1. Jeff Schultz: Before the draft, most NFL general managers acted like 1,000-year-olds at the spectre of Sean Weatherspoon's boisterous zeal and general Atlantaciousness. "He never shuts up. He gives me a headache. I don’t want him in my locker room," groaned one team's pasty-assed shineblocker who can't bicycle 100 miles in a single morning. Comrade, on the other hand, fears no swag, no matter how swagstronominal:
Falcons officials were meeting with one last player before the draft at UCLA. Dimitroff sat in the back of the room, listening to coaches talk to the prospect.
"My mind was wandering," he recalled. At that moment, he took personnel director Les Snead’s small whiteboard and wrote down one of his mantras: "Positive. Passionate. Perserverance." He added a "12" (Weatherspoon’s uniform number at Missouri) after each word."
I started thinking, ‘Why are we wasting our time to see if he’s going to fit in?’" he said.
2. Arrowhead Pride: HEY DID YOU GUYS KNOW we're playing actual football in the actual Dome in six days HEY LOOK I EVEN TAGGED IT IN THIS POST? Our Chiefs blog looks ahead to the matchup for which you can buy $2 tickets right now just to get in the building. Then simply creep your way down to front and center as soon as Matt Ryan leaves the game. A secret message can be revealed by pretending that crossed-out text isn't crossed out.
3. Bolts from the Blue: Not only do the Falcons tend to rank right around tenth according to preseason blowhards, they're also among the most consistently ranked teams -- and the second most consistently ranked among playoff picks. Biggest crapshoot: our neighbor Panthers, picked as high as eighth and as low as 23rd.
4. Dr. Saturday: Let's say you're a college football team. Let's say there's so much bad blood between you and your in-state rivals that their deeply religious quarterback talks shit about you even after throwing a game-winning pass against you. Let's also clarify: they're Mormons. How do you best tweak your Mormon rivals? If you're the Utah Utes, you release a post-practice video of your players dancing midriffedly with each other to Beyonce as coaches beam with pride. Can you fathom anything a BYU fan could possibly hate more than that?
5. SB Nation: Title: If Brett Favre Retires, Jeff George Would Be Happy To Take His Place. We've run out of old-guy-hanging-outside-of-high-school-footbball-field jokes to make about the former Falcon burnout (not fadeaway). Hang in there, Jeff.
6. Joe Sports Fan: Luckily we're all still wearing our ponchos and goulashes from last night's metro area thunderstorms, because it's time to wade through the 19 gushiest sportswriter/announcer Brett Favre quotes ever. When only one Peter King tonsiling is gooey enough to make the cut, you know it's a deep, deep pool of talking head precipitation.