What about Bob?

When we talked about the plight of retired players the other day, Harry Carson was adamant about the idea that benefits for he and his fellow retired players can and WILL be improved over the coming months.

What NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said earlier today lends credence to that assessment. Although Goodell won't testify at Tuesday's Congressional hearings about the difficulties experienced by former players applying for disability benefits, as well as other areas of concern like pensions, Goodell said at today's rookie symposium should at least hearten those - including us - who would like to see the situation improve.

"The focus on retired players is that we have an obligation and a responsibility to retired players," he said. "I think we’ve done some very positive things for retired players and we’re considering doing some additional things that I think are quite responsive to the issues. I’ve spent a fair amount of time listening to retired players and listening to what the issues actually are."

Even better news: Goodell and NFL Players Association executive director Gene Upshaw will meet with retired players on July 24 to talk about the issues that are near and dear to the hearts of retired players, many of whom continue to live with the wounds inflicted during their playing days.

"Hopefully we’ll be able to move this forward," Goodell said. "I think we’re being very responsive to our retired players and I understand the interest in this. I hope were going to be seen in a very positive light in terms of being responsive to this."

Pete Kendall is in a very ticklish situation these days … and no, we’re not talking about the fact he’s unhappy with his contract and has asked to be traded or released.

It’s over the issue of whether the Jets have violated the Collective Bargaining Agreement by allowing too much contact during off-season workouts and/or mini-camps.

So why would Kendall, the Jets’ disgruntled guard, be any more conflicted about this situation than his teammates? Well, Kendall is the Jets’ player representative, and as such, he’s responsible for reporting to the NFL Players Association if there’s too much hitting in practice. The question now is whether he’s willing to blow the whistle on a team that is not budging on his request to add $1 million to his 2007 salary of $1.7 million.

We saw for ourselves during mini-camp practice that the Jets were involved in some pretty significant physical contact during some drills – the defensive linemen were rushing pretty hard and being blocked by the offensive linemen, even though the Jets were dressed in just helmets, jerseys and shorts, with no shoulder pads. Technically, this is a no-no when it comes to the off-season rules regarding contact, although many teams routinely ignore the “no contact” edict.

Here’s how the union handles it, according to NFLPA spokesman Carl Francis:

“When we get information like this, we call the player rep and talk to him about what’s been going on,” Francis said. “If he feels like that’s a violation, we launch an investigation.”

Francis was uncertain when or even if the union would contact Kendall, but there’s a chance it will happen. And what Kendall would do with any information is unclear. Kendall did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

If Kendall does decide to lodge a complaint, it’ll be interesting to see how the Jets respond. We’ve been told through a team spokesman that general manager Mike Tannenbaum and head coach Eric Mangini are not commenting on our initial report that the Jets may have violated the CBA by allowing contact.

The Raiders last week were slapped with a one-week sanction on off-season workouts because of too much contact. The Jets’ off-season workouts are complete, so any penalty would essentially be moot. But the team is subject to a fine, and if it’s determined that the violations have been rampant, a draft choice might be forfeited.

Francis said that if the union feels a complaint is warranted, it will ask the team for film of practice in a written correspondence, a copy of which goes to the NFL office.

If we hear anything further on this, we’ll let you know.

Former Giants and Redskins linebacker LaVar Arrington is in a Maryland hospital after being rushed from the scene of a motorcycle accident.

Details are sketchy at this point, but he is listed in "stable" condition.

We'll keep you posted. In the meantime, best wishes to Arrington and his family.

Police apparently think Pacman Jones might know who the shooter was in connection with an incident after a fight at an Atlanta strip club early Monday morning, but apparently, Jones is not the focus of the investigation.

According to the Associate Press, "Jones, his group and three other people got into a fight, apparently over a woman, at a club around 4 a.m., officer Ariel Toledo said.

"After everyone involved left the strip club — the three people in one car, and Jones and his entourage in three other cars — someone in Jones' group shot at the car, and the others returned fire, Toledo said.

Toledo said Jones was not present when the shots were fired."

Even if Jones was not involved in the shooting, it's still another huge mark against an already checkered career that looks as if it might never continue. Less than a week after telling commissioner Roger Goodell he's turning his life around, and he's involved in - or at least associated with - another incident at a strip club.

The guy sounds as if he is doing anything but turning his life around, and it appears the clock is ticking on his eventual permanent expulsion from the NFL.

Check out this dispatch from the Associated Press out of Georgia. If Pacman Jones, who only last week decided to accept Roger Goodell's one-year suspension for a series of off-field mess-ups, is involved in this incident, his NFL career is most likely done:

Police in Decatur, Ga. are searching for Adam "Pacman" Jones after a shooting early Monday morning near a DeKalb County strip club, according to a report from WSB TV in Atlanta.

Witnesses said a man who identified himself as the suspended NFL star got into an altercation with a group of men at Club Blaze, after the men asked a girl with him for a dance.
After being threatened by the man identifying himself as Jones, the group left the club and drove away in an SUV. They say they were followed by another SUV, carrying several armed men.

According to police, a gun battle from both vehicles then took place, leaving one riddled with bullet holes. There were no major injuries.

Jones is serving a one-year suspension for his part in several off-field incidents over the last two years, most notably a brawl at Vegas strip club during the NBA All-Star weekend that left one person paralyzed.

Not a good day for Redskins rookie safety LaRon Landry, who found out that paintball can be just as painful as football.

Caught up with embattled Jets guard Pete Kendall after practice this afternoon, and he continues to hold a tough line with the Jets. He wants to be traded or released immediately, but he understands neither is likely to happen.

I asked Kendall what his gut feeling was, and it was the same as mine.

“I think I’ll probably be released a week before training camp,” he told me.

I think that’s exactly what will happen, too. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s cut the day before training camp. After all, the Jets will not be held hostage by a 34-year-old guard looking for a $1 million pay raise.

It’s too bad it’s going to end so ugly, because Kendall has been a steady contributor and a big-time locker room leader during his tenure with the Jets. From the time he came in during training camp in 2004, his presence has been nothing but positive for all concerned. The writers have been especially appreciative of Kendall, who is always quick with a quote, win or lose. The man has a unique sense of perspective that few NFL players possess.

But it’s difficult to see this one ending any way except with Kendall’s unceremonious release within a matter of weeks. Kendall insists there was an agreement to bump up his contract – he’d like $2.7 million this season, substantially more than the $1.7 million on his contract – and he’s been hopeful of getting that pay raise for months.

“That’s why I wanted to get this thing going in January,” he said.

But Kendall knows that when it comes right down to it, players are expendable. And at this point, with the Jets backed into a corner with his demands, it’s hard to see them softening their stance. The thinking among GM Mike Tannenbaum and coach Eric Mangini always goes back to the four words that drive their decision-making process: What would Belichick do?

Both men, who were raised in the NFL at the feet of Patriots mastermind Bill Belichick, know that he’d do nothing other than stare down Kendall and release him, but only when he was good and ready.

“I can’t imagine [the situation] has softened on their part,” Kendall said. “They’ve had time to make a decision.”

Kendall was running second team yesterday behind Adrien Clarke, and it’s likely it will stay that way. The Jets might as well keep Kendall around as insurance in the event Clarke gets hurt between now and the start of camp. But come late July, Kendall will be on the open market, hoping to get a deal similar to the one he’d wanted with the Jets.

“I think there’s a team out there willing to pay market value, and that’s what I’m asking,” Kendall said. “I think I’ve been reasonable in what I’m asking, but right now, it’s a circus.”

Just finished with Jessie Armstead retirement press conference at Giants Stadium. Great to see No. 98 one more time. Flanked by former teammates Michael Strahan, Amani Toomer and protégé Antonio Pierce, Armstead admitted it’s been tough not playing, but that the only place he every truly enjoyed was with the Giants.

“My blood always had New York Giants in it,” Armstead said. “I went to Washington, another good organization, but no organization is like the New York Giants. They say the grass is always greener, but there’s no grass outside new grass. Any time you get an opportunity to retire with a great organization … I’m thankful it came today. I’m blessed.”

Toomer offered a perfect anecdote about the first time he met Armstead as a rookie.

“I remember the first day here,” Toomer said. “I was a second-round pick, doing pretty good, and I ran a couple of routes. Jessie knocked the ball away from me, and he gave me a shove. I gave him a shove back, and the next thing you know, he’s in my face. I’m like, ‘This is a different league.’”

And Armstead was a different player. A former eighth-round draft pick – hey, they don’t even have eight rounds any more – Armstead combined a unique blend of speed, power and aggressiveness to turn into the Giants best outside linebacker since Lawrence Taylor retired in 1993.

Michael Strahan said Armstead’s passion for the game still motivates him.

“I was fortunate enough to come into the league with Jessie and play a long time with him,” Strahan said. “He’s still motivation for why I play the game now. I never had a chance to play with a guy that I look up to like this. He had the best football instincts I’ve ever been around. I’ll never know anybody quite like him.”

Strahan was asked about the time Armstead scored an apparent first-half touchdown in the Giants’ Super Bowl XXXV game against the Ravens, a play that was called back on a holding penalty by Keith Hamilton. The tide might have turned right there, but the Giants were eventually blown out.

“I remember hitting Dilfer, he dumps it off, and I look up and see it’s Jessie running like he stole something,” Strahan said. “That [penalty] definitely put a damper on our Super Bowl.”

Armstead keeps busy these days with two car dealerships he owns and a third in the works. But it can never replace football.

“Those things make money,” he said. “But money don’t mean nothing compared to this game. You’ve got to smell the grass every day.”

He smelled it one last day with the team he will love forever. There will not be another guy like Armstead for a long time.

In a somewhat surprising development, Adam "Pacman" Jones has dropped his appeal of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell's one-year suspension over an assortment of legal issues the last several years.

Jones had filed an appeal of the suspension, the stiffest yet imposed by Goodell as part of his recently strengthened personal conduct policy. But he will now sit out the year, with the possibility for reinstatement after 10 games, as long as he achieves a series of behavioral benchmarks set forth by Goodell.

Meanwhile, police in Las Vegas are hoping that new evidence in a strip club incident in which Jones was involved - which ultimately led to the shooting of one of the club's owners - will allow them to charge Jones in connection with the melee. So far, there has not been enough evidence to charge Jones.

We wonder if there is a cause-and-effect at play here. In other words, did Jones drop his appeal fearing he'd be charged in connection with the incident?

He didn't indicate anything along those lines in a statement released to the press. But he also knows that his appeal would have little chance of succeeding if he was formally charged in the incident.

Stay tuned on this one.

Donovan McNabb made a surprise visit yesterday ... to the huddle.

The Eagles quarterback, rehabbing from a torn anterior cruciate ligament injury he suffered midway through last season, practiced for the first time since getting hurt.

He didn't tell anyone he was going to practice, but once his teammates saw him take part in team drills, it was a huge boost on an otherwise mundane Monday in June.

I'm not surprised McNabb is ahead of schedule on his rehab, because I'd been hearing several weeks ago that he was on track to be ready for the start of training camp. That he's already healthy enough to practice is even better news for an Eagles team that is still a force to be reckoned with in the NFC East - but only if McNabb is in the lineup.

There's a nasty fight brewing between Mike Ditka and other high-profile former players, including Bills Hall of Fame offensive lineman Joe DeLamielleure, against the NFL Players Association for what they believe is the union's unwillingness to help retired players struggling with medical and financial issues.

Ditka and DeLamielleure yesterday introduced former Jaguars and Bengals offensive lineman Brian DeMarco as an example of the NFLPA dropping the ball on medical coverage for its former players. DeMarco, 35, said he and his family have been homeless three times since retiring in 2000 with back and elbow problems.

"My right leg is completely numb. I have extreme nerve pain in my arms," DeMarco said in an article in the Chicago Tribune. "I have lost my grip ... my ability to hold my kids."

But the union countered later in the evening, telling ESPN's Chris Mortensen that they have indeed offered assistance to DeMarco, and that DeMarco himself has failed to fill out disability forms and show up for jobs lined up by former colleagues.

The fighting needs to stop, because no one wins in this thing. Ditka and DeLamielleure are admirable in trying to push the issue to the forefront, but lashing out at the union and accusing them of ignoring the plight of former players is simply ill-informed. Can the union do more? Yes it can, and it is currently working with the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell to increase benefits for the players who built this game into the great spectacle it has become.

And NFLPA executive director Gene Upshaw isn't making any friends by threatening to "break DeLamielleure's neck" because of criticism leveled by the former Bills guard at the union leader.

The rhetoric needs to be toned down, because former players need help. And they've needed help for a long time.

I did a four-part series on life after football several years ago, and it was as clear then as it is now that it is a massively difficult adjustment to go from playing in the NFL to living a normal life in society. Many players are physically and mentally scarred after leaving the game, and it is all they can do to get by. Others walk away with their health intact and their financial lives in order, and with today's salaries and improved medical care, we can expect to see more players make a better transition.

In the meantime, the message coming from Ditka's group and Upshaw's union should be more about uniting to solve the problem. Enough with the name-calling.

Saw this item just a few minutes ago. It appears the Bills have signed their seventh-round pick, a defensive end named C.J. Ah You.

Not kidding.

Something Neil Best would probably get a kick out of, since he has no life to speak of outside blogging. :-)

The latest twist to the Daunte Culpepper sage in Miami: An hour into practice today, he walked off the field, and then vowed to block any trade the Dolphins might have in mind.

The Dolphins have deemed Culpepper excess baggage in the wake of their trade this week for Chiefs quarterback Trent Green. And even though Miami is trying to work out a trade of Culpepper, who was acquired last year from the Vikings for a second-round pick, the chances of completing a deal are remote, since Culpepper said he'll refuse to restructure his contract.

Culpepper attempted to come back last year from a career-threatening knee injury, and complications from the surgery prevented him from playing at the level he'd once been at with the Vikings.

At this point, the Dolphins should just let the guy go. It didn't work out, now cut your losses.

You're only going to get a low-round pick for the guy anyway, and if he's going to refuse to restructure his contract, then the chances of the deal being completed are slim.

If you haven't checked it out yet, tune in to Newsday colleague Neil Best's media watch blog. It's a perfect blend of news, humor and Best-like sarcasm that only he can deliver.

He talks about the media. He talks about sports. He talks about his dead fish named Nell.

What I like best about Best is that, in this increasingly vicious world of blogs we now live in, he entertains without being mean-spirited and overly negative. It's a rare feat these days, but Best conquers the medium in his understated way. I guess I'll have to start talking about our dead fish Aqua, who rests in peace just outside the window of my home office, beneath a lovely piece of sculpture created by my older daughter when she was in fourth grade.

btw, I will let you in on a little secret about Neil: He held out for the longest time before plunging into the blogosphere, and I repeatedly chided him for being a wimp. But now that he's joined the world of instantaneous news, analysis and opinion, he is already one of the best reads on the Internet.

I worked with Neil for all 10 of his seasons on the Giants beat, and even though he left me hanging in the off-season of his first year on the beat - he insists he needed to finish up the St. John's beat rather than worry about whatever pressing Giants story was in the news - we had a fine time working together.

Neil was admittedly worried about what life would be like without the fame and small fortune associated with appearing on Giants On-line - a gig that saw him recognized in airports and even once on Bourbon Street - but I suspect that he will have similar success in the blogosphere.

Well done, Best.

Randy Moss addressed the New England media today at the team’s mini-camp, and he seems genuinely excited to be in a Patriots uniform.

Some highlights:

On whether he feels this is a new beginning: “I’ve had two of those [in Minnesota and Oakland]. I don’t really want to call it a new beginning. It's something that you dream of knowing that the New England Patriots sit high on a lot of people’s charts and as a wide receiver to come in and play with the core guys, with Tom Brady and Kevin Faulk and the offensive line. It's a great group of guys that we have here on the field and off the field. That's something that I can really enjoy.”

On playing with a quarterback like Brady: “I’ve always been a big fan of his and now that I'm here playing alongside him, I don't want anything to change. I'm not going to even try to get in his way in anything that he does and hopefully it doesn't get in the way of anything that I do. I'm just basically talking on the field, because that's one thing that I came here for was to be with this group of guys, the organization as a whole and just try to do come out here and help what I can do to win some games.”

On whether he was nervous in his first mini-camp with the Pats: “At first I did. Like I said, they have a long list of guys that they have on their team. They have Pro Bowlers, future Hall of Famers. My biggest thing was coming in with a locker right beside Tom’s and right next to the right of me is Vinny Testaverde. I think that's where the butterflies came in just really getting in the locker room and meeting the guys. Once we get out on the field, that's really where you get your freedom.

On why he showed up in the off-season program, even when he didn’t have to: “I’m a 10-year veteran and I know how hard you have to workout to come into a season. Injuries do occur as the seasons goes on. I didn’t really tell him anything like that. [Bill Belichick] just asked me what I normally do in the off-season and I said work out. And he told me that most of the guys were up here working out, so that's why I came. I want to fit in. Nothing that I've done over my nine-year career has ever stopped me from fitting in with my teammates. I still love to play the game and hopefully the results of this season will hopefully be good.”

Promising start for the mercurial wide receiver.

Of course, the games haven’t started yet. That’s when it’ll get interesting. That’s when we’ll see whether Moss really means it when he says he’s serious about fitting in with a championship caliber team. I say he is.

Just got word that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has slapped Tank Johnson with an eight-game suspension for violating the NFL’s personal conduct policy, the NFL announced today.

Johnson is eligible to participate in the Bears’ offseason workout program, training camp and preseason games before the suspension begins after the team’s final preseason game. In a letter to Johnson, Commissioner Roger Goodell said he would be prepared to reduce the suspension to the first six regular-season games if Johnson meets certain conditions.

The conditions for Johnson include:
* No further adverse involvement with law enforcement and full compliance with any requirements imposed by a court.

* Compliance with all league requirements, including counseling.
* No participation in any practices or other organized team activities during the period of the eight-game suspension. (During the suspension, he may be at the Bears’ facility for counseling sessions and other approved activities such as physical treatment or individual workout sessions.)

Goodell said he would review the matter no later than October 1 to assess Johnson’s progress and determine whether the suspension should be reduced.

Johnson last month completed a 60-day prison term at the Cook County Jail. He had been sentenced to 120 days for violating probation last year on a weapons charge.

You might be aware of Hall of Fame linebacker Harry Carson's son's battle against a rare blood infection that saw Donald Carson hospitalized numerous times over the last several months. The good news is that Harry Carson reports Donald is doing extremely well and is now off all medications.

I got a chance to meet Donald at last year's Hall of Fame ceremonies, and he is every bit as genuine as his father, who is probably the classiest, most thoughtful and insightful athlete I've ever covered. Harry is now trying to convince Donald to write a book about his experiences, which include playing for the winless Savannah State University football and basketball teams a couple years back.

Donald was so down and so embarrassed at not having won a single game in either sport that he seriously considered transferring. But Harry told his son that he would learn some valuable lessons by persevering through the losing - just as Harry did with those terrible Giants' teams of the late 1970's and early 1980's.

Glad to see Donald is doing so well.