It's July, and nothing, nada, diddly-squat is happening in the NFL. That hasn't stopped me from watching the NFL Network every day. Watching NFLN in July is like watching the Weather Channel on a clear day. It's repetitive, and there's nothing to talk about, but the pretty colors and the cool jazz keep you tuned in.

Here's what I've learned.

In their continuing effort to spin straw into gold, the Saints acquired former Eagles linebacker Dhancin' Dhani Jones to help bolster their run defense. Wow, I wrote that sentence without snickering. To get into the Big Easy spirit, Jones may change his victory celebration from Air Banjo to Air Trombone; he'll toot the imaginary horn after he makes an important tackle (in other words, once every four games). Before signing with the Saints, Jones said he would work for Al Gore as an environmental activist. I feel bad for the Saints defense, but on the flip side, I'm suddenly optimistic about the giant panda.

Jones was on NFLN on Friday reciting poetry. Remember that awkward moment when your girlfriend opened her journal and shared her soul-bearing blank verse with you? ("Here I sit, listening to Morrissey, my heart an empty shell.") Now imagine your girlfriend weighing 230 pounds and wearing a bowtie. That's what NFLN was like on Friday.

In other Saints news, a group of Saintsations cheerleaders has been touring Iraq. The troupe performs at military bases around the Middle East, traveling from gig to gig in Black Hawk helicopters. Talk about Bombshells over Baghdad. The tour has been going smoothly except for one hitch. At a mobile army surgical hospital, a hairy Lebanese corporal donned a miniskirt and pompoms and attempted to sneak off with the girls. He was captured and sentenced to room with Jones in training camp.

The Falcons signed NFL Europa receiver Noriaki Kinoshita, who if he makes the team will be the first player born in Japan to play in the NFL. Bobby Petrino was initially excited by the move, then disappointed to learn that Kinoshita cannot throw a Gyroball. Michael Vick and other Falcons were also disappointed that the long time Amsterdam Admiral didn't smuggle any extra goodies with him from overseas. They hoped Kinoshita could score one of those hard-to-find Nintendo Wii systems. What were you thinking?

For months, NFLN has been running an American Heart Association public service announcement featuring Steve Smith and a bunch of kids running, skating, and swimming. The "Get Up and Move" spots were fast-paced and good-natured efforts to encourage kids to exercise, and Smith looked comfortable in front of the camera. Recently, the PSA was edited: Steve Smith is out, with Matt Leinart in his place. Leinart displays all of the charisma of a department store mannequin and reads his few lines as though he's translating on the fly from Lebanese. This guy is supposed to be "Hollywood"? On camera, he's barely Glendale.

Watching the Smith PSAs made my son want to swim the English Channel and hang glide over the Grand Canyon. But when he saw Leinart, he grabbed a crate a Pop Tarts and a blanket and settled in for a Spongebob marathon. It's time to retire the Leinart ads. The health of our children is at stake.

Don't get me wrong. I like Dhani Jones. He's a Renaissance man. The trouble is, they didn't have football in the Renaissance.

In non-NFLN news, the Sporting News season preview is out, and the otherwise solid publication predicts that the Cowboys will go 13-3 this season. Yes, 13-3. Who is making these predictions … Jon Kitna? Seriously, for the Lions to win 11 games (as predicted by the Oracle of Kitna) and the Cowboys to win 13, the Vikings will have to lose about 34 games.

Speaking of the sports bible, Donovan McNabb's rehabilitation from an ACL tear is on schedule. The Sporting News reported a few weeks ago that McNabb's regimen includes games of tag to improve agility and stop-start strength in the knee. Tag is no laughing matter: the collective bargaining agreement strictly prohibits Kick the Can, and rumor has it that Eric Mangini keeps his players in shape with a vigorous Red Light, Green Light drill. Donovan was apparently playing traditional tag, not freeze tag or TV tag ("Grey's Anatomy! You can't touch me!") TSN reports that at one point, a cornered McNabb improvised, stood at attention, and declared, "I'm a tree. You can't tag a tree." There's no truth to the rumor, however, that McNabb was hanging out with Kinoshita in Amsterdam.

I just realized that my Spell Checker is happily accepting "Kinoshita" without a little red underline. A quick Google search reveals a stunning model named Ayumi Kinoshita, a film director named Keisuki Kinoshita, a hotel named Casa Kinoshita in San Miguel, Mexico, and an NFL Europa receiver who was just signed by the Falcons. Apparently, Kinoshita is a fairly common name in Japan, and possibly Mexico. I'm told Tanier is pretty common in France, but Spell Checker never accepted it until I added it. Maybe if I could throw a Gyroball, or something.

Rookie tight end Greg Olsen signed a contract with the Bears. Olsen is eager to be in camp on time; he wants to master his timing with Rex Grossman. When he does, he'll be the first.

Okay, I'll cop: I watched a lot of NFLN on Friday because I thought I would be on. Indie filmmaker Tim Carr was hawking his movie "Leaf, an Almost True Story," and I appear in the film as a football humorist/historian. Yep, a stretch. Sadly, I wasn't in the clip Carr used, probably because I have the screen charisma of Matt Leinart.

Mike Nolan and Jack Del Rio have once again gotten league permission to wear cheap-looking suits designed by a sneaker company during games. The NFL should adopt a rule that if a coach wears a sneaker suit, then his players must wear Armani cleats. I don't have a problem with suits per se, and I know Nolan wears one as a tribute to his sick father, but I wish these guys were allowed to line up their own formalwear endorsements like NBA coaches. The typical NBA coach looks like who he is: a high-profile executive for a successful multi-million dollar corporation. The sneaker suits make Nolan and Del Rio look like Salesmen of the Month at the local used Hyundai dealership.

It could be worse, though. Rumor has it that liberal firebrand Michael Moore is working on a new film called "Slobbo," an expose on how Bill Belichick's wardrobe choices have unintended consequences for low-wage garment industry employees. In one of the film's most dramatic scenes, Moore and Belichick visit a dry cleaner for the first time in their lives.

Aaron would be miffed if I didn't mention that Football Prospectus will be out in just two weeks. A quick look at the Amazon sales board on Friday found us ranked 1,505th among books, pretty darn good for two weeks before the drop date. I told Aaron that we should call it Football Prospectus and the Deathly Hallows, but the muggle never listens to me. We're ranked 30th in sports books. Take that, Inner Game of Tennis! Be sure to check us out, even if sobriety prevents us from predicting a 13-3 season for the Cowboys or 11-5 season for the Lions.

Finally, as the father of two small children, I watch nothing but kiddie programming when I am not glued to NFL Network. I also see all of the superhero movies. I saw Spider-Man 3 and was disturbed by the amount of time Peter Parker spent dancing in the movie. I saw Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and shielded my eyes as Reed Richards performed an elaborate dance at a New York club. Superheroes should not dance. Remember the Batutsi? Be glad you don't.

I bring this up because I haven't seen Transformers yet, but I heard a song from the soundtrack by the Goo Goo Dolls. It's a ballad. Worse yet, it is in 3/4 time, making it a waltz. A Giant Robot that Turns into Motorized Vehicle to Fight Evil Waltz. Mark my word, if champagne bubbles start floating and Optimus Prime starts waltzing in that movie, I am taking my kids and marching right out of the theater.

And if old Optimus starts playing Air Banjo or reciting poetry, I'm demanding a refund.

post by Mike Tanier

Ben Maller's rumors and notes page is a really useful feature here at FOXSports.com because it aggregates stories from a bunch of newspaper websites you wouldn't check otherwise. But not every newspaper story is worth highlighting.

The top headline on the NFL page today is "Eagles McNabb to Vikings?" That story is featured in a link on the main FOXSports.com NFL front page as well. If the Eagles are really considering trading Donovan McNabb to Minnesota, that's a huge story. That's really great reporting by whichever reporter discovered that one.

Except it isn't.

The rumor comes from the "Overheard" column at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The column is anonymous, and this is what it says:

Intriguing thought: If the Philadelphia Eagles were to beat the Saints on Saturday in New Orleans with quarterback Jeff Garcia, they would advance to the NFC championship game without starting QB Donovan McNabb, who's out with a knee injury.

Would Eagles coach Andy Reid, a pal of Vikings coach Brad Childress, who was McNabb's offensive coordinator in Philadelphia, then be willing to trade McNabb, 30, to the Vikings, who need a blockbuster playmaker to retain their season-ticket base?

Or would the Vikings try to sign the unrestricted free agent Garcia, 36, who runs the same West Coast offense as Childress, allowing Tarvaris Jackson more time to develop?

That's right. This isn't reporting. There is no indication whatsoever that the Eagles are actually considering a deal to send McNabb to the Vikings. A Pioneer Press sportswriter -- who isn't even high enough in the Pioneer Press hierarchy to get a byline -- just sort of had an "intriguing thought" in an otherwise tossed-off notes column. And suddenly it's a story, and not only does it get NFL front page play here at FOXSports.com, but I'm sure they are talking about it all over sports radio in Philadelphia and Minnesota as if Andy Reid actually told a reporter, "We're considering trading Donovan to the Vikings, and going with Jeff as the starter next year."

Are you kidding me?

Tell you what, let's start one too and see if we can get everyone talking about it as if it is an actual possibility.

Intriguing thought: With Urban Meyer winning a national championship at Florida, and proving himself a world-class offensive mind, would Wayne Huizenga consider offering Meyer the largest contract in NFL coaching history to take over the Dolphins?

There you go. Urban Meyer is officially a leading candidate for the Dolphins job. Go and spread the word.

Post by Aaron Schatz

So, I was playing around with the game charting data, and I decided to check out some of the stats that we included in Pro Football Prospectus 2006, to see if they stayed consistent this year. One of the biggest things in the charting is yards after catch -- STATS Inc. keeps that, but they really don't do a good job of making it public, so we wanted our own numbers. We did those not just for wide receivers, but also for tight ends, running backs -- and quarterbacks, to see who got the most extra yardage from hitting receivers in stride, throwing screens, or having Santana Moss on their team.

Comparing the two seasons was pretty interesting. (Actually, we're talking about the 2005 season compared to an incomplete sample from the first 13 weeks of the 2006 season, but I digress.) It's surprising how few quarterbacks played a significant amount of time on the same team, in the same system, in both 2005 and 2006. 30 quarterbacks had at least 80 charted passes in 2005 and at least 50 charted (so far) passes in 2006. But seven are now on different teams, and five (counting Mark Brunell) are in new offensive systems this year. Both of those could be big reasons why YAC would change.

At first glance, it doesn't look like quarterback YAC has a lot of correlation from one year to the next, but actually, the correlation coefficient is .33 for all the quarterbacks, and .41 for the quarterbacks who are on the same team as last year (no matter if the coaching staff changed or not). For the NFL, that's reasonably consistent.

Last year's top quarterback in YAC was Jake Delhomme, and he's fallen to the middle of the pack this year. (No duh, since Steve Smith hasn't been as explosive or used as much as last year.) But last year's number two, Donovan McNabb, is this year's top quarterback in YAC, by far: 8.0 yards per completion. Delhomme was at 6.1 last year, and nobody is above 6.7 in our incomplete sample of 2006.

Here's the remarkable stat for people who think Jeff Garcia is actually better than Donovan McNabb in that Philadelphia offense: Garcia is last this year with just 3.8 yards after catch. In the same offense, with the same receivers. It sure doesn't look like they're calling the plays differently -- the Eagles still throw bombs and hit Westbrook on screens -- but something is clearly different.

The rest of this year's top five: Daunte Culpepper, David Garrard, Mark Brunell, and Brett Favre. Brunell was third last year, but Garrard was near the bottom of the YAC rankings last year. That's an overall change in the Jacksonville offense, I think -- Garrard went from 43rd to third, and Leftwich went from 33rd to eighth.

Tom Brady was one of last year's leaders, but he's middle of the pack this year with the New England "seriously, who are these guys" wide receiver plan.

Another same team, different offensive philosophy: Culpepper was second this year and Joey Harrington is third from the bottom. The bottom five: Garcia, Matt Hasselbeck, Joey Harrington, Peyton Manning, Steve McNair. All of those guys were middle of the pack in 2005 except Hasselbeck -- with a lot of specific routes to get first downs, and running backs who suck at receiving, Hasselbeck is just not going to get YAC.

There are a lot of other guys who are near the bottom in YAC both years, though -- they just aren't bottom FIVE this season. That includes Charlie Frye, Carson Palmer (surprising, I think), and Michael Vick.

Post by Aaron Schatz

I first heard it after the Eagles beat the Redskins in Week 14. At that point, it was said sheepishly, almost apologetically. After the Giants victory, I heard it asked straight-facedly on a Philadelphia morning sports-talk show:

"Let's say the Eagles win the Super Bowl with Jeff Garcia. Do they go back to Donovan McNabb next year?"

As a teacher, I am supposed to live by the mantra that there are no stupid questions. But this question is stupid with a capital "stew." And it is being discussed seriously by people who should really know better.

To understand the abject idiocy of the question, we must first examine the opening phrase. "Say the Eagles win the Super Bowl." Yeah, let's just say. Say the most exciting, wonderful, unlikely event in the history of Philadelphia sports happens in six weeks (please don't e-mail me about Villanova-Georgetown). Say the Eagles make the playoffs, win a game, win another game, beat the Bears in Soldier Field, then beat the Chargers or Ravens or Colts or Patriots or whoever. Say that the trumpet doesn't sound at that moment and the Seventh Seal isn't broken. Say that Eagles fans don't burn South Street to the ground in celebration. Say all of that happens. Who's the quarterback next year? Who cares? If the Eagles win their first Super Bowl ever, the Barefoot Contessa can quarterback the team for all anyone cares. They'll have won the Super Bowl!

What an assumption to make – after three wins, the Super Bowl is a prepositional phrase leading into a sentence about a quarterback controversy brewing in the mind of a deluded armchair GM. The only thing more preposterous about the concept itself is the idea that someone would broadcast it. "Hey, Tony, Mike from Mount Ephraim here. Say a race of giant space insects comes to earth and enslaves the population in their subterranean lairs making nutrient jelly for their queen's eggs. If that happens, do we start Garcia or McNabb next year?" I can hear these same callers flooding the airwaves 45 minutes after the Eagles beat the Ravens 56-0 in their imaginary Super Bowl, with Garcia throwing eight touchdown passes. "So, Jody, who do we start next year? And by the way, what was that bum Andy Reid thinking when he punted on 4th-and-inches from midfield when we only had a 49-point lead? He's a lousy gameday coach who can't make adjustments."

The issue here isn't the Eagles' Super Bowl worthiness, though I feel despite their DVOA that they are a notch below the top contenders (here's a thought: what would LaDainian Tomlinson do to their defense?) The issue is that some fans are willing to leap to absolutely insane conclusions on the basis of three games. Garcia led the Eagles to victories over a bad Redskins team and Panthers and Giants teams that fit squarely into the Eagles' sewing circle of talented-but-highly-flawed NFC contenders. The Eagles needed defensive heroics to win all three games. Garcia's performances in all three contests were surprising and effective but not great. But suddenly, Garcia can do things that McNabb couldn't. He's better at reading defenses (no he isn't). He's easier to block for (no he isn't, because most linemen hate quarterbacks who jitter around in the pocket). He's more creative when plays break down (please be serious). He's better on quick-hitting timing passes (okay, you've got one, but I'll take the 45-yard bombs to the five-yard hitches any day). He finds a way to win.

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner. Garcia is a winner, because he has won three games. McNabb never executed a three-game winning streak. Oh wait, he has, but that was then and this is now, baby. The Eagles respond to Garcia (actually, their luck for the season started to even out). He has come through in the stretch (he hasn't been victimized by dropped passes and 62-yard field goals). He's a "leader" in some magical way that McNabb isn't. He's taking the Eagles to the Super Bowl, and it's time to ask now if Reid has the guts to trade McNabb and give Garcia the chance to repeat, or if he's going to go with "his man".

Maybe I am overreacting to one or two talk radio callers and some water cooler speculation. Or maybe not. Midday sportstalker Jody McDonald (one of our more level-headed thinkers in the Philly media) read a long diatribe on the air that I believe was taken from some Eagles blog. The screed ripped McNabb for all of his shortcomings and explained why Garcia makes the Eagles a much better team. For good measure, the screed railed against Reid for being a lousy coach (who only won because he inherited great players from Ray Rhodes) who has finally seen the light in the last three weeks. I think Jody Mac was only throwing it out there for conversation, not endorsing the essay, and I don't know or care who wrote it (when a street corner lunatic tells me that fluoride in my water is giving my kids ADHD, I don't write his name down so I can cite him in future research, either).

I couldn't write a better parody of incoherent football reasoning if I tried. Anyone with eyes can see that McNabb is a better quarterback than Garcia – not a better athlete, not a better option for the future because he's younger, but a better quarterback. Anyone who paid even a little attention to the Eagles over the last three weeks knows that the team could easily be 6-8 right now without changing a thing that Garcia did: just have Keyshawn Johnson outjump Lito Sheppard and get the Redskins to convert in the red zone in the fourth quarter, and the same geniuses who have anointed Garcia a winner would be clamoring for A.J. Feeley. I'm thrilled (and somewhat shocked) at how well Garcia has played, but I have seen his faults and failings in the past three weeks, the interceptions that bounced off defenders' hands, the throws behind receivers, the wobblers, the "buy time" dances in the pocket that will turn into sacks once teams adjust to him. He's no McNabb. Not even close. And he doesn't have any magical "winner" properties.

So let me phrase a more rational, realistic question. Say the Eagles make the playoffs and lose in one of the first two rounds. What do they do about Garcia, and what does that say about the team? If that happens, I say we re-sign Garcia to back up McNabb. If McNabb is slow to rehab his knee, then we give Garcia a start or two. And the moment McNabb can plant and cut and do all of those things, we give Garcia a baseball cap and put the real quarterback in.

And if Garcia gets us a Super Bowl, we do the same darn thing.

But if/when the Eagles fall short, we should realize that this season was an absolute vindication of Reid's system. Look at the offensive line. Look at the secondary. Look at the front seven on defense … well, don't, but at least the team's problems are localized. If the Eagles finish 10-6 with Garcia, they would easily have gone 11-5 with McNabb: either give them the Titans game back or take away the miracle field goal. That is sustained success, with 2005 written off as an injury-and-distraction ridden blip. You don't throw that away for a three-game hot streak. For me, the thought that this team is on the right track is a lot more satisfying than a pre-fab quarterback controversy.

post by Mike Tanier

Nathan Freedman: I'm an Eagles fan, and I think McNabb could have been a future-Hall of Fame quarterback had he played on a team that had good receivers. I am interested in what the 3-year similarity scores are for McNabb, and if any QB is actually really comparable. It seems to me like a pretty unique 3-year stretch, by a unique player of the DVOA Era.

Aaron Schatz: There's no way to use similarity scores to tell how he would have done with better receivers; the quality of the receivers is built into the stats. And the similarity scores don't use DVOA, just regular stats -- they go back to 1978, not just the DVOA era (1997).

That being said, similarity scores are fun, so let's see what we can find.

Two injured years means that McNabb doesn't come out as very similar to anybody.  The highest three-year similarity is 714, Mark Brunell 1997-1999.  Then Jim Kelly 88-90, Joe Montana 84-86, and Bill Kenney (who?) 1983-1985.

The most similar single seasons to McNabb this year: Steve Grogan in 1983, Jim McMahon in 1987 (pro-rated for strike), Wade Wilson in 1988, and some guy named Donovan McNabb in 2005.  Grogan is also the most similar if you look over two years only. It's funny, I don't think anybody would think of Steve Grogan and Donovan McNabb as similar players, but they are in many ways: scrambling quarterbacks who fought injuries for years, and the fans never felt that they quite reached their potential. Grogan had a lower completion percentage, but part of that is the era in which he played. (Part of this is that people have a hard time seeing players of different races as similar, even if they are similar, like Warren Moon and Trent Green.)

Then I took this year's numbers and pro-rated them to 16 games to see what would come up. I left last year's injury in, so you'll get players who had a middle year with an injury.

The most similar in that case is Joe Montana 1985-1987, but again, not that similar: 741. Montana's 85-86 is pretty similar to McNabb's 2004-2005, but Montana's 1987 is very different from McNabb this year: higher completion percentage but fewer yards per attempt, more passing touchdowns but less running.  Montana's 1987 numbers are pro-rated for the strike.

It's funny -- people keep asking me about quarterbacks this year, and I keep coming up with "that quarterback is really unique."  I'm guessing this is a sign I need to work on refining the quarterback similarities in the off-season.

Post by Aaron Schatz 

I know this is a couple days too late, but I still wanted to share with the class. This showed up in the Football Outsiders MNF discussion thread, composed by reader Jason Harris:

Every time someone mentions a Packer starter and you say, “Who the hell is that?”: Take a drink
Every time Favre flings a completely inexplicable interception: Take a drink
Every time Favre does that and Theismann covers for him: Take a drink

Every time somebody mentions Terrell Owens:
And his suicide attempt: Take a drink
And his impact on the Eagles: Take a sip (pace yourself)
And you ask yourself why they’re talking about a guy who has nothing to do with the game: Take a sip (Again, pacing)

Every time an announcer mentions how vicious Eagle fans are: Take a drink
If said fans give the announcer a well-deserved cockpunch: Chug the bottle
Every time somebody mentions cheesestakes, cheeseheads or if the camera man finds the lone, marginally attractive female Green Bay fan in the stadium: Take a drink
Every time somebody mentions Brett Favre in relation to a tragedy befalling his family, his pet ferret or his favorite tractor up to and including: death, dismemberment, VD, bad haircut, psorisis or heartbreak associated with same: Drink enough to dull the pain
Every time somebody mentions Donovan McNabb’s injury: Drink three fingers of rotgut

Take one drink for every player Kornheiser claims to have on his fantasy team
Take one drink for every minute the utterly useless celebrity spends spouting inanities in the booth

If Theismann gets so angry about Albert Haynesworth his head actually explodes: Take a Lithium and lay down in a dark room
If, after a sack, somebody says, “He is all over the QB like Mark Foley on teenage boys”: Chug heartily

Post by Aaron Schatz