FanHouse Igor Olshansky

Training camps have wrapped up, the NFL season is right around the corner, and it's still hot as sin outside. But instead of cooling you off with a warm island song, FanHouse break out ye old heat check for our 2009 NFL Season Previews. We'll rate each club in 5 categories on a scale of 1 to 10, high score wins.

Tony Romo was 16 years old the last time the Dallas Cowboys won a playoff game -- Dec. 28, 1996 over Minnesota. Since then, a span of 13 seasons, America's Team has gone 0-6 in the postseason and failed to qualify for the playoffs seven times. It's a shocking drought for a franchise with the history, and more obviously, the pride that Dallas does that there has been more recent on-field success. This is a big season in Big D, for Romo, for coach Wade Phillips, for the future of the franchise. But breaking that postseason jinx won't be easy.

With Fantasy Football season ready to kick in high gear, FanHouse is here to preview each and every team -- one per day until we've done them all.

Meet The ...
The team that decided to become more "Romo-friendly". Tony Romo got rid of two divas this offseason. He broke it off with longtime gal Jessica Simpson and the team released wide receiver Terrell Owens. While neither departure is guaranteed to help the Cowboys, getting rid of Owens with no true number one receiver in house will most likely shift the offense back towards a run-first philosophy, which will be quite a change from the 58% pass offense that Dallas utilized in 2008.

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While the Terrell Owens news might have been the most talked about, a bigger issue in Dallas was how thin the Cowboys were becoming in the secondary. No worries for Jerry Jones and company, who signed former Jaguars safety Gerald Sensabaugh to a one-year deal.

Sensabaugh will be helping a depleted secondary that saw Roy Williams part ways with Dallas and Keith Davis possibly head to Kansas City. This signing gives the Cowboys a younger player that can fit in at both strong safety and free safety, who recorded 82 tackles last season and four interceptions.

Go figure: The Cowboys finally make a solid, uncontroversial personnel move, and it barely registers a blip on the radar screen. While the football world is still working to come to grips with Terrell Owens' release (and, to a far lesser extent, Roy Williams' release), Dallas snuck into the free agent market and pulled defensive end Igor Olshansky out of San Diego.

According to the Dallas Morning News, Olshansky's deal is worth $18 million over four years -- or two years and $24 million less than what former Cowboy DE Chris Canty got from the Giants. Olshansky is guaranteed $8 million on his contract.

Because the NFL season never ends, we present our 2009 Offseason Roadmaps for front offices to navigate through the summer.

The San Diego Chargers are a hot mess. Things are kind of working out for them right now -- Darren Sproles has been franchised and there should be some sort of resolution to LaDainian Tomlinson in the near future -- but there's still a good chance that A.J. Smith screws the proverbial pooch on handling his real franchise player.

No, not Philip Rivers -- although he's really, really good, turning in an MVP caliber quarterbacking season on a relatively shoddy Charger squad. Tomlinson.

Because the NFL season never ends, we present our 2009 Offseason Roadmaps for front offices to navigate through the summer.

It's a brave new world in Denver, where the Broncos will take the field without Mike Shanahan on the sideline for the first time since 1995. Josh McDaniels, their new coach, was 19 back then, and has one of the shortest resumes of any head coach in NFL history. That could be a good thing or a bad thing, but it was clear that Shanahan's system was no longer bearing fruit and the team may benefit just from the change of voice on the sideline.

Training camps are underway, the NFL season is right around the corner, 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: Bear in mind, I'm a tremendous Philip Rivers fan. So despite the hilarity of Ape's Marmalard skits, I don't laugh (much). And the fact that everyone focuses on Rivers poor throws amuses me some, since Norv Turner consistently put him in horrible situations for most of the season. I won't mention that he has the stones to go toe-to-toe with Tom Brady sans ACL. Anyway, two years ago he was prepared to take his game to the next level and somehow regressed in 2007. Won't happen this season, providing his coach is smart. Crap. Heat Index: 8

Running Back: Am I allowed to give a heat index of 11? Because, like Nigel's amps, LaDanian Tomlinson is a little bit louder/better than anyone else. The loss of Michael Turner hurts a little, but the poor man's lightning-thunder backup combo of Darren Sproles and Jacob Hester is going to be a pretty devastating change of pace factor for opposing defenses. Heat Index: 11

Wide Receiver: Vincent Jackson was supposed to rise up and become a legit number one last year. Whoops. Fortunately, Chris Chambers and his potentially record breaking low catch rate (based on target % anyway) are in town now. Craig Davis will blossom decently this year and Malcolm Floyd is a pretty nasty, athletic freak, red zone target type. Oh yes, and Antonio Gates counts here too, so there's that. Heat Index: 9

Chargers defensive lineman Igor Olshansky isn't afraid of giving the Patriots bulletin board material. After the Chargers beat the Colts to reach the AFC Championship Game, Olshansky was asked about the Chargers' next opponent, and he said this:

"Who? New England?" Olshansky said. "Seriously, I mean, they're more worried than we are, I promise you. Believe me. They know what's up."

I have no problem with confidence, even cockiness. But really? Olshansky thinks the Patriots are more worried than the Chargers are? I have a feeling a lot of players on the Patriots will chuckle at that one.

Hat tip: The Sporting Blog.

The primetime Broncos-Chiefs matchup is tomorrow, people. The quick turnaround leaves a lot of questions unanswered about last Sunday's loss to the Chargers, so I'm going to touch on some of the more pressing issues real quick before we turn our attention to the game tomorrow.

First, what's up with special teams? The Chargers' Michael Turner averaged 36+ yards on kickoff returns, and the short field made a big difference in the game. The Chargers' average starting field position on Sunday was the 33 yard line. Give the Chiefs that kind of field position, and its going to be even worse, which is why the media has been speculating that we might see more starters doing double-duty to shore up special teams - especially with Dante Hall returning punts.

Then there's the issue of Tom Nalen, who was just fined $25,000 for taking a "cheap shot" at Chargers' defensive lineman Igor Olshansky. Olshansky, meanwhile, was fined just $10,000 for punching Nalen in retaliation. All I'm going to say is that this is ridiculous - Yes, it was a spike play, but Nalen was just playing sound football, trying to block Olshansky if something happen and Plummer dropped the snap or something. Okay, Nalen went low - but last time I checked, trying to punch a player is a lot worse than trying to block someone, especially when the block literally didn't do anything. Olshansky wasn't injured, knocked to the ground or anything, so this fine is purely a reaction to the San Diego media, which has exploded this story as if Olshansky had been seriously injured on the play. Needless to say, the Broncos are furious, and Tom Nalen will be appealing this ridiculous sanction.