We just might.

Another round of labor talks between the NFL and NFLPA took place while the scouting combine got underway, and still there was no indication of a new collective bargaining agreement being reached, meaning a 2010 NFL football season without a salary cap seems a certainty.

Negotiating committees for the NFL, including NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, and the NFLPA that includes executive director DeMaurice Smith, Colts center Jeff Saturday and Chiefs linebacker Mike Vrabel were among several participants, met for more than 90 minutes.

Goodell said the two sides discussed ‘’setting up” another meeting, but did not establish a date. Goodell declined to discuss other topics on the agenda, but said he remains hopeful the two sides will negotiate a deal before the CBA expires.

”I think it’s natural that deadlines produce results, so I think deadlines help,” he said. ”I think there is a general desire on both sides to get a deal. But I don’t think you can create artificial deadlines.”

Smith and other NFLPA executives will meet with player representatives and some agents at another meeting where the NFLPA will address a larger group of agents and player reps. The state of labor and how they will impact players and agents will be the main subject of discussion.

Goodell ruled out any chance of the owners agreeing to a…

You just know you’ll read through this, unless your a Raiders fan who could care less who wins it this year.

For anyone that pays attention to NFL power rankings throughout the season, the writing for this matchup has been on the wall for months. As I’m sure you’ve all heard, Indianapolis will meet New Orleans in Super Bowl XLIV and for a lot of bettors it truly is the two teams that most deserve to be in the show.

Online sportsbooks have the current line at Indianapolis Colts -6 with a Total of 56. Once the opening line was posted, money showed up quickly on the favored Indianapolis Colts at SPORTSBETTING.com. The Colts continued to be the side most players were looking at, as over the fist couple of days of wagering action 70 percent of the money is on Peyton Manning and crew. The line has moved to -6. The Over/Under betting volume has been pretty balanced, with a slight lean to the Over

Indianapolis was 14-0 before sitting Peyton Manning down in a Week 16 loss to the New York Jets while New Orleans went 13-0 before heading into the playoffs on a three-game losing streak. Looking at results from the past two weeks it appears that for coaches Caldwell and Peyton, this was all part of the master plan.

The Indianapolis Colts made things up to their fans with wins over Baltimore and the Jets.

In the Big Easy, the New Orleans Saints returned to their regular season ways, averaging 38 points per game in wins against Arizona and Minnesota to earn the trip to Miami to play for the Super Bowl against the Colts. This will be the first time since 1993 that two No.1 seeds have met in the Super Bowl.

Manning’s offense is capable of moving the ball against…

Betting on the NFL for the last time before Christmas Day couldn’t be any better.

Because Week 15 of the 2009 NFL football season has FOUR games for you on primetime, two of ‘em could very well rewrite history while the other two could very well rewrite the playoff seeding.

Let’s start with the first team looking to rewrite history this season, the Indianapolis Colts. In case you haven’t noticed, they haven’t lost a game for quite some time now and on Thursday night Football, they are looking to continue their undefeated streak against the Jacksonville Jaguars to kick off Week 15.

Yep, the Indianapolis Colts and the Jacksonville Jaguars relive their AFC South rivalry. The Colts have already secured the AFC’s No.1 seed for the playoffs. And while the Jaguars would love to beat their AFC rivals this Thursday night and give themselves that late push for a wild card spot, the Colts are just playing too good to be beat these days.

The last time these two teams met, Indianapolis beat Jacksonville 14-12. The Colts are 12-4 all-time against the Jaguars with Peyton Manning at quarterback. The three-time league MVP, 28 of 38 for 301 yards with a touchdown and an interception in their last meeting with the Jaguars, passed for 4,354 yards with 30 TDs and 11 picks in those 16 games against Jacksonville.

Manning is looking to get back on track following a shaky…

We have a good one for you this week.

Everybody knows that the intensity of the 2009 NFL football season picks up after Thanksgiving and the games we have for you this weekend proves why.

First, we have MVP candidate Brett Favre and the rest of the Minnesota Vikings playing hosts to the Chicago Bears. The Vikings are on a three-game winning streak and since the Bears virtually don’t have anything going for them at this point of the season, this game gives the Vikes the perfect opportunity to extend that streak to four straight wins.

Since the Minnesota Vikings welcomed Brett Favre in mid-August, the team has gone to great lengths. The Vikings are averaging more than 30 points per game, they have the consensus top running back in the league in Adrian Peterson and the future Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre, who is playing better at 40 than he ever has.

On the defensive end, the Vikings are no.3 against the run, allowing just 85.5 yards per game with defensive end Jared Allen ranking second in the NFL with 10.5 sacks.

As for the Chicago Bears, they are on a streak of their own, a losing one. While the Vikings have won three in a row, the Bears have lost three in a row. Jay Cutler and the rest of the Bears have also lost five of their last six games, definitely not something you want to be in the middle of at this point of the season.

In the past 30 days, the Chicago Bears have been lit up by…

We’re in for another shootout on Monday night.

Scoring hasn’t been a problem on Monday nights with the two opposing teams in each of the last two Monday Night Football games this 2009 NFL football season going for at least 40 points combined.

We even have two quarterbacks who are both capable of coming up with a lot of yards and a whole lot of points. Yep, we’ll have Tony Romo of the Dallas Cowboys and Jake Delhomme of the Carolina Panthers. There’s this one problem though, while we know both guys can throw the football, they can also throw the game away for their teams just as easy.

The last time the Dallas Cowboys were on the field, Tony Romo threw 3 INTs in their 33-31 loss to the New York Giants, including one that was so badly thrown that it looked like the football was punted towards the defender. That was the first ever regular season game on the Cowboys’ new home in Arlington. Yep, the Cowboys are still looking for their first win in Cowboy Stadium.

As far as the Carolina Panthers are concerned, they’ll be happy just to get their first win of the season. Yes, the Panthers are still winless. And after everybody was blaming Jake Delhomme for their first loss after he gave up four INTs to the Eagle defense, all the Panthers can blame the following week was fate because Delhomme was solid and yet, they still lost the game, this time to the Falcons.

So who’s your pick? Will you go with an unproven guy like Tony Romo who has brought this Dallas Cowboys franchise back to prominence but is still yet to prove that he can win big games? Or…

The Bills and the Patriots will play on Monday Night Football but Brady’s return to the field is what everybody’s raving about, I guess.

Yep, the first Monday Night Football game of the 2009 NFL football season will feature the highly anticipated return of Tom Brady to football after being out of the field for New England’s entire campaign last year.

This year, Tom Brady is hoping to help his team return to the top of the food chain and a win on their first game of the season will sure put the questions on his health to rest.

Bill Belichick and Tom Brady’s combined focus on returning to the top of the league aren’t the only reasons New England Patriots fans are excited this season. Brady not only returns to an offense that re-wrote the record books in 2007 but he returns to an offense that has acquired new weapons like running back Fred Taylor, wide receivers Joey Galloway and Greg Lewis and tight end Chris Baker.

Defensively, a major overhaul has taken place in the back end that so badly let the team down last fall. The Pats are hoping that they’ll be able to improve on a pass defense that gave up too many big plays, too many third-down conversions and waaay too many touchdowns.

The defense remains anchored by a front line that includes Ty Warren as well as linebacker Adalius Thomas. Young players like defensive rookie of the year Jerod Mayo now have a year under their belt and should be able to help that defense now with Richard Seymour gone.

Add in free agents Leigh Bodden and Shawn Springs…

The brand new season will start this Thursday.

When the 2009 NFL football season schedule was released in the spring, it set off a chain reaction in the sports betting world, as online sportsbooks went to work on their Future Odds menu as numbers were calculated on everything from odds to win the division to Week 1 totals and every prop bet in-between.

The odds change throughout the summer based on betting activity and one of the most popular futures bets, ‘Team Win Totals,’ often have a much different look by the first kickoff in Week 1.

Strength of schedule (SOS) is one thing that doesn’t change during the summer and it’s interesting to look at some of the variances between how the bookmakers are currently ranking the teams and how the SOS rates them.

SOS is a simple formula that takes every team’s record from the previous season and puts that into the upcoming season’s schedule. Records are added up, wins and losses, and the team this year that faces the list of opponents with the best combined record from last year gets rated no.1 for SOS.

For bettors looking for value plays on Team Win Totals, comparing SOS to Season Win Totals is an excellent place to start.

The most common projected range is from 7.5-8.5 wins. The reason, of course, is that NFL teams play 16 games during the regular season. After making the playoffs, the next biggest goal is finishing the season above .500 (eight wins). For a lot of teams, hitting .500 is a much more realistic goal than actually making the post-season and this year there are 16 teams listed in that slim one-game range of wins.

The 7.5’s, of the five teams listed by online sportsbooks to…

He has to, because if they suffer another losing season then that name change he went through will all be for nothing.

After suffering his worst season since his rookie year as Chad Johnson, the Bengals’ enigmatic wide receiver is looking forward to the coming 2009 NFL football season to redeem himself, this time as Chad Ochocinco.

You read it, he actually went through the name change as the Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver now has the last name to go with the no.85 at the back of his jersey. However, name changes should be the least of this guy’s worries.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s been a while since Cincinnati Bengals fans had something to cheer for. Especially last year when they played most of that season virtually without a passing game with Carson Palmer out for most of the year and Ochocinco struggling.

To make matters worse, the running game never got going either, and the result was a team that ranked dead last in the NFL in points scored and yards gained, finishing 29th in…

Well, that’s at least what new Broncos head coach Josh McDaniels is claiming.

Josh McDaniels believes that there are plenty of quarterbacks that can win in the NFL and he will be under a lot of immediate pressure to prove that in the coming 2009 NFL football season.

Is this his way of saying that the Denver Broncos can still win without Cutler? Probably. Is this his way of saving his own ass after instigating the change? Definitely.

Denver traded quarterback Jay Cutler, a 25-year-old quarterback coming off a Pro Bowl season, to Chicago. Making such a trade is unthinkable and McDaniels got his ass in trouble with some football fans in Denver as a result.

McDaniels claims he had not spoken to Cutler in weeks and couldn’t get him to return messages, so the Broncos felt they were forced to take the drastic and unusual step of trading a franchise quarterback entering his prime.

McDaniels guided Tom Brady, a sixth-round pick, and Matt Cassel, a seventh-round pick, to big seasons when he was offensive coordinator of the New England Patriots. He…

Probably because of the recession. Hee-hee…

Indianapolis’ second most popular football star (next to Peyton Manning of course…) is parting ways with the Colts, creating a lot of buzz in the process even before the 2009-10 NFL football season kicks off.

Yes, Colts wide receiver Marvin Harrison has been having his problems with the Colts front office lately after team executives asked the veteran to take a pay cut. For a guy who has been one of the Colts’ most identifiable players, who ranks second in the league in career receptions and holds all of Indianapolis’ major career and season receiving records, it was understandable why the veteran isn’t too fond of the situation.

Understandably still, Marvin Harrison has already asked the Indianapolis Colts for his release even before the team decided to part ways with the star. What was the reason for the team to ask their premiere receiver to take a pay cut? Read on.

Indianapolis Colts president Bill Polian told reporters Sunday at the NFL annual scouting combine that the team was trying to…