FanHouse Marty Booker

The Atlanta Falcons are in St. Louis tonight to take on the Rams in week two of the NFL's preseason. Friday night is going to be a pivotal game to begin answering many questions that the Falcons have about depth chart issues and final 53-man roster considerations.

Here are three scenarios to keep your eye on.

Who is going to end up being the third wide receiver?
When Harry Douglas went down with a season-ending ACL tear, the Falcons had immediate openings for a punt returner (see later comments) and a third wide receiver. The team signed veteran free agents Robert Ferguson and Marty Booker soon after the Douglas injury and they are now competing with Brian Finneran and Eric Weems for that No. 3 spot.

FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. -- Roddy White and his agent have been quiet during the first nine days of training camp, preferring not to comment publicly on negotiations. The holdout is over and on White's first day in camp, he's making noise.

"We'll have a lot of big, explosive plays this year out of our offense," White said after his first practice with the team.

As you can tell, White is excited to be back in camp, back with the team and back in the huddle. Head coach Mike Smith is just happy to have him back.

FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. -- In the aftermath of the Harry Douglas injury, the Atlanta Falcons made multiple roster moves on Thursday as the team added two receivers, cut an undrafted free-agent rookie, and lost another rookie to injury.

Thursday morning started with the addition of unrestricted free agent Robert Ferguson, who signed a one year contract. Ferguson is a seven-year veteran of the NFL, most recently with the Minnesota Vikings. He only had three receptions last season but over his career has 151 receptions and 13 touchdowns.

As the season grows closer and closer, the malign on the Bears receiving corps gains steam. It seems as though everyone in the world believes the receiving corps is so bad that Jay Cutler can't be successful. Nevermind the fact that the vastly inferior Kyle Orton threw for almost 3,000 yards and 18 touchdowns (in 15 games) in the same offense last season. It's not as though the losses of Marty Booker and a handful of games from Brandon Lloyd are irreplaceable.

Still, Bears general manager Jerry Angelo just can't escape the question of whether or not the Bears will pursue help at wide receiver. Inevitably, Plaxico Burress' name arises.

Chicago Bears coach Lovie Smith had an interesting response when asked this week about the production of his wide receivers, who have combined for a whopping nine catches in the Bears' back-to-back losses against the Titans and Packers:

"Other teams covered us," Smith said. "It's kind of as simple as that. We haven't been able to get them the ball. If you look at our receiver play throughout, it's been pretty good. You go through spells where you are not as productive as you would like. But in the big picture we have gotten a lot of production from our receivers."

Smith always defends his players when they're criticized in the media, but for him to say the Bears have gotten "a lot of production" from the wide receivers is just wrong.

For a brief moment there early in the season, it appeared that Brandon Lloyd was finally going to make good on his promise. He had been a colossal bust at every stop in his early career, but he showed flashes of brilliance for the Bears, including a gem in Week 3 where he caught six balls for 124 yards and a touchdown.

Like everyone else with a brain, I figured his knee injury was still lingering when I saw Lloyd on the inactive list this past weekend when the Bears faced the NFL's lone unbeaten team.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

Lloyd explained that it was coach Lovie Smith's "strategy decision," to sit him against the NFL's stingiest scoring defense.

"I've been champing at the bit to get out there," Lloyd said.

Um, seriously? Well, then I'd like to have a few words with Lovie Smith. Earl Bennett -- who only plays special teams -- was on the active roster instead of a fully-healed Brandon Lloyd? Someone, anyone, please make sense of this for me. He has more talent than Rashied Davis and Marty Booker. Unlike the speedy Devin Hester, he's actually a wide receiver by trade.

You don't think Rex Grossman could have used another weapon?

If this is true, it's an absolutely absurd decision by the Bears coaching staff. Let's hope it doesn't happen again.

What a crazy game.

You've got an old-school NFC North -- formerly NFC Central -- battle. The black and blue division. Two foes who like to use the "run and defense/smash mouth" method to win football games.

Or not.

Let's try 558 yards passing as opposed to 208 yards rushing. Or think about the 72 passing attempts compared to 54 rushes.

People who bet the "under" in this game could see the writing on the wall before the first quarter was over.

Let's try to sort out this mess of a game, which was by far the most fun game I've seen this season. Obviously my being a Bears fan helped, but there were so many wacky occurrences. Like ...

- The Vikings lost the turnover battle five to one, yet still only lost by a touchdown.

- Gus Frerotte threw four interceptions to a Bears secondary that has been decimated with injuries -- Nathan Vasher, Charles Tillman, and Danieal Manning all missed the game.

- It was Gus Frerotte and Kyle Orton at QB. Glance back up above at those passing vs. rushing numbers.

Every week when the dinner bell rings on Friday evening, we'll be here to provide you a comprehensive injury report for the NFL weekend to follow. For those injuries that go right down to the wire, drop by our Fantasy Fanhouse expert live chat from 10am to 1pm EST every Sunday and we'll take care of you on those bloody game-time decisions. As always, please feel free to chime in with opinions, updates, and rumors in the comments.

The Arizona Cardinals

Anquan Boldin - After the last Sunday's vicious hit, Boldin came away with a fractured sinus membrane, which I believe means he broke his face. While he is lucky that is the worst of it after what looked like a neck injury, he is very unlikely to play on Sunday at this point. It has not yet been ruled out however, so keep an eye on his progress.

The Baltimore Ravens

Willis McGahee - McGahee continues to keep things interesting as now he has injured ribs, which limited his playing time on Monday night. His efforts in practice this week have been limited, but he did practice on Friday, so he should be good to at least split carries.

The Buffalo Bills

Roscoe Parrish - Parrish is definitely out for three to five more weeks with a thumb injury. While this is not material for many people, it opens the door for James Hardy to gain some playing time and for Lee Evans to put up a couple of his sporadic breakout games.

The Carolina Panthers

Jonathan Stewart - Stewart is still on the injury report, but he will be fine to go this week.

Jake Delhomme - Delhomme is listed as probable with a thigh injury, but he will be ready for week 5. With Steve Smith back and Muhsin Muhammad getting involved, Delhomme's value is on the up and up.

Training camps are underway, the NFL season is a month off, and to get you ready for 2008, FanHouse previews all 32 teams, "heat index" style. We'll rate each club in 10 categories on a scale of 1 to 10, high score wins.

Quarterback: It's an open competition between Rex Grossman and Kyle Orton. Cue the laugh track. I'll try to be positive. In 2006, Grossman led the team to a 13-3 record and an NFC Championship to boot. He led the NFL in 100+ QB rating games (yes, I know he led in games below 40 and also had a zero rating once ... remember I was being positive), and threw for over 3000 yards with 23 TD passes for a running-and-defense team. Orton went 10-5 as a starter in the previous season with atrocious numbers (seriously, he didn't even throw for 2,000 yards or ten TDs in 15 games). Look for Grossman to start, unless the Bears want to completely take away the threat of Devin Hester. And they can't do that. Heat Index: 2

Training camp is finally here and FanHouse breaks down the most important position battles heading into the season, team by team.

Seriously, I tried to narrow this down and actually spotlight one positional battle like all the rest. Other than just picking the offensive side of the football, where could we even begin? I could simply spotlight the anemic duo at QB like everyone else, or take the easy way out and sort through Kevin Jones vs. Matt Forte at RB.

That's just not good enough. The fact of the matter is that half the offense is up for grabs in training camp. Let's take a little stroll through Halas Hall's proud offense ...