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Sticking with a dozen NFL unlikely to pare playoffs to eight teams
Sports Illustrated's Peter King chatted with Bob Lorenz about the goings on around the league entering Week 2 of the season on CNN's NFL Preview: Bob Lorenz: We know the league is set on keeping the 16-game schedule, but what we don't know yet is what the NFL will do about the playoffs. Will there be eight teams or will there be the full 12? What most likely will happen? Peter King: There are two things we know almost in stone right now. One, there will be a 12-team playoff system because there are too many voices around the league who won't stand for the reduction to eight. The other thing we know almost certainly is that New Orleans will be the site of the Super Bowl -- there is a very miniscule chance that they will have to move this game or want to move this game. The most pressing issue for the league right now is whether they can move the game from January 27 to February 3 and play it in New Orleans. Under that scenario, pushing the game back a week, the league has been negotiating with the National Automobile Dealers Association, which currently has 24,000 hotel rooms booked for the week after the Super Bowl is currently scheduled. That's the big thing. Look for the NFL to get the city of New Orleans and its mayor intricately involved, to let them be the heroes and to run with this. I think it's 65-35 that the Super Bowl stays in New Orleans and moves back one week, so we don't have to go through all the other procedures to compress games. Lorenz: There still exists the possibility, though, that they can't move the Super Bowl back. If that's the case, the format would have the wild-card games in the middle of the week, with the winners moving on and playing again just a few days later. Is that even possible? King: It's possible, but not preferable. A lot of players -- Warren Sapp, Trent Green, to name a few -- told me this week that they want the extra playoff games even if they have to play them, say, four days after the end of the regular season, and then play another playoff round four days after that. These players do not want to lose the extra playoff games and the opportunity for four teams to make the playoffs. Lorenz: Players get back on the field this week and so do the regular officials, who reached a new six-year contract. Why did this deal suddenly get done? King: As crass as it sounds, this deal suddenly got done because of what happened at the World Trade Center. These officials knew that they could not win a public relations battle with the NFL in any way, shape or form, asking for a 200-250 percent raise. So they determined this week to go back in and get as much as they absolutely could right now, particularly in a week where there were layoffs all over the place -- 90,000 layoffs in the airline industry alone. The officials went in to make the best deal they could, which was the deal the NFL had on the table three weeks earlier. Lorenz: Giants head coach Jim Fassel's late father was a firefighter, so I assume that the events at the World Trade Center have hit him pretty hard. King: It has hit him very hard. In fact, most NFL coaches spend Monday and Tuesday game-planning. This Monday, just after 4 p.m., Fassel drove into Ground Zero and spent about three or four hours consoling, talking, semi-preaching, listening to all the people there. At the end, one of the guys said, "Hey, Jim, open up the offense!" and that's when Fassel knew it was time to get back to football. Lorenz: Terrell Davis is out six weeks after having his knee scoped. That means he'll have missed 23 of the Broncos' last 29 games. Everyone is wondering, will we ever see the old Terrell again? King: No, we won't. We may see little glimpses like we saw in the opening Monday night game. In talking to Mike Shanahan, I get the feeling he's going with Mike Anderson and he's going to ride that horse as long as he can. If Davis comes back, I think he'll be used, sort of, as a late-innings pinch hitter for the Broncos and I think Olandis Gary even jumps ahead of Davis on the depth chart. The fact is that right now the Broncos do not trust Davis to stay healthy because in each of the last three years he hasn't been. Lorenz: Steve McNair won't be starting today for Tennessee against the Jaguars -- is Neil O'Donnell ready to step in? King: That's a really good question, especially considering the events of the last two weeks. O'Donnell is from New Jersey -- a lot of his friends are in the financial industry and some of them are still missing in the wake of this tragedy. I spoke with Titans head coach Jeff Fisher on Friday and asked how O'Donnell was coping. Fisher told me, "Neil's been fantastic all week. He views this as his duty -- he knows he really has perform. I know how well Neil O'Donnell will play because in Friday's walkthrough, the ball did not hit the ground one time all through practicfce." Lorenz: The Bills looked awful in their opener. Why did they stake their future in Rob Johnson? King: That's the question I asked last February. As much as I respect [general manager] Tom Donahoe and [head coach] Gregg Williams, I think they picked the wrong guy as does half of Buffalo. The one thing you're going to notice now is that there will be increasingly more pressure on Johnson every week as the season goes along, particularly as Doug Flutie continues to play well in San Diego. I think it could turn very ugly in Buffalo unless Johnson turns it around quickly. Sports Illustrated senior writer Peter King covers the NFL beat for the magazine and appears each Sunday on CNN's NFL Preview.
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