NFL Rumors And Football News With A Fantasy Football Slant.

It was announced on Friday that Tom Brady will be on the cover of Madden NFL 18: G.O.A.T Edition, which is either great or worrisome, depending on whether you believe in the Madden Curse (Brady does not.) In the wake of this news, Brady revealed a bit about his history with the Madden franchise that isn’t just as a playable character in the game.
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In an interview with ESPN, Brady revealed he used to work out at Electronic Arts’ gym, since they were located in his hometown, and he had a family friend that worked there. He also revealed that whenever he plays Madden with his son Jack, most times he has to face the video game version of Tom Brady and the Patriots:

J.J. Watt missed almost all of the 2016 season after undergoing a second back surgery to repair a herniated disc. Texans fans should be happy to know that Watt’s back is just fine. Watt even felt good enough to win the home run derby associated with his annual charity softball game.

No, I feel fantastic, Watt said about his recovery, via the Houston Chronicle’s Aaron Wilson. I’ve done more core work in the past eight months than I think just about anybody in the world. My core is about as tight and locked in as it can get at the moment. So, I’m feeling all right swinging the bat.

Watt not only won the home run derby, but he also homered to help the defense beat the offense with a final score of 9-3.

Watt hosts this softball game every year to benefit his foundation, which provides opportunities for middle school children to get involved in athletics.
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He’s clearly healthy enough to dominate on the softball field. Watt has also been medically cleared to play football, and that’s good news for the Texans.

The Raiders’ reported interest in retired running back Marshawn Lynch is both surprising and, well, not so surprising.

Lynch, who turns 31 in April, hasn’t played a down of pro football since the 2015 season. His multiple retirement confirmations over the last year kept him off the free agency radar for most until Friday, when ESPN reported Oakland is strongly considering either trading for the back who remains on the Seahawks’ reserve/retired list or signing him as a potential free agent.

The comeback decision ultimately is Lynch’s to make. Still in shape and indeed tempted to play again, Lynch reportedly has not asked for his release from Seattle, which technically still has him under contract.

Authentic Kids Paul Molitor Jersey Regardless, the Raiders’ interest in Lynch alone begs a couple questions: Why Beast Mode? Why not any of the available free-agent running backs who, you know, are not retired?
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Kirk Cousins will play this year in Washington under the franchise tag, but it seems like he’s doing it because he has to, not that he wants to. The Redskins are a mess and fired general manager Scot McCloughan on Thursday. This is after the team saw its top two receivers leave as DeSean Jackson signed with the Buccaneers and Pierre Garcon left for San Francisco.

The Redskins also lost defensive lineman Chris Baker, who is joining Jackson in Tampa. The Redskins already had plenty of holes to fill and now things are worse as the team seems rudderless.

Many expected Dalvin Cook to go in the first round of the 2017 NFL Draft.

The Vikings saw him available early in the second round and traded up to get him. Cook was selected with 41st overall pick Friday night and will team up with former Raiders running back Latavius Murray in the Vikings backfield.

The 5-10, 201-pound Cook impressed at the NFL Combine, but slid in the draft because of multiple off-field incidents. Cook told NFL teams he is no longer running with the same crowd he did in college.

On the field, Cook runs with power and speed, catches the ball well, is a solid blocker and got better each of his three seasons in Tallahassee.

Cook ran for 1,765 yards and 19 touchdowns last season and finished his three-year career at Florida State with 4,464 yards and 46 scores. He also caught 79 passes for 935 yards and two touchdowns as a Seminole.

Cook’s innate ability to catch the ball is one aspect of his game that might separate him from other backs. Longtime wide receivers coach Jerry Sullivan, who retired in January after 25 years in the NFL, told Omnisport that Cook reminds him of Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell.

“The guy’s got the whole package,” Sullivan, who was most recently with the Jaguars from 2012-16, said of Cook. “He’s a great receiver out of the backfield, smart, instinctive. If you put him outside, he can catch.

“He’s a lot like Bell. When you put the guy outside, he’s not just a guy taking up space; he can make something happen as a receiver.”

Like Bell, Cook was a first-team All-American in his final season of college and also has some off-field issues. The Vikings now hope Cook can be as productive as Bell and that they got a steal by getting the draft’s most complete back with the 41st pick.

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Cecil Travis, serving in World War II: Poor Cecil Travis. Over his first nine seasons, the Washington Senators shortstop hit .327, peaking at .359 at age 27 in 1941. Then he lost most of the next four years serving in World War II, famously suffering frostbitten feet in the European Theatre. More damaging to his career, he later admitted, he also lost his timing as a hitter. He played just 226 more games in the majors after the war ended, hitting .241 with -3.3 Wins Above Average, according to Baseball-Reference.com.

Bradley McDougald Authentic Jersey Chicago managed just three hits and three unintentional walks and struck out 13 times over the final 9 1/3 innings, though. Thanks to a short bench and a long game, three Cubs starting pitchers had to pinch-hit in extra frames. Each one struck out, including Kyle Hendricks to end the contest at 2:14 a.m. ET, six hours and five minutes after first pitch.

All of that is to say the offense isn’t the juggernaut it was last year. It’s not all bad, though. The Cubs are third in the National League with a .333 on-base percentage, fifth with 154 runs and eighth with 36 home runs.

Perhaps the bats can perk up at Coors Field starting Monday night, about 18 1/2 hours after the end of Sunday’s game.

The one constant in the whole deal was the pitch limits: Friedrich, Chacin and everyone else had them, and Rockies hurlers averaged 76.3 pitches per start over the 97 games of the experiment. The maximum pitch count by a starter in that period was 97, by Jeff Francis. The minimum was 53, by Drew Pomeranz.

That range makes the Rockies’ experiment relevant to today’s game.

Miguel Cabrera has yet to win a World Series with the Detroit Tigers, and he wants that to change this year.

Game Mens Laremy Tunsil Jersey After the recent loss of beloved Tigers owner Mike Ilitch, Cabrera is ready to honor the man who brought him into the team from the Marlins and signed him to a massive contract.

We come into spring training a little sad, Cabrera told reporters Saturday, via MLB.com. But at the same time, we come in like we need to keep going and need this for him. He always dreamed about a World Series champion. We never gave him the chance. We have extra motivation, so we need to be here and do extra and try to be our best this season.

Carew is still undergoing regular testing to make sure his body doesn’t reject his new heart, but the 71-year-old baseball Hall of Famer is embracing life.

It’s been a long journey, Carew said, but everything just came out right, the way everybody wanted it.

The seven-time AL batting champion and first-ballot Hall of Famer has been hailed for his Heart of 29 campaign, which raised funds for the American Heart Association and spread awareness of heart disease.

That 29, of course, is the number Carew wore throughout his 19-year career with the Twins and Angels. In a strange twist, 29 is also the age of the heart donor who gave Carew new life.

They found me a 29-year-old heart, Carew joked. You never know, it could be time for a comeback.

Rhonda Carew said she wants to meet the man’s family.

I desperately want to meet them, she said. Rod hasn’t focused on it, but I have. I think it would be really a neat thing for the donor’s family to have the ability to listen to their son’s heartbeat again.
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Authentic Vince Wilfork Jersey The Tigers activated first baseman Miguel Cabrera from the 10-day disabled list Tuesday, the team announced.

John Hicks has been sent back down to Triple-A Toledo in a corresponding move.

Cabrera, who has now served only two DL stints throughout his 15 MLB seasons, is back after missing nine games with a strained groin. The former Triple-Crown winner returns to a .268 average with three homers and nine RBIs in 56 at-bats this year.

Detroit has lost four of its last six games, but are still just one game behind the Indians for the AL Central lead. The Tigers are currently playing a four-game series against the defending World Series runners-up.

LongWaytoOctoberCrew-GD-FTR-032417.jpgThe crew of It’s a Long Way to October, from left: Audio supervisor Ken Noland, producer Glenn Diamond, director Mark Johnson and videographer Rafael Ortiz-Guzman. (Photo courtesy of Glenn Diamond)

The relationship between the crew and the team became somewhat symbiotic.

We all became friends, thus the relationship gave us even more insight to get to know these guys, Ortiz-Guzman said.
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This didn’t mean that the players held back on having fun at their new friends’ expense, sometimes playing pranks on the crew 鈥?stealing hotel keys, for example 鈥?or ribbing them with sarcasm 鈥?Are you gonna follow us into the bathroom? 鈥?or feigning anger at having to be in the spotlight.

It got to the point where one of the things I do is (yell), No cameras! No cameras!’ said ’82 Braves reliever Gene Garber. And that was just a way of saying hello to these guys.

Adams fits both profiles, and it doesn’t matter whether he plays free or strong safety for Todd Bowles. He’s bound to pick up a lot of tackles flying upfield, as he had 76 during his junior and final season at LSU. His quickness into the backfield should mean multiple sacks, and he’ll back that up with big plays in pass coverage in the middle of the field.

The current best young safety in the NFL plays for the other New York team. Landon Collins, the Giants’ second-rounder from Alabama in ’15, exploded as an All-Pro in his second season with 125 tackles, four sacks, 13 passes defended and five INTs.

Adams can have a similar immediate impact. Really, both the Seahawks’ Earl Thomas and the Chiefs’ Eric Berry were both good enough to win DROY as first-rounders in ’10, but both were overshadowed by the Lions’ big pick at No. 2, Ndamukong Suh.

The 6-2, 222-pound Cleveland area native threw for 3,748 yards and 30 touchdowns with just six interceptions last season. He set school records for passing yards and touchdowns and his 304 completions and 4,056 yards of total offense also set UNC marks.

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Mitch Trubisky, ironically, might be the most ready to play quarterback in this class, NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock said last week during a media conference call. And he’s only a oneyear starter. Like his pocket awareness. Think he has good feet and quick release. Don’t think he’s got a ceiling as high as some of the other guys, but I think he can become a solid NFL starter.

We have another set of NFL over/under win totals to ponder months before Week 1 of the 2017 season. Online sportsbook Bovada.lv has released its NFL O/U season totals. The main takeaway: The bar is set very high for the Super Bowl 51 champion Patriots.

Bovada pegs the Pats’ O/U line at 12.5, meaning New England would have to win 13 games on their 2017 season schedule for the “OVER” to cash. To entice the betting public to take the OVER, Bovada has put 1:1 odds on the Pats winning at least 13 games. The UNDER is a 13:10 favorite, meaning bettors think the Patriots will win 12 or fewer would need to wager $13 to make a $10 profit.

Bovada says the Patriots’ O/U is the highest win total for any NFL team in the past decade. That number seems fair, though, given New England’s 14-2 record last year and its seeming success in upgrading the roster in the offseason.

The Seahawks have not yet commented on the matter.

The 24-year-old Reed is a 6-3, 311-pound defensive lineman from Goldsboro, N.C.

The former Alabama star was a second-round draft pick last year and started six games for the Seahawks, recording 34 tackles and 1 1/2 sacks.

Reed started 28 games for the Crimson Tide, helping the team win a national championship in 2015, after transferring from East Mississippi Community College, the junior college featured in Netflix program “Last Chance U.”

The Seahawks did use two of six second-day draft picks on defensive linemen, taking Michigan State’s Malik McDowell in the second round and drafting North Carolina’s Nazair Jones in the third.

The Houston Rockets announced they are offering $1 food and drinks for fans who arrive early (5:30 p.m. early) to the potentially deciding Game 5 of their first-round playoff series against the Oklahoma City Thunder. The Rockets are up 3-1 over the Thunder, and a win on Tuesday would advance the team to the second round.

That post once linked to another instance of Rondo trying that against Josh Smith, although the embedded media is now dead. So what we know is that Rondo has tried this three times, and all three times been unsuccessful.
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Our conclusions are either that Rondo is an attempted tripper who is bad at actually tripping players, or a jokester who tries to balance the line of appearing to trip someone while failing to actually do so. I don’t know which one is the preferred option; I do know that you probably shouldn’t be either one of those things.

Heath Miller Elite Jersey Notably, Crowder was traded from the Dallas Mavericks to the Celtics for Rondo in 2014, so they weren’t actually teammates. Boston pretty clearly won that trade, but I doubt that’s what Rondo is upset about. Maybe he’s regretting his short-sleeve suit choice, and wanting to take it out on someone.

It doesn’t appear that Rondo was publicly fined for either incident, so it doesn’t seem like that would happen now. Still, this is such a Rondo story, and clearly not a good look regardless of his intentions.

Baltimore had a solid draft, adding a handful of defensive players with the talent to carry on the franchise’s rich history. The Ravens didn’t take an offensive prospect until day three, adding help at all three levels with cornerback Marlon Humphrey, linebackers Tyus Bowser and Tim Williams, and lineman Chris Wormley. While those players won’t help Joe Flacco or an offense that ranked 24th in yards per play last fall, they’ll certainly help slow down the Steelers’ dynamic attack.

Elite Womens Kony Ealy Jersey With the series tied at 1-1, the Utah Jazz head home to Vivint Smart Home Arena on Friday to try and take a 2-1 series lead in their first-round NBA playoff matchup with the Los Angeles Clippers.

Thomas got a B+ in the class. He doesn’t know Lynch’s grade but guesses it was an A. Afterward, they kept in touch, Thomas reaching out to the nine-time Pro Bowler for advice.

Wow, that’s a heck of a coincidence. I’m betting no general manager in NFL history has ever drafted a former college classmate. Cool thing, in my opinion.
A follow-up note from The MMQB’s Peter King, reporting on the phone call between Thomas and Lynch on draft night:

Solomon! It’s me! … John Lynch! You want to be a 49er?
Thomas is a havoc-wreaking tackle who could turn out to be downright Michael Bennett-like for the Niners. Dan Kadar’s scouting report:
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Thomas is kind of a strange player to evaluate. He’s not a true edge player, but he’s also not a true interior defensive lineman. Thomas’ best fit in the NFL will be as a base end who can move inside on pass rush plays. He fits that profile because he has the ability to overpower opponents. Unlike some power ends, though, he has good quickness to win on the edge. Thomas can get off blocks in a hurry and violently. He can dominate against the run and has nice pursuit speed if he’s away from the play.

However, he doesn’t have the speed and length combination you often seek in a true end, and Stanford didn’t rush him from the edge a lot.
Speaking of Lynch and Thomas-related grades, Kadar gave the whole Niners’ draft a B-.