Salary cap wants to give a shout out to the 49ers salary cap status. After years of being in salary cap hell, the San Francisco 49ers have an estinated 50 million dollars to spend. Too bad the free agent market has dried up because eeryone is in good shape. Should the 49ers go out and sign Jeff Garcia as a backup? Only time will tell.
Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and his top executive, Joe Banner, hired Andy Reid as their coach in 1999 when practically no one else in the league thought Reid was ready or able to be an NFL head coach. They watched as Reid built the Eagles from also-rans into NFC East champions. They stuck by him as the team lost three straight NFC title games and when wide receiver Terrell Owens tore the organization apart and the team stumbled to a 6-10 record last year.
So they weren’t about to change their minds about him this season, even when the Eagles lost quarterback Donovan McNabb to a torn knee ligament and suffered through a midseason stretch in which they lost five of six games following a 4-1 start.
This is the start of 5-10 years were the Philadelphia Eagles are going to dominate their competition. No matter how bad it looks, salary cap managed well allows teams to overcome injuries with even star players. You take any team and throw away their best DE and QB and see if they could make the playoffs. This is exactly what the Eagles did. Next year looks very promising with the additions of McNabb and Kearse back on the team.
The Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts are in the Super Bowl. Salary cap wants to extend a warm welcome to the two most abused quarterbacks in the league for the most gruelling two weeks of their lives.
Rex Grossman has to say the least been a little inconsistent this season. He is somewhere between a quarterback rating of 12 to 100. Salary cap feels that he has the most to prove to his critics in Chicago that he does just enough not to lose the game for his team. He reminds me of what Jim McMann did for the 1985 Bears. Say hike and turn around and hand the damn ball off.
Peyton Manning has finally gotten to the big game. The best brain in the NFL under center will now have the pressure to show the world he is the best. The colts have to help Peyton instead of relying on him to carry them to victory.
This being said, Salary cap feels that defense wins championships. So, da bears are going to lifting the trophy at the end of the game. Sorry peyton.
It has been proven that the NFL has asked YouTube to remove the video of Reggie Bush getting hit by Sheldon Brown in last Saturdays Gamre. It must be that many websites were recieving more attention than NFL.com and that the movie violated copyright laws
….the NFL dropped the ball on this one…truly a fumble of character.
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Salary cap found this great article about faith and determination of the story of the Philadelphia Eagles. This year had all the emotions and feelings associated with most Philadelphia sports teams. Here is to another great season and looking forward to next year. Enjoy!
Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie and his top executive, Joe Banner, hired Andy Reid as their coach in 1999 when practically no one else in the league thought Reid was ready or able to be an NFL head coach. They watched as Reid built the Eagles from also-rans into NFC East champions. They stuck by him as the team lost three straight NFC title games and when wide receiver Terrell Owens tore the organization apart and the team stumbled to a 6-10 record last year.
So they weren’t about to change their minds about him this season, even when the Eagles lost quarterback Donovan McNabb to a torn knee ligament and suffered through a midseason stretch in which they lost five of six games following a 4-1 start.
“If you feel you’ve surrounded yourself with really good people,” Lurie said as he sat behind his desk this week at the Eagles’ training complex, “then give them the support and that will bring out the best in them.”
The Eagles won their final five games of the regular season to secure their fifth division crown in six years. They beat the New York Giants in a first-round playoff game here Sunday to advance to an NFC semifinal Saturday night in New Orleans. They have, again, proven to be a model NFL franchise, perhaps more so now than ever because Lurie, Banner, Reid and General Manger Tom Heckert stuck to their way of doing things even when last season’s debacle and this season’s struggles made it appear to many observers that their way just might not be working any longer.
When the Eagles returned to Philadelphia after a lopsided late-November loss in Indianapolis that dropped them to 5-6, they faced an avalanche of criticism. But this wasn’t the usual, the-season-is-hanging-in-the-balance variety. This was their fans and local media members raising bigger issues, like whether Reid’s message to his players had grown stale and whether he should keep his final say over all the franchise’s football decisions or even be retained as coach after this season. Banner knew the market. He’d worked in Philadelphia as a radio producer and reporter before being hired by Lurie, his boyhood pal in Brookline, Mass., to run the franchise. But even he was stunned.
“It was startling how extreme it was so quickly,” Banner said this week, sitting at a conference table in his office that’s a few doors down from Lurie’s. “Although things looked bad at 5-6, they were really obituaries. They weren’t like, ‘Things are going poorly and they’re 5-6 and it’s going to be tough for them to make the playoffs,’ all of which were obviously true. They were like, ‘It’s over and they should dismember and start again.’
“It was like nothing prior had ever happened or nobody here had established any credibility. To me, that was mostly about Andy. If it was about coaching or leading or being the general manager, he’d established a track record over eight years that didn’t fall away over a three-game losing streak.”
Reid told his bosses he thought things could be turned around, and they believed him. Banner watched the Eagles’ practices that week and thought the players and coaches still were full of positive, constructive energy.
“I’m really proud that when we were 5-6 you couldn’t find any divisive, negative thing within the team, front office, coaches or anything,” Banner said. “There were people questioning, ‘What do we need to do to get better?’ That’s constructive energy.”
The Eagles’ MO is well-established. They build through the draft and mostly shun splashy free agent moves. They use their money and salary-cap space to re-sign their own promising young players long before they’re eligible for free agency. They bristle at the suggestion they’re not risk-takers. But the risks they take usually are thoughtfully measured and precisely calculated.
They got to the Super Bowl in the 2004 season after trading for Owens and signing defensive end Jevon Kearse, an expensive free agent. But Owens is long gone and Kearse is on the injured reserve list and both Lurie and Banner say they wouldn’t have made the Owens move if they’d known then what they know now, even though the deal helped to get them to a Super Bowl during a period when it seemed they might never get to one.
Banner, who assumed the title of team president in 2001 and is the manager of the club’s salary cap, said he will favor taking risks on players in the future but never again will favor taking one that could jeopardize the core values of the team as did the addition of Owens.
Lurie and Banner talk about having an insatiable desire for the best of everything in the league, such as the most innovative team Web site, the most comfortable stadium and the most creative marketing approach. It all goes back to the conversations they had as teenagers after they had been introduced by a common friend. They’d debate what the Boston sports teams were doing, and Lurie, in particular, would be amazed every time Celtics boss Red Auerbach would make a move that the fans hated but that Auerbach knew would aid in producing a cohesive, winning team.
The two stayed in touch even when they headed off to different colleges and went their separate ways in business, Lurie to Hollywood to produce movies and Banner to Philadelphia to work in radio, back to Boston to run a retail clothing business and then to work for City Year, a national service organization. When Lurie decided to get serious about fulfilling his dream of buying a pro sports franchise — he failed to land the New England Patriots just before buying the Eagles from Norman Braman in 1994 — he called his old friend Banner. When Reid, a little-known quarterbacks coach from the Green Bay Packers, came aboard and drafted McNabb, they soon found themselves with a winning team.
Reid didn’t berate his players when things went bad this season. He told them that everyone, including he and the other coaches, needed to perform better. When Reid was asked during a news conference this week about his even-keel demeanor and where that comes from, he gave his usual low-key response. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know that, where it came from. My mom and dad.”
Some veteran Eagles players think Reid perhaps has done his best coaching job this season. Lurie said he’s not sure of that. He thinks it would be difficult, he said, for Reid to top the job he did during the 2003 season when he took an injury-laden team to the NFC championship game before losing to the Carolina Panthers. But this has been, he’s quick to add, a superb coaching job.
“What separates him is, you can tell when someone is genuine,” Lurie said. “They’ll look you in the eye and they’re just human. They’re just themselves. When he talks to a player or a coach, he’s just Andy Reid. He’s not playing a game. He’s not role-playing. He’s not trumping up emotion. It’s very real.”
The United States, Worldwide Stamps and Postal History auction will be held January 16-18, 2007 by Cherrystone Auctions (http://www.cherrystoneauctions.com).
Salary cap hides the fact that he graduated Summa Cum Laude from PSU. So, trying to be partial is very hard. I love my Nittany lions and would believe any hype about them…that being said, I believe USC will be the new number one next year. Buy Penn State should be ranked in the top five. This team is returning almost everyone(except Hunt) and are poised to make a run at the national title.
Speaking of national titles, did you see OSU get their asses handed to them. God, I loved it. I thought Ohio State was overrated for the entire season. Texas barely beat Iowa, and Michigan wasn’t much better. The SEC was by far the best conference this year. Salary cap told a friend(the betting kind) to take every SEC team in the bowl games. The 6-3 record spoke volumes.(PSU won theirs) Next year will be almost the same.
Salary cap is astonished at the turn around that the New Orleans Saints have done this year. With New Orleans ravaged by Hurricane Katrina in late August 2005, the Saints became nomads that year, winding up 3-13 under Jim Haslett. Payton, an assistant coach in Dallas, was hired to revive one of the NFL’s historically unsuccessful franchises. Payton and his team gave the city – indeed, the entire Gulf Coast – something it desperately needed: a reason to smile.
Now, the fairy tale is about to come to an end. The Philadelphia Eagles are going to crush their little fantasy world on Saturday. For the turnaround “term” could be said for the Philadelphia Eagles, though their season continues on a high while their NFC East brethren were sent packing this weekend. One day after a botched 19-yard field goal attempt kept the Cowboys from advancing in the playoffs, a well-executed 38-yard field goal by the Eagles’ David Akers as time ran out sent Philadelphia to the next round.
Salary Cap’s prediction is this: Philly 38, New Orleans 24.
Salary cap wants to be the first one to express undying loyalty to the Philadelphia Eagles. For a while there, it looked like salary cap hated everything Philly sports team ish. But believe me, sisters, salary cap bleeds lots of green every Sunday. Speaking of bleeding green, salary cap found this website for true philadelphia eagle fans.
This Philadelphia Eagles blog is one the best around for my rabid philly brothers. This guy reminds salary cap of everything good that is a philly fan. From pat’s cheesesteaKs to running up the stairs pretending to be Rocky, Philly is the BEST city in the world to be a sports fan. So, here is the true test for us philly fans. Sunday, Giants, win and move on, lose and go home. Salary cap’s prediction is Philadelphia 27, Giants 24. Akers wins it with 3 seconds left with a 42 yard field goal. E-A-G-L-E-S, EAGLES!
I was watching college football over the weekend, and got a crazy salary cap idea. Thinking about money, how would you rank Rutgers versus bang for your buck mentality. According to the President of University of New Jersey, Rutgers loss money last year even though it went to a bowl game. While this is true, it is a well known fact that a successful football program generates money from Alum giving. Penn state saw giving increase 25% last year when the football team ended third in the nation.
So, the question is how much does Rutgers lose by having a winning program. The coach is only paid one million dollars a year. Pennies when you think about how much bigger, better known colleges pay their coaches for mediocre teams. Also, the mreo exposure for Rutgers will cause more people to attend the University. Since it is all about enrollment, New Jersey University will benefit greatly from this program. I, for one, would love to see Rutgers make it to the Big game just to have another team vie for the right to be champion.