MMQB (cont.)

Ten Things I Think I Think

1. I think the most underrated roster move of the weekend was Ed Reed going on the physically unable to perform list for the first six weeks of the season. That makes an iffy secondary rely even more on young safeties Dawan Landry and Tom Zbikowski ... a secondary that will likely start newcomer Josh Wilson and Fabian Washington (coming off late-season ACL surgery), with Chris Carr in the slot. It's looking more and more like the best cover corner the Ravens have, Lardarius Webb, also coming off ACL surgery, won't be ready opening night against the Jets.

"I can't wait to see our blitzes this year,'' coach John Harbaugh told me in camp. The blitz package sounds like it will be less exotic, with more focus on using fewer rushers so as to not expose the secondary as much. It'll be interesting to see if Mark Sanchez is accurate enough, and can wait until the last second often enough, to carve up the Ravens' D in Monday night's opener. His preseason would suggest he won't.

2. I think with the Sunday cutting of fullback Tony Richardson (which clearly could be done in an attempt to float him on the market late, after most teams have their rosters intact, with the possibility of signing him after the first game to a contract for less guaranteed money), the Jets enter the first game of their season without their three most significant offensive leaders from the 2009 AFC playoff team: Richardson, Alan Faneca and Thomas Jones. Every week on Hard Knocks,' I keep hearing Rex Ryan cry out for leadership on the team. Hard to find leaders when you keep eliminating them.

3. I think Pete Carroll hasn't had to say it out loud to get the point across to the Holmgren/Mora/Ruskell regimes: I don't like the players you left me. Dealing Josh Wilson for a fifth-rounder, cutting T.J. Houshmandzadeh, signing and starting Mike Williams, looking hard at Vincent Jackson and Matt Leinart. Carroll needs to be right on most of these. The natives aren't sure he knows what he's doing.

4. I think the hidden story behind the Sage Rosenfels deal by the Vikings might be money. Might. Trading him saved Minnesota $2.7 million, and I've heard the Vikings payroll this year is approaching $150 million. For a team in the bottom quartile of NFL revenues, don't sneeze at $2.7 million.

5. I think the hidden story of the week was Maurice Clarett's return to football. He'll play for the United Football League's Omaha Nighthawks, as an understudy to Ahman Green. Clarett served three-and-a-half years in an Ohio prison for aggravated robbery and carrying a concealed weapon. Upon his release, UFL commissioner Michael Huyghue cleared him, thinking Clarett was trying hard to change his life. Now Clarett will open the season in the backfield rotation of the Nighthawks. "I am committed to working hard to earn the right for a second chance in football and more importantly in life," Clarett said in a league release. Hope he means it.

6. I think Mike Shanahan is a very good football coach. One of the best. But if you're trying to build a bridge and salvage your relationship with Albert Haynesworth, why would you play him almost all of the fourth preseason game, when his peers are all on the bench? Whatever Shanahan's reason, he would have been better served playing him a half, max. Seemed insulting.

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7. I think the Pat White story -- Miami cut White, its second-round pick, after a terrible spring and summer of trying to make him a real quarterback -- is a great example of what happens when teams judge a player more for what he does in the winter than in the fall. In other words, the Dolphins fell in love with the White who had a great 2008 postseason. They liked his potential as an athletic Wildcat quarterback, and when they got him to camp found out he didn't throw the ball much better than Ronnie Brown.

8. I think these are the best nuggets from the enlightening America's Game 2009 New Orleans Saints show, airing on NFL Network Wednesday at 9 p.m. EDT:

a. Never knew Sean Payton, a strike-team quarterback for the 1987 Bears, threw an interception on his last NFL pass -- and it was a Saint who intercepted it.

b. Defensive coordinator Gregg Williams showed his players nature videos of animals pouncing on their prey and devouring their victims ... to get them in the mood for the way he wanted them to attack quarterbacks.

c. When kicker Garrett Hartley missed a game-winning 37-yard field goal against Tampa Bay in Week 15, he came to the sidelines with a hangdog look. Peyton barked at him: "Let's go! Get that look off your face! Have some nuts!''

d. Second half, NFC Championship Game, Payton on the sidelines, to no one in particular about Favre: "This guy's going to make a mistake now, I promise you.''

e. I still can't believe Hank Baskett blew the catch on the Super Bowl onside kick to start the second half. You'll see a great view of it on the show -- and you'll be amazed that a wide receiver on the front of the kickoff-return team, clearly there because of his hands, lets the ball bounce off him and right into a pigpile of Saints.

That's a vastly underrated part of the Super Bowl story. If Baskett recovers the simple bouncer at the Saints' 45, Peyton Manning takes the ball on a short field, and if he drives the Colts to a touchdown instead of Drew Brees driving the Saints to a touchdown, the game could have been changed in a huge way. But with 25 minutes left in the game, instead of Indy being up 17-6, the Colts trailed 13-10. Baskett gets off far too easy for his error.

f. On the Peyton Manning interception that Tracy Porter intercepted and ran back for a game-icing touchdown, NFL Films has a good iso camera on Reggie Wayne. Three points.

First: Poor throw by Manning, obviously, to a spot where he thought the receiver could be just beginning his cut, because Porter stepped into the hole and made an easy catch.

Second: Great anticipation by Porter made that play happen. Clearly he knew Wayne almost certainly would be running an incut route on the play, and he anticipated it brilliantly.

Third: I don't see Wayne on an iso camera running routes often, but this one was rounded and lazy and not run with the speed that could have had Wayne cutting off Porter. All in all, I'd credit Porter for a great football play, but I'd also criticize Wayne for his route and, to a lesser degree, Manning for making a throw that Porter saw coming a hundred miles away.

9. I think, speaking of strategy and the Saints, it's significant that Darren Sharper starts the season on the PUP list. As I wrote in my Sports Illustrated pro football preview essay on spread offenses and how defenses are trying to trump them this week, defensive coordinator Gregg Williams used Sharper as his blitzing missile in the NFC title game. Williams sent Sharper through the "A'' gap (the gap between center and guard) four times. Twice Sharper nailed Favre cleanly, once so hard he left Favre badly bruised.

The interesting part of the story, to me, is how Williams debriefed Sharper when he arrived in free agency and found out the Vikings wouldn't go back and watch every game to determine where the blitzes came from early in the season, and thus didn't expect Sharper to come through the A gap. I wonder if the Vikings will go back farther than eight games to study where Williams might send the pressure from this Thursday. The Vikes should.

10. I think there are my non-football thoughts of the week:

a. Welcome back to New Jersey, Ilya Kovalchuk.

b. My Lord. Who has kidnapped the New York Mets? Mets batting order Friday at Chicago: Pagan, Duda, Carter, Wright, Davis, Arias, Thole, R.Tejada, Dickey. That's closer to the Binghamton lineup than a big-league one.

c. Box score line of the week: Manny Delcarmen's debut with the Colorado Rockies: (L, 0-1) 1/3 4 4 4 0 0. That's right. Faced five batters. Four got hits. All scored. A loss, in his National League debut, against the Phillies.

d. Evidently Rich Rodriguez didn't read his preseason obituary.

e. Notre Dame lives.

f. Just how many NCAA stars are suspended, exactly? That seemed to be the story line in so many games.

g. Memo to ESPN radio: After the 39th radio spot promoting the Mike Tyson/Tupac movie Tuesday night, we not only stop paying attention, but also got so angry at the over-promotion that we became determined not to watch it.

h. Coffeenerdness: On the 76 miles of backroads down to Cape Cod Saturday night, I counted the number of Dunkin Donuts stores. Thirty-two. Saw one Starbucks. It's New England.

i. A great savaging of the Manny Ramirez "apology to Boston,'' which was about as disingenuous as any athlete's apology I've ever read, in Sunday's Boston Globe by Dan Shaughnessy: "Now -- as he transparently courts favor in his quest for one more fat contract -- Manny finally says he was wrong about everything that happened at the end in Boston ... when he quit.'' Perfect. Hasn't been the same since he got off the female fertility drug.

j. Nice knowing you, Jonathan Papelbon.

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