FanHouse Calvinpace

While NFL players serve league-imposed suspensions, they're ineligible to practice, work out at the training facilities, or participate in any other team activities, which means it's up to them to stay in shape on their own. But for three players who are suspended for the start of the 2009 season, they'll be training at former UFC champion Randy Couture's mixed martial arts gym in Las Vegas.

Rich Cimini of the New York Daily News reports that Jets outside linebacker Calvin Pace and Saints defensive ends Will Smith and Charles Grant -- all of whom will serve four-game suspensions for using banned supplements -- are going to spend that time working out at Xtreme Couture, a gym widely regarded as one of the best MMA training facilities in the world.

Not to pick on poor Calvin Pace, who claims today to be the latest NFL victim of those sneaky, nefarious over-the-counter supplements, but come on here, people. At what point is it fair to start calling out the NFL on the performance-enhancing drug issue? This guy's no superstar, but he's an important player on a New York team. The baseball equivalent would be somebody like Ryan Church on the Mets or Hideki Matsui on the Yankees. Imagine if one of those guys had been suspended today for steroids? Would ESPN even think about leading SportsCenter with anything else?

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Every Play Counts is Michael David Smith's weekly look at one specific player or one aspect of a team on every single play of the previous game.

In an installment of Every Play Counts last month, I wrote about how the New York Jets' defense had dominated the Buffalo Bills' offense, and specifically how defensive tackle Kris Jenkins was a practically unstoppable presence in the middle of the line. The Bills finished that November game with just 30 rushing yards on 17 carries, and the Jets' defense looked like it could lead them deep into the postseason.

And then in Sunday's Jets-Bills rematch, Buffalo ran 32 times for 187 yards and two touchdowns, and the Jets' defense looked like it had no business playing in the postseason at all. Although Bills quarterback J.P. Losman ended up giving the game to the Jets with five turnovers, including three in the final 2:06 of the fourth quarter, the Jets' run defense was a mess.

So what's gone wrong? And can the Jets count on their run defense to lead them in the playoffs? We explore in this week's installment of Every Play Counts.

It would have been easy for the Jets to fall into a trap today against the Rams. The game was against a weak opponent, sandwiched between two divisional road games and the second of those is Thursday in New England. Someone forgot to let the Rams know they should set one.

There wasn't much that went wrong for the Jets today. They cruised down the field and scored on the opening drive, forced a three-and-out and then added a field goal. The game wasn't in doubt after the next Rams possession. Abram Elam came like a cannonball on a safety blitz to force a Marc Bulger fumble, Calvin Pace recovered and returned it for a touchdown. It was 17-0, just 10 minutes were off the clock and things only went downhill from there for the Rams.

It was a complete effort for the Rams as well, completely inept. They turned the ball over five times, gained 200 yards and looked about as happy to be in New Jersey as a low-level mafioso who insulted Tony Soprano's goomah. During the game, I got a text from a friend suggesting that Alabama would beat the Rams. My reply, "So would Michigan," should let anyone familiar with college football know how pathetic the visitors' effort was this afternoon.

Pathetic may seem like a strong word, but, really, based on the way the Rams played, effort is the stretch in that last sentence.

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: Chad Pennington enters 2008 trying to prove yet again that he -- wait, what? Who? Really? Didn't he retire? Oh. I see. It doesn't seem like Brett Favre wants to play in New York this year, he's basically said so much in the most diplomatic way possible, which means this is the year where Favre stops having fun. This is the year he stops looking like a kid again, to support the cliche. And it can be argued that that magic has perpetuated itself, and has been the reason Favre is still considered -- rightfully or not -- one of the best quarterbacks in the league. Without it, I can imagine 2008 being a disaster for Favre -- bad play and missed games. And then the New York media jumps in and the misery just compounds. That's how I see 2008 rolling. Oh, plus, they don't have a decent backup quarterback. Heat Index: 6

It seems that the misery of a 4-12 season has lit a fire under the seat of Jets GM Mike Tannenbaum. He's been the most active man in the NFL since the offseason officially began, a trend that continued this afternoon when Gang Green signed Calvin Pace and Damien Woody as free agents. And, as in the Kris Jenkins and Alan Faneca acquisitions, the Jets spent money like a drunken sailor to make the deal happen.

Pace, a bust until recording six and a half sacks this season, got $22 million in guaranteed money to sign with the Jets for six years and $42 million overall. The move to a 3-4 served Pace well in Arizona last season but, as the Jets saw with Bryan Thomas, boosts from scheme changes can be temporary boons to otherwise mediocre players. Even his 2007 "breakout" was a modest one, making this move a gamble of major proportions.

Woody didn't match Faneca's NFL-best deal but will get $11 million in guarantees from the Jets to play right tackle. He started five games there for the Lions at the tail end of a four-year stint which featured more negatives than positives. He had been a productive guard and center with the Patriots before moving to Detroit, something that likely affected Eric Mangini's impression of his abilities.

Shaun Rogers to Cincinnati. Alan Faneca to the Jets. Lance Briggs visiting Tampa Bay. The compensation for Jonathan Vilma. The proximity of Patriots/Randy Moss, Jaguars/Drayton Florence, and Dolphins/Calvin Pace agreements.

There were a lot of conflicting reports and stretches of misinformation on the first day of Free Agency 2008, and that is no doubt due to the increasing presence of the Internet and, particularly, the Blogosphere in football. No longer are the rumor mill and breaking news constricted (and filtered) by an MSM hindered by lead time and afraid of being wrong. They didn't report news until it was officially news.

Now, with a cadre of sometimes anonymous insiders with pockefuls of sources willing to step out on that iLimb, even the MSM is jumping in with bloggier formats and a willingness to boldly jump the gun in an effort not to be out-scooped by us basement-dwellers, left hung out to dry much like the symbolic newspapers you see in the accompanying image.

The good news is that the increase in misses is well worth it for the large increase in hits that have resulted. Asante Samuel's deal was reported nearly a day before he signed his name, and many other deals have been correctly reported early in the last 36 or so hours. So sometimes it pays to take the bad with the good.

Besides, it's all keeping me very entertained.

The Arizona Cardinals are in a mess heading into the NFL free agency period, and they have no one to blame but themselves.

Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald is owed a base salary of $16.5 million for the 2008 season, thanks to the incentive-laden rookie deal that the Cardinals agreed to when they made him the third pick in the 2004 NFL draft. As a base salary, the entire contract will count against the team's 2008 salary cap, which means about 15% of the cap is tied into one player.

That will make it extremely difficult for the Cardinals to hang onto all the other players they want to keep, including linebackers Karlos Dansby and Calvin Pace, running back Edgerrin James and both quarterbacks, Matt Leinart and Kurt Warner. They seem to already have resigned themselves to losing third receive Bryant Johnson.

The Ravens only have one big-named free agent hitting the market in March and the story for most of the season is that the team would try to re-sign him. The scuttlebutt had defensive end Terrell Suggs wanting "Dwight Freeney money," so that could potentially muck up the process of keeping him in Baltimore.

So, too, could Suggs wanting to play for another team ... on the other side of the country:

Suggs is a free agent and told KTVK's Brad Cesmat at Wednesday night's ASU-Arizona basketball game that he would love to come back to Arizona and play for the Cardinals - who desperately need the skills he offers.

Now part of this could be Suggs just shooting the breeze with a television reporter while he tries to take in a basketball game in his hometown. It could also be something much more straightforward. Like that Suggs wants to play for the Cardinals.

Usually teams are lauded for trading down in the draft -- particulary in the first round -- to accumulate draft picks. It's a staple of the Bill Belichick/Scott Pioli blueprint to roster building, after all. But one example of when the trade down didn't quite pay dividends was in 2003. The Arizona Cardinals (shocking that the Cards got the short end of the stick on something, I know) traded out of the No. 6 selection, picked up the 17th and 18th picks, and have been regretting it ever since.

Before the draft, the scuttlebut had the Cards taking Arizona State defensive end Terrell Suggs, but when the big day finally rolled around, the team traded that pick to New Orleans and ended up with wide receiver Bryant Johnson and defensive end Calvin Pace.

The Saints passed on Suggs -- after a mediocre Pro Day performance, Suggs dropped on some draft boards -- and the Ravens took him at No. 10. And all he's done in four years is rack up 40 sacks and made two Pro Bowls. In the meantime, Pace has been mostly a backup, and Johnson is third fiddle after Anquan Boldin and Larry Fitzgerald.

It's hard to fault the Cardinals for trying to stock up on quality players, but it's also not surprising that the move blew up in their face. Arizona travels to Baltimore today for their toughest test of the young season, and before it's all over, quarterback Matt Leinart might have intimate knowledge of how good Suggs really is.