Kurt Warner doesn't want Arizona Cardinals' offence rebuilt
KAPOLEI, Hawaii -- Kurt Warner's decision to return with the Arizona Cardinals seems to rest on everything from God to his desire to play. Now throw the loss of offensive c-oordinator Todd Haley into the mix.
Haley was hired as coach of the Kansas City Chiefs on Friday after helping the Cardinals, behind their high-powered offence, reach the Super Bowl.
Warner said the team needs to make sure it builds upon its success this season.
"I don't want to go backward as far as what we're doing, or having to readjust everything," Warner told The Associated Press following Pro Bowl practice Friday. "I want to be able to continue to move forward and to build off where we were this year. I think it's definitely going to be a factor in me weighing everything and making a decision."
While Warner said Haley's departure wouldn't be the main factor in whether he retires, it's another consideration.
"You have to look at the big picture," he said, "and wherever we're going and whoever is coming in, you just got to make sure you feel comfortable with that and they have the same mind-set. So at least from the football side of it, you feel comfortable that you can come back."
The situation will undeniably have some impact on continuity of the offence.
"It affects everything," Warner said. "Any time you make a change, and a major change, as you try to establish something, there's a lot of question marks there on what's going to happen moving forward."
Haley did not start calling plays until late in the 2007 season. But this season, the Arizona offence set a franchise record with 427 points, finished third in scoring in the NFL and was second in yards passing.
"He did a lot of great things for us: bringing his knowledge of the game, shaping this offence, understanding all the pieces in place here and how to use them," Warner said.
Even receiver Anquan Boldin, who got into a sideline shouting match during the playoffs with Haley, had only positive things to say.
"He meant a lot to this team. He brought a lot to the table, especially on the offensive side of the ball. He'll definitely be missed in Arizona," Boldin said. "Everybody wishes him well and hopefully he'll get the job done in Kansas City."
Boldin said the departure is "definitely a blow" to the team.
"But it's the NFL. The coaches get jobs here and there. Players are moved here and there," he said. "One thing that happens is guys have to find a way to fill in. I'm pretty sure they'll get somebody to do that."
But perhaps no one worked as intimately with Haley than Warner.
"We worked very closely over the past two years to really build this thing the way we wanted it and shape the offence, and kind of design it around our playmakers and utilizing both our minds to do that," he said. "It's going to be different not having him around. But bottom line is I'm sure coach Whis is going to do a great job of bringing in a replacement and other guys are going to work together well."
Copyright (c) 2009 The Canadian Press
Is James Laurinaitis the Best of Both Worlds?
With an amazing Super Bowl behind them and an intriguing combine slated to begin on February 18, Coaches, General Managers and Scouts from around the NFL are preparing to face a question as old as the league itself. Which is the more important quality to look for on draft day, production or upside?
As fans, we have seen this dilemma play out countless times, often with franchise-altering consequences. Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf? Ricky Williams or Edgerrin James? Vince Young or Matt Leinhart or Jay Cutler?
Teams looking to shore up their line-backing corps during this draft seem to be facing a similar scenario as they evaluate the outstanding career of Ohio State linebacker James Laurinaitis against the tantilizing talents of USC's Rey Maualuga. This conundrum may just be solved in Indianapolis, Indiana at the 2009 NFL scouting combine as Mr. Laurinaitis shows that sometimes, you can have your tapes and project well, too.
In the debate between production and upside, Laurinaitis certainly has the production aspect covered. Projected to be a Top 10 pick in the 2008 NFL Draft following a season in which he amassed 121 total tackles and five sacks, Laurinaitis returned for his senior campaign and improved upon his numbers totaling 130 total tackles, four sacks and two interceptions.
During three years as a starter for the Buckeyes, Laurinaitis collected 376 tackles, nine interceptions and 13 sacks. While the Big Ten has received a great deal of negative attention directed at their ability to compete with the "Big Boy" programs, Lauranaitis can point to nine tackles versus USC, nine tackles versus Texas, 18 tackles versus LSU in the 2007 BCS Championship games and 15 tackles versus Florida in the 2006 BCS championship game as proof that he can produce no matter how bright the lights shine.
Production, by definition, can be quantified and evaluated. Players either have the stats, or they don't. Upside can be much trickier and is largely a product of opinion based on certain measurables (speed, strength, agility) combined with other intangibles (leadership, intelligence, "football IQ"). In the case of James Laurinaitis, the NFL may have a player who projects as well as he produced.
Throughout his career, Laurinaitis has been shown to posses excellent lateral mobility and an innate ability to drop his hips and display superior agility as he maneuvers in traffic. Once the ball is located, Laurinaitis has consistently been able to explode to the ball utilizing plus speed for a linebacker.
The NFL combine will present multiple opportunities for Laurinaitis to put these athletic qualities on display. In the 60 yard and 20 yard shuttles, as well as the three cone drill, scouts will be able to observe how well Laurinaitis can maintain the lateral ability and coordination that he used to excel in sideline-to-sideline coverage.
In the 40 yard dash, a time between 4.5-4.55 will most likely be turned in by the Buckeye 'backer with a sub 4.5 time possible. By comparison, Maualuga has consistently clocked in at 4.6+. There are no recent numbers on record for Laurinaitis in the 225lb bench, broad jump or vertical leap but it seems unlikely that an athlete so explosive would fail to impress in these areas.
In short, Laurinaitis has the outstanding athletic ability to become a high "upside" player following the 2009 combine.
How this translates into draft status remains unclear. There several teams who could certainly benefit from Laurinaitis's services and are in solid position to obtain them.
While there are several teams in the top 10 in desperate need for defensive help, the Denver Broncos, selecting 12th, seem to be an ideal fit for Laurinaitis. If Denver passes, the New Orleans Saints sit at 14 with a dynamic offense that needs significant upgrades to a poor-tackling defense in order to become a playoff contender.
If these teams pass, the New York Jets at 17 have displayed a penchant for drafting Buckeyes early (Nick Mangold, Mike Nugent) and Laurinaitis would certainly fill a need for an athletic linebacker. Meanwhile, the worst case scenario for Laurinaitis (or anyone) sits at 20 when the Detroit Lions make their second first round selection. With a high-risk, high-reward pick such as Matt Stafford already selected, the Lions would basically have to re-hire Matt Millen in order to pass on a sure-thing such as this sure-tackling athlete from nearby Hamel, Minnesota.
By adding a dynamic combine performance to a solid frame (6'3", 240lbs), excellent understanding of blocking schemes and linebacking responsibilities to his impressive list of credentials, this may be one time when NFL teams won't have to choose between production and upside. They can simply select James Laurinaitis and have both.
Copyright (c) 2009 Bleacher Report, Inc
Arizona's QB true throwback to the old days
Newspaper and broadcast images of Kurt Warner should only be allowed in grainy black and white.
The Arizona Cardinals quarterback, who will be playing in his third Super Bowl next Sunday, is a throwback to the journeyman NFL players of the past. They drifted from team to team, nursing broken fingers and washing their own socks.
Their grizzled faces appeared on movie-house newsreels following reports about post-war Europe.
Unheralded and undrafted, Warner would have been a perfect fit for the old Chicago Cardinals, one of the 14 original professional teams that made up the NFL in 1920. The Muncie Flyers and Rock Island Independents now exist only in yellowed newspaper clippings and tattered scrapbooks.
But there is still a handful of Cardinals players alive from the 1947 Chicago team that defeated Philadelphia 28-21 for the NFL championship, 20 years before the first Super Bowl. Vince Banonis, an 87-year-old center and linebacker for that title team, was interviewed on the air and in print last week before the current Cardinals played the Eagles for the NFC title. Like many old Chicago South Siders, Banonis is an avid fan of Warner and the Arizona team even though the current players and ultra-modern new stadium are 60 years away from the icy gloom of old Comiskey Park where the Cardinals won their title.
Old loyalties rarely die, especially those forged in the heydays of radio newscasts and big-city newspaper sports pages.
Chris McLean, photo director of The Pueblo Chieftain, talked last week about her father's passion for the Cardinals and dislike of the "other" team in town.
The late Gene McLean, born in 1914, played and coached football on Chicago's South Side. He was an avid Cardinals fan and was convinced the Chicago Bears’ George Halas, "drove the Cardinals out of town," his daughter recalled. "He hated the Bears."
McLean traveled to St. Louis to watch the Cardinals after the team's first move and he's probably sitting on a cloud right now, eagerly anticipating Super Bowl XLIII.
Warner and these Cardinals have defied all odds in advancing through the playoffs for the first time in six decades.
And the 37-year-old Warner is the epitome of the unlikely odyssey.
He played football at Regis High School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and then at the University of Northern Iowa, where he was a third-string quarterback until his senior year. Warner attended the Green Bay Packers training camp in 1994 but didn't last the summer.
A year later, he signed on with the Iowa Barnstormers of the Arena Football League and bounced off the padded walls of basketball venues around the country for two years. Then, it was on to NFL Europe and the Amsterdam Admirals as a journeyman minor leaguer with the St. Louis Rams.
Warner shocked the sports world when he led the Rams to a victory in Super Bowl XXXIV and brought them back again two years later, only to lose to the Patriots. He stuck with the Rams through 2003, played with the New York Giants for a year and then caught on with the Cardinals in 2005.
It's hard not to root for Warner in yet another gutsy season. Whether that will be enough remains to be seen.
Tune in to NBC at 4 p.m. next Sunday in living color and find out.
Copyright (c) 2009 The Pueblo Chieftain
Who are Arizona Cardinals' Newest Legacies?
What a run it has been for the Arizona Cardinals. The team started the season 7-3 and had basically clinched the NFC West after the first 10 games. Then they played horrible down the stretch.
Due mainly to complacency and lack of motivation, they suffered a big hiccup in where they lost 48-20 in Philadelphia on Thanksgiving, 35-14 at home to Minnesota, and played an awful game in New England, losing 47-7.
The Giants showed us that momentum means everything in the playoffs last year.
The Cardinals showed us that momentum doesn't matter this year...
With the way they ended the season no one thought they would host a NFC Championship Game. No one thought they could go to the Super Bowl. Congratulations on a job well done.
That game was a legacy maker for two Arizona players.
I believe Kurt Warner is now a Hall of Famer, regardless of what he does in the Super Bowl in two weeks. He is now making his third Super Bowl appearance with his second team. If he wins, he will be the only starting quarterback in NFL history with a ring from two different franchises.
The only quarterbacks to make three Super Bowl appearances as the starting QB are Troy Aikman (3), Terry Bradshaw (4), Tom Brady (4), John Elway (5), Jim Kelly (4), Joe Montana (4), Roger Staubach (4), and Tarkenton (3). All of them are in the Hall of Fame.
Warner's 93.8-career QB rating is third highest in NFL history for quarterbacks with at least 10 years of NFL service. He has two regular season MVP awards and a Super Bowl MVP award. He has had a 4,800-yard passing season and 40-touchdown pass season. The only other players that have done that are Tom Brady and Dan Marino.
He's a little light in career numbers with 28,591 passing yards and 182 career touchdowns. On the other hand, he has only started 101 career games.
When you are asked to rank the top ten quarterbacks of all time, his lack of starts and numbers will severely hurt him. Still, you don't need to be a top-10 quarterback to make the Hall of Fame.
His numbers are very favorable when compared to Troy Aikman. They are comparable to someone like Roger Staubach, who also got his career started late. In that case, it was a Naval commitment. I believe with what Warner accomplished in St. Louis and what he has now accomplished in Arizona the last two years he belongs in the Hall of Fame.
The other legacy that was made was Larry Fitzgerald.
Everyone knew this guy was a great receiver. He has cemented himself as the premier receiver in the NFL with his playoff run this year. He set a record for receiving yards in a postseason with 419 breaking Jerry Rice's 1988 postseason with 409.
He's one of only three players to have three consecutive 100-yard receiving playoff games and the only one to do it in the same postseason.
He became the third player to record three touchdown catches in a Conference Championship Game, joining Cleveland's Gary Collins (1964) and Preston Pearson (1975). He's the only one to have them all in one half.
It was a big postseason for Larry Fitzgerald. It is too early to say he is Canton bound, but as long as he continues to put up big seasons, this is the type of postseason that will cement a legacy and make Canton a reality.
It reminds me a lot of Steve Smith's run in the 2003 playoffs. Everyone knew the guy was the real deal and he exploded on the biggest stage. Fitzgerald's 23 catches for 419 yards and five touchdowns is a historic postseason that will be talked about forever. If he can play big in the Super Bowl, his postseason stock will only continue to grow.
fantasyfootballmaniaxs.com
Titans feel like underachievers
The Titans became the NFL's feel-good story the first few months of the season, forcing their way into conversations with an improbable 10-0 start.
They were viewed as overachievers, a team picked third in their own division that ended up the AFC's No. 1 seed and the NFL's best record.
Yet after a devastating 13-10 loss to the sixth-seeded Ravens on Saturday in the Divisional playoffs, the Titans will watch the rest of the postseason on television.
And because they raised expectations, they'll probably be remembered as underachievers, surrounded by questions about whether they peaked too early.
"We had a chance to prove our critics and our doubters wrong and we just didn't do it," defensive end Kyle Vanden Bosch said. "(The playoff loss) erases a great regular season. I think there are a lot of great things we take away from the season, but ultimately we are judged as players on what we do in the postseason and we just came up empty.''
No, it wasn't a bad dream. After a 13-3 regular season, the Titans will hold their final team meeting on Monday at Baptist Sports Park. Coach Jeff Fisher, one of his teams eliminated in the first round for the third time in his career, will hold a season-ending press conference a few weeks before most fans anticipated. Players will clean out their lockers and go their separate ways for what's sure to be a long offseason.
The Titans spent the whole season wanting to prove everyone had them underrated. Their critics, who questioned whether this team was built for the long haul, feel the Titans proved them right.
Tennessee went 3-4 in its final seven games, including Saturday's loss to Baltimore.
"It is very frustrating. We could have done something about it but we didn't,'' linebacker Keith Bulluck said Saturday. "But I will not let that take away from the player that I am or my teammates or the effort that we put forth this year. At the end of the day we lost a game we should've won but we are walking out of this locker room with our heads up.''
So did these Titans overachieve by going 13-3, or underachieve by bowing out so soon?
"I don't know,'' defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth said. "I don't really care.''
"Neither,'' cornerback Cortland Finnegan said. "We just lost a football game. We worked hard, we just came up short by three.''
Others pointed to the way the Baltimore game played out. The Titans out-gained the Ravens, 391-211, and easily outnumbered them in first downs, 21-9, but were done in by three costly turnovers, a truckload of penalties (12 for 89 yards) and some blown assignments on defense.
At least Haynesworth offered a solution, though with the potential to become a free agent he might not be around to help deliver.
"We have to suck it up. It was the playoffs, and when you get there you have a chance to do something,'' he said. "Injuries don't matter, who is starting it doesn't matter, you just have to play your best ball and not make so many mistakes like during the regular season.
"Hopefully next year we'll just blow people out and not ever look back. We kept people in the game too much.''
"No looking back" is certain to be a theme for Fisher's final message to the team Monday, though doing so will be easier said than done.
Aside from a 31-14 win over the Steelers on Dec. 21, arguably the team's best performance, the season went out with a whimper after starting with such a bang.
"We played winning football all year, but we ended up beating ourselves,'' safety Chris Hope said. "It's hard. All the work we did, all the dreams we had at the beginning of the year, it just goes down the drain in just one game.
"The thing is we won't have the same team, nothing is guaranteed. And we have to wait all the way 'til next year to get this bad taste out of our mouths.''
Copyright (c)2008 wbir.com
Big Ben set to practice, play
Ben Roethlisberger is practicing today and the Steelers quarterback said he will play Sunday in an AFC divisional playoff game against the visiting San Diego Chargers.
Roethlisberger, who got knocked out of the Steelers' regular-season finale with a concussion, said he passed a test this morning that cleared the way for him to resume practicing.
As for Sunday's 4:45 p.m. game at Heinz Field, Roethlisberger said, "I plan on being out there 100 percent ready to go."
Roethlisberger sustained his third concussion as a Steeler in their 31-0 win over the Browns on Dec. 28. He got carted off the field and said he initially lost feeling in both of his arms.
While he called the ordeal "scary," Roethlisberger said it won't affect his play Sunday.
"It's just like when a player comes off a knee surgery or some type of injury," Roethlisberger said. "You can't go out there and play scared or afraid to get hurt. I'm going to go out there and play normal football. If I get hit, I get hit."
Copyright (c) 2009 by The Tribune-Review Publishing Co
As usual, Bill Belichick & Co. heat up as December winds howl
ORCHARD PARK, NY -- Let's just get this out of the way: If the Patriots miss the playoffs, it will be because the Ravens won and the Jets lost.
It won't be because the Patriots shot themselves in the foot. There's no way on God's muddy earth the Pats are losing to the Bills today.
That's not what they do in December.
When it comes to must-win games, few teams have been better than the Pats over the last decade. When it comes to must-win December games, forget about it. The Pats are practically unbeatable.
One of the NFL's great stats is the Patriots' December record since 2003. When the games get toughest and the weather gets coldest, the Pats ascend to the top of the pack.
Following last week's annihilation of the Cardinals, Bill Belichick and the Pats are now 23-2 in December over the past five years, good for an otherworldly .920 winning percentage.
That's by far the best record in the NFL. The Chargers are the only other team to win 20 December games in that span, and they're 20-6.
"November and December are always when you have to play your best ball," said corner Ellis Hobbs. "You think about when the season starts and how there are so many front-runners and you think about all those teams that started out so well in the beginning and have fallen off at the end. You just have to take it for what it is and just keep playing ball and just hope for the best."
One of those former front-runners is Buffalo. The Bills started the season 4-0 and talk up north centered around not only the Bills' first playoff berth since Doug Flutie was taking snaps in 1999, but the inevitable Super Bowl appearance that was certain to follow behind quarterback Trent Edwards, running back Marshawn Lynch and receiver Lee Evans.
The Bills have gone 3-8 since, at least partly undone by an Edwards concussion that impacted him in a number of games before a sore groin knocked him out for two weeks in favor of turnover-happy J.P. Losman.
Now they're left with the hope of playing spoiler for a Patriots team that doesn't lose in December when the games matter.
"We don't really look at ourselves as spoilers," Evans said. "It's just our last opportunity to play this year, play as a team together, and we're really excited about it. And it's against the team that's been at the top of our division for some time. So it's a great opportunity for us to come out and see what we've got at the end of the season."
As has been the case since Belichick arrived in 2000, the Patriots are playing their best football at the end of the year.
Midway through the season they were having trouble scoring without Tom Brady, but then Matt Cassel found his sea legs and the Pats began pouring on the points. They've reached 47 points three times in their last five games, including against the division-leading Dolphins.
"When we played them earlier in the year I thought they were an outstanding football team," Bills coach Dick Jauron said. "Obviously I think their quarterback is a lot more comfortable, which is to be expected. He's been in the league a number of years and he's experienced all of the off-the-field work and the classroom work so he clearly looks like he knows exactly what he wants to do with it, but it's different when it gets on the field. We're going to have to play at a very, very high level to stay in this game with them."
Odds are, whatever they come up with today isn't going to be good enough. The Patriots have won 10 straight against Buffalo and haven't lost to them in the final month of the season since 1999.
Neither streak is going to end today. That's not what the Patriots do in December.
Copyright by the Boston Herald and Herald Media
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