What's that? You were wondering exactly how many days until the start of the NFL season? Well, you're in luck! We here at the Triangle are set to spend the next three and a half months providing a daily reason to get excited about pro football's return.

This morning, Calvin Johnson reportedly confirmed something that we’ve sorta known, but not really known, for a few months. Then he didn’t. Right now, we know this much: For a significant portion of a season in which he broke the single-season record for receiving yards, Megatron played with at least one messed-up finger.

Now, as others have noted, broken fingers for wide receivers are not uncommon. Torry Holt looks like this. Antonio Freeman can’t wear his Super Bowl ring because notorious asshole/finger-breaker Brett Favre ruined his hands.

That said, Calvin Johnson still came 36 yards short of 2,000 with some dingy digits. Have you ever broken a finger? I have. It hurts. Have you ever felt a football? I have. It’s hard. This would be an uncomfortable arrangement even if Chad Pennington were the Lions quarterback. To be clear, he is not.

Really, I’m just using this fingers stuff as an excuse to post the above YouTube video and remind everyone that Megatron is Megatron, and he is barely real. This may be a product of my Bears-fandom-influenced desire to discount any success from other NFC North teams, but somehow I feel like Calvin Johnson is still underrated. Considering he was no. 3 on NFL Network’s player-voted list of the 100 best players in the league a year ago, I don't know how that could possibly be true, but again, those are my issues.

Outside of the quarterback upper class (Brady, Brees, Manning, Rodgers), there is no more influential offensive player in football than Johnson, and it’s that status as the ultimate threat that actually makes his accomplishments more impressive. For almost the entirety of his career in Detroit, Johnson hasn’t just been the Lions’ primary offensive option — he’s been their only one. When Johnson had 1,300 yards in Detroit’s 0-16 2008 campaign, the Lions’ no. 2 wide receiver was Shaun McDonald — with 332 yards. In 2011, it was Nate Burleson. Even if Nate Burleson hasn’t played for your team, he has. Last season, it was Titus Young. And that’s all I will say about that.

That’s saying nothing about the five-headed Shaun Hill–Dan Orlovsky–Daunte Culpepper–Drew Stanton–Jon Kitna monster that’s started at quarterback for more than half of Johnson’s career games. Johnson’s numbers may be inflated by the Lions’ pass-happy approach, but they’re deflated by everything else. His past two seasons stack up with any 32-game stretch ever, regardless of era, and with 10 working fingers, I can only imagine this year will be more of the same.

What's that? You were wondering exactly how many days until the start of the NFL season? Well, you're in luck! We here at the Triangle are set to spend the next three and a half months providing a daily reason to get excited about pro football's return.

Take a look at this photo. What do you see?

I’ll tell you what I see. I see the purest of friendships, an unbreakable bond, forged by hundreds of millions of after-practice route-running sessions and a joint chiponmyshoulderness born of lives defined by slights. It just isn’t right, what happened. If we can’t believe in Tom and Wes, what’s left to believe in?

The fallout between Welker and Belichick (who clearly hates love in all its forms), along with Brady’s unhappiness and the whole situation’s ugly turn, deserved the attention it received. But underplayed in all this, somehow, was not only that Welker was leaving — he was running straight into the arms of Brady’s greatest rival. It could’ve been anyone. But no, it had to be Peyton Manning.

In this loyal-free era of sports, we see defections like this all the time, but with Welker, I want to believe it was about more than business. I want to believe that what happened with New England was a personal affront, that he chose Denver to stick it to Belichick, and that all this talk about feeling like a rookie again is an effort to make Brady jealous. Until I hear otherwise, that’s what I’m going with. And I can’t wait for Wes Welker to be the Adam Banks of the NFL.

By the way, the Broncos visit Foxboro in Week 12, when I can only assume those teams are going to be a combined 17-3 and battling it out for home-field advantage. I've got to assume that all this comes up that week. Just a hunch, though.

What's that? You were wondering exactly how many days until the start of the NFL season? Well, you're in luck! We here at the Triangle are set to spend the next three and a half months providing a daily reason to get excited about pro football's return.

For about five minutes last year, the NFL’s switch to Nike uniforms came with the thought that, just maybe, this would mean a revamp for some of the league’s lesser designs. But because every NFL decision-maker’s job is to make football as little fun as possible, the uniforms were introduced, and nothing had changed (a little neon green and a sleeker panther don’t count).

This year, Minnesota, Jacksonville, and Miami all underwent some tweaks, but mostly, it’s more of the same. For some teams, a resistance to change is understandable. The Steelers have had essentially the same uniform for 40 years, and if anyone tried making any wholesale changes to the Bears’ jerseys, I would almost guarantee a riot. That type of tradition doesn’t go for everyone, though, and there are some teams that really could use a change. As always, cue enterprising users.

What's that? You were wondering exactly how many days until the start of the NFL season? Well, you're in luck! We here at the Triangle are set to spend the next three and a half months providing a daily reason to get excited about pro football's return.

In the first quarter of the Cardinals’ Week 3 win over the Eagles last year, a few minutes after Larry Fitzgerald caught a desperation flip from Kevin Kolb that went for four yards on 3rd-and-16, this graphic popped onto the screen.

Think about this only for a second, and it makes sense. Larry Fitzgerald is one of the best wide receivers in football, and has been since he came into the league almost a decade ago. Think about it for any longer, and it makes absolutely no sense at all.

Since Fitzgerald came into the league, the Cardinals have played 144 regular-season games. For 57 of those games (and two playoff runs), Kurt Warner was the Cardinals’ starting quarterback — so we’re good there. For the other 87, Arizona trotted out a combination of — I know you think you know this list, but I promise, it’s still great every time — Josh McCown, Shaun King, John Navarre, Matt Leinart, Derek Anderson, John Skelton, Max Hall, Kevin Kolb, Ryan Lindley, and Brian Hoyer. For 60 percent of his games, this is what Larry Fitzgerald has worked with at quarterback, and still, no one younger has ever caught 700 passes. Bill Belichick thinks everyone he’s about to play is the greatest something ever, but with Fitzgerald, I think he might actually believe it.

OK, so I know what you’re thinking: If you’re going to start a countdown this far in advance (which is admittedly crazy), why not just wait to start on a round number? I’ll tell you why — because Simmons is the boss, and he wasn’t going to go another day without a reason to get excited about football season:

It's time.

I want the countdown to the NFL season. EVERY DAY.

That was an e-mail from earlier this week. It was not a request.

The first few days of NFL free agency are a jumble of names, rumors, and fan delusion (mostly the fan delusion). No matter how many times we see a team win a Super Bowl on the back of solid drafting and player development, early March always becomes a time when the next big name is going to put that offseason champion over the top. After a week or so, the big prizes are gone, and attention turns to the next set of saviors — that year’s crop of first-round picks.

Moves that go down in May never come with the same fanfare, but especially with the current salary-cap landscape in the NFL (with player salaries outpacing the cap), there are still bargains to be had. There are still more than a handful of players out there who can make a difference for a team, this year and beyond, and to help sift through them, we put together what we hope is a helpful primer.

Eric Winston

2012 team: Kansas City Chiefs

Winston was the most notable casualty during the regime change in Kansas City (aside from Matt Cassel, I guess, but c’mon). He signed a four-year, $22 million deal with the Chiefs last offseason after being cut by the Texans, but with John Dorsey and Andy Reid coming to town and two franchise left tackles sitting there with the no. 1 pick, Winston was shown the door. Kansas City seems to have a better plan in place than Houston did a year ago. The right side of the Texans’ offensive line was a shuffling mess last season without their former right tackle, but now that the Branden Albert trade with Miami has fallen through, Kansas City will likely have no. 1 pick Eric Fisher on the left side and the franchised Albert on the right.

Few things betray Roger Goodell’s unquenchable thirst for power like the NFL’s efforts to be a constant fixture in the sports calendar. It’s not enough that football dominates Sundays (and Mondays, and now Thursdays) between September and February. Now it wants March (free agency) and April (a four-day, prime-time broadcast NFL draft), too. For all of the league’s efforts, though, May is still a lull in the churn of NFL news. Post-draft headlines are reserved for rookie contract signings and mandatory minicamps — not exactly Darrelle Revis trade chatter.

Last week, tossed in with talk of outdated NCAA rules and Nick Fairley’s craziness was a seemingly simple news bit about Sean Lee and Dez Bryant being "ready to go" for the Cowboys in 2013. The headline was a reminder (not about Bryant, really, who had his best season as a pro and played in all 16 games) that even though most of the official transactions are done for the offseason, there’s one area left where some teams are set to quietly improve — the back-from-injury, de facto free agent.

Every now and then, our boss, Bill Simmons, will forward some of his reader mail to me and fellow Triangle editor Chris Ryan. Most of the time, it’s to troll us about our favorite teams (Brian Urlacher’s pre-draft ascension was entirely legitimate, and I won’t hear otherwise), but occasionally, one of the notes has an idea so insane that it actually makes a lot of sense.

Following the NFL draft, Jonathan from Suitland, Maryland, sent an explanation of why it often sucks to root for the Eagles around draft time. His reasoning for this was a series of draft trades made during the 2009 and 2010 seasons. It started with a trade in April 2009, when the Bears traded Kyle Orton, the 18th pick in 2009, a third-rounder in 2009, and their first-round pick in 2010 to the Broncos in exchange for Jay Cutler and Denver’s 2009 fifth-round pick. Now, watch carefully. This gets confusing fast.

Oh dear. Tim Tebow. Do we have to do this? There's way more meaningful stuff happening elsewhere this week, in case you haven't noticed. This isn't going to be fun for you, or for me, or really even for Tim Tebow. Fine. Just know that I think your obsession with backup quarterbacks is weird and unsavory.

Well, it's safe to say the Tim Tebow experiment in New York did not quite go as planned. It took about two months for everyone involved to realize as much. Out of sheer misguided desperation, though, the Jets kept Tebow on the roster through the 2013 draft in the hopes of somehow trading Tebow and acquiring a draft pick. When that didn't happen, the Jets wasted little time in releasing the former first-round pick. It didn't work because nothing with the Jets worked last year. Let's all move on.

Does Tim Tebow have discernible skills that make him an employable NFL quarterback? Yes. He was certainly effective in his role as a "punt protector" last year, where he converted on three of four fake punts. Tebow's exhibited some ability as a runner in short yardage, where his 236-pound frame can push the pile. He would also offer some ability in those situations as a passer on trick plays, as his above-average arm strength (for a running back) could allow him to chuck bombs downfield. I don't know that those combined skills are enough to justify a roster spot, but it's something.

The Philadelphia Eagles' selection of USC quarterback Matt Barkley in the fourth round of this year’s draft appears, by any logical measure, to be a great value pick. At one time, Barkley was talked about as a high first-round pick, and there's no doubting his precise footwork or his accuracy on short and intermediate passes. That’s saying nothing of his personality and whiteboard smarts, which coaches and scouts have raved about since he started as a true freshman at powerhouse Mater Dei High School.

Barkley steadied USC through the loss of Pete Carroll to the NFL, NCAA sanctions that limited scholarships and depleted the Trojans roster, and the often bizarre antics of his coach, Lane Kiffin. Barkley’s final season at USC, one in which the Trojans began the season ranked no. 1 in the country before finishing 7-6, was one to forget. His play was inconsistent, and he finished the year on the sideline after suffering a shoulder injury against UCLA. But for Chip Kelly and the Eagles, grabbing such an accomplished player in the fourth round should qualify as the quintessential "value" pick.

Super Bowl champions Ray Rice and Torrey Smith met at video game producer Treyarch's studios in Santa Monica this week to settle an argument: Who would win in a Call of Duty: Black Ops II grudge match? Before they sat down to virtually duke it out on the just-released The Uprising DLC Map Pack (that's as close to a neutral field in video games you can get; oh, and if you're over 35, don't be embarrassed if you don't know what a DLC Map Pack is), we had a chance to ask them a couple of questions:

With the NFL offseason trudging along, there are plenty of questions for every NFL team. But for most, there's one issue that trumps the rest. This is the latest in a team-by-team look at the offseason tasks that just can't get botched.

The Mike Tannenbaum era for the New York Jets will, justly, be remembered for two things. The first is the freewheeling 2008 offseason that saw the Jets bring in a massive free-agent class designed to retool a team that went 4-12 a season earlier. Before ascending to his role as general manager, Tannenbaum had earned a reputation as a cap master, and the complications that come with several huge veteran contracts seemed to be ones he was leaving to Future Mike. Well, putting his franchise against the cap with a bunch of misplaced free-agency money was enough to ensure that we never actually got to Future Mike, and instead, it was new GM John Idzik who inherited a roster more than $20 million over the limit.

The second is actually the more telling, and also what’s made the past 24 hours a sign of a new start in New York. In the 2009 draft, the Jets picked three times. Their first selection was the fifth overall, a pick they’d gotten by trading first- and second-round picks to Cleveland in an effort to secure USC quarterback Mark Sanchez. That Sanchez hasn’t worked out — and that the Jets compounded that problem by giving him heaps of guaranteed money anyway — matters, but it isn’t the point here. Now with no picks left in the top 75, the Jets sent third- and fourth-round choices to Detroit in exchange for the first pick in the third round. That pick was Shonn Greene. Finally, the Jets picked in the sixth round, where they took Nebraska guard Matt Slauson — the best player of the three, and also one who was allowed to leave town this offseason to sign for close to the minimum in Chicago.

"Did they get a fair price for Rickey Henderson? It's kind of like if you're an art collector and you have the Mona Lisa, what's a fair price for it? The idea in building a championship team is to acquire players like Rickey Henderson. It's a sad day when you have to give one away."

Bill James wrote that about the Oakland A's after they traded Henderson to the Yankees before the 1985 season. As the Jets and Buccaneers negotiated terms for a possible Darrelle Revis deal for weeks (almost entirely through leaks from "unnamed sources" in New York newspapers), I kept coming back to that paragraph from James. I don't know whether this trade will end up being what any of the parties involved hope it will be. I just know that it's depressing to have something as wonderful as Darrelle Revis and then give it away for some unknown quantity. It's just too difficult to get another Darrelle Revis.

What do smart NFL teams do in and around draft day that naive, stupid teams don't do? They draft better players, of course, but it's not that simple. They don't "want it more" and will themselves into picking better players. The dregs of the league don't just forget what winning football teams look like and come away from the draft with three punters and a kicking tee. Matt Millen drafted Calvin Johnson. The Browns took Joe Thomas at the top of the first round. Dumb teams do brilliant things sometimes. And likewise, the teams we perceive to be among the league's smartest make plenty of mistakes on draft day. The Ravens traded up to grab Kyle Boller. The 49ers took Alex Smith over Aaron Rodgers. Bill Belichick has drafted dozens of useless defensive backs over the past few years. This stuff happens.

Because they occasionally screw up, we know that it's not that the league's wise teams are privy to some super-secret scouting technique that the dumb ones can't pick up on. They don't see some tiny hitch on tape or have some perfect interview question that reveals everything about a player's future. And players don't come fully developed out of the college womb, either; they continue the growth and maturation process at the professional level, and it would be naive to pretend that the organization they end up in doesn't have a huge say in that. It's no accident that linebackers for the Steelers and defensive linemen on the Giants seem to develop more reliably than if those same players lined up for the Chargers or the Jaguars.

With the NFL offseason trudging along, there are plenty of questions for every NFL team. But for most, there's one issue that trumps the rest. This is the latest in a team-by-team look at the offseason tasks that just can't get botched.

There were two elements of the Saints' 2012 season that were unprecedented in the NFL. The first was the season-long suspension of Sean Payton, a product of the punishments handed down after the (admittedly botched) investigation into the bounty program linked to former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams. Even without their primary play caller, the Saints and Drew Brees were still a top-10 offense, and with both Payton’s return and offensive coordinator Pete Carmichael’s decision to not seek a head coaching job, they should be even better at moving the ball next year.

The other historic thing to happen to last year’s Saints is the more concerning one, because it has no such guarantee of righting itself. By most measures, the Saints were an all-time terrible defensive unit in 2012. New Orleans gave up more than 7,000 total yards during the regular season — the most ever surrendered and more than 900 yards worse than the league’s 31st-ranked team. Only Tampa Bay gave up more yards through the air, and no one gave up more yards on the ground. New Orleans posted a defensive DVOA of 14.8 percent, again worst in the league. Just about nothing went right on that side of the ball for New Orleans, and the result was Payton, immediately upon return from suspension, relieving Steve Spagnuolo of his defensive coordinator duties and replacing him with Rob Ryan.