Here is the first in our series lead­ing up to the 2007 NFL Draft. Through­out the upcom­ing weeks, we’ll fea­ture the play­ers and posi­tions that will define this year’s draft. Let’s start it up with the man who maybe the first over­all pick.

Name: JaMar­cus Russell

Height: 6’5

Weight: 265 lbs.

Home­town: Mobile, Alabama

Age: 21

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The road to the 2007 sea­son began in Indi­anapo­lis on Thurs­day as the annual NFL Scout­ing Com­bine began. We will pro­vide pro­files on some of the top draft prospects and offer analy­sis on their fan­tasy con­tri­bu­tions. First though, a side­bar if I may.  

Along the way dur­ing Super Bowl week, I man­aged to draw the ire of a Colts fan. While it is plainly obvi­ous I’m not on the Colts Express, I do under­stand what they accom­plished. They com­mit­ted the great­est heist of a Super Bowl since the…’05 Steel­ers. Not to worry though Colts Nation, as John Mad­den reminds you every sea­son, win­ning a cham­pi­onship is for­ever. I can­not take that away from you. It was a great moment for Colts fans everywhere.

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Pey­ton Man­ning and the Indi­anapo­lis Colts closed out the 2006 NFL sea­son in mer­ci­ful fash­ion by sub­du­ing the Chicago Bears 29–17 in Super Bowl XLI. Unless you had a block pool or some other gam­bling inter­est in the game, I’m not sure how it was enjoy­able to any­one other than Colts fans. The Miami slopfest fea­tured a total of eight turnovers and per­haps the shadi­est Super Bowl MVP vote in years. Seri­ously, how did Pey­ton Man­ning win the MVP? For his “exe­cu­tion of the offense” as Jim Nantz put it on the CBS telecast?

The rather ho-hum Super Bowl fea­tured an unspec­tac­u­lar but solid effort by Pey­ton Man­ning who fin­ished with one touch­down pass and an inter­cep­tion. That seemed like ’89 Mon­tana in com­par­i­son to Rex Gross­man, who looked like a high school quar­ter­back in the sec­ond half. That ulti­mately was the dif­fer­ence. Man­ning is a Porsche and Gross­man is a Ford Pinto. The Porsche beats the Pinto every sin­gle time no mat­ter the envi­ron­ment and conditions.

As for Manning’s place in his­tory, I could exhaust hours going over this but I’ll try to sum it up. I was watch­ing an America’s Game doc­u­men­tary on the 1975 Pitts­burgh Steel­ers. Dwight White of the Steel­ers said there are two cat­e­gories of Super Bowl par­tic­i­pants that nobody remem­bers: Read the rest of this entry »

In order for the Bears to win Super Bowl XLI and over­come Pey­ton Man­ning, they’ll need plenty of TDs, turnovers (hence the ball ref­er­ence), and sacks (or at worst pres­sure against Manning).

This is a bizarre matchup due to some of the game’s wild vari­ables. For exam­ple, Rex Gross­man is Mr. Hot and Cold. If he plays extremely well and doesn’t turnover the ball, the Bears have a great chance of win­ning the game. If plays like he did ver­sus Min­nesota and Green Bay dur­ing the reg­u­lar sea­son (he fin­ished those games with quar­ter­back rat­ings of 1.3 and 0.0 respec­tively), this game could be the sec­ond com­ing of 49ers/Chargers in Super Bowl XXIX.

Another wild card is the fac­tor of pres­sure on Pey­ton Man­ning. No, I don’t mean the type of pres­sure that Paris Hilton’s for­mer favorite foot­ball player, Brian Urlacher, will put on Pey­ton Man­ning but instead the pres­sure from within.

The kind of pres­sure that made Man­ning an imme­di­ate bust in the play­offs; the kind of pres­sure that made him wilt against New Eng­land in the ’03 and ’04 play­offs. With the excep­tion of the sec­ond half of the AFC Cham­pi­onship game against the Patri­ots, Man­ning has played mediocre foot­ball at best dur­ing this play­off run. Dur­ing the play­off march for Indy, Man­ning has thrown six inter­cep­tions. In fact, through­out most of his play­off games he looked uncom­fort­able, uncer­tain and at times a bit flus­tered. Read the rest of this entry »