The Wild Wild West Football Jamboree
Football is back! The lock-out is over. The entire off-season free agency saga will be shoved into a few small weeks and teams are scrambling like never before.
Players are getting cut. Free-agents are getting signed. It’s gotta be pretty tough for players who sat through the entire lock-out, supporting their teams, their teammates, enduring their “harsh” summer, only to find out the day an agreement is made for football to resume that they’ve been cut and no longer have a job. There’s a huge list of players out of a job now and their time frame to get a job back is shorter than ever.
Derrick Mason. Marion Barber. Sidney Rice. Kevin Kolb. Donovan Mcnabb. Vince Young. Plaxico Burress. Terrell Owens. Kyle Orton. There’ s a veritable buffet of free agents just waiting to be woo’d to a specific team. And it’s all happening in 15 days!!
I almost wish the NFL forced this every year. This free-for-all is much more exciting to watch than a 8 month long snooze-fest. Teams are frantically fighting over highly-desired free agents and we get to sit back and watch all the madness like the mob sitting in a saloon peering out at the duel between gunslingers. Get ta’ slinging.
Carson Palmer, on the other hand, has taken the reigns himself in what may be the most stubborn, career-ending move since Jake “The Snake” Plummer. If you don’t recall, “The Snake” was set to be traded by Mike Shanahan (of the Broncos) to the Buccaneers, and instead, decided to retire. He was 31 at the time (I believe) and left football with a 39-17 record.
Palmer is getting ready to do the exact same thing. Carson is threatening to retire if he isn’t traded from the dysfunctional Bengals before the season starts. Now, I don’t blame him for wanting to leave the Bengals, because they suck. He knows it. I know it. They don’t run an organization very well. The Bengals don’t want to trade him (mainly because of that little thing we call a contract, that… ya know… legally binds you) and owner Mike Brown held a press conference yesterday saying Palmer was “retired.”
This could get ugly. Does anyone remember last year when Ochocinco threatened to do the exact same thing? He wanted out of Cincinnati, and guess where he played last year? Cincinnati. Me thinks this may have the same outcome. Otherwise, the Bengals are stuck with their back-ups, Palmer #2, Jordan, or draft pick Andy Dalton.
There’s another trading block that deserves some attention. A small, small amount of attention. The MLB trade deadline is Sunday and the only big names that could be traded are Heath Bell and Carlos Beltran. It’s laughable listening to some of these analysts discuss Beltran’s worth. They’re talking about him like he’s going to be the tipping point for some team to get to the World Series. Beltran?? Really??
Halfway through the season, I’ve got my World Series picks already. Yankees/Phillies. That’s it. Bring it on.
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