Ten Things I Think I Think

The Rams have been trying to preserve workhorse Steven Jackson by limiting his carries during the preseason. Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images

MAILBAG Peter King will answer your questions each week in Monday Morning Quarterback: Tuesday Edition. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

1. I think the latest example of the idiocy of the preseason came Saturday night in St. Louis, when two of the three or four best backs in football, LaDainian Tomlinson and Steven Jackson, played a total of one play in the Rams' preseason game against San Diego. "He's definitely a guy I wouldn't put in in the preseason,'' Tomlinson said of Jackson.

What a boondoggle. Owners should be ashamed. The league should be ashamed. I'm not advocating Jackson and Tomlinson play -- not at all. Teams should do what they think is in their best interest to get ready for the season. Curtis Martin used to tell Herman Edwards he needed 20 or 25 summer carries to get ready for the real games, and that's what Edwards did with the Jets each August. Tomlinson obviously needs none, and the Rams think Jackson needs very few. Fine. But don't fleece the fans.

2. I think most fans have no idea what a rip-off this is, in this sense: Players get paid expense money, about $800 a week, during the preseason. But no salaries. So the average owner gets to fill his stadium, make maybe $1 million per meaningless game and not pay the players his fans came to see. (And stand on the sidelines, in the case of Tomlinson.)

One more thing: the Rams fans that came to see the game the other night paid up to $100 per seat for general admission in the stadium and up to $275 for club seats. The Cardinals fans down the street paid $24 for a field-box seat in spring training to see the World Series champions -- and, in all likelihood, Albert Pujols bat two or three times more than Steven Jackson touched the ball. The same Cardinals fans pay $85 for a field-box seat during the season.

3. I think if owners were fair, they'd do the Wal-Mart thing -- roll back the prices. That will happen about the same time I play tight end for the Raiders.

4. I think I admire the candor of Chris Simms, the quarterback who knows his days as a Buc might be numbered because he's not in the kind of football shape he needs to be in. "If I have to sit out a year, I'm totally prepared for it,'' he said in an interview with the independent team paper that covers the Bucs, Pewter Report. "I really am. I have a long, long career in front of me. If I do [get cut] -- and I hope that doesn't happen, trust me -- but if it does happen, I'm not going to go anywhere else until I feel like I am ready to play again and feel like the old Chris Simms.'' It's hard not to root for the guy.

5. I think Daunte Culpepper (11 of 20, 153 yards, two touchdowns, a few telling scrambles) looks like the best quarterback Oakland's got right now. He ran out of the pocket the other night against San Francisco, juked a defender and scrambled 13 yards for a first down, looking relatively mobile on his surgically repaired knee.

The Raiders have thought all along that, with their shaky offensive line, they'd need a mobile quarterback to play much of this year. Thus the deal with Detroit for Josh McCown on draft weekend. McCown has run around well, but not looked especially sharp. Culpepper has been very quick to learn the Raider offense and has executed it well -- other than three fumbled snaps -- in his two game trials so far. The competition is open. I still think McCown is the leader in the clubhouse, but the tide could still turn Culpepper's way.

6. I think, speaking of Raider QBs, I was of a mind over the weekend to say absolutely, positively that the JaMarcus Russell holdout would last well into the season, and perhaps into the offseason because the two sides are at a huge impasse. I'm told Russell really doesn't want to play for the Raiders anyway -- that's the biggest open secret in the league right now. Russell was never crazy about going to Team Turmoil with that leaky line, ever-changing coaching staff and weird front office. He watched as the Raiders unemotionally dealt for Culpepper. Russell knows even if he reported tomorrow, there's a good chance this would be a redshirt year anyway.

Basically, there's little motivation for Russell to sign. And there's little motivation for the Raiders to rush to get it done either. Depending on how they'd do the contract, the Raiders would either have to put significant millions into escrow with the league to fund the guaranteed portion of the deal, or they'd have to do something like signing the kid to a five-year deal instead of the allowable league limit of six -- (which they'd never want to do, seeing that this year's a near-wash already anyway, reducing a five-year deal to four playing years).

So I was ready to declare a long impasse a certainty this morning ... until I talked to Someone Who Knows Things this weekend. Al Davis will never suffer the embarrassment of the first pick in the draft to stiff him. Somehow, it will get done. When? I still say after Labor Day, but we'll see.

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