NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell's suggestion last month that the league should consider moving the Pro Bowl to the weekend before the Super Bowl has received lukewarm reaction.

"So what happens to the guys who make the Pro Bowl who are on the Super Bowl teams?" said Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, an eight-time Pro Bowler and member of the franchise's 2000 championship team. "They can't play? No way, that's not gonna fly."

Goodell's motivation for moving the game up is to generate more interest for the poorly viewed event by capitalizing on the excitement surrounding the playoffs and the upcoming Super Bowl.

"I don't know what you can do, but it's so hard when players and coaches are worried about getting hurt," Jacksonville Jaguars running back Fred Taylor said.

Along those lines, 13 combined Super Bowl participants of the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears – featuring stars such as Peyton Manning and Brian Urlacher – would have skipped the Pro Bowl to avoid risking injury.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Perhaps we don't really know Jack.

The perception of the Jaguars' Jack Del Rio as a head coach has always been that of a conservative, defense-first leader. In fact, that would be defense first, second and all the way to 541st.

Somewhere on the way to a 4-1 start, including a 37-17 victory Sunday here against Houston – and with a showdown looming a week from Monday against 5-0 Indianapolis – Del Rio has begun to shed that image.

Want to gamble on your season? Cut starting quarterback Byron Leftwich a week before the season begins. Want to gamble on a key game against an upstart Texans team that has given you problems in the past? Sandwich a pair of fourth-down gambles around an onside kick over a critical stretch that bridged halftime and turned a 6-0 deficit into a 16-6 lead and control of the game.

Suddenly, Del Rio went from Reagan Jack to Riverboat Jack.

"It's just how I saw this game playing out when we talked about it earlier this season," said Del Rio, who

OWINGS MILLS, Md. – Baltimore Ravens coach Brian Billick can be humorously defiant, even as he admits to a problem so obvious that not even Marion Jones could deny.

"We have to come up with big plays," Billick said. "But I don't want my quarterback – on a team that plays great defense, that has good balance, that has a good completion percentage, that's running the ball fairly well and has the good third-down conversion – forcing the ball downfield because some slap (expletive) thinks that we need to throw (deep patterns) up every route. It doesn't make any sense."

What doesn't make sense is that a team 11th in yardage (346.2 per game) is only 20th in scoring (17.6 per game). So as Billick resists taking drastic measures, his office is filled with tools to fix the offense: a desktop computer loaded with coaching programs, a laptop with stats and a big-screen TV with a DVD player.

"I'm very conscious of the fact that we're going to have to be more explosive. … In most measurable ways,

While people close to Ricky Williams say the oft-suspended running back has taken his latest round of counseling from NFL-sanctioned psychologists seriously, there's really a much simpler motivation for his attempt to return to the field:

Play football or possibly go to jail if he gets too far behind in paying child support.

Williams is in that predicament based on the fact that he has a child support agreement with one of the three mothers of his four children. In 2004, Williams agreed to pay $4,200 per month, maintain life insurance and keep approximately $500,000 in a separate fund for the son he had with Cherie Clark. Clark currently lives in Hawaii, but the agreement was reached in Florida where Williams and Clark met.

Williams, serving a suspension since the start of the 2006 NFL season for violating the league's substance-abuse policy, is not subject to a reduction in financial responsibility as a result of self-induced changes in income or job status, according to Florida law.

The Minnesota Vikings should know within a week if their decision to be patient in trading a player they don't want will pay off.

Multiple sources said running back Mewelde Moore is expected to be traded by the NFL trade deadline on Oct. 16.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press reported that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers contacted Minnesota last week after losing running back Carnell "Cadillac" Williams to a right patellar tendon injury on Sept. 30 in a victory over the Carolina Panthers. Tampa Bay's need for a running back increased when it lost Michael Pittman for six to eight weeks with a broken right fibula during Sunday's loss to the Indianapolis Colts. The Bucs are down to running back Earnest Graham.

However, the difference in what the Bucs have offered and what the Vikings want is significant. Tampa Bay offered a sixth-round pick for Moore, who has been inactive for most of the two seasons under coach Brad Childress, and is behind backs Chester Taylor and Adrian Peterson on the depth chart.

LANDOVER, Md. – This is the kind of game so many quarterback prodigies never understand.

The type of game where the defense is daring a young passer to beat them, lining up in eight-man fronts to stop the run and basically saying, "Go ahead kid, take your best shot." At some point, the youngster has to screw up.

On Sunday, Redskins quarterback Jason Campbell never did what most coaches would have expected. He didn't use his cannon arm to force a throw. He didn't use his intriguing combination of size (6-foot-5, 230 pounds) and good speed to buy more time for a big play that never came.

Rather, Campbell played a coaches' game. He played smart. He played easy. He played efficient. Bottom line: he played one of the better games you won't see on the highlight reels, going 23 of 29 for 248 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions during a 34-3 victory over the Detroit Lions.

While much of the football world will be caught up in the numbers the Washington defense reduced Detroit and

Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Ike Hilliard was the No. 7 overall pick in the 1997 NFL draft out of the University of Florida. While he has never achieved the star status that some expected, he has had a quiet-but-productive 11-year career and is respected among coaches and fellow players for his knowledge of the game. He had seven catches for 114 yards against the Carolina Panthers on Sunday after returning to the starting lineup.

On Tuesday, he was up early, but not because he was prepping for next Sunday's game against the Indianapolis Colts. He was taking care of his 17-month old daughter, allowing his pregnant wife to sleep in:

Cole: You were talking Sunday about how you have to "stay young," which was one of the reasons you play video games so much. Is that young from a psychological standpoint?

Hilliard: Yeah, in this game you have to keep up with all the young guys coming in. There are a million guys ready to take your job coming out of college, so you have to stay on top

CHARLOTTE – It's all of a quarter through the season, but already you can sense the Tampa Bay Buccaneers might be on to something special from the mania in coach Jon Gruden's voice.

Gruden, whose team controlled the Carolina Panthers from start to finish in a 20-7 victory Sunday, tries to contain himself in times like these. After all, he knows all too well that a 3-1 start is worth about as much as getting a "date" with a Las Vegas stripper.

Yet after going 4-12 last season while losing one quarterback (Chris Simms) to injury and dealing with sixth-round pick Bruce Gradkowski as his starter, Gruden can put a little swagger back in his speech.

And he did in his postgame presser when asked to compare this start with last season's meltdown. Gruden pounced on the question faster than he hits the wings and beer at Hooters.

"We're not going to talk about last year," said Gruden, who entered this season on the hot seat. "Goddamn, I'm so tired of talking about last year. We had a rookie