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With the 2010 NFL season in the books (and a lockout battle now in the courts) it's time to turn our eyes to the NFL draft, and the pre-draft evaluation process. We've already done scouting reports of the top 40 players on our board, and you can read all the details on the first Shutdown 40 here. For the second Shutdown 40, players 41-80, we have the advantage of combine performances and that much more evaluation material.

Over the next few weeks, we'll also be adding Pro Day data when relevant. But we're always going mostly on game tape; the proper evaluation formula seems to be about 80 percent tape, 20 percent Senior Bowl/combine/Pro Day. If you see what you expect in drills, you go back to the tape to confirm. If what you see in drills surprises you in a positive or negative sense, you go back to the tape to catch where the anomalies may be.

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No matter what you thought of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's strategy to bypass the NFL Players' Association and appeal directly to the player with the letter he sent last Thursday (and it's been pretty clear that most players didn't appreciate the gesture at all), you knew a response was coming.

And here it is. The response from the player representatives Kevin Mawae, Charlie Batch, Drew Brees, Brian Dawkins, Domonique Foxworth, Scott Fujita, Sean Morey, Tony Richardson, Jeff Saturday, Mike Vrabel, and Brian Waters was a line-by-line refutation of Goodell's attempt to clarify what he thought the league's last best offer was.

You can read the players' complete response after the jump, but even the highlights indicate just how off-base Goodell was with the original letter. The response disputes the NFL's assertion that the players were always interested in litigation, saying instead that breaking off the bargaining talks was "a last resort" taken when "(the last) proposal did not

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Very, very sad news for anyone who loves the game of football -- Steve Sabol of NFL Films was diagnosed with a brain tumor last week after suffering a seizure at an event in Kansas City on March 5. Sabol will undergo chemotherapy and radiation to try to eliminate the tumor, which was found in the left side of his brain.

"[Sabol] will begin treatments soon," the company's statement said. "Steve is in good spirits and is deeply appreciative of everyone's good wishes."

The 68-year-old Sabol has always been great at "telling on himself" when it comes to the story of his time with the company. He was a student at Colorado College in 1964 when his father Ed, the founder of NFL Films, called him up and said, "Judging from your grades, the only things you're doing out there are watching movies and playing football. But that makes you uniquely qualified for this new venture."

Sabol came home to Mount Laurel, N.J., and started working with his father in what used to be called Blair Motion

yahoo_marvinaustin2With the 2010 NFL season in the books (and a lockout battle now in the courts) it's time to turn our eyes to the NFL draft, and the pre-draft evaluation process. We've already done scouting reports of the top 40 players on our board, and you can read all the details on the first Shutdown 40 here. For the second Shutdown 40, players 41-80, we have the advantage of combine performances and that much more evaluation material.

Over the next few weeks, we'll also be adding Pro Day data when relevant. But we're always going mostly on game tape; the proper evaluation formula seems to be about 80 percent tape, 20 percent Senior Bowl/combine/Pro Day. If you see what you expect in drills, you go back to the tape to confirm. If what you see in drills surprises you in a positive or negative sense, you go back to the tape to catch where the anomalies may be.

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There have been many different player reactions to the current schism between the NFL and the NFLPA, and that's understandable — emotions will run very high in a work stoppage. But for Minnesota Vikings punter Chris Kluwe, it was an opportunity to get creative.

First, a little whiteboard pictograph from Kluwe's own Twitter feed:

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And second, Kluwe's version of the form letter sent to each player by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell this week:

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Word is that the players will send a response to Goodell as a group. We're certainly going to be interested to read that one as well … especially if Chris Kluwe has anything to do with it.

H/T: Pro Football Talk

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At the same time we're concluding the Second Shutdown 40 series of scouting reports at the end of March, we'll also be starting up a series of 20 more player profiles (bring out pre-draft scouting report total to 100) called "The Sleeper Hold". This series will be for players who could very well fit in either Shutdown 40, but who are also ridiculously under the radar for whatever reason, and deserving of a specific mention as players who need (and deserve) more eyes on them.

It's hard to think of players better fitting this description than Nebraska running back Roy Helu, Jr, who rushed for 1,245 yards and 11 touchdowns in his senior campaign despite his status in a rotation that allowed him just two games with 20 or more carries, and four with less than 10 carries. Especially for his size, Helu shows an impressive and surprising second-level burst, and this was confirmed at the scouting combine. At 6-foot-0 and 219 pounds, Helu ran a 4.40 40-yard dash (tied for fourth-best among all

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When Oakland Raiders cornerback Stanford Routt signed a three-year, $31.5 million extension on Feb. 24, it was the end of a long journey on the way to leaguewide respect. Selected in the second round of the 2005 NFL draft by the Raiders after posting the fastest 40-yard dash time (4.27) of any defensive back in the new millennium, Routt took his lumps early on as he struggled (as most new NFL players do) to the speed and complexity of the game.

But in 2009, the team saw enough of what it liked to put a first- and third-round tender on the restricted free agent. And in 2010, Routt beat out fellow cornerback Chris Johnson for the starting job opposite the great Nnamdi Asomugha. According to STATS, Inc.'s final 2010 numbers, Routt finished second among top cornerbacks in completed passes allowed (behind only Darrelle Revis of the New York Jets), and placed among the league leaders in yards per attempt and completion percentage allowed. He gave up just four touchdown passes in 2010, which