed to pay his stepfather, Roy Pinkney, and his mother, Frankie Pinkney, a substantial sum of money in four installments to insure that they would want for nothing. But that wasn't good enough for the Pinkneys, or some of Smith's own siblings.

“There was a certain amount I agreed to give them, but it went way beyond that and I was just like, ‘I’m done,’” Smith said. “I feel like I shouldn’t have given them so much. There was nothing wrong with helping them out and making sure they were taken care of, but not something to where they live the same lifestyle as you.”

According to the Morning News story (and as we recalled on Shutdown Corner at the time), things got a lot worse when Smith tried to set some boundaries.

Last October, John Schorsch — Smith’s Dallas-based attorney at the time — said Smith’s “mom and/or the stepdad threatened the physical well-being of Tyron and the life of his girlfriend.” Smith filed a protective order against his parents last summer to keep them from having any contact with him. The order also prohibits contact from Smith’s parents through his siblings. During training camp last year in Oxnard, Calif., one of Smith’s brothers whom he said he hadn’t talked to “in a long time” showed up and had to be removed from the facility.

Six months ago, his attorney said, Smith discovered that his family had taken more than $1 million from him. “There was money missing, but I just don’t know where it went,” Smith said in the report. “There were times I would check my statements and it wouldn’t make sense and I hadn’t authorized it at all. I just felt betrayed and I was like, ‘Who can I trust?’”

Smith had been using a financial advisor recommended by his parents.

And last season, when Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett told Smith that he'd be moving from right to left tackle, he texted his family to share the good news. Of course, since left tackles generally make a lot more in their second NFL contracts than do right tackles, you can guess where their focus was.

“They were already looking forward to the next contract, talking about things they wanted to get already,” Smith said. “I was like I haven’t even got there and there’s not even a sure thing that I will. And that was all that was coming out of their mouth.”

As the report indicates, Smith is a good kid with the right attitude ... but there's only so much one can do. He hopes to reconcile with his family someday, but things will obviously have to change on the other end, and it's fair to wonder if his family isn't beyond hope.

“If all the incidents stop,” Smith said about what it would take for that reconciliation to happen, “and they just give me the space that I’ve asked for.

"The takeaway from this is don’t let people take advantage of you. And it’s all right to say no to certain people.”

New England Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski will have surgery next week to replace a plate in his left forearm, Albert Breer and Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network report.

Gronkowsk broke his forearm while blocking on a fourth-quarter extra point attempt in a 59-24 win over the Indianapolis Colts on Nov. 18. Gronkowski underwent surgery to repair that break and would miss five regular season games. Gronkowski broke the same forearm again during a divisional playoff win over the Houston Texans and had surgery in mid-January.

A third procedure took place in February after Gronkowski developed an infection following the second surgery. A fourth procedure to replace the plate in Gronkowski's forearm has been delayed by that infection, which has been treated with a round of antibiotics.

According to report, Gronkowski's forearm will be examined on Monday to determine if the infection has cleared. If it has, Dr. Jesse Jupiter will perform the operation sometime next week at Mass General Hospital in Boston. Gronkowski appears to be in good hands as Dr. Jupiter's bio at the Mass General website states that he "specializes in the care of traumatic and reconstructive problems of the upper limb. These include arthritis, fracture healing and failure to heal, nerve compression and injury, and both pediatric and adult injuries to the upper limb".

Previous reports have Gronkowski needing 11 weeks to recover from a fourth surgery. If the infection has cleared, and the fourth surgery does the trick, Gronkowski would be on schedule to return early in training camp and should be available for the start of the regular season. As Rapoport notes, if the infection has not cleared a fifth procedure, in July, is a possibility, which would jeopardize Gronkowski's availability for the start of the regular season.

Late last month, New York Jets second-round quarterback Geno Smith fired his agents after falling out of Round 1 in the 2013 NFL draft. Smith is expected to announce a decision on a new agent soon — the favorite is Jay-Z's "Roc Nation" sports agency — but he won't be the only Jets draft pick to change agents after being selected slightly later than expected.

According to Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, Jets first-round pick Dee Milliner has fired Impact Sports after he was not selected with one of the first five picks in the 2013 NFL draft. Milliner "tumbled" all the way to the ninth overall pick in the draft.

Milliner was expected to be a first round pick, but there were no iron-clad guarantees that he would be selected in the top five, or even the top ten. In our pre-draft, "Shutdown 50" series, Milliner was ranked ninth by editor Doug Farrar, who had Milliner going to the Cleveland Browns with the sixth overall pick in his mock draft. Greg Cosell had Milliner going to the Pittsburgh Steelers with the No. 17 pick in his mock draft.

Milliner was represented by Tony Fleming and Mitch Frankel, who were set to negotiate Milliner's four-year rookie contract which would be worth around $12.66 million, all of which would be fully guaranteed, including a $7,588,072 signing bonus. Based on the contract signed by Detroit Lions defensive end Ziggy Ansah on May 10, the No. 5 overall pick in the 2013 draft, Milliner would have received a four-year contract worth $18,594,502 in fully guaranteed money.

"I know that everything was done to ensure that Mr. Milliner would be drafted as high as possible," Fleming told Rapoport. "Dee was the first cornerback selected, and he was drafted ninth overall to the New York Jets. This is a tremendous accomplishment. I wish Mr. Milliner future success in his professional career."

Per NFLPA rules, Milliner has to wait five days before he can officially hire a new agent.

While there is a nearly $6 million difference in the value of the first (and perhaps only) NFL contract Milliner will sign, it's difficult to see how falling out of the top five can be pinned on Fleming or Frankel as neither agent was in charge of a draft war room making those selection. Perhaps Milliner was promised he'd go in the top five, but on the surface, that seems doubtful. Fleming and Frankel have three dozen active players and Impact Sports (Sean Kiernan is a third agent with that agency) as a group has over 50 active players in the NFL and 2013 was not this group's first rodeo.

Among their active client list, a dozen players were selected in the first two rounds of the draft, with six players chosen in Round 1, including Green Bay Packers linebacker Datone Jones, the No. 26 overall pick in the 2013 draft.

As we and many others reported yesterday, the New England Patriots released defensive tackle Kyle Love this week in the wake of the news that he has Type-2 diabetes. And for those who were wondering whether Love's release might have been for other reasons, there's a lot of evidence that there were no other reasons. First, there was the fact that New England released Love, who started 25 games for the team over the last two seasons, with a non-football injury designation. And, according to Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk, the Pats gave Love two options: Either retire for a year, in which case the team would not move to recover any part of the $500,000 signing bonus he received as part of his two-year, $3.09 million contract extension he signed in 2012, or take a risk on playing sooner, and take a walk.

Love chose the latter, and as it turned out, he didn't have to wait long for a team interested in his services. The Jacksonville Jaguars reported, per the team's official website, that they picked Love up off waivers on Thursday. Love had lost about 30 pounds off his 315-pound frame in the offseason, which left him unable to participate in off-season activities for the Pats, but according to his agent, Richard Kopelman, Love is back in fighting shape and ready for action.

“Prior to the diagnosis, Kyle recently experienced unexplained weight loss, but since being diagnosed and having altered his diet, Kyle has regained most of the weight he lost, is in good health, and was not limited in any way during offseason workouts in which he was engaged up until being told he would be released," Kopelman told ESPN Boston on Wednesday.

Love is the second former Patriots defensive lineman picked up by the Jaguars this week -- they also acquired defensive end Brandon Deaderick off waivers on Tuesday.

Love played primarily as a run-stopping tackle for the Patriots, and he could well perform the same role for new Jags head coach Gus Bradley, who learned a lot about multiple fronts from Pete Carroll when Bradley was Seattle's defensive coordinator. Jacksonville signed tackles Sen'Derrick Marks and Roy Miller this offseason, moved former tackle Tyson Alualu to end (where Deaderick will also compete for playing time), and the Jags, who have been missing true pass-rush effectiveness for a number of years, will try Jason Babin as the LEO pass-rushing end.

Kudos to the Jags for taking a chance on Love, who had quietly morphed into a good rotational player in his third NFL season. He was signed as an undrafted free agent in 2010 out of Mississippi State, and became an important cog in a championship-level line. It's also worth mentioning -- once again -- that diabetes is far from an NFL career-ender.

Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2008, two years after the Denver Broncos selected him in the first round. Three-time Pro Bowl defensive end Michael Sinclair, who racked up 73.5 sacks for the Seattle Seahawks between 1992 and 2001 and still holds the team's single-season sack mark with 16.5, was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes late in his career. And offensive guard Kendall Simmons started 83 games for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Buffalo Bills from 2002 through 2009 as a Type 1.5 (Latent Autoimmune) diabetic.

As for the Patriots, you'd think they'll have some explaining to do if the NFLPA comes calling with questions about the way this was handled. And the NFLPA should be doing exactly that.

David Garrard's injured left knee will end his decade-long playing career, but the former Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback could begin his coaching career with an internship with the New York Jets, reports Jim Corbett of the USA Today.

Garrard, 35, has not played in an NFL game since 2010. After being released by the Jaguars a week before the 2011 season, Garrard had surgery to repair a herniated disk, a procedure that ended his season. Garrard resurfaced with the Miami Dolphins last offseason, but injured his knee away from the field at the start of training camp and was released in September.

In March, the Jets signed Garrard to a one-year deal worth up to $1.35 million to compete for a spot on the 53-man roster. Garrard's left knee forced him to call it quits on Wednesday, but the Jets have provided him with an opportunity to return as a coach during this year's training camp.

"The Jets offered me the chance to come back if I want to take a shot at that coaching thing with an internship in training camp,'' said Garrard, whose wife recently gave birth to the couple's third child. "I told them I'd talk with my wife about it, so I could still work with those guys. "It's definitely something I'm considering.''

With Garrard out of the fold on the roster, 2013 second-round pick Geno Smith is expected to press the much-maligned incumbent Mark Sanchez for the starting role. Garrard said the battle will be fought during the preseason.

"If he [Sanchez] goes out there as the vet and gets back to just playing ball and not thinking too much on the field, he's going to make it tough on [the coaching staff],'' Garrard said. "It's up to those guys [Smith and Sanchez], the way they carry themselves and handle the offense, really putting points on the board and winning ballgames.

"So when they get to the preseason, it's really going to show who should be the guy.''

NFL video on Yahoo! Sports:

More NFL coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Patriots release Kyle Love after diabetes diagnosis
• Packers ready to welcome Brett Favre back into the fold
• Photos: Odd and premature sports retirements

One year ago, Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll went all-in on third-round quarterback Russell Wilson, saying that the former North Carolina State signal-caller (by way of Wisconsin) would get a huge number of reps in the preseason. He certainly did -- Wilson was worked like a mule up to, in, and through, the preseason, and it's safe to say things worked out pretty well ... pretty well, that is, for everyone but seeming incumbent Matt Flynn, who Seattle signed to a lucrative free agent contract before Wilson was drafted.

Now, another team has taken Carroll's "Always Compete" mantra to that same position, applying it to another third-round pick from NC State, and that philosophy may spell trouble for a seeming incumbent and former first-round pick. Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Greg Schiano came away from his first year at the helm of the Bucs without a clear picture of quarterback Josh Freeman, and that was reflected in his comments after the season.

Though Freeman became the first player in franchise history to throw for more than 4,000 yards in a season, and his 27 passing touchdowns also set a team mark, he was as bad as the Bucs were down the stretch. Tampa Bay lost five of its last six games, and Freeman threw nine of his 17 picks in the last three games. Of course, it wasn't Freeman's fault that the Bucs' pass defense was a dumpster fire in 2012, but when Schiano was asked about Freeman's future, he didn't sound convinced.

“That’s a question that, again, I’m not all in with myself yet, so how could I me all in with Josh Freeman or any other player?'' Schiano told the Tampa Bay Times last Dec. 31. "I’m not side-stepping you, but I need to evaluate.

"What I can say is, a 4,000-yard passer, a touchdown record – there’s a lot of things you say, “Wow.’ Are there things that frustrate you? Yeah. There’s things that frustrate him, too. And I’m not ducking the question, because quite frankly, I really like Josh Freeman. But I want to make sure I don’t get ahead of my skis at all here and really evaluate every single thing to what’s best for this organization. Do I think Josh Freeman is going to win Super Bowls in this league? I do. So, I hope that happens here. But again, at the end of the day, I have to evaluate everything before I can say that’s what we’re doing."

Part of that evaluation was the selection of NC State quarterback Mike Glennon in the third round. Glennon, who we ranked as the 41st-best player in this year's Shutdown 50 series, impressed the Bucs brass enough at the team's rookie minicamp for Schiano and general manager Mark Dominik to give Glennon the Russell Wilson treatment. Glennon got his chance after Wilson transferred to Wisconsin because NC State head coach Tom O'Brien would not let Wilson pursue his baseball aspirations, and Glennon was the beneficiary. Apparently, he took his collegiate lessons to the NFL, and looked like a model student from Day 1.

“We’re going to put a lot of pressure on him and see a lot of reps from him in the preseason," Dimonik recently told NFL.com (via JoeBucsFan.com). "He’s got to play. We may not see as much of Dan Orlovsky or even of Josh Freeman somewhat in the preseason as much as you’re going to see Glennon.

“We’re excited about just the little bit we saw from him [during rookie minicamp] in terms of mentally what he could handle. We kept piling more on him and he kept doing a great job digesting it, regurgitating it and running the team.”

Freeman, who is in the last year of the five-year, $26 million contract he signed after the Bucs selected him with the 17th pick in the 2009 draft, has seemed to get up Schiano's nose for a while. Whether it's his streaky play, of the fact that he's not as "rah-rah" as Schiano would like, or a simple schism in overall football philosophy (Dominik drafted Freeman, and Schiano may want his own guy under center), it would appear that the Bucs are not committed to Freeman beyond this year -- and the switch could come sooner than some expected.

Ten days after he was released by the Minnesota Vikings, veteran punter Chris Kluwe will reportedly sign a one-year contract with the Oakland Raiders, reports Brendon Ayanbadejo of FOXSports.com.

Kluwe, a native of Southern California, is looking forward to playing in his home state.

"I’m excited to be an Oakland Raider and be playing in California," said Kluwe. "Now, my family can actually come to games."

Kluwe spent eight seasons with the Vikings and was scheduled to earn $1.45 million in base salary and bonuses in the final year of his contract. According to Ayanbadejo, Kluwe's deal with the Raiders is for the veteran minimum, which for Kluwe, is $840,000.

The 31-year-old Kluwe had speculated that his release was due, in part, to his vocal support and advocacy for marriage equality, both nationally and in the state of Minnesota. Vikings GM Rick Spielman, who used a fifth-round pick in the 2013 NFL draft on punter Jeff Locke, denied that accusation, which he called "off-base". Kluwe finished the 2012 season with the highest net punting average of his career (39.7 yards), but ranked towards the bottom of the league in placing punts inside the opponents' 20-yard line and was one of three regular punters to not have at least one punt of 60 yards.

Kluwe joined first-year player Marquette King and undrafted rookie Bobby Cowan on the Raiders, who lost free agent Shane Lechler to the Houston Texans this offseason. According to Football Outsiders' advanced metrics, the Raiders ranked 31st in special teams DVOA (Defense-adjusted Value Over Average) last season and their punting unit ranked 31st, as well. Earlier this week, the Raiders took a step towards improving their punt coverage unit by agreeing to terms with Josh Cribbs, a solid return man who had 24 special teams tackles for the Cleveland Browns over the last two seasons.

The Raiders will need to clear a roster spot to officially add Kluwe, which means King, or most likely Cowan, will be released as carrying three punters is not feasible even with a 90-man roster during the offseason.

Off the field, Kluwe returns to California in the same week that Minnesota officially approved a marriage equality bill and at a time where many are awaiting a decision from the United States Supreme Court to overturn Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in the state of California.

NFL video on Yahoo! Sports:

Other popular content on Yahoo! Sports:
• Patriots release Kyle Love after diabetes diagnosis
• Packers ready to welcome Brett Favre back into the fold
• Photos: Odd and premature sports retirements

The Buffalo Bills announced on Thursday morning that assistant GM Doug Whaley has been promoted to general manager.

Whaley replaces Buddy Nix, who stepped aside from that role on Monday and is now working in a "special assistant" role to the club.

"He did a great job of helping to pick players and scouting," Nix said of Whaley. "He’s a level-headed mature guy and he makes the right decisions. He’s very loyal and will be to the Bills for a long time."

Whaley, 41, joined the Bills organization as director of pro personnel in 2010 after spending over ten seasons in the scouting department with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Whaley was promoted to assistant GM in 2011 and has been viewed as the Bills' "GM-in waiting". Whaley was actively involved in the team's search for a new head coach in January and received a contract extension in February, though it remained unclear when Whaley would replace Nix as general manager.

As recently as the Bills' post-draft press conference on April 27, CEO Russ Brandon said that Nix would be the GM for "a long time". Less than three weeks later, Nix is out, Whaley is in, and the Bills are moving forward.

The Minnesota Vikings may not be entirely sure who their future franchise quarterback is, but they apparently know who it won't be. It was announced on Wednesday that head coach Leslie Frazier has decided to move backup quarterback Joe Webb to receiver on a full-time basis. Webb, who started the Vikings' first playoff game since the end of the 2012 season due to starter Christian Ponder's elbow injury, completed 11 of 30 passes for 180 yards, one touchdown, and one interception in the Vikings' 24-10 wild-card loss to the Green Bay Packers. Those passes were the first Webb had thrown since the 2011 season finale against the Chicago Bears.

Webb was a quarterback/receiver combo player at Alabama-Birmingham, and the Vikings selected him in the sixth round of the 2010 NFL draft more for his impressive athleticism than his positional specificity. Now, with Ponder established as the starter and former New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Matt Cassel signed on as the backup, Webb will add to a receiver corps that was weakened in the offseason by the trade of Percy Harvin to the Seattle Seahawks, but bolstered by the addition of Tennessee receiver Cordarrelle Patterson in the first round of the 2013 draft. It was after the Patterson selection that Frazier informed Webb of his new full-time role.

"Coach brought me in the office and talked to me about the different plans they had and stuff,” Webb told Sid Hartman of the Star-Tribune. “I haven’t played [receiver] since my rookie minicamp, but I think I can adjust to it pretty good. You just have to put in a lot of work. Coach Stew [wide receivers coach George Stewart] will do a lot of that with me, so we’ll see what happens.”

It was thought by some at the time that the Vikings were drafting Webb to be a receiver, but after Brett Favre's injuries in 2010, the team's quarterback situation was nebulous enough for Webb to get some time under center. He started two games in his rookie campaign, and played in 11 in 2011. The Vikings selected Ponder in the first round of the 2012 draft, and while Ponder's overall results have been less than totally impressive, he's going to be the man at that position -- at least, in the short term.

Webb's positional switch does give Ponder another target. He spent his entire sophomore season at UAB at receiver, but he said that his experience at quarterback goves him an advantage.

“I always relate things that I see on the field to quarterbacks — to Christian [Ponder], to Matt Cassel, to [McLeod] Bethel-Thompson, I can tell those guys what I see out there. That will help them out a lot, my quarterback experience. Also, it will help the receivers out — for instance if they see a safety rotating down, different coverages that teams prepare and things like that. I think it’s going to be a big help.”

Webb, who displayed 4.4 speed as a draft prospect, has caught 33 passes for 480 yards and four touchdowns total in his college and pro careers. Just one of those catches -- a nine-yard reception against the Packers in Nov., 2011 -- came in the NFL.

In case you had any doubt as to the truism that professional football is a ruthless business, wonder no more. Two weeks after he was diagnosed with diabetes, former New England Patriots defensive tackle Kyle Love was released by the team via a non-football injury designation.

“This comes on the heels of Kyle having been diagnosed within the past two weeks with Type-2 diabetes," Richard Kopelman, Love's agent, told ESPN Boston. "Naturally, we are disappointed that the Patriots decided to part ways with Kyle, especially in light of the fact that a number of elite professional athletes with diabetes – both Type-1, which is known to be far more difficult to manage than Type-2 diabetes – have had very successful careers in professional football, hockey, baseball and basketball.

“Prior to the diagnosis, Kyle recently experienced unexplained weight loss, but since being diagnosed and having altered his diet, Kyle has regained most of the weight he lost, is in good health, and was not limited in any way during offseason workouts in which he was engaged up until being told he would be released."

Love, who had been with the Patriots since 2010, started 25 games over the last two seasons in the Pats' interior defensive line, most often as Vince Wilfork's bookend. Used primarily as a run-stopping expert, the 6-foot-1, 315-pound undrafted Mississippi State alum signed a two-year, $3.09 million contract extension in 2012 to prevent him from hitting the market as a restricted free agent.

Wilfork, whose father died after a long struggle with the disease, and whose foundation is committed to raising awareness about diabetes, can't be happy about this at all.

Love played his last snaps for New England in the Pats' AFC Championship loss to the eventual Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens. Love suffered a knee injury in the first half, and the Ravens took advantage with several big running plays in the last 30 minutes of the game. According to Pro Football Focus' run defense metrics among defensive tackles, Love was the 22nd most effective player at his position in the league last year.

“Having consulted with leading authorities on the effects of Type-2 diabetes, we have every reason to believe that Kyle will, in the immediate future, be at 100 percent, and will be prepared to participate in training camp in a couple of months," Kopelman concluded. "As Kyle said, 'there is no way something like this is going to stand between me and a long and successful NFL career.'”

Several prominent players have succeeded in the NFL despite known diabetes diagnoses. Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes in 2008, two years after the Denver Broncos selected him in the first round. Three-time Pro Bowl defensive end Michael Sinclair, who racked up 73.5 sacks for the Seattle Seahawks between 1992 and 2001, was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes late in his career. And offensive guard Kendall Simmos started 83 games for the Pittsburgh Steelers and Buffalo Bills from 2002 through 2009 as a Type 1.5 (Latent Autoimmune) diabetic.

Simmons is now a full-time advocate for those who manage diabetes.

“I wasn’t going to use diabetes as an excuse for missing a block or use [my blood sugar] being high and not really being able to focus as an excuse for missing an assignment,” Simmons told the War Eagle Reader in 2011 . “But you have to mentally tell yourself, ‘I can do this.’”

Clearly, Kyle Love has told himself the same thing, and we wish him the best.

Remember that infamous Seattle-Green Bay Monday Night Football game last season where the replacement refs completely butchered the outcome? (Sorry, Packers fans.)

Richard Sherman, who was on the winning Seattle team, sure does, and in a bit of devilish humor has hired replacement ref Lance Easley (he's the one making the "touchdown" score there) to umpire at his upcoming charity softball game. Easley ruled that Seattle's Golden Tate snagged a touchdown even though it sure appeared that Green Bay's M.D. Jennings intercepted the pass. (The NFL even admitted the refs' error, and that game was seen as one of the reasons hastening the NFL's settlement with its regular refs.)

"Don't be surprised if a few flags are thrown," reads Sherman's event's Facebook page. The game will take place on July 7 at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma, Wash., which is a good thing because any closer to Wisconsin, and Cheeseheads would be on the march.

-Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee.-

NFL video on Yahoo! Sports:

More NFL coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Florida car dealer says he gave kickbacks to agency for NFL clients
• Denard Robinson's NFL future rides on his ability to adapt
• Troubled Ravens LB Rolando McClain retires from the NFL at 23

New York Jets quarterback David Garrard is calling it a career due to a knee injury that ended his comeback bid last season with the Miami Dolphins.

"Having to call it quits. My knee is not holding up," Garrard said in a text message to Adam Schein of Sirius XM radio. "Continuing to swell after practices. Limiting what I can do."

Earlier on Wednesday, Ian Rapoport of NFL.com reported that Garrard had informed a few teammates that he no longer planned to be on the team, who signed the 35-year-old to a one-year, $1.35 million contract on March 12. Garrard's deal with the Jets included a $100,000 signing bonus, a $250,000 roster bonus (which will not be earned when Garrard officially retires) and a non-guaranteed base salary of $1 million for Garrard to compete for a role behind projected starter Mark Sanchez.

Garrard spent his entire on-field career with the Jacksonville Jaguars, who selected the East Carolina product in the fourth-round (No. 108 overall) of the 2002 NFL draft. Garrard took over the Jaguars' starting job on a full-time basis in 2006 and, in 86 games over his nine seasons in Jacksonville, passed for 16,003 yards with 89 touchdowns and 54 interceptions, earning Pro Bowl honors in 2009.

The Jaguars released Garrard a week before the 2011 regular season-opener, opting to go with 2011 first-round pick Blaine Gabbert at quarterback. Garrard would miss the entire 2011 season after undergoing back surgery. The Miami Dolphins signed Garrard last offseason and he opened training camp as the No. 1 quarterback, but injured his knee while playing with his kids away from the field and was released on Sept. 4.

According to Tania Ganguli of the Houston Chronicle, Garrard intends to retire as a member of the Jaguars.

With Garrard out of the fold, the No. 2 quarterback job with the Jets will either be Sanchez, 2013 second-round pick Geno Smith or 2011 seventh-round pick Greg McElroy, the No. 3 quarterback behind Sanchez and Tim Tebow for much of the 2012 season.

Baltimore Ravens linebacker Rolando McClain has informed the team of his intentions to retire, GM Ozzie Newsome announced in a statement released by the team.

“Rolando let me know that he plans to retire from the NFL," Newsome said. "We have placed him on the Reserve/Retired list."

The Ravens signed the 23-year-old McClain to a one-year, $700,000 contract that included up to $400,000 in playing-time incentives on April 12. McClain was arrested in his hometown of Decatur, Alabama on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest just ten days into his stint with the defending Super Bowl champions.

McClain is due in court on July 9 on those charges.

McClain entered the NFL as the No. 8 overall pick of the 2010 NFL draft by the Oakland Raiders, who signed the University of Alabama standout to a five-year, $40.25 million rookie contract. In 41 games in his three NFL seasons with the Raiders, McClain had 246 tackles, 6.5 sacks and recorded one interception. McClain's most impressive season came in 2011 when he posted five sacks and a career-high 14 passes defensed as a 14-game starter, but off-field issues would quickly derail his career.

McClain was arrested in Decatur, Alabama in January of 2011 after allegedly pointing a gun at another man and firing it next to his head. McClain was convicted and sentenced to 180 days in jail, but charges were dropped upon appeal when the victim would not cooperate with the criminal case against McClain. In January of 2013, McClain was again arrested in Decatur, Alabama after giving a false name to police during a traffic stop.

In between those arrests, McClain had a run-in during the 2012 regular season with first-year Raiders head coach Dennis Allen that resulted in a two-game suspension for conduct detrimental to the team. McClain was a healthy scratch following his reinstatement and the team granted his agent, Pat Dye, permission to find a trade partner. Even McClain's off-field issues voiding $3.635 million in guaranteed base salary, no team was willing to part with anything of value for McClain, who hit the NFL waiver wire and went unclaimed on April 5.

Before you run screaming into the streets, we should make clear that this headline is not meant to infer that Brett Favre is trying to un-retire again. No, it's simply that after years of bad feelings and unnecessary drama, the Green Bay Packers are ready to make nice with Brett Favre in an official way.

During the team's recent Tailgate Tour, an opportunity for fans to interact with players in an informal setting, Packers president Mark Murphy said that it's time to welcome Favre back into the fold as one of the team's all-time great players.

“I think each year it’s lessened a little bit,” Murphy said on Tuesday about the questions regarding Favre. “My first year was 2008, so we actually thought we might see Brett along the tour.”

Of course (and we'll keep this summary mercifully short), 2008 was Favre's first year away from Green Bay since 1992, when then-general manager Ron Wolf traded a first-round pick to the Atlanta Falcons that February for his future quarterback. Safe to say, that was a fairly one-sided deal. Favre threw for 61,655 yards and 442 touchdowns in 16 seasons for the Pack, but he was traded to the New York Jets in August, 2008 -- a few months after he retired, unretired, asked current general manager Ted Thompson to return to the team, and was rebuffed. After one iffy year with the Jets, Favre played two more seasons with the Minnesota Vikings -- a brilliant one in 2009, and an injury-plagued finale in 2010, before he finally hung 'em up for good in 2011.

There were bad feelings on both sides, and between Favre and successor Aaron Rodgers for a time, but the appearance by Favre and Rodgers on stage together at the 2013 NFL Honors show during Super Bowl week seemed to indicate that there had been some patching up along the way. Their dialogue in the show was pretty funny:

Rodgers: We’re here to present the award for best comeback player.
Favre: You know Aaron, everyone loves it when a great player makes a comeback.
Rodgers: (smirking) Yeah, well, not always. Some people wish great players would just retire and stay retired.
Favre: Good to see you, too, Aaron.
Rodgers: You too, man.
(Handshake, followed by awkward, possibly scripted quasi-hug)
Rodgers: That was awkward.

Peyton Manning, who won that award, riffed right off the Favre-Rodgers meeting. "What a tremendous honor to receive this award from two of the best quarterbacks of all-time, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers," Manning said. "It sure is great to see the two of them up here together. It’s great for football. I feel pretty confident me and Andrew Luck will be up here one day presenting this award together."

"I thought it was good timing to just let the fans know, to let Brett know, let's move forward," Rodgers said of that appearance. "Let's heal things up and move forward."

Favre had caught some flak for wondering why it took so long for Rodgers to grab a Lombardi Trophy, which he did at the end of the 2010 season when the Packers won Super Bowl XLV.

“I’m going to be honest, I was not surprised," Favre told a Atlanta radio station in October, 2011. "The biggest surprise to me would be that he didn’t do it sooner ... And I’d like to think that he watched, he learned, and then when he got a chance to play, he brought in his ability which is obviously very good or they wouldn’t have drafted him in the first round. He’s got tremendous talent, he’s very bright and he got a chance to watch and see successful teams do it right. And so he just kind of fell into a good situation. On top of that, he’s a good player. I don’t think anyone would question now the talent around him is even better."

Rodgers, who was selected by Green Bay in the first round of the 2005 NFL Draft and had to sit behind Favre for three years before he could establish himself as perhaps the league's best quarterback, reflected in 2011 about his relationship with Favre.

"I thought we were [close], I really did," Rodgers told ESPN in 2011. "You know, the first year was a tough year. I'm sure there were some feelings of frustration that they picked his potential successor in the first found. But then in '06 and '07 I thought our relationship really got strong, and he realized that I was in his corner ... I was the guy caught in the middle of the struggle, and it was out of my control."

Murphy first became specific about a Favre jersey retirement ceremony and other celebrations at the owner's meetings in March, saying that “I don’t know the timing of it ... certainly I don’t want to put a deadline on it, but it’s going to happen. It’s got to be sitting down – the organization, whether it’s myself or others, sitting down with him and working on the timing on it.”

Murphy said during the 2012 Tailgate tour that the time to retire Favre's number would be when it was "meaningful to Brett." Now, he'd like to see Favre on next year's Tailgate Tour.

“I envision someday he’ll be on this with us.”

Official NFL playing-time documents show that over his 10-year career with the Pittsburgh Steelers, current Cincinnati Bengals linebacker James Harrison played in 7,145 snaps on defense or special teams. Considering the physical, often violent nature of the sport, and Harrison's own playing style, that will lead to a lot of wear and tear on the body.

Since Harrison uses his body to make a living, it would make sense that he would spend some of his earnings in keeping himself in prime physical condition. During his introductory press conference with the Bengals on Tuesday, Harrison disclosed that he has spent upwards of half a million dollars per year on his body.

“My body is what helps me to make money," Harrison said. "Whatever there is that I need to do to try and make myself better or get myself healthy, I’m going to do it. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to say that I spend anywhere between $400,000-$600,000 on body work, as far as taking care of my body, year-in and year-out.

"As far as training, I have a hyperbaric chamber. I rent a hyperbaric chamber when I’m in Arizona. I have massages and I bring people in from New York, Arizona to where I’m at. There’s that cost. Like I said, I get body work almost every single day except Saturday and Sunday. I have a homeopathic doctor and I do a lot of homeopathic things. It’s just a lot, supplements, so on and so forth.”

In addition to the financial commitment, Harrison also spends considerable time each day getting worked on.

“Getting stretched, maybe an hour or so. Ice tub, hot tub, cold tub, maybe another extra 30 or 40 minutes," said Harrison. "Massage, maybe another two-to-four hours per day."

Harrison earned over $23 million over the four previous seasons, so spending a few hundred thousand dollars per year on chiropractors, acupuncture and massage therapy probably did not seem that excessive. Harrison added that he hasn't felt this good since 2008 or 2009, but he may need to cut back on the "body work" expenses moving forward.

Harrison's two-year contract with the Bengals is worth a total of $4.45 million and only his $1.2 million signing bonus is guaranteed.

The saga of former Detroit Lions receiver Titus Young rolls unmerrily along. Young, who participated in several criminal acts over the last few days, is currently on medical hold at the Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana, Calif., pleaded not guilty to a total of eight criminal charges at a video arraignment on Tuesday. On May 5, Young was arrested for a DUI, and was arrested again later that day for trying to steal his car from the impound lot. And on May 10, he was charged with burglary, assaulting a police officer, and resisting arrest after he tried to break into a San Clemente, Calif. home and fought with police during a chase.

In addition, the Detroit Free Press reports, Young is being charged with two additional felonies for a May 4 incident in which he stole candy, bottled water, and cigars from a Chevron station in Orange County. Farrah Emami, a spokesperson for the Orange County prosecutor’s office, said that Young first stole the candy and water, then returned to pilfer the cigars. He was not arrested at the time, but was identified at the scene. Emani said that each entrance into the store carries its own charge because he entered a commercial property with the intent to steal.

According to the Free Press, Young faces a possible sentence of 7 1/2 years in prison, or more, if he is convicted of all charges. He could still face additional counts of DUI and felony burglary for the May 5 incidents. Recently, his bail was reduced from $75,000 to $25,000, and according to USA Today, Young's family is considering whether to put up that money.

Based on Young's recent past, he might be better off in jail -- it's perfectly clear at this point that he has no ability to take care of himself. On Monday, Young's father Richard told the Free Press that he's seen his son spiral downward quickly, and that football-related concussions may be part of the reason. After a concussion Young allegedly suffered in 2012, Richard Young said, his son was concerned about his own mental well-being.

“He said, ‘I don’t feel good.’ He just started crying,” Mr. Young said his son told him. “He said, ‘I just don’t feel good. I’m not myself, I don’t feel good, Dad. I don’t know what’s happening to me.’”

Recently, according to his father, Young sought help at different facilities in California and Texas, and has been taking the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel, though not according to doctor's orders.

“Ain’t nothing we can do, man, but pray," Mr. Young concluded. "We just want Titus to get well, that’s all we’re doing right now ... We ain’t thinking about football, we’re thinking about our son now, because I don’t know what’s going on with him.”

Why is it the kickers who are always the most interesting players on any football team? Theory: too much time with nothing to do + lack of repeated hits to the head. Anyway, here's Jaguars kicker Josh Scobee with a tweet you cannot unsee:

That's ... whew, that looks like it's going to hurt. For The Win speculates that the unnamed O-lineman is Jason Spitz, who tips in at about 300 pounds. If he could put that beef behind a kick, he'd be able to boot 80-yarders, right? Forget what it looks like -- has Josh Scobee unintentionally altered the balance of the kicking game in the NFL?

-Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee.-

Carolina Panthers running back DeAngelo Williams has restructured his contract in a move that could keep the 2006 first-round pick out of Memphis with the team through the 2015 season, a source with knowledge of the situation confirmed to "Shutdown Corner".

Williams was entering the third season of a five-year, $43 million contract and was scheduled to earn $5 million in cash with an $8.2 million salary cap number for 2013. Williams will still receive $5 million in cash this year, but the deal has been restructured in a way that reduces his cap number to $5 million, a cap savings of $3.2 million that leaves the team $8.46 million under their adjusted 2013 salary cap number of $126.232 million.

Williams was scheduled to earn $4.75 million in non-guaranteed base salary with a $250,000 workout bonus this season. Under the renegotiated contract, Williams' base salary was lowered to $850,000 and his workout bonus reduced to $150,000. The remaining $4 million was converted to a signing bonus, which will be prorated against the Panthers' cap at $800,000 per season through 2017.

The real cash savings for the Panthers occurs in 2014 and 2015.

Prior to restructuring his contract, Williams was scheduled to earn base salaries of $5.75 million in 2014 and $6.75 million in 2015 with $250,000 in annual workout bonuses ($500,000 total) for a total of $13 million. The restructured deal reduces those base salaries to $1.85 million in each season (with up to $750,000 available in undisclosed base salary escalators in each year) with $150,000 in annual workout bonuses ($300,000 total). Williams is also due a $1 million option bonus — prorated over the 2015-17 seasons — between the first and fourth day of the 2015 league year.

Over those two seasons, Williams is scheduled to receive $5 million, a potential cash savings of $8 million to the Panthers over the remainder of Williams' contract. The Panthers tacked on two "dummy" years in 2016 and 2017 for proration purposes, but both of those seasons will void if Williams is on the Panthers' roster four days after Super Bowl L (Feb. 11, 2016).

In terms of salary cap savings, the Panthers are scheduled to save $3.2 million against their 2014 cap and $3.867 million on their 2015 cap. The Panthers will have to account for $2.267 million in "dead" money when the 2016 and 2017 seasons are voided.

The Panthers have a deep stable of running backs as Williams is joined by Jonathan Stewart (who renegotiated his large contract in February), 2013 sixth-round pick Kejon Barner and fullback Mike Tolbert, who was second on the team with seven rushing touchdowns in 2012.

Given the team's depth at the position and Williams' salary, his future with the Panthers had been in doubt. The Panthers could have designated Williams a "post-June 1" release at any time this offseason and doing so would have saved $5 million in cash and cap space on June 2. Instead, the Panthers have guaranteed Williams $4 million and increased his potential "dead" money from $9.6 million to $14.6 million, all but assuring him a spot on their roster in 2013. The deal increases the chances that Williams will remain in the fold through the 2015 season as his base salaries become reasonable and commensurate with a reduced role in the Panthers' offense moving forward.

Williams, 30, started 10 of 16 games for the Panthers last season, finishing with 737 yards (second behind quarterback Cam Newton's 741) and five rushing touchdowns while playing in 40.58 percent of the team's offensive snaps. Williams added a pair of touchdowns among his 13 receptions in 2013 and now has 49 touchdowns over his seven-year career with the Panthers, which ranks third in franchise history. Williams is the Panthers' all-time leader with 5,784 rushing yards and 43 rushing touchdowns.

San Diego Chargers outside linebacker Melvin Ingram suffered a torn ACL in his left knee during Tuesday's OTA practice, the team announced on Tuesday night.

Tuesday was the second day of OTA practices for the Chargers, who began their offseason program on April 1. The Chargers are in "Phase Three" of the program, during which no live contact is permitted.

Ingram, the No. 18 overall pick in the 2012 NFL draft, started two of 16 games as a rookie, totaling 41 tackles, including one sack, with five passes defensed. A good portion of Ingram's contributions as a rookie came on special teams where he was tied for the team lead with 12 tackles, including a team-high 11 solo stops.

According to official NFL playing-time documents, Ingram logged just 43.61 percent of the Chargers' defensive snaps. Ingram's one quarterback sack in 2012 was comprised of two shared sacks. The first half-sack came in a 7-6 loss to the Cleveland Browns on Oct. 28 and the second came in a 27-17 win over the New York Jets on Dec. 23. With the Chargers letting veteran outside linebacker Shaun Phillips walk away in free agency, Ingram was expected to secure a starting job in 2013.

Ingram posted 21.5 sacks during his 50-game college career at South Carolina and his ability to get to opposing quarterbacks was behind his selection with the 18th overall pick in last year's draft. Ingram's four-year, $8.263 million contract included $7.522 million in guaranteed money, including the $2.7 million in base salaries Ingram is scheduled to earn over the next three seasons.

With Ingram likely to miss the entire 2013 season, the Chargers may be in the market for a free agent pass-rusher. That could put them in the mix for free agent Dwight Freeney, a former Indianapolis Colt who is best-suited to play defensive end, but had five sacks as an outside linebacker last season in Chuck Pagano's defense. The Chargers' defensive coordinator is John Pagano, Chuck's younger brother. Another connection to Freeney is GM Tom Telesco, who spent 15 seasons in the Colts' scouting and personnel departments before getting the Chargers' job in January. In-house options to replace Ingram are Larry English, an underachieving first-round pick from 2009, and 2013 sixth-round pick Tourek Williams, who had 18 sacks in 49 games at Florida International University.

Former New Orleans Saints and San Diego Chargers running back Chuck Muncie suffered heart failure and died in his Los Angeles-area home on Monday, the Associated Press reports.

Muncie, the No. 3 overall pick of the 1976 NFL draft, had turned 60 in March.

Muncie spent the first four-plus seasons of his career with the Saints, rushing for 3,393 yards and 28 touchdowns in 59 games and earned Pro Bowl honors in 1979 before he was traded to the Chargers midway through the 1980 season. Muncie ranks fifth in Saints' history in rushing yards, is third in rushing touchdowns and is a member of the Saints' Hall of Honor.

“Sadly, we have learned of the untimely passing of Chuck Muncie,” said New Orleans Saints Owner Tom Benson. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family and other loved ones at this difficult time."

In 51 games over his four-plus seasons in San Diego, Muncie ran for over 3,300 yards with 43 touchdowns, a number that still ranks second in Chargers' history. Muncie led the NFL with 19 rushing touchdowns in 1981 and scored eight more touchdowns in a nine-game, strike-shortened season in 1982, earning Pro Bowl honors after each season.

“It’s disheartening and when I got the call it shook me up quite a bit," former Chargers guard Ed White said. “He was a great guy and a wonderful teammate. I loved him to death. The thing that I see when I close my eyes is his happy face, his smile and his kindness to everyone."

Muncie struggled with drug abuse during and after his playing career and in 1989 he received 18 months in federal prison after being convicted for cocaine distribution. Following his release from prison, Muncie dedicated himself to the Chuck Muncie Youth Foundation where he worked with at-risk youth.

"He was a star on the football field but his most impressive work was done in the second chapter of his life where he lived his life with great transparency,'' said Muncie's former wife, Robyn Hood. ''He simply wanted others to learn from his mistakes. He carried that message with him everywhere he went. And as a result, he changed the lives of hundreds of kids. He made a difference."

The Minnesota Vikings have unveiled prospective images of their new stadium, and, in the spirit of similarly asymmetrical and eye-snagging designs like the new Atlanta Falcons design, it's pretty darn striking.

Designed by HKS Sports and Entertainment, the stadium will seat 65,000, and can seat as much as 73,000 for a Super Bowl (which, of course, is always the goal). Since a retractable roof was too expensive, the stadium will have a clear roof to let in some of that sweet, sweet natural sunlight.

The venue will be configurable for all sorts of events, including concerts, baseball and NCAA basketball, just in case. And there promises to be a manicured plaza that will give Vikings fans something pretty to stare at if Christian Ponder throws the team out of the postseason.

The stadium's shape made us feel something ... something we hadn't felt in a long, long time. But it took the fine folks at Kissing Suzy Kolber to nail it:

The Vikings hope to start work on the giant immobile Sandcrawler this fall.

Earlier this offseason, Eagles running back LeSean McCoy challenged quarterback Michael Vick to a foot race. McCoy turned the air green with trash talk, calling Vick "old man" at every turn. But the old man still had some hops; according to Philly safety Colt Anderson, Vick dusted Shady by as much as five yards over a 40-yard distance.

Now, with OTAs underway, both sides are talking to the media ... and McCoy is hinting that the "feud" (spoiler: probably not a feud) isn't really over.

"The jubilation I felt that day was unbelievable," Vick told Yahoo! Sports' Jason Cole, "not only to myself but for the morale of this team. Nothing against LeSean, but he asked for it." Vick conceded that he didn't know he had that speed still in himself. He credited the Eagles' strength and conditioning coaches for getting him ready, and the Eagles players for getting him pumped.

"The build-up has been going on since the beginning of April," Vick said. "I was conservative about it because I didn't want something to happen. Just the fact of it being sort of immature and then if I tore a hamstring or LeSean tore up a hamstring, Chip [Kelly]'s going to be mad at me, so I didn't want that. (But) it got to a point where I couldn't take it anymore."

Alas, getting whupped wasn't enough for Shady. McCoy, 24, is now claiming Vick, 32, cheated by jumping the gun, and is alleging he has video proof of the infraction. (The video, strangely enough, has not yet surfaced.) Sour, bitter grapes, or keeping a healthy rivalry alive? We're going with the latter. The Eagles have had more than enough of the former.

-Follow Jay Busbee on Twitter at @jaybusbee.-

Former Detroit Lions receiver Titus Young had a questionable history even before he was drafted in 2011, but the recent behavior that caused Young to be arrested three times in less than a week has his family wondering just who Titus Young is anymore. Young was first arrested twice on May 5 -- first for a DUI, and second, for trying to steal his own car from the impound lot. Then, he was charged with burglary, assaulting a police officer, and resisting arrest last Friday after he tried to break into a San Clemente, Calif. home and fought with police during a chase.

On the same day Young was arrested for the third time, he had breakfast with his father, Richard, and Young's father says that there was no indication his son was about to continue his crime spree.

“We were really talking, and so I was loving it,” Richard Young told Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press on Monday. “We get home, and he said, ‘Daddy, I left my phone in the car. Can I get my phone?’ ’Cause usually I give my wife the key to hold the key, ’cause he’s not supposed to be driving. And I gave him the key, he sat in the car for a minute, and he took off and we ain’t seen him since.”

Richard Young told the Free Press that his son had recently sought psychiatric treatment in Texas and California, and that he was planning to enter a facility to deal with his problems. Now, he's in the medical ward of the Central Men’s Jail in Santa Ana, and Richard Young is left to wonder just who his son has become.

“I hope they just forgive Titus because this ain’t none of Titus, it wasn’t none of his fault. I look at my son right now, I don’t see my son. That’s not my son. I know my son. Titus is not the boy I really raised, I’m saying the way he acts, the way he intermix[es] in society right now. He shut down, he look[s] through you, it’s like he’s depressed. He don’t like to watch TV, he don’t like to get involved with music that much. And these are the things that you’ve got to know what’s going on in the world. Cause we in the world, you’ve got to have a relationship with the world. You’ve got to deal with people. I don’t know, but we’ve been trying to get him help.”

In truth, Young has had a complicated relationship with the world for a while. He was suspended from the Boise State football team for fighting with a teammate, a pattern of behavior that reared its head again when he sucker-punched Lions teammate Louis Delmas. And the willfulness that had him refusing to run the right routes for the Lions in a protest of playing time isn't that different from the attitude that got him booted out of the Athletes Performance facility in Carson, Calif., when he became belligerent over a 40 time he disagreed with during his pre-draft process.

Still, as Richard Young says, his son's behavior has clearly gone over the edge ... and he doesn't really know why. However, Mr. Young does point to a concussion his son suffered during his time with the Lions as a possible factor.

“He said, ‘I don’t feel good.’ He just started crying,” Mr. Young said his son told him last December. “He said, ‘I just don’t feel good. I’m not myself, I don’t feel good, Dad. I don’t know what’s happening to me.’ ”

According to the Free Press, Titus Young was undergoing counseling, and had been prescribed the anti-psychotic drug Seroquel. But Mr. Young said that his son was not taking the medication as prescribed. Currently, he's on medical hold, and he will undergo a video arraignment in the near future. He's being held on $75,000 bail.

“Ain’t nothing we can do, man, but pray," Mr. Young concluded. "We just want Titus to get well, that’s all we’re doing right now.

"We ain’t thinking about football, we’re thinking about our son now, because I don’t know what’s going on with him.”

While the hullabaloo surrounding Tim Tebow's continued football unemployment seems to far exceed his actual NFL prospects at this point (we pretty much stopped paying attention when the Omaha Beef became involved), there's now one possible opportunity for the former first-round pick of the Denver Broncos and recent New York Jets cast-off. Former NFL quarterback and current ESPN analyst Ron Jaworski, who does the "NFL Matchup" show with our good buddy Greg Cosell, also co-owns the Philadelphia Soul Arena League team. And Jaws has reached out to Tebow with an interesting offer: Come play for my team, get your mechanics in order, and see where you can go from there.

"If Tim Tebow decides he wants to play in the Arena Football League, I'd love to have him on the Philadelphia Soul," Jaworski told Philly.com. "I haven't heard back from him and I'm not going to push it. If he decides he wants to play Arena Football, we'll make a spot for him."

Most people in sub-leagues want Tebow for the name recognition alone, but Jaworski is far more serious about the football aspects of a Tebow signing, if such a thing could happen. Jaws and Soul head coach Clint Dolezel went to the trouble of sending Tebow a list of plays in which he could be featured. Most were red zone plays, and at this point in time, Dan Raudabaugh would be the team's starting quarterback.

But Jaws, who has forgotten more about quarterback play than most of us will ever know, is serious about the faster-paced arena game working wonders with Tebow's iffy passing mechanics.

"One [criticism] of Tebow is that he is slow and methodical," Jaworski said. "He would be forced to quicken it up in this league and it would be good training for him. You can learn a lot in this league. It's about processing information and getting the ball out ... or you get whacked."

Kurt Warner could attest to that. Warner came out of Northern Iowa as an undrafted nobody in the early 1990s, washed out with the Green Bay Packers, and eventually landed with the Iowa Barnstormers of the Arena League. From 1995 through 1997, he refined his game in the high-paced arena game, and he's said many times since that it allowed him to process information at a much faster tick. This, of course, helped him immeasurably when he joined the St. Louis Rams in 1998 and eventually became the leader of the Rams' "Greatest Show on Turf" offense. Warner went on to throw for more than 32,000 yards and over 200 touchdowns in his NFL career.

Tebow may not have that level of nascent talent, but then again, who knows? If he's really looking to get back in the NFL at a level that will allow people to take him seriously, the combination of Jaworski's football acumen, and a style of game that would force him to clean a few things up, might be his best shot.

Donovan McNabb will officially retire as a member of the Philadelphia Eagles, the veteran free agent quarterback said during an appearance on NBC Sports Radio, reports Paul Domowitch of the Philadelphia Daily News.

According to McNabb, who spent the 2012 season out of football and now works as an analyst for the NFL Network and NBC Sports Radio, the team has suggested a ceremony on Thursday, Sept. 19 as the Eagles host former head coach Andy Reid and the Kansas City Chiefs in a nationally-televised game on the NFL Network.

McNabb spent the first 11 seasons of his 13-year career with the Eagles, who selected the former Syracuse standout with the No. 2 overall pick in the 1999 NFL draft. McNabb passed for 32,873 yards with 216 touchdowns and 100 interceptions in 148 regular season games for the Eagles, led the team to five appearances in the NFC championship game, one Super Bowl and earned six trips to the Pro Bowl. McNabb is the Eagles' all-time leader in passing yards, passing touchdowns and ranks among the top ten in franchise history in both rushing yards (3,249) and rushing touchdowns (28).

In 2010, McNabb was traded to the Washington Redskins, where he passed for 3,377 yards in 13 games, but had more interceptions (15) than touchdowns (14). Following the 2011 lockout, McNabb was traded once again, this time to the Minnesota Vikings. McNabb's stint in Minnesota lasted just six games before he was replaced in the starting lineup by 2011 first-round pick Christian Ponder. Not content to be a backup, McNabb asked for and received his release from the team on Dec. 1, 2011 with the hope that he would catch on with a team like the Chicago Bears, Houston Texans or Kansas City Chiefs, each of whom had lost their starting quarterback to injury.

None of those teams signed McNabb, who officially remains a free agent.

McNabb suggested last year that he's a Hall of Famer, but his retirement becoming officially is unlikely to have the folks in Canton, Ohio starting a clock for his induction. McNabb's career will officially end with him passing for 37,276 yards, an impressive total that ranks 17th in NFL history. McNabb ranks 22nd in NFL history with 234 passing touchdowns, which has him sandwiched below Hall of Famers Y.A. Tittle (242), Len Dawson (239), Jim Kelly (237), George Blanda (236), but ahead of Hall of Famers Steve Young (232) and Terry Bradshaw (212). As much as "quarterback wins" has become an antiquated statistic, the multiple Lombardi Trophies that Young (three) and Bradshaw (four) helped their team win separates them from McNabb, who was intercepted three times in his lone Super Bowl appearance, a 24-21 loss to the New England Patriots.

McNabb had an outstanding career, and his number should be retired by the Eagles, but we doubt we'll ever see McNabb enshrined in Canton.

The Pistol formation -- that backfield concept which has the quarterback lined up about four yards behind center and the halfback another three yards behind him -- took the NFL by storm in 2012. Between Robert Griffin III, Russell Wilson, and Colin Kaepernick, more quarterbacks were running Pistol more effectively than ever before. That formation was invented by former Nevada head coach Chris Ault in 2005, and forwarded by Ault with Kaepernick as his quarterback from 2007 through 2010. In the NFL, we first saw the Pistol in 2008, when Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Chan Gailey reacted to the loss of his starting and backup quarterbacks (Damon Huard and Brodie Croyle, respectively) by inserting third-stringer Tyler Thigpen in the lineup and running Pistol to a high degree of effectiveness for a few weeks.

It took the rest of the league a while to catch up, but a handful of teams finally did. And now, the man responsible for that concept is also in the NFL. Ault, who retired from his position at Nevada in December of last year, has agreed to become an offensive consultant with the Kansas City Chiefs. Bob LaMonte, Ault's agent, confirmed the news to Dan Hinxman of RGJ.com.

“I’m excited to have an opportunity like this,” the 66-year-old Ault said on Monday. "It’s an opportunity to get a feel for the NFL. [Chiefs head coach Andy Reid has] hired an experienced staff. The timing is exciting. I’m going to learn an awful lot about the NFL.”

When asked whether he would be making more than the estimated $500,000 per season he was making at Nevada after 28 years there, Ault laughed and said that it wasn't about the money.

“I told Coach Reid, ‘Whatever I can do to help you win a Super Bowl, I’ll do it.’”

The Ault hire is interesting on a number of levels. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith, who was traded to Kansas City this offseason, was made redundant in Jim Harbaugh's offense in part because Kaepernick offered so much more dynamism, both in and out of the Pistol. So, while Kaepernick went from Ault to Harbaugh, Smith will take the reverse path. Smith, who is more mobile than people generally think he is, did run some option stuff for Urban Meyer at Utah, and it's possible that he could work his way into a few Pistol packages sooner than later.

Reid, who's been a disciple of the West Coast Offense since his days under Mike Holmgren in Green Bay in the 1990s, also hired longtime head coach and coordinator Brad Childress as a "spread game analyst," which would lead the alert reader to assume that either Reid is about to change his offensive philosophies, or he's worried enough about facing other offenses who run option and Pistol to get guys on his staff who understand how to break it down. Per the team's official website, Childress was tasked with helping to assemble information for the draft, and "he will also conduct thorough research on the spread offense, benefitting not just the offense but also helping the Chiefs defense."

Whether Smith runs mobile offenses or not may be the short-term question, but an advance knowledge of these philosophies could help the Chiefs as they look to transition to a new franchise quarterback -- perhaps in the 2014 NFL draft. Smith is a safe player at the position, but he has obvious limitations, and he may be a bridge player until Reid and his staff can get their hands on a 2014 quarterback class that looks to be far more interesting than the 2013 version.

While Florida State's E.J. Manuel (who was selected 16th overall by the Buffalo Bills) was the only highly-ranked quarterback in this class with serious experience in option packages, next year's group has quite a few prospects with abilities that lead more toward that kind of thinking. Louisville's Teddy Bridgewater and Clemson's Tajh Boyd don't just possess impressive passing skill sets -- they can also provide threats to defenses with their running abilities. And though Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel hasn't run as much specialized option stuff as some might assume, he's certainly got the athleticism (if not yet the proven passing ability) to make things interesting at the NFL level, should he make himself available for the 2014 draft.

In January, I wondered why some smart and opportunistic NFL team hadn't hired Ault yet. It's good to see that the Chiefs did, because who would understand the Pistol better than the man who first put it together?

Sad tale out of Mississippi as former Jacksonville Jaguars wide receiver Jimmy Smith is currently serving a six years in the Mississippi Department of Corrections after being convicted of drug and weapons charges, Chad Cushnir of firstcoastnews.com reports.

According to Mississippi DOC records, Smith is serving two years for "possession of a firearm by a convicted felon" and four years for possession of cocaine. Smith began his sentence on March 29, 2013 and his tentative release date is November 8, 2018.

Smith finished his career with 862 receptions for 12,287 yards — both totals rank among the Top 20 in NFL history — with 67 touchdowns during his 178-game career, all but seven of which were spent with the Jaguars after beginning his career a second-round pick of the Dallas Cowboys in 1992. Smith was injured during his first two seasons in the NFL and spent the 1994 season out of football before latching on with the expansion Jaguars in 1995.

During his 11-season career with the Jaguars, Smith earned five trips to the Pro Bowl and remains the franchise's all-time leader in every major receiving statistical category. Smith also had a few brushes with the law — a DUI arrest in 2001 that would eventually be dropped — and was suspended for four games during the 2003 season for violating the league's substance abuse policy.

Following his playing career, Smith was arrested for DUI in 2008 and on drug charges following a traffic violation in 2009. Smith received probation in both of those cases and voluntarily checked himself into rehab following the 2009 arrest. Smith appeared to have turned his life around, working with at-risk youth through his foundation. Smith was also quite active on Twitter, but has not posted since Dec. 18 of last year.

More news from the Yahoo! Sports Minute:

Other popular content on Yahoo! Sports:
• Chris Bosh's interesting pregame routine
• Andrew Wiggins' decision may weigh heavier on FSU's Leonard Hamilton
• Marshals: Tiger Woods never asked about Sergio Garcia’s shot

The Buffalo Bills announced on Monday that GM Buddy Nix is stepping aside to transition into his new role as "special assistant" to the team's personnel department.

Nix, 73, was a scout for the Bills from 1993-2000 before working as the assistant GM/director of player personnel for the San Diego Chargers. Nix rejoined the Bills organization in January of 2009 and was promoted to general manager later that year. The Bills were 16-32 in three full seasons with Nix as their general manager.

"I've made this decision to step away from the General Manager's position because I feel it is the right time," Nix said in a statement released by the Bills. "By the 'right time' I mean I think we have a good young roster, an excellent head coach with a good staff, and it's time to let someone else handle these responsibilities and move forward together. Timing is the main thing, but there are other benefits as well. This job is very demanding with a 24-7 schedule of responsibilities.

"This new position will enable me to spend more time with my family. I appreciate the opportunity given to me by Mr. Wilson and Russ (Brandon) and I'm fortunate to step away from the job and still remain a part of the team."

The Bills have not announced a replacement for Nix, but the team will likely promote assistant GM Doug Whaley to the position. Whaley spent 10 seasons in the personnel department with the Pittsburgh Steelers before joining the Bills in 2010. The 40-year-old Whaley is a highly-regarded talent evaluator and received a contract extension from the Bills in February.

With Whaley waiting in the wings, and CEO Russ Brandon eager to create a "robust" analytics program that Nix hasn't been too enthusiastic about, Nix stepping aside this offseason does not come as a complete surprise. However, Nix appeared excited about building a team around 2013 first-round quarterback E.J. Manuel and Bills CEO Russ Brandon maintained as recently as April 27 that Nix would be the team's general manager for the foreseeable future.

"There's a lot of speculation for whatever reason related to that," Brandon said of Nix's future with the team (via Tim Graham of The Buffalo News). "Buddy Nix is our general manager and will be for a long time."

In this case, "a long time" is sixteen days.

The adjustment process when one moves from high-caliber college player to NFL prospect trying to fit in is generally a tough one. With a few notable exceptions, even the best collegiate players need a settling-in period, and that has as much to do with the off-field stuff as it does with what Mr. Hot Shot will bring to his NFL team on game day.

Former West Virginia receiver Tavon Austin, perhaps the NCAA's most dynamic offensive player in 2012, is learning that the NFL brings a few interesting realities to light. Specifically, the fact that money brings problems in the form of people wanting money ... and we're not talking about agents and the IRS.

“Everybody expects a lot of things from you as far as money." Austin recently told the Rams' official website. "Everybody wants to be around you. My phone doesn’t stop ringing now. It feels like they’re counting my bank account now. So that’s probably the hardest thing for me right now, just people.

[Also: Former Lions receiver Titus Young arrested for third time in a week]

“I’ve got a lot of cousins now. The whole [city of] Baltimore is my cousin now. We’re going to just try to keep focused and let my mother and all of them handle it.”

Si.com's Peter King spent draft weekend in the Rams' war room, and he reported in his latest Monday Morning Quarterback that while Austin was admired for bypassing the temptations he encountered on the mean streets of Baltimore, there was some concern in NFL circles that Austin's past, in the form of "hangers-on," might follow him to the pros, and even increase their presence once the money started to roll in. That's not a knock on Austin, who is a great kid by all accounts -- it's a simple truth for young NFL players. Once the cash piles up, you're going to receive "heartfelt" communiqués from people you hardly know.

Draft pick salaries are slotted for the most part per the current Collective Bargaining Agreement and the numbers change a bit from year to year, but Austin will be moving up quite a few tax brackets when the numbers come out.

The Rams traded with the Buffalo Bills to move up to the eighth overall slot to select Austin. Miami Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill, last year's No. 8 pick, signed a four-year, $12.668 million contract with $7.653 million guaranteed in the form of a signing bonus. Tannehill made $480,000 plus a $484,841 roster bonus in his rookie year, and he'll rake in about $1.5 million this year between base salary and bonuses. Austin should expect to see similar numbers, and for him, it's all about getting his family out of his childhood home and into a better life.

[Also: Andy Reid gets rid of his Eagles stuff with one big garage sale]

"The goal was to get my mother and my grandmother out of the city," Austin told the Charleston Daily Mail on Apr. 28. "I don't know if they want to leave, but I'll definitely get them a better house so they don't have to worry about living in the hood. That was my No. 1 goal and that's happening now.

"I'm definitely going to move them to a nice place outside in the county, Harford County, or something like that, where it's a gated community and I pretty much know they're comfortable while I'm here working and they're back there just waiting for my game days on Sunday."

Sounds like Austin has his priorities in order, even if some around him don't seem to. As the noted philosopher Notorious B.I.G. once opined, "Mo' money, mo' problems."

More news from the Yahoo! Sports Minute:

Other popular content on Yahoo! Sports:
• Tiger Woods' win, Sergio Garcia's collapse at TPC should surprise nobody
• Steph Curry plays through pain in Warriors win; can he do it again?
• Top hoops recruit Andrew Wiggins to announce choice Tuesday

If Andy Reid ever goes back to the Philadelphia Eagles for any reason, he's going to have to buy his swag all over again. Reid, who coached the Eagles from 1999 through 2012 and now does the same for the Kansas City Chiefs, held a memorabilia sale at Harriton High School in Rosemont, Penn., on Sunday. The sale was to benefit the school's football team and also Laurel House, a local anti-domestic violence agency.

"We've got anything that we wore or collected over the last 14 seasons of Eagles gear," Reid's wife Tammy told Angelo Cataldi of WIP-AM. "You know, jackets, shorts, pants, tops, sweatpants, my rain boots, my cowboy boots that have Eagles on 'em. Everything's autographed and ready to go.

"I had to sell all the green and silver and black stuff, you know? You gotta, 'Out with the old, in with the new.' Now, I'm red and gold."

Indeed. And in case you missed the sale and would like to know what was on the blocks, we have some interesting pics after the jump, courtesy of WIP Promotions Director Chris Johnson.

Andy collected bobbleheads #AndyReidyardsale twitter.com/chrisjohnsonjr…

— Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnsonjr) May 11, 2013

Full set of NFC East sheets. #AndyReidyardsale twitter.com/chrisjohnsonjr… — Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnsonjr) May 11, 2013

Andy's NFL cue balls. #AndyReidyardsale twitter.com/chrisjohnsonjr…

— Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnsonjr) May 11, 2013

Andy's ice cream. #AndyReidyardsale twitter.com/chrisjohnsonjr… — Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnsonjr) May 11, 2013

Andy's cowboy (boooooooo!) boots. #AndyReidyardsale twitter.com/chrisjohnsonjr…

— Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnsonjr) May 11, 2013

Andy's bedside lamp. #AndyReidyardsale twitter.com/chrisjohnsonjr… — Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnsonjr) May 11, 2013

Andy's 5XL sideline pants. #AndyReidyardsale twitter.com/chrisjohnsonjr…

— Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnsonjr) May 11, 2013

Andy's shower shoes. #AndyReidyardsale twitter.com/chrisjohnsonjr… — Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnsonjr) May 11, 2013

Andy's birdhouse. #AndyReidyardsale twitter.com/chrisjohnsonjr…

— Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnsonjr) May 11, 2013

Andy's bicycle helmet. #AndyReidyardsale twitter.com/chrisjohnsonjr… — Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnsonjr) May 11, 2013

Andy's board games. #AndyReidyardsale twitter.com/chrisjohnsonjr…

— Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnsonjr) May 11, 2013

Socks, ruler, 5XL shorts and duct tape. #AndyReidyardsale twitter.com/chrisjohnsonjr… — Chris Johnson (@chrisjohnsonjr) May 11, 2013

More news from the Yahoo! Sports Minute:

Other popular content on Yahoo! Sports:
• Heat hold Bulls to franchise playoff-low 65 points in blowout
• Twins rookie steals HR, goes deep twice himself
• Watch: Blackhawks' current lineup better than 2010 roster?