FanHouse Eddie George

Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher, who coached Steve McNair for his first 11 seasons in the NFL, remembered the slain quarterback Monday as a loving husband and father and a good man both on and off the field. He also spoke for McNair, even apologizing on McNair's behalf and suggesting that McNair would want to say he's sorry for his relationship with Sahel Kazemi, the woman who allegedly killed him and killed herself.

Keith Bulluck sat down with the Tennessean for a Q&A this week that covered a lot of topics: his favorite Titans team, his best teammates, his toughest loss and his best game. It's not meant to be, but it almost read like a farewell speech.

Bulluck is heading into the final year of his contract. The Titans have not made any moves to re-sign him. He has already said that he expects to be playing elsewhere next year, although his wish is to remain with the Titans. And when you consider the Titans track record, that's not surprising.

With the recent passing of Doc "Mr. Inside" Blanchard, FanHouse takes a stab at naming the five greatest living Heisman Trophy winners

In a game that spans many eras, any task like this is exceedingly difficult and fraught with contradiction. With all the nostalgia built into the Heisman Trophy and the game of college football, we're buying into it with a less clinical, more emotional effort at ranking players. There's a bias towards the modern, towards a player being associated with the trophy and towards those that most captured peoples' imaginations.

Everyone makes mistakes. But when those mistakes are magnified by intense scrutiny of the NFL draft, well, they become much more embarrassing than, say, my typical Friday morning, mustard-stain-on-khakis incident.

Which is why the NFL FanHouse braintrust got together to determine who is the biggest bust for each NFL team. They're not listed in terms of stupidity -- they're all stupid relative to a team's total draft performance. Meaning, of course, some teams "bust" is much different than another organization's; we did it this way to avoid just linking you to DetroitLions.com.

Instead, we're putting it in current draft order, sans trades, and allowing this list to serve as a reminder of each's team's ability to properly execute a fail. The "bust factor" was based primarily on three things: statistical production (or lack thereof), position in the draft and other available options during that year's draft.

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In anticipation of Cardinals-Steelers, FanHouse takes a look back at some forgotten storylines from past Super Bowls.

Everyone remembers Kevin Dyson stretching out with the football from the one yard-line in a desperate attempt to tie the game in Super Bowl XXXIV as time expired. The Rams won the game, Kurt Warner won the MVP, Dick Vermeil won his only Super Bowl championship, and Vermeil "retired" for Mike Martz to take over as coach.

What many people don't consider about that game is: Why did the Titans only have one timeout on that final drive?

As the Patriots continue to rebuild their front office and coaching staff following another offseason exodus, the team has announced the hiring of former Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans general manager Floyd Reese as a senior football advisor. According to the team's official press release, he will work alongside director of player personnel Nick Caserio and head coach Bill Belichick in "various football-related assignments, including contracts."

Here's what Patriots owner Robert Kraft had to say on the hiring:

"We consider ourselves fortunate to have the opportunity to add someone with Floyd Reese's NFL experience and expertise to our staff," said Patriots Chairman and CEO Robert Kraft. "Floyd will be a tremendous asset serving Coach Belichick in an advisory role."

When Steve McNair retired last week, it became inevitable that his candidacy for Canton would be evaluated. His trip from Alcorn State to the Super Bowl erased the last lingering doubts about the fitness of black quarterbacks and he threw for 31,304 yards in his career.

That's a nice number but it's also less than Kerry Collins. He only threw for 20 touchdowns three times, though, and the Titans went to the Super Bowl on Eddie George's legs and a strong defense more than McNair's right arm. They also didn't win that game, falling a yard short of forcing overtime and that may be the defining yard of McNair's chances at enshrinement. Hailed as a tough-as-nails gamer around the league, McNair with a ring would be a much more appealing candidate than without one.

Hashmarks spoke with one HOF voter who is keeping an open mind about McNair's chances, though.

"I can't say that I would never vote for McNair. There are some guys like Warren Moon that I didn't think was a Hall of Famer at first, but as time passed, the numbers stood out and I was convinced that he was."

That's a hard case to make given McNair's era. Peyton Manning, Tom Brady and Brett Favre are guaranteed spots in Canton and there's likely to be one or two others coming from behind that will surpass McNair's modest overall resume. McNair isn't a HOFer right now and time isn't likely to help him much either.

FanHouse is counting down the 10 best, 10 worst, and 10 weirdest moments in Big Ten football history.

Howard Stern could take over for Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News. Your cat could win the Nobel Prize in physics. Guns 'N Roses could actually release Chinese Democracy. Those are three things which seem as unlikely now as Northwestern's 1995 Rose Bowl run seemed at the time.

Northwestern had occupied a certain niche in the Big Ten's ecosystem, that of the perennial homecoming date. The Wildcats could be counted on to show up sometime between late September and late October to provide an all but guaranteed W for the returning alumni. And as long as they still played football in Evanston, every Big Ten team knew that no matter what other outrageous fortune befell them, they wouldn't go winless in the conference unless it was one of those years Northwestern just wasn't on the schedule.

A lot of coaches sacrificed large parts of their careers coaching in Evanston, trying to face up to the challenge of turning around a football team that hadn't won a conference title since 1949. But not even legitimately good coaches like Lou Saban, Ara Parseghian, and Dennis Green could accomplish anything with the Wildcats. So how did Gary Barnett do it?

Kind of a non-story actually, but there was one interesting tidbit. Troy Smith was forced to ship his Heisman Trophy home today, because airport security wouldn't allow him to take it on the plane with him. Which kind of makes sense, although I couldn't really tell you why.

But anyway, Troy wasn't really fazed, because after all, he didn't want anything to happen to his Heisman the way something happened to Eddie George's:

Eddie George, the last Buckeye to win the Heisman in 1995, had his trophy get stuck in an airport X-ray machine, losing the tip of its right index finger and bending the middle finger.

And really one of the last things you want to have happen to you in life is for your Heisman Trophy to get the tip of it's finger cut off in an airport X-ray machine. Or so I would think.

More: OSU's Smith forced to ship Heisman - AP

There's been so much going on with the Buckeyes this season (National Championship run, Troy Smith for Heisman) that certain things have kind of gone unnoticed. One of the most promising developments at the half way mark has to be Chris Wells' performance thus far.

Wells came to Ohio State the number one recruit in the country, and when you look at his body makeup it's not hard to see why. He's 6'1, 225 pounds, with plenty of speed. It's hard not to have flashbacks of Eddie George when looking at the kid.

He has a shot at the Eddie George career path as well. Wells is being used this season, but sparingly, and that's not likely to change next season (Antonio Pittman's senior year). Eddie George developed the same way, seeing the field in limited time his first two seasons and becoming the starter his junior year. Obviously we all remember how that turned out, with George winning the Heisman following a terrific senior year.

Wells has only carried the ball more than 10 times twice this year, but had great games both times. He averaged five yards a carry against Northern Illinois in week 1 (10 carries) and 5.6 yards per carry against Iowa in week 5 (14 carries). He's obviously good enough as a true freshman to play at the college level, and I have no doubt that he'd be a starter next year for the vast majority of college teams in the country. Backing up Pittman for another year will only make him stronger and better though. With the start that Wells has gotten off to it seems that there's little doubt that he's going to end up as, at the least, a very solid running back. At the most, who knows? He certainly has the physical attributes that signal future Heisman candidate. All I know is that it's awesome that Ohio State already has Pittman's replacement seeing time on the field with the opportunity to learn before having to start.