So, any Niners fans here?

I just heard that they're toying with the possibility of starting Randy Moss. Personally I don't think it'll make a difference unless #11 improves on his passing game.
And I'm praying that our defense slays as much as they did last year.

No Niners fan here. A Cards fan. Whatever contribution he makes on the field will be negligible as one can see by the largely incentive laden contract he signed. I think the team will regret it though. They have a Super Bowl caliber D and Alex Smith has got his mojo. I don't know why they would risk a cancer in that tight locker room.

Yeah I'd have to agree, signing Moss seemed more like a stunt than anything, especially when you consider the fact that we already have a fairly strong lineup of receivers/tight ends. Although I have to say, that out of all the "super star" receivers we could have gone after, I'm just glad we didn't pick up T.O. and his pompous bullshit. Now THAT wouldn't have ended well.

And I would have been quite interested to see how the battle for the NFC West would have panned out had you guys snatched up Peyton

Peyton should have gone to the 49ers actually if he truly wanted the best shot to get to the Super Bowl. But yeah, Arizona was one of the places that tried to woo him and he made it out here to meet with the team per friend Larry Fitzgerald's request but it was not happening; one look at that sieve of an offensive line was guaranteed to scare him off.

Fuck Colby Armstrong. But I'm pretty sure he'll be better for Mtl than Latendresse will be for Ott.

Anyway, Ottawa won't do anything major this time around I bet, not that that's really unusual for them.

Murray knows what's up... He's a sneaky, effective GM. Only move he made that I absolutely despised was trading Volchenkov and signing Gonchar. Guillaume Latendresse is playing for Ottawa next season??

Dude, it's the Free agent signing day, keep in touch!

That would be a serious personnel gaffe on the part of the management. SF has no lack of good receivers, especially after drafting a new one in the first round. What they need- desparately- is a championship level quarterback. To be fair, Alex Smith did improve last season, but that's only saying he went from "terrible" to "mediocre." The cold fact is Smith is not a championship caliber NFL quarterback and probably never will be. You could have the greatest corps of receivers in the league, but the bottom line is, it wont translate into a successful passing game unless you you have: a) a solid o-line to provide pass protection and, b) a good quarterback who is both accurate, consistant, and unflappable under heat. The 49ers do have the former, but are lacking in the latter.

Hey remember when Rex Grossman got to the big dance with Chicago? Or how about when Trent Dilfer managed to walk away with a ring with Baltimore despite going five games with three offensive touchdowns or something ridiculous like that? I'm not saying a top tier QB is irrelevant, not at all, in fact without one it's almost impossible to succeed, but it can happen and it does every so often. Keep your D strong and you can overcome some hilariously bad offensive woes.

On that note, I actually own an Erik Kramer jersey from when I was a kid. I wonder how much that thing is worth? Twelve cents?

Desperately? I'm not so sure about 'desperate'. You guys came within one quality set of downs and a routine special teams catch away from the big game. Just to reiterate what Bastardhead was saying, a competent game manager can sometimes be enough when a team has an elite D like the Niners have. And besides, championship caliber quarterbacks aren't exactly at a surplus. That being said, you guys did draft Alex Smith over Aaron Rodgers who is the best quarterback in the NFL right now. It's fair to say San Francisco wishes they had that one back. Hehe

as a 49er fan I have been kicking myself- and throwing darts at a picture of then-head coach Mike Nolan- ever since the dubious 2005 draft, when they passed over Aaron Rogers for smith. What the #@$^ were they THINKING??.

the team did make some pretty poor choices over the last decade. I remember that @#^# idiot Dennis Erickson was the head coach for a couple of forgettable seasons before that.

Interesting moves in the NHL... I'm kinda scratching my head about the Sens' moves; I didn't see Foligno leaving, that's for sure, but am happy to see Kuba go. In the words of a fan at the stadium and some random game last year: "Go back to Europe Kuba, you bum!" I had a soft spot for Konopka though; tough son of a bitch. Latendresse though, ehhh...

Both Suter AND Parise sign with the Minnesota Wild

The Miami Heat of the NHL now? Heater, Parise, Suter for the big three, plus they have the supporting cast of Koivu and Gooch and a few others. Looks like ditching Havlat and Burns may well have paid off after all.

This.

This whole Penn State scandal..story of the year. If JoPa was still alive, he'd be facing charges now.

I am not a Penn State fan, and I would like nothing more than to see Sandusky die of a properly inflicted chest wound. But I think it is too bad that people are considering Paterno to be a "pedophile by proxy" despite the fact that he had NOTHING to do with what Sandusky did. People seem to imply that Paterno molested those kids himself. I think really Paterno's problem was, he was clueless. Totally in the dark, and somewhat naieve as well. And while a great coach, his tragic flaw was he was incompetant about handling the allegations which at that time, were not yet proven. That is tragic, and certainly unfortunate, but not really criminal. While I do think (as do most people) that Paterno could have and arguably should have done more to stop what was happening, I do NOT think he was the great enabler and "by-proxy pedophile that people are making him out to be nowadays. In short, it is too bad that after all Paterno he achieved, this fucked up shit is tarnishing his legacy. I say, let Sandusky die a horrible excruciating death, and let Paterno rest in piece.

From what I understand (which I admit isn't a whole lot, so take my words with a grain of salt here), Paterno either knew what was going on or had caught wind of something sour and either said nothing about it, or brought it up to somebody and made no further efforts to make sure it was done. If he knew, Sandusky could have easily been fired and arrested, but he wasn't. Joe Pa was (and is) a legend and could have had ANYBODY at that school fired if he knew something was going on. By doing nothing (or a miniscule amount), he tarnished his own legacy and let down all of those kids. Every man is guilty of all the good he chose not to do.

Yes, that's what is so upsetting: that Paterno was such a demigod in State College. His "superiors" i.e. the athletic director and the university president were anything but. It's a safe venture to bet that these big shot coaches no matter how legendary will no longer be idolized and given the benefit of the doubt when you also take into consideration the far, far lesser but no less demonstrable transgressions that occurred with Bobby Petrino and Mike Leach.

I like what one person tweeted: "Instead of removing the Joe Paterno statue, they should just turn it around so it looks the other way."

I'm extremely pleased that Selänne decided to continue his career with one more year, although I don't see the Ducks competing for Stanley Cup. Let's just hope that he doesn't suffer from any injuries during the season.

A Slovakian hockey player, former Flyers draft pick, was convicted of murdering a referee. The story is even more bizarre than you might expect.
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nhl-puck- ... --nhl.html

Even though I'm not much of a baseball fan anymore, MLB 12: The Show is the best, most comprehensive sports video game out there. It does take alot of time to get used to both the pitching and hitting mechanics but I love playing that game. The motion capture is the most photo-realistic there is and it looks like you're playing a real match on the tv.

Well I had my first of two fantasy drafts for football. This is an awesome league for me because it's a family league, and out of the ten teams, only four of them have played FF before, so it's pretty stacked for me to do well hopefully. I have astoundingly bad luck when it comes to football though (I was born with a four leaf clover in my ass when it comes to hockey though), so we'll see. Anyway, the Asskickers' first lineup looks like:

QB: Aaron Rodgers, Michael Vick
WR: Julio Jones, Miles Austin, Antonio Brown, Demaryius Thomas, Anquan Boldin
RB: Darren McFadden, DeMarco Murray, Darren Sproles, CJ Spiller, Toby Gerhart
TE: Rob Gronkowski, Kyle Rudolph
K: Neil Rackers
DEF: Seattle

Keep in mind I had the tenth pick out of ten teams, and got Rodgers with my first pick. Being in a league full of Bears fans paid off in that regard. I kinda boned myself with bye weeks but I'm kinda hoping to use Vick as trade bait to help even that out a bit. We'll see.

EDIT: Also, return yards count for this league (albeit for a lesser value than receiving/rushing/passing yards), so Sproles and Brown are gonna be my secret weapons.

Yeah. Good luck with that. The last two times I was in a family type league, the people who were into fantasy before got their asses kicked by the wives who picked the teams with the colors they like. Maybe it's just my luck and I have bad karma, or possibly I'm just utterly terrible at making line up matches...

Good luck regardless!

I think most teams wish they had Green Bay's capability to develop young QBs, as well.

You can get to the Super Bowl without an elite QB. Heck, as a Bear fan I would be dishonest not to admit that. But it's becoming increasingly unlikely.

That said, I think the jist of your post is on target -- if there's a team that can do in 2012/2013, it might just be the 9ers.

The thing about San Francisco this year though is that they will lose the element of surprise. They kind of surprised everyone last season and now they have expectations to accomplish as many wins and go far in the playoffs. They should win the division but I have a niggling suspicion that Seattle will creep up.

I'm not much of a fantasy football guy so this is just a regular football take but I've long considered Nick Foles to be the hidden gem from this year's draft. He put up some very nice numbers stuck on a super lousy team on the fringes of the Pac 12. While he still needs alot of work and is woefully immobile, he's got prototypical size, an NFL caliber arm with a nice touch on the ball. He's pretty much won the backup job in Philadelphia and will certainly get a few starts since Michael Vick is made of glass. He of course may be just another Kevin Kolb for Andy Reid to butter up in a trade for Patrick Peterson but keep an eye on him.

The Maple Leafs will be very good next year.

Washington Redskins fan here. I was extremely impressed with RGIII's performance against the Saints on Sunday. A lot of analysts picked the Saints to win, and even I thought it would be hard for the Skins to get a victory in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome where the Saints were undefeated last season. Boy, was I surprised. RGIII had a hell of a game. What better way to make a rookie debut in the regular season than with 19/26 passes for 320 yards & 2 touchdowns with no interceptions (139.9 QB rating)! It's only the first week of the season, but if this team continues to play the way they did that game, then we're in for a fun season. HTTR!

Just want to point out Cam Newton last year. Dude had some phenomenal games but it meant jack squat when the team couldn't win a game. Granted Washington did beat New Orleans here, but I'm skeptical because I'm a Bears fan, and thus used to promising things blowing up in my face.

Very true. He deserved Rookie of the Year last season for good reason. That team finished at a mediocre 6-10 though, so yes, it didn't mean shit. I'm gonna wait till the Skins play against tougher teams in the coming weeks (namely the Falcons & Steelers) before I say how good they truly are. I do have hope though!

Fuck the NHL, fuck Bettman, that is all.

I was getting stoked for the Capitals season too, hopefully it won't drag out for too long.

So just me watching the Champions league then...

What match you got on? Real Madrid vs Man City for me.

Nope! Watching City match, good game so far, Real Madrid the better team at the moment though.

Yeah, thats the game. Considering their league form, i was surprised by how dorminant Madrid were in the first 30mins. Good saves by Hart.

City score against the run of play. Quite fortunate City, very good finish though

Yaya Toure is a beast. He had a few good runs in the first half but the final ball was always lacking. Didn't make a mistake there though, and a decent finish from Dzeko. Madrid have been wasteful, but if you don't take your chances you'll get punished.

Yup. yaya is one hell of a player when he's in the mood. Almost scored there