Torrey Smith may be the best receiver after AJ Green and Julio Jones. Should the Rams be interested?

This year's crop of receivers, according to touts and scouts, is broken into three groups: "AJ Green and Julio Jones"; a second tier of potentially exciting players that includes Maryland's Torrey Smith, Pittsburgh's Jonathan Baldwin and Miami's Leonard Hankerson; and everyone else.

These three tiers not only passes the eyeball test, but it also makes sense from a historical perspective. We just completed an analysis of the last 30 years of wide receivers in the draft, weighing the level of impact as compared to the order each player was taken. And the "boom/bust" risk breaks very neatly between the first two receivers taken and the next group.

After his brilliant Combine performance, there's a good chance that Julio Jones is now unreachable for the Rams. And while signing free agents -- even their own, like Mark Clayton -- is on hold, the Rams are doing their due diligence by working out other options at the WR position, like Torrey Smith.

The open question, though, is whether their chance of finding a true "impact" player from this second tier is good enough for them to make the pick?

Click through to see the full analysis and a monster infographic, after the jump.

Apparently, I'm not the only one in the football world who likes to use infographics to explain themselves. Commissioner Goodell sent a letter to the players (read the full text of the letter, as acquired by Mike Freeman of CBS Sports), hoping to break the logjam in communication by bypassing the leadership of the union.

Vikings punter Chris Kluwe (@ChrisWarcraft on Twitter) felt compelled to respond, but knew words wouldn't be enough, so he took to the whiteboard to illustrate his response:

Pretty funny stuff, and bonus points to Kluwe for what looks like a pretty accurate portrait of Jerry Jones. But the muse had not left him; Kluwe followed this up with a handwritten satire of Goodell's letter.

One wonders, though, if he puts on the UPS-guy's lady-wig when he gets inspired to start whiteboarding his thoughts...

Related reading:

Jim Trotter's description of what may have been the breaking point of negotiations between players and owners is vivid. Jerry Jones' gesture clearly carried great dramatic weight ... but here's where the language fails us in the retelling, from players to Trotter to us. What kind of gesture was it? Exactly what did Jones mean to say, and was the players' reaction appropriate?

While we can't confirm, we can at least explore the range of possibilities, from likely to absurd, from benign to deeply insulting.

1. "We are at odds."

Likelihood: probable.
Meaning: relatively clear.

We start with the most likely possibility, that Jones brought his fists together in direct opposition, implying that despite continuous meetings, neither side in this debate was willing to give an inch.

However, he isn't really saying anything that wasn't already abundantly clear to begin with. This shouldn't have been news; why would the players attach any particular meaning to this, other than the natural drama of the delivery?

2. The "Terrorist Fist Jab"

Likelihood: very improbable.
Meaning: foggy at best

A rotation of this same gesture would be some sort of perverse self-congratulatory fist-bump, of the kind made famous by Barack and Michelle Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign.

While it seems likely that we could dismiss this gesture, perhaps Jones intended it to underscore just how little the owners care about communicating with the players. Perhaps he started by trying to dap one of his fellow owners, and was left hanging, and so dapped himself?

3. The Friends Gesture: "F*** You"

Likelihood: absurdly low
Meaning: insulting but harmless

When I related this story to my wife, this interpretation was the first that popped into her head. The gesture, invented by Ross and Monica as a way of flipping each other off without their parents' knowing, is equal parts goofy and hostile. But once seen, it can't be forgotten. (Watch)

However, given the gulf between the intended hostility of the message and the way the players in the room laughed it off, perhaps this was it...

4. The Hand Jive

Likelihood: absurdly low
Meaning: ???

Okay, this is perhaps the least likely. But the sudden uncontrollable urge to break into obscure dance moves from the 70s may be a nervous side-effect of the massive strain a billion dollars of stadium debt is placing on Jones. It may also be the reason he has been absent from most talks.

5. "We are hard-core"

Likelihood: barely possible
Meaning: comical but clear

Knowing how insistent the owners have been in negotiations, and how hawkish Jones is by nature, and throw in a dash of Texas-sized crazy and it's not inconceivable that Jones temp-tatted an indisputable message to the players, then made sure to deliver it in his brief time at the negotiating table.

6. "Cuffs on, please"

Likelihood: you tell me
Meaning: insulting, incendiary

In all likelihood, Adrian Peterson and Rashard Mendenhall are simply speaking out of turn. (See the last "We need a new language" post.) But what if Peterson's "modern-day slavery" comments were sparked by an incindiary, racially-charged gesture?

As lunatic as the owners' cartel has sometimes appeared, this just doesn't seem to fit. But as the questions posed by Dolphins exec Jeff Ireland to prospect Dez Bryant (including "was your mother a prostitute?") show, sometimes we assume way too much gentility on the part of those in charge of our game.

Just as momentum for an LA stadium seemed to be building, the Lockout gets in the way.

After years of speculation, politics and in-fighting, the consortium led by Ed Roski that has been attempting to build a new stadium in Los Angeles and lure an NFL team away (or prompt Roger Goodell to reach into his magic sack and create one) had finally begun making serious headway. They have a site. They have an architect. And thanks to AEG's mammoth naming deal, they have $700 million dollars to play with.

And just as Roski's dream of fielding professional football in Los Angeles again seemed close to reality, the Lockout throws on the brakes. Again.

According to Jilane Rodgers, PR rep of the group formerly known as the NFLPA -- which begs the question, how does an association that no longer exists still employ people? -- part of the discovery process of Judge Doty's ruling on the league's TV contracts unveiled a rather interesting document. This "decision tree" was designed by the league to help owners an investors determine how and when to dip into the war chest, in the event of a lockout.

(Click to see this image full size)

Notable if you follow the chain down and to the right, under "Hold until new CBA in place": Los Angeles.

On the one hand, this should be heartening. Clearly, LA is now forefront in the league's plans, if it wasn't already. They just have this little brushfire with those pesky players to put out first. On the other, though, it's yet another obstacle in what has become a fifteen-year odyssey to return the sport to the city of angels.

Note: I haven't always been so friendly with LA, particularly when I wrote this diatribe/open letter to the new Rams' owners last year explaining why St Louis was the perfect home for the Rams. But my extended Twitter family now contains a lot more folks from Southern California, and they've warmed up my Grinchy little heart. Just don't take my Rams, and we'll be fine. (At this point, the Vikings, Jaguars, and Chargers all seem more likely anyway.) 

One year after this seminal book came out, Adrian Peterson signed the richest contract ever given to an NFL running back -- before playing a single down.

As sports fans we talk a lot about "players" and "owners" ... and if the boom of fantasy sports is any indication, we all want to be "owners." But the terms are horribly misleading, especially in context of highly successful professional sports. Adrian Peterson -- his body, his family, his existance as a human -- isn't owned by Zygi Wilf and the Vikings any more than my family and I are owned by the good folks at Bloguin. We're under contract. 

There are differences between my contract and his -- if I wasn't writing for Bloguin I could go and write for one of a few dozen other networks or websites, assuming they liked my stuff. There aren't many alternatives to the NFL. But that exclusivity carries with it a pretty exclusive pay scale -- his current contract is worth approximately 400 thousand times what mine is worth.

You could make an argument that Peterson is referring to a concept of "wage slavery" -- that his very livelihood depends on his making a living wage, and the more control and exclusivity his bosses have over the size and availability of that wage, the more the situation approaches something like slavery.

But therein lies the fault of the language. Slavery isn't a concept that exists by degrees. Either you are enslaved or you are free. We need a better metaphor. But instead, we fall back on the concepts that we're used to, and give in to the temptation to compare ourselves to some historical precedent -- especially those at the extreme end of the scale -- when we're under duress.

Witness all the media coverage over the past few weeks that have posed this lockout scenario as a "disaster" -- perhaps "the biggest disaster ever," as the Hollywood Reporter suggests; or talked about the NFLPA's ability to decertify as their "nuclear option," as does the Wall Street Journal; or talk about a "seismic shift in thinking" required to end the lockout, as did the New York Post. All metaphors that suddenly fall awful flat in comparison with the real events happening in Japan.

At some point we as writers or speakers -- especially those with a large platform -- need to realize the limits of our words to connote the things we mean. And whenever possible, we need to expand our vocabularies or our phraseology to better express ourselves. Because as Peterson is sure to find, our words may outlive our intentions. 

To be honest, while I've leaned on the side of the players during this labor standoff, I don't hold a lot of truck with the events of the last week. From what I understand, the work done to get an extension -- and an extension of the extension -- was done based on some notion of coming compromise. And clearly the owners' group was in position to make compromises on some of their demands after being backhanded by Judge Doty's court.

However, the players were in position to make compromises as well, if settling a deal and re-opening the business of football in Spring was really a part of their plan. But among the numerous leaks that sprung in the negotiation's supposed gag order, all we heard was player offer of a "50-50 split of revenues" and a demand to "open the books" to justify more. These are the exact same proposal and threat of counterstrike used a month ago. Compromise? None.

It seems to me that DeMaurice Smith, in his first "main event" as a negotiator, has been guilty of reading his own press and overestimating the strength of his position. Just like so many rookies in the past, he seemed capable of leading the game-winning drive, but may have just thrown a gut-churning interception.

Now, as Bernie Miklasz writes, both sides are pummeling the press with statements and counter statements, trying to wage a war for public opinion, a war that has only casualties at this point.

Occasionally we are reminded that our existence clings fragilely to a huge and violent planet controlled by massive forces that toil invisibly beneath its own surface, or in the currents of the far away sky. When something breaks in the balance of these forces, we -- either you, me, or some copy of you and me embodied in people we cannot know halfway around the world -- are caught in the middle, and made to suffer. Those in Japan are suffering now, and our thoughts naturally gravitate to them.

When the earth heaves and yaws and breaks open, when pure red molten evil erupts, when the air we breathe is suddenly filled with irresistable howling fury, when walls of water rise up to scrub away our matchstick existence, that's when the conceit of our faith disappears.

Our faith in a kind and benevolent god -- a god in whose image we ourselves are made, whose purest impulses of love and power and creation and sublimation are somehow genetically coded (however imperfectly) into each of us -- gets thrown into crisis. When the massive earth itself overturns us, we cannot comprehend. We cannot but see a hand at work, but we wail against our own faith in the guiding power behind that hand.

The spiritual crisis that these disasters provoke boils down to four words: "Who would choose this?"

And yet we do choose it, all too often, in the worlds of our making. We build up mighty empires and then tear them down with our own hands. We take the misery of one community and use it as justification to destroy another. We wage continent-sized wars over the intangible, unseeable color of belief.

We are seeing this drama play out again on an embarrassingly small stage in these NFL negotiations. Even now those lucky and immeasurably wealthy fools who have enriched themselves from the most popular game in the land stand only hours away from wreaking their own personal havoc upon it. The deeply felt forces boil within these men, threatening to turn over the ground upon which the game stands, to scatter it to pieces. The relative scale of this destruction -- huge in the balance of the sporting world, miniscule in the balance of our survival -- is barely felt by those whose hands are upon it. The irony is entirely lost in the mad instinct to break a balance, to take control at whatever cost.

And our faith in the game, our conceit that it somehow matters, is shaken by the uncomprehendable stupidity of the act of destruction. Even if it wasn't immediately dwarfed by catastrophes much larger in scale.

But something curious happens once the crisis has passed, once the dead are dead, the broken is broken, and the rest of us live. More often than not, that faith comes back, and with it the urge to build, to create, to save. Not just to put back what was, but to somehow make it better than before. It might be folly, but it is a human instinct.

There may be some who leave Japan in the wake of this earthquake, but there will be many, many others who stay, whose grip on their life there, whose belief that it matters, could not be shaken free. 

And regardless of what happens behind closed doors today when the opposing tectonic forces of millionaires and billionaires meet, what may happen in courtrooms and press conferences and war rooms in the coming weeks and months, it will be hard to scatter this silly conceited love of football that I hold.

It might sound ridiculously small in the scale of today's events, but it will take more than this invented labor "crisis," in other words, to stop me from believing in my Rams.