Wes Welker walks off the Broncos practice field after an organized team activity. (USA Today)

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. – Wes Welker sat back in a plush, leather chair in the lobby of the Denver Broncos training facility last week, conducting a post-workout interview without revealing the slightest hint of stress.

Unlike the conversations he had with reporters during his six-year stint with the New England Patriots – whose coach, Bill Belichick, scrutinizes his players' public comments with NSA-like zeal – Welker felt no urgency to walk the line between bland and unrevealing.

"I feel like I can be myself a little more for sure," said Welker, who signed a two-year, $12-million deal with the Broncos on March 13, a day after becoming an unrestricted free agent. Asked if he'd received any pre-interview lectures about what subjects to avoid, Welker laughed and said, "Here? No. … All they told me was, 'Just be yourself.' "

Long regarded in player circles as one of the funnier, edgier NFL stars, Welker may finally reveal that to fans after six years of mostly pent-up plainness. Indeed, the

Read More »from Wes Welker finally able to be himself as member of the Denver Broncos

Peyton Manning and Wes Welker talk during team activities Wednesday. (USA Today)

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. – Peyton Manning was so good, so soon during his triumphant return to football in 2012 that it was easy to forget his personal journey was as choppy as a Tim Tebow pass through a stiff Mile High breeze. Once a regimented resident of football's most carefully crafted comfort zone, Manning spent his first year with the Denver Broncos confronting challenges he hadn't faced since leaving the University of Tennessee 14 years earlier.

While the physical struggles Manning experienced in returning to the field following four neck surgeries and a 19-month absence have been well-documented, the quarterback's transition to a new city, team, coaching staff, system and set of teammates was a similarly jarring endeavor, one he managed to navigate with far less fanfare.

The transition was so overwhelming that Manning, who has always regarded his penchant for impeccably detailed preparation as his greatest edge, had to adopt a less stringent standard in the name of self-preservation.

Read More »from Peyton Manning 'felt like a rookie in some ways' during comeback season with Broncos

Raiders owner Mark Davis (L) talks to GM Reggie McKenzie (R) during rookie minicamp. (USA Today)

Mark Davis made some news over the weekend, informing public relations director Zak Gilbert that his silver-and-black spin-doctoring services were no longer required.

Because this happened as May turned to June – and because so many consumers have an insatiable appetite for NFL-related happenings – it qualified as a nationally relevant story, with the added intrigue of a certain Yahoo! Sports columnist having his sentiments redeemed on a widely read pro-football-obsessed website.

Understandably, many fans have since questioned why a firing that has industry insider written all over it should be assigned any relevance, particularly to an already frustrated fan base pining for its first winning season in more than a decade.

I'm here to tell you why, as a member of Raider Nation or as an NFL fan in general, you should care why Zak Gilbert got the axe. 

While Davis is easy to criticize, and seems to be living down to the Tommy Boy nickname I bestowed upon him after the 2011 season, he

Read More »from Raiders owner Mark Davis puts GM, rest of staff on notice with firing of PR head

As a ninth-year veteran who has yet to experience a winning NFL season, Richie Incognito views offseason hype with the same eye-rolling dismissive demeanor that most voters reserve for politicians vowing to end the gridlock in Washington.

While it seems as though virtually every other member of the Miami Dolphins' organization has conspicuously talked up the team's 2013 prospects over the past two months, the Pro Bowl guard prefers an approach more consistent with his surname.

Dolphins coach Joe Philbin yells at players during an offseason workout earlier this month. (AP)"Yeah, I have noticed that everyone's looking through rosy-colored glasses," Incognito says. "It's a combination of things: We got more talent. We have our starting quarterback set. Our coaches and coordinators are back for another year. And we've got a good foundation here, and we work our asses off.

"But you know what? I definitely need to see it on the field before [talking about it]. I get it from my friends: 'How are you gonna do this year?' It's real easy to say in May, 'Hey, we're gonna win the Super

Read More »from Offseason additions spark Dolphins players, GM Jeff Ireland to predict great 2013 season

TEMPE, Ariz. – Carson Palmer didn't see the safety coming, zipping a pass into the right flat that was destined to end up in the wrong man's hands toward the end of a two-minute drill. The accompanying rebuke from Bruce Arians, the Arizona Cardinals' first-year coach? That was easy to read.

"We can't have that," Arians growled after an errant Palmer throw during organized team activities (OTAs) earlier this week, accentuating his sentiment with a couple of choice expletives. Palmer, the Cards' newly acquired starting quarterback, nodded dutifully and kept smiling on the inside.

It's only May, but Palmer is thrilled with his third and perhaps final incarnation as a presumptive franchise quarterback, and nothing is going to stomp on his buzz. Seven weeks after the Oakland Raiders shipped the 33-year-old passer to the desert for a pair of late-round draft picks, the NFL's version of CP3 begins each workday with the giddy excitement of a kid rushing to the tree on Christmas morning.

"I love

Read More »from New Cardinals quarterback Carson Palmer feels reborn in the desert

Brian Urlacher said "Peace out" to pro football Wednesday, ending an iconic 13-year career that will absolutely lead to a bronze bust in Canton at the end of this decade.

In responding to a chillier-than-a-Windy-City-winter market for his services, I believe the great linebacker was, in essence, making another two-word statement to the NFL's 32 franchises, this one of the unprintable variety.

Brian Urlacher hoists the George Halas Trophy after the Bears beat the Saints in the 2007 NFC title game. (AP)Did you really expect Urlacher to go out any other way? Does it make sense that a fierce competitor, who once told me that after a game "win or lose I'm up all night" in a self-flagellating stupor, would let his storied career bleed itself to an undignified conclusion?

While Urlacher may well have arrived at this decision after considering a multitude of personal factors — including, most important, the state of his body, which has more cause to be broken down than virtually any other skeletomuscular structure that has worn a football uniform this century —

Read More »from Bears LB Brian Urlacher's retirement forced in part by blow to pride

As a journalist who has consistently experienced the wrath of Tebow Nation — mostly for passing along the slings and arrows voiced by various NFL players, coaches and talent-evaluators — I'm well aware that many devotees of the world's most celebrated unemployed quarterback carry a heavy persecution complex.

Yet as Tim Tebow's career wheezes to an underwhelming halt, with less apparent interest in his services than Massachusetts funeral parlors have in Tamerlan Tsarnaev's remains, something strange is happening. Against all odds, I'm starting to wonder whether the man who helped the Denver Broncos become one of the league's most stunning success stories in 2011 is getting unjustly blackballed.

Nine days after Tebow was released by the New York Jets, it has become increasingly clear that the ultra-popular quarterback who has hijacked many a news cycle has no viable landing spot. No NFL team seems to want him — as a starter, backup, converted H-back or fake-punt decoy — and it's not

Read More »from Tim Tebow blackballed by NFL teams because of cult-like following, media frenzy

He sat at a podium and called it "the greatest trade in football," a calculated burst of hyperbole that would haunt him like a silver-and-black poltergeist.

Now, 18 months after championing his team's costly, driven-by-desperation deal for Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer in the middle of the 2011 season, former Oakland Raiders coach Hue Jackson admits he'd like to take it back.

Carson Palmer played admirably for Oakland under some difficult circumstances.(Getty Images)No, Jackson doesn't regret the organizational decision to send first- and second-round draft picks to the Bengals for the then-retired Palmer, a much-maligned transaction that officially ran its course last Friday when Cincinnati selected running back Gio Bernard with the 37th overall pick of the 2013 draft. Rather, the do-over Jackson desires is a retraction of that five-word statement accompanying Palmer's arrival in Oakland in October of 2011, a proclamation that many Raiders fans now regard as the ultimate irony.

"In hindsight, calling it 'the greatest trade in football' wasn't the best idea,"

Read More »from Pump the brakes: Raiders' trade for Carson Palmer wasn't nearly as bad as some claim