FanHouse Kerryrhodes

One of the more entertaining stories in the NFL last week was about former New England Patriots safety Rodney Harrison and current New York Jets safety Kerry Rhodes having a war of words over Twitter. But there's just one problem: Harrison, who's now an NFL analyst for NBC, isn't on Twitter. The account @Rodneyh37, which Rhodes and others assumed was written by Harrison, was bogus.

If you didn't know better, you'd think that Sunday's Jets-Patriots game was for the AFC Championship. There has been an outsize amount of jabbering between the two rivals, most of it coming from the Jets, for a game that will leave one team at 1-1 with 14 games to play.

The latest and, presumably, final stage in the pregame yammering took place on the radio and Twitter Friday between Jets safety Kerry Rhodes and former Patriots safety Rodney Harrison. Earlier this week Rhodes said that the Jets didn't want to just beat the Patriots, they wanted to embarrass them. Harrison responded during a radio interview.

The knock on Vernon Gholston coming out of Ohio St. was that he took plays off, even as the most physically gifted player on the field. His rookie season with the Jets didn't change that perception, especially since he was taken sixth overall in the 2008 NFL draft.

Gholston's final stats: 15 games played, no starts, 13 tackles, no sacks. In January, shortly after getting the Jets head-coaching gig, Rex Ryan said that "We hope [Gholston] can be a great player ... A lot of us aren't sure, but we're going to find out. If he can't do it for me and for this team, he's never going to do it."

FLORHAM PARK, NJ -- Jets safety Kerry Rhodes came out after practice to take questions, but he made it clear right away that he couldn't answer any about the woman who claims she was raped at his Morristown, N.J. home.

"It's a pending legal matter, and I can't talk about it," Rhodes said at least 10 times in answers to questions about the incident.

Rhodes did say he was pleased that the Morris County prosecutor had made it clear in a public statement that Rhodes was not a suspect or the target of the investigation, and he and coach Rex Ryan both said they didn't expect it to be a distraction for Rhodes or the team going forward.

The owner of the Minnesota Vikings is Zygi Wilf, which means Brett Favre has become The Boy Who Cried Wilf. He also now qualifies as the most persistently annoying athlete in sports, a man in distinct danger of losing his icon status in this country because he CAN'T ... MAKE ... UP ... HIS ... FRIGGIN' ... MIND. After telling us back on Feb. 11 that he truly, honestly, genuinely, emphatically is through with football -- "It's time to leave," he said -- guess what he's doing this week?

He'll be meeting with Vikings coach Brad Childress about returning to the NFL for a 19th season, which would be his second un-retirement in less than a year and further evidence that Favre is dizzier than Courtney Love on a bender.

That didn't take long. Jay Cutler has been a member of the Chicago Bears for approximately three hours and the local media are already questioning his leadership skills. From the Chicago Tribune's Rick Morrissey:

Jay Cutler's dreams are finally coming true: the Broncos have agreed to trade him. Of course, if he weren't so sensitive -- or if new head coach Josh McDaniels had better controlled the flow of information -- it never would've come to this.

More than five month later, Josh Alper's words still hold true: "Two things are for certain about Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler: He says exactly what's on his mind and doesn't care for Philip Rivers of the Chargers." Josh was referring to a 2007 dust-up between the two quarterbacks, and Cutler's subsequent appearance on "The Best Damn Sports Show" where he expounded on his views of Rivers as "kind of an ass."

The last four weeks must've been a schadenfreude-tastic time for Rivers, what with the very public Broncos-Cutler cat fight. But as it turns out, the Chargers quarterback isn't alone in his dislike for his Denver counterpart. Jets safety Kerry Rhodes also makes it clear that he's not a Cutler fan. Which might be awkward should New York work a deal for him.

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

What a difference five weeks made for the New York Jets. From 8-3 to 9-7. from Eric Mangini as head coach to Rex Ryan, and from Brett Favre as the starting quarterback to, well, your guess is as good as ours. Those last five games sent the franchise into yet another new direction, one that will only start coming into focus when free agency opens on Feb. 27.

On Monday, Sports Illustrated's Peter King wrote that "You're kidding yourself if you think [Brett Favre's] going to move back to New Jersey for 12 to 16 weeks in March. 'I've never been in a [full] offseason program,' Favre told me a month ago..."

This was in response to Jets owner Woody Johnson, who during a radio appearance last week, offered this: "If [Favre] wants to play and he comes in early, which he will, and goes through the training like everybody else, we'll ... (Brian) Schottenheimer will give him a playbook and he'll have a lot more time to prepare."