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Who will quarterback Peyton Manning face in his Denver Broncos debut? When will the top picks in next week’s NFL Draft play in their first NFL games? Which teams will kick off NFL Network’s expanded 13-game Thursday Night Football schedule in Week 2?
These questions and many more will be answered when the 2012 NFL schedule is released in primetime, exclusively on NFL Network on Tuesday, April 17 at 6:00 PM CDT.
If you can’t beat them, sign them.
At the end of the 2006 NFL season, the Chicago Bears lost to the Indianapolis Colts. The play that sealed their fate in the Miami rain and mud that February evening was a pick-six by cornerback Kelvin Hayden. The 56 yard return was the first career interception for Hayden. He’s not the same player today that we was then, but he will provide secondary help.
And he’s got local interest.
The official word is in. CBSSports.com‘s Mike Freeman confirms that Manning’s pick is Denver and that a contract “is a formality” at this point.
The Denver Broncos previously claimed they were 95% certain they had Peyton Manning locked down. They were the #1 seed in the Manning Final Four, and they played like it, as they cut down the nets today.
A person familiar with the ongoing situation says the Tennessee Titans will be visiting with four-time NFL MVP Peyton Manning in his search for a new NFL team. Sure, you’ve heard the reports that the Denver Broncos are 95% sure Manning is coming their way, and that Tim Tebow is likely out the door.
Not so fast my friend.
The source in this report spoke to the Associated Press Monday about Manning’s meeting with the Titans on the condition of anonymity because the location and time of that meeting remains confidential.
The 2012 NFL season officially begins tomorrow at 4 p.m. eastern time. That’s when the blockbuster NFL draft trade between the St. Louis Rams and Washington Redskins will become official, and the Denver Broncos can sign Peyton Manning, and then Tim Tebow will be set free to get another gig, and then everything starts up again.
In the meantime, here’s everything you need to know about how NFL free agency in 2012
Nobody – nobody – wanted it to end this way.
Not you or me. Not Indianapolis Colts fans, who are sure to be divided — many of them irate — about the franchise’s decision to part ways with Peyton Manning. Not Manning himself. Not owner Jim Irsay, who undoubtedly will be the recipient of the aforementioned fan ire. Not Indianapolis Star columnist Bob Kravitz, who was among the first (if not the first) to opine that parting ways with Manning was the only decision that made sense for the franchise and subsequently became an easy target for angry Colts fans as someone who was running the four-time MVP out of town.
Nobody wanted it to end this way.
But it must.
With the official announcement — a joint one — that the Colts will release Manning after 14 seasons with the club coming at noon today, the news we’ve been expecting really hits home. And it hits home hard — for many reasons. But as heartbreaking as it might be to see the departure of someone who essentially put football on the map in Indiana, there was just no way around it.
The house that Peyton built (Lucas Oil Field) will no longer house Peyton Manning. The face-of-the-franchise QB and the Indianapolis Colts will part ways officially tomorrow at a news conference. The announcement is already all over internet media. Lots of ramifications here on this decision.
In case you needed any more evidence that the NFL is truly king in America, Super Bowl XLVI is the most-watched television program in U.S. history and the highest-rated Super Bowl in 26 years, according to fast national data released by The Nielsen Company.
The game was seen by a record 111.3 million viewers (6:31-9:58 p.m. ET), topping last year’s 111.0 for Super Bowl XLV on Fox and is the biggest audience to watch a television program in U.S. history. I guess the lockout didn’t hurt interest in the game after all.
MOST-WATCHED PROGRAMS IN U.S. TELEVISION HISTORY:
Just so you know, the Colts have made a few major changes this offseason.
Bill and Chris Polian are gone. In their place is new general manager Ryan Grigson, formerly a member of the Philadelphia Eagles’ front office.
Oh, and former coach Jim Caldwell also is out of town. The new guy? Chuck Pagano, who spent the 2011 season as the Baltimore Ravens’ defensive coordinator. Word is he plans to do away with the Colts’ familiar Tampa 2 defense and install a hybrid 3-4 scheme.
The Colts have some new coordinators too, you know. Bruce Arians, who was the team’s quarterbacks coach from 1998-2000 and previously served as offensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Steelers, is back in Indy to conduct the offense (Clyde Christensen isn’t gone, though. He’s quarterbacks coach now). Greg Manusky, who in 2011 was the San Diego Chargers’ defensive coordinator, now has that position here.
Any other offseason, these would be HUGE stories that would command their own blog posts. But this offseason? We hardly have heard a peep from or about any of these guys. There’s only one story surrounding the Indianapolis Colts right now: the very public dilemma between Peyton Manning and owner Jim Irsay that eventually will lead to the four-time MVP’s exit from town.
Then GM Bill Polian used his first pick in the 1998 draft to take Peyton Manning. While Polian has had a few good picks since, it has been mostly downhill from there.
I think it is too soon to take a look at the 2010 and 2011 drafts so I will start our analysis with the 2009 draft.
NFL Lockout: The Movie
The Lockout is OVER!!! Over the past few months, the lockout has provided no shortage of twists, turns and some stuff that Aaron Sorkin and Scott Rudin could easily turn into Hollywood drama (if you doubt that last sentence, I direct your attention to the film “Moneyball” coming to a theater near you in September).
Regardless, arguing the merits of whether a series of events would make a decent movie is not what this post is all about, nor is it what’s fun about creating fake movies. The fun lies in thinking about which actors would play each of the main players.
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