RB Brown may be close to taking off Dolphins jersey

Having spent all the past five seasons with the Miami Dolphins, restricted free agent running back Ronnie Brown will possibly have to kiss bye his NO. 23 Dolphins jersey soon as the team is seriously considering trading him for a mid-level draft pick. And things could happen within a couple of days as Thursday is the deadline of free agent signing.

Brown was drafted by the Dolphins in 2005 as a first round pick and has had 928 rushes for 4081 yards and 31 touchdowns, with 648 rushing yards and 8 touchdowns last season. He was also selected to Pro Bowl last year. However the Dolphins still remove him from the team’s long-term plan when he became a restricted free agent in the early offseason. They offered him a first-round tender but Brown has yet to sign the offer sheet. The major reason for Dolphins to do so is that they want to trade the running back for something before he loses value completely with another injury. A mid-level draft pick is not a good price for Brown at all but it is better than nothing that they may get when Brown has to be cut instead of to be traded.

At age 28, Brown is oft-injured. If not because of the injuries, the Dolphins would no way give up a good running back as Brown. When healthy, he is one of the best backs in the league with a powerful combination of strength and speed. However, during his six-year career, he did not finish any but one season and has had three serious injuries. Some even doubt that his body will not hold up much longer. However, he is still has his value to some teams. After all, he still managed to be the most productive player in Dolphins jersey and the team’s staple on the offense line.

WR Harvin may wear back Vikings jersey late with migraine

While most of his teammates have been ready to wear back their Minnesota Vikings jerseys for the team’s voluntary offseason workout program on Monday, wide receiver Percy Harvin is struggling with lingering migraine headaches and is putting off his returning time.

Despite the annoying headache, Harvin still managed to have a breakout rookie season and missed only one game. He sat out practices a bit often but the team still offered enough support to the rookie since drafting him from last year’s first round as they already knew about the headache issue when they made the choice. Harvin did not fail them and had a productive season with 790 receiver yards and 6 touchdowns. He is also having a productive offseason somewhat by gaining some weight.

Although Harvin has visited a number of doctors, it still seems unlikely that he would have any chance to get rid of the migraine headaches. Following certain treatment plan could help reduce some pain, but Harvin said he is ready to have to bear it for a long time and try to contain it as much as he can. He did not give the exact time when he could return to join his teammates for the team’s offseason program, but he has been working out on his own, so it could be taken for sure that he will wear back his Vikings jersey in time for the new season.

Bills will fill in WR spot with remaining receivers

As it seems that wide receiver Terrell Owens is determined to find a new job out of the Buffalo Bills and unrestricted free agent Josh Reed will not stay without a demanded contract, the Bills are in need of wide receivers but they will not look for one outside the team on the free agent market.

According to reports, the Bills seem content to allow its in-house options to compete for the job. And general manager Buddy Nix said at the NFL owners’ meetings that the Bills is not going to target any of the current free-agent wide receivers but would like to offer the chance to those lesser-used pass catchers inside the Bills.

Thus the Bills have several choices with James Hardy and Steve Johnson to back up starting receiver Lee Evans. Hardy was a highly touted second-round pick when he put on the Bills jersey two years ago as a rookie, and Johnson is entering his third season with the Bills but finished the last season with just two grabs. Besides, the Bills can also pick a young receiver from the draft that begins next month.

Ravens CB Rolle is unlikely to return

The Baltimore Ravens are not expecting that veteran cornerback Samari Rolle could be able to wear back his Ravens jersey to play professional football in NFL again after having a couple of neck surgeries. What we can expect now is an official announcement of the veteran’s retirement.

"There’s been no indication that I’ve heard from anybody that Samari is going to be physically ready to play," Ravens coach John Harbaugh said. "If that changes, great. We would have to be very convinced that he would have no risk.”

Having played in eleven seasons since being drafted by the Tennessee Oilers in 1998 as a second-round pick, Rolle is turning 34 years old this August. Just as he has admitted by himself, having two neck surgeries at his age just essentially means his NFL career is done.

Cardinals added three defensive men with new contracts

Restricted free agent tight end Ben Patrick is to wear back his No. 89 Arizona Cardinals jersey for the 2010 season as the team has signed a one-year contract with him. Similar thing happened to safety Hamza Abdullah and fullback Nehemiah Broughton.

A seventh-round draft pick out of Delaware in 2007, Patrick has 30 career receptions for 323 yards and four touchdowns. He also has five postseason receptions, including a touchdown catch in the 2009 Super Bowl. All of Patrick’s first three career seasons were spent with the Cardinals, while six-year veteran Abdullah joined the Cardinals last December and played in only one regular-season game but took part in both postseason games.

As for Broughton, he spent last season with the Minnesota Vikings on practice squad without playing any game. He was previously signed by the Cardinals on Jan. 5 and on Tuesday the Cardinals signed his exclusive rights contract to get him back from the free agent market.

Broncos are targeting at free agent center Mawae

If the Tennessee Titans do not take action in time to keep Pro Bowl center Kevin Mawae, other teams could make their effort to sign him away. Actually, the Denver Broncos have already expressed their interest in getting the center before the free agency ends.

The Broncos need a center because they lost center Casey Wiegmann to the Kansas City Chiefs in free agency, and though the team is looking to get younger at that position, Mawae is still possible to put on Titans jersey as an unrestricted free agent if the Broncos offer an attractive contract in time.

However, Mawae also has the option to return to the Titans because he could be able to play a depth role if staying with the Titans. At age 39, he is too old to start any new era with a new team. He managed to finish the 2009 season without suffering injuries and was voted to Pro Bowl again, so staying with the Titans before retirement could be a better choice for the 17-year veteran.

Tom Brady is to skip offseason workouts for boxing training

According to latest reports, the New England Patriots star quarterback Tom Brady is not going to attend the team’s voluntary offseason program as he will be busy with some other jobs like boxing and visiting families.

On Saturday, pictures emerged of Brady training at a Beverly Hills boxing gym, the Boston Globe reports, via the blog Faded Youth. However, Brady isn’t training to take on Manny Pacquiao. He’s adopting the Chad Ochocinco program for offseason conditioning, working on his footwork and hand-eye coordination in the boxing ring. All of these seem necessary to the quarterback, who is still recovering from multiple injuries.

Besides, Brady is also reported to visit wife Gisele Bundchen’s family in Brail to show the newly born boy. Well, it’s just reasonable for the new farther to miss team works to enjoy such kind of family life. Just hope that he would wear back his Patriots jersey in time for preparation for the new season.

Former All-Pro guard Andrew was released by Eagles

The Philadelphia Eagles finally made their decision to release the former All-Pro right guard Shawn Andrews, making it clear that they are going to move on to rely on someone else who could be more reliable than Andrews.

The move on Wednesday was expected as Andrews missed the entire 2008 training camp because of depression and played in just two games over the past two seasons because of back injuries. The first-round pick in 2004 draft did offer his efforts and contributions to the Eagles but he just became expendable while the team is moving in another direction.

Andrews has been considered to be eccentric since putting on the Eagles jersey because of his interest in music and offbeat personality. He posted some videos on YouTube last summer while he was sitting out practices, and sported faux-hawk haircuts that sometimes were dyed blonde or red, and often wandered through the locker room singing out loud. He missed rookie season after breaking a leg in the season opener but managed to rebound and emerge into one of the best players at his position by making the Pro Bowl in 2006 and 2007 and winning a contract that ran through 2015. He deed has the talent in football, so he has said that he would continue playing after being released by the Eagles.

Saints are looking for Des in free agent market

Finishing the past season with the Super Bowl title, the New Orleans Saints found it still necessary to improve their team for a new season. They are as active on the free agent market as any other team and their focus is on defensive ends.

According to Saints general manager Mickey Loomis, the St. Louis Rams defensive ends James Hall and Leonard Little both are of interest to the Saints. Hall just finished a visit on Friday and Little was expected to have visit next week.

The Saints released veteran Charles Grant last week and allowed linebacker Scott Fujita to sign a three-year, $14 million deal with the Cleveland Browns. They could start looking at players with expired contracts on other teams, but their main target would still be the defensive ends, as they still have quite few choices on linebackers.

According to Loomis, the Saints could choose a linebacker from those still wearing Saints jerseys like 2009 draft pick Stanley Arnoux, 2009 undrafted free agent Jonathan Casillas, two-year pro Jo-Lonn Dunbar, 2007 draft pick Marvin Mitchell, three Year Pro Anthony Waters and veteran Troy Evans, to group with middle linebacker Jonathan Vilma and weakside linebacker Scott Shanle as starting linebackers.

Faulk re-signed with Patriots with plan to retire as a Patriot

Having spent the entire of his 11-year career with the New England Patriots, running back Kevin Faulk thinks that he should just begin and end his NFL career both as a Patriot, just like All-Star shortstop Nomar Garciaparra, who chose to re-join the Boston Red Sox, the team drafted him in 1994 be he retired the next day. So, Faulk decided to re-sign with the Patriots.

“I might have left and gone and it might have been successful, but it wouldn’t have been the same if I would have been here doing it,” Faulk said Thursday in a conference call with reporters, a day after Garciaparra made his awkward, one-day return to the Red Sox for the purpose of announcing his retirement. “What happened with Nomar Garciaparra—it’s great he came back and retired a Red Sox, but at the same time if he would have done it here it would have even been better.”

Being picked by the Patriots as a second-round draft choice in 1999, Faulk became an unrestricted free agent earlier this month. He is the longest-tenured member of the Patriots and played in all the Patriots’ three Super Bowl victories along with Tom Brady, Matt Light and Stephen Neal. His numbers in last season included 335 rushing yards, 37 pass catches for 301 yards and 3 touchdowns. Since putting on the Patriots jersey, he has totally had 3,505 yards rushing and 418 receptions for 3,605 yards along with returned kicks and punts.

Falcons added veteran CB Robinson to roster

Unrestricted free agent cornerback Dunta Robinson was brought in the private jet of Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank to have a visit with the team. It was his first visit since becoming a free agent and also the last as he is now officially a Falcon after signing a six-year contract.

“This is something I’ve always dreamed about growing up in Athens, Ga.,” Robinson said. “This was the first professional team that I wanted to play for. I’m home. This is where I need to be. Here is where I’m most comfortable.”

The money is also what he’s dreamed of. The multiyear contract is worth $57 million, including an approximately $22.5 million in guaranteed money. And the way he was signed was similar to the way running back Michael Turner was signed two years ago when Blank, general manager Thomas Dimitroff and coach Mike Smith had Turner visit to Atlanta and persuaded him to sign a six-year contract in early March 2009.

Once in Falcons jersey, Robinson is likely to take part in the team’s mini-camp in May as a starting cornerback along with Brian Williams, who signed a new one-year contract with the Falcons last week. And Coach Smith’s expectation of Robinson is simply to jam the opponent’s No. receiver at the line of scrimmage before dropping into coverage.

Free agent RB Fargas visited Chiefs for new chance

Being released by former team is not totally a bad thing as the player is now with the freedom to choose a new team to join. That’s exactly what veteran running back Justin Fargas has now after failing his physical and being released by the Oakland Raiders right before he was due to get a $1.7 million roster bonus, and his first visit is with the Kansas City Chiefs.

"I don’t see that happening, no," Fargas told the San Francisco Chronicle. "I was told by the coach that they were moving in a different direction. They said it was strictly about money. I know some things were put out there, I guess they said I didn’t pass a physical. I’m a little disappointed by the way it happened but I understand it’s a business.”

Therefore, with the determination not to wear back the Raiders jersey, Fargas began his visit and research of possible new teams. After the visit to Chiefs, the next stop could be the San Francisco 49ers, which have been in contact with Fargas’ agent.

Cribbs finally get a three-year deal done with Browns

Now the versatile Josh Cribbs has gotten what a most popular player of the Cleveland deserves to have, a new multi-year contract. According to reports, the Cleveland eventually rewarded Cribbs a new three-year part of his six-year, $6.67 million deal that was signed in 2006.

“I’m excited,” Cribbs said, sitting alongside new team president Mike Holmgren at a hastily arranged news conference. “It’s been a long road. It worked out. We reached a good compromise. I’m happy to wear this uniform proudly, as I’ve been saying the whole time.”

The restructured final three-year part will guarantee Cribbs $7.5 million plus another $20 million if he reaches incentives. Thus the Browns finally managed to keep the 26-year-old kicker/wide receiver in Browns jersey for another three years. Meanwhile, the press conference Cribbs said earlier this week he would hold to make a major announcement turned out to be held by the Browns.

The contract ended two seasons of threats, broken promises and back-and-forth negotiations. As the NFL’s career leader with eight kickoff returns for touchdowns, he is considered to deserve a big deal and had won supports from Browns fans for the past season.

Panthers released QB Delhomme

The original news was that the Carolina Panthers cut veteran defensive tackle Damione Lewis, but it was changed to be about quarterback Jake Delhomme, who was released on the same day following Lewis. It had been expected that he would lose his starting job after his worst season as a pro last year, and being released was really a surprise.

One day ago, the Panthers said that they would like to keep quarterback Matt Moore in Panthers jersey for 2010 season but he may have to compete for the starting job. Since the team decided to release Delhomme, the quarterback Moore will have to compete with for the starting role must be someone new from the free agent market or draft pick. Bursting onto the scene in 2003 and leading the Panthers to the Super Bowl, Delhomme had been the team’s starting quarterback for years until last season after Moore replaced him to start in the final five games.

At the end of 2008 season, Panthers offered Delhomme a lucrative contract extension in hope that he would give better performance than committing six turnovers in a playoff loss to the Arizona Cardinals. However, Delhomme only offered another six-turnover performance in a season-opening loss to the Philadelphia Eagles and had a career-high 18 interceptions before being sidelined. Then Moore came on and had eight touchdown passes and only two interceptions as Carolina won four of its final five games. As a result of the different performance, the Panthers gave Moore the highest restricted free-agent tender of $3.043 million for one season on Wednesday while released Delhomme the next day.

Texans found it challenging to re-sign WR Walter

Although the Houston Texans would like to keep the pending unrestricted free agent wide receiver Kevin Walter in the Texans jersey, they may feel that re-signing him is beyond their ability, according to the team’s general Rick Smith.

“We would like to have Kevin back,” Smith said, noting he had talked to Walter’s agent. “He is an important part of our football team and we would like to (keep him.) Unfortunately the thing about free agency now is, you can’t keep everybody. When you talk about putting a football team together and structuring your team and trying to improve and get better, you’ve got to make some tough decisions. And sometimes, you’ve got to let players go that you otherwise wouldn’t want to. That’s just a part of it.”

Walter will turn 29 in August and caught 53 passes for 611 yards and two TDs in 14 starts for Houston last season, missing two games with a hamstring injury. However, the Texans may not feel much pain if Walter really chooses to depart because they still have Jacob Jones, Andre Davis and David Anderson in wide receiver depth.

The ticket prices for one of the Minnesota Vikings’ 2010 games will be $29 to $128 and even an average seat will cost $2.40 more than last season. Brett Favre has not made his mind to wear back Vikings jersey, but the team is confident that more fans will come to buy the tickets despite the price raise.

As one of the many teams that froze ticket prices a year ago, the Vikings this year becomes the third team in the NFC North to raise tickets prices. Last season the team created a frenzy for tickets by taking the arrival of Favre. And this year, the Vikings are coming off a trip to the NFC title game and the return of Favre is still possible, so tickets may be on hot sell again.

“While we could not realistically duplicate the flat pricing structure of last season, we wanted to make the increase as minimal as possible to acknowledge the commitment of our season-ticket owners,” Vikings chief marketing officer Steve LaCroix said. “We wanted to continue one of the NFL’s lowest priced season-ticket offerings at $29 per game, while keeping nearly 9,000 tickets priced the same or less.”

The other two teams who have raised tickets prices are the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers. The Detroit Lions are the only team left motionless in ticket prices.

Steelers’ safety Clark will join free agent market

According to Yahoo Sports, the Pittsburgh Steelers seem to have made no big progress in retaining safety Ryan Clark, who is to be a free agent on Friday, the deadline for free agency, with no deal being done in time.

Steelers director of football operations Kevin Colbert has identified Clark as a core player the team wants to re-sign. And the Steelers do have been discussing a contract with Clark’s representative, but by so far there has been nothing concrete to indicate that a deal is imminent as talks haven’t progressed quickly.

Successfully signing back nose guard Casey Hampton with a three-year contract and retaining kicker Jeff Reed with a franchise tag last week, the Steelers, however, is still in slow progress while talking with Clark about his new contract. They can only now let him test the free agent market with hope that no other team would offer better deal than the Steelers and Clark would change his mind to wear back the Steelers jersey.

Chargers CB Cromartie may be sent to Detroit

Although it is still a rumor-like message on a reporter’s Twitter page, it just sounds likely that the San Diego Chargers cornerback Antonio Cromartie will soon put on the Detroit Lions jersey.

The Chargers have a lot of tough monetary decisions to make before the 2010 season. Releasing running back LaDainian Tomlinson was just the first step. And it’s already no surprise that the Chargers decided not to offer tender to No. 2 running back Darren Sproles. So it may shock us even less if the Chargers really decide to send Cromartie to Lions for some good draft pick.

Without Cromartie, the Chargers still have Antoine Cason to do the starting job well. Getting rid of all those causing financial concerns, the Chargers will feel better while making their effort to bring back offensive tackle Marcus McNeil, wide receivers Vincent Jackson and Malcom Floyd and outside linebacker Shawne Merriman.

Next free agent for Steelers to retain: Safety Clark

After keeping nose guard Casey Hampton with a new $21.3 million contract and kicker Jeff Reed with a franchise tag, the Pittsburgh Steelers turn to focus on negotiating new deal with another free agent: safety Ryan Clark.

"Ryan is one of the three starters … we’ve taken care of one, moved closer with another and we’ll continue to talk," Steelers director of football operations Kevin Colbert said. "With all of these guys, they want to stay, we want them to stay. Usually, when you have that type of mindset on both sides, it helps get deals done."

According to his agent Joel Turner, Clark is willing to remain in Steelers jersey even at a slightly reduced salary. And it seems likely that the Steelers would offer a bit more for the safety who is the best not only in unrestricted free agency but also restricted free agency.

Saints are ready to retain 13 free agents with new contracts

As many as eighteen players now wearing the New Orleans Saints jerseys will become restricted free agents after the March 5 deadline for free agency, and the Saints have plan to retain thirteen of them and have tendered qualifying offers them.

The thirteen will-be free agents are offensive tackles Jammal Brown, Jermon Bushrod and Zach Strief, safeties Roman Harper, Chris Reis and Usama Young, defensive linemen Remi Ayodele and Anthony Hargrove, wide receivers Lance Moore and Courtney Roby, linebacker Marvin Mitchell, tight end David Thomas and running back Pierre Thomas. The detailed terms of the offers have not been available.

Before agreeing to any contract with the current team, the thirteen players all may just wait to see if they can receiver better offers from other teams who are hunting in free agent market. But as restricted agents, they should allow the Saints to match any offer.