The latest NFL trade doesn't involve a big name going to a new team, or a swap of huge contracts. It's based more on the hope that two high-drafted and ultimately disappointing players can find new roles and success in new environments. The principals, St. Louis Rams offensive tackle Alex Barron(notes) and Dallas Cowboys linebacker Bobby Carpenter(notes), will be traded for each other as soon as Barron signs his restricted free-agent tender, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Barron, who was made redundant by the ascent of Jason Smith(notes) and the 2010 selection of Rodger Saffold(notes), is a talented but inconsistent player who struggles with technique and penalties -- more on that in a minute.

Carpenter, who was drafted by Bill Parcells at least in part because the Big Tuna coached his father, Rob Carpenter, with the Giants in the 1980s, has started a grand total of three games in his four-year career. That's far less than you require from a player taken with the 18th

When he signs his new two-year contract today or Monday, the seemingly inevitable will happen - cornerback Adam "Pacman" Jones will become a Cincinnati Bengal. And given Pacman's off-field history, and the Bengals' history of taking on troubled players, the only question is why it took so long for this to happen after Pacman tried out for the team in February. After displaying major skills with the Tennessee Titans in 2005 and 2006, Jones was suspended by the league for the entire 2007 season for a series of incidents in which he was interviewed by police. Jones' most notorious involvement was the strip club incident during the NBA All-Star weekend, when a fight and shooting left one man paralyzed. Given another chance by the Dallas Cowboys for the 2008 season, Jones was suspended six games that year for yet another scuffle, this time with a bodyguard provided by the team. In 2009, Jones was close to signing a contract with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers of the Canadian Football League. But

Believe it or not, offensive guards were once considered relatively fungible players by most NFL general managers. That started to change in 2005 when former Green Bay Packers guards Marco Rivera(notes) and Mike Wahle(notes) received large contracts from the Dallas Cowboys and Carolina Panthers, respectively. With two new guards, the '05 Packers went 4-12, and Brett Favre(notes) threw a career-high 29 picks trying to avoid all the pressure.

Before the 2006 season, the NFC North got its own back when the Vikings signed ex-Seahawks guard Steve Hutchinson(notes) to a seven-year, $49 million contract. This was a sum previously unheard of for the position; twice the value of the Rivera and Wahle contracts. What followed seemed to be fiscal insanity, as nearly every free-agent guard with a lick of talent got their own versions of the Hutchinson contract. Derrick Dockery(notes), Eric Steinbach(notes), Leonard Davis(notes) ... things got really odd for a while with this trend, as matching

Unless a miracle happens and a non-eleventh-hour negotiation of a new Collective Bargaining Agreement comes about during the season (really not likely), the sad music playing underneath the 2010 season is the very real possibility of a lockout in 2011, and no NFL football for a long time. You'd think that the owners and players would be inclined to agree on the furtherance of a sport that's basically become a license to print money, but the money is what it's all about -- more specifically, how much of it the players get. I talked to ESPN's John Clayton about this at the most recent scouting combine, and his more educated take on the specific matters can be found here.

You may very well wonder what happens to advertising deals, licensing deals and television money in the event of a lockout. Basically, unless the principals on the other side of the table from the NFL dealmakers are complete idiots, any revenue from these deals reverts back to the companies looking to do business with

There's no doubt that San Francisco 49ers middle linebacker Patrick Willis(notes) is one of the best players at his position in the NFL. Since being picked with the 11th overall selection in the 2007 draft, Willis has transcended what was an initially porous defense, become its on-field leader and helped it become an effective (if underrated) unit. And since Willis' five-year, $16.7 million rookie contract had just one year remaining, it was time for the Niners to fill out an already exceptional offseason by signing their best player to a new deal.

There was only one problem with the compensation -- while Willis deserved to be paid as the star he has become, there's a kink in the NFL's post-CBA landscape called the 30-percent rule. This rule, which kicked in once the NFL went to an uncapped year, states that no renegotiation or extension of a current contract may increase a player's base salary by more than 30 percent. But as Marvin Miller eventually did in defeating the reserve clause

In the fine tradition of Ozzy Osbourne, Jeff Gordon, Eddie Vedder, Danica Patrick, and (whoa!) Mike Ditka, new Chicago Bears running back Chester Taylor, who signed a four-year, $12.5 million contract with the team in March, thought it would be a fine idea to take to the mike at Wrigley Field (or, as Gordon, said, "Wrigley Stadium") for a little butchery of that old baseball chestnut, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame".

Aieee. My favorite part was the modification of the song's fourth line to, "I don't care if you never come back!" At this rate, Chester, it's a pretty good bet. After that, he bagged on the song altogether, going instead for the mike-in-the-air, audience participation thing, coming back only to sing that rousing final line, "And ... I ... old ballgame!"

Or something like that. Now, if you're Bears head coach Lovie Smith, you have to be disturbed by one thing - Taylor's obviously reading the lyrics from a sheet, and he's still all over the place. Let's hope it's just a case

Now that the draft is over and the long offseason walk begins, it's time to dust off the underground shelter and break out the canned goods -- it is most certainly time for yet another Favreapalooza/Favrewatch/"Oh my God, please make it stop" event.

ESPN's Ed Werder broke the news this morning that Brett Favre will need ankle surgery if he wants to play in 2010. That according to Dr. James Andrews, the physician of choice for most football players, in regard to the ankle Favre injured in the Vikings' NFC Championship loss to the New Orleans Saints.

Of course, we've been through this before. Last season, Favre needed surgery on his throwing shoulder before he could enter what has become a very special decision-making time for him -- a time that generally involves an insane degree of media overkill, press conferences announcing absolutely nothing and summers in which diehard football fans who would prefer other types of NFL news go hungry. That said, Favre did have one of his best

Thursday, the greatest player in Seattle Seahawks history -- and the last tie to the amazing tackle classes of the late 1990s -- retired from the game. Walter Jones, the nine-time Pro Bowler and four-time First-Team All-Pro announced that he can no longer play the game he's graced since 1997. Various injuries prevented Jones from playing at all in the 2009 season, and with the selection of Oklahoma State tackle Russell Okung with the sixth overall pick, there was also the quick draft weekend announcement from Seattle GM John Schneider that a statement would be made in the following days about Jones' future. Now, we know what we previously suspected.

Having watched Jones since his early days, when he came to the NFL about the same time as Orlando Pace and Jonathan Ogden, I'll remember him as the player who forged my interest in offensive line play. I will especially remember his week-to-week play in the Seahawks' 2005 season, when he nearly guided his formerly moribund team to a