Zoneblitz.com

Once rare, several trades have gone down on the first day of the NFL league calendar.

Green Bay Packers DT Corey Williams, the team’s franchise player, was traded to Cleveland for a second round draft pick. The move takes the Browns at least temporarily out of the first day of the 2008 NFL Draft. Williams has 14 sacks over the last two seasons and had priced himself out of the Packers budget with his play. This is an interesting move for the Browns. Certainly they needed to do something about their 30^th ranked defense. And Williams is a quality player, having started 20 games and notched 14 sacks over the last two seasons. I like him better in a 4-3 defense. While he’s 6-4, 313 pounds, I’m not 100 percent sold on him being the space-clogging, double-team eating nose tackle a team needs in the 3-4 defense. But an improving Browns team is doing a nice job of collecting young, talented players and they did snag one of the top defensive linemen available on the market.

Another move that could pay dividends is the New York Jets acquisition of DT Kris Jenkins from Carolina for a couple of mid-round picks. This move makes sense as the Jets switched to a 3-4 defense and Dewayne Robertson isn’t really big enough to play the fat-boy-in-the-middle role. The question is health. If Jenkins stays healthy the Jets will have worked out a steal that should improve their sieve-like run defense.

The biggest deals so far involve teams keeping their own players. Reports put the deal DL Tommy Kelly signed at $50 million over seven years with more than $18 million upfront. While Kelly has been solid he’s also been injury prone. He’s coming off of a torn ACL. And it’s questionable to me why he is worthy of being the highest paid DT in league history.

Less than two hours into free agency, and several signings are already being reported on ProFootballTalk:

Justin Smiley, Guard, to the Miami Dolphins for $25 million over 5-years
Kwame Harris, Tackle, to the Oakland Raiders, no details available
Jeff Faine, Center, to the Tampa Bay Buccanears, no details available, other than apparently the deal will make him the highest paid center in the league.

That’s right, the highest paid center in the league.  Maybe I’ve been asleep for the last couple years, but I’ve never heard anything about Faine that makes me think he’s worth that much, even if the Bucs had an astounding $44 million in cap space.

Other deals rumored to be close include Asante Samuel to the Eagles (for at least $10 million a year, another case of over paying), Randy Moss supposedly staying with the Patriots (for what Sid Hartman’s word is worth), and one that’s way out there, Derek Anderson supposedly signing with the Panthers (although that one could just have been someone having fun with Wikipedia, which has already come down).

There are also several visits rumored to be lined up, but frankly I’m too tired to get into that at this point.  All I will say is that if Bernard Berrian gets the deal he is rumored to want, I hope he’s not lining up in purple next year.

There’s the traditional New Year on January 1st, Chinese New Year in early February, and perhaps most importantly, there is February 28th, which annually marks the end of the NFL calendar year.  So at 11pm CST last night, the slates were officially wiped clean, the teams had to be under the 2008 salary cap, and contracts expired, making numerous players free agents.

And the 13,345,324th blog about football launched (that’s just a guess).

So what’s the story with Zoneblitz.com?  Well, take two brothers who spend way too much time analyzing, re-analyzing and analyzing again what goes on in the NFL, who like to argue a lot (sometimes just for the sake of arguing), and who each are (amazingly) married to wonderful women who (not so amazingly) couldn’t care less who is going to be taken with the 13th pick in the 3rd round of the NFL draft.

So, we’re hoping you’ll indulge us instead (if you really want to know more about us, feel free to check out the appropriately named ‘About‘ page). 

And if you’ve read this far, frankly you’re paying us more attention than they do when we start talking football.  So thanks for checking us out.  Hopefully you’ll be at least mildly amused, and come back for more.  Or come back just to mock us.  Whatever works.