The Sports Review

It has been reported that Detroit Tigers’ ace Justin Verlander is in talks with the club over a reported 5-year, $75 million deal that will keep the right hander in Motown. Verlander is coming off an All-Star season in which he won 19 games and ended the year with a 3.45 ERA. The 26-year-old is one of the most promising pitchers in the game with heat that breaks the 100 MPH mark. The current deal the Tigers have with Verlander expires after the 2011 season when if no deal is made the pitcher would be a free agent. In 2006 Verlander won the Rookie of the Year Award going 17-9 and became the only rookie pitcher to win 10 games before June in MLB history. Verlander has only one season with a losing record which was in 2008 when he went 11-17. The two sides appear to want to get this deal done before the 2010 season starts.

The New Orleans Saints will be hosting Brett Farve and the Minnesota Vikings on Sunday in the NFC Championship Game with the opportunity to go to the franchise’s first Super Bowl on the line. The Saints will have their hands full with the Vikings balanced offense of Farve airing it out and Adrian Peterson moving the chains between the tackles, however, when looking back at the Vikings’ last loss (against the Chicago Bears on December 28th) there are some lessons to be learned.

The Bears certainly didn’t shut down the Vikings as Farve forced overtime with a miraculous touchdown pass in the final moments of the fourth quarter only to be outdone by Jay Cutler connecting with Devin Aromashodu in OT. The biggest thing that allowed the Bears to defeat the Vikings was their offensive line’s ability to protect their quarterback. Left tackle Chis Williams surprised many in the way he handled Jared Allen (one of the NFL’s best pass rushers).

If the Saint’s offensive line led by Jonathan Stinchcomb and Jonathan Goodwin can protect Drew Brees then they should be able to put points on the board. That being said with the seasons these two teams had offensively look for Sunday’s contest to be a classic scorefest.

Gilbert Arenas did the silly thing of joking with a teammate about guns and then actually bringing a gun into the Verizon Center. The stadium is located in the District of Columbia, which has some very strict gun laws. Then he joked about it in public, with Twitter comments and goofy shooting motions at his teammates. This sealed his fate for the NBA for the moment, as he has been suspended indefinitely. Today he pleaded guilty to a weapons charge in the city, where he will end up with some impressive punishment. There is a possibility that he could be put in jail for a certain amount of time. But there is also the possibility that he will just get probation and something else. It doesn’t look like he will actually end up in jail for any length of time. But he will have to clean up his act a little bit if he wants to make a comeback of any kind.

Donovan McNabb struggled in the final weeks of this season. The biggest challenge for him was this weekend when he lost to the Cowboys for the second week in a row. It was particularly tough because they had already been shut out in their previous game. The Cowboys had their number, as they say, so they’re headed to the Divisional Round. Then the yearly question about whether Donovan McNabb is going to stay in Philly again this year or not. They are concerned about his record in the playoffs over the last years. Whether the team goes in as a Wild Card or as a division winner, they just don’t seem to be able to win it. They made it to the Super Bowl once, but they had a long series of simply losing in the NFC Championship. This weekend, losing in wild card might be embarassing, but they have a young team with some great talent. They shouldn’t dump McNabb just yet. It’s going to be a better year next year and hopefully continue that trend for several more years.

Kurt Warner has been in the league for only about a dozen years. But he’s 38 years old. Most quarterbacks don’t make it that long, and many never reach the level of play that Warner has been able to achieve for multiple years in a row. A long time ago, he was a Super Bowl champion. Then he was silent for nearly 4 years. I even didn’t realize that he was still a player in the league. Now he’s on his way back to the playoffs once again. Last year, he even led his team to a Super Bowl appearance. They didn’t quite win it, but they were awfully close. Will he be able to do it again? And what about next year? Is there another next year for Warner? Or has he been injured too many times to keep himself going much longer?

After we saw the end of the regular season for the NFL, we saw some teams jump for joy while they start to prepare for the playoffs and some other teams are disappointed with how things turned out. One of those teams is the Chicago Bears, who entered with high expectations, including being some experts’ pick to win the Super Bowl, and went on a 2-8 streak in the middle of their season. They started out strong and finished strong, but weren’t able to get the job done for long stretches. They would like to blame it on injuries, but there weren’t too many of those. They have some personnel issues and possibly some coaching issues. There is word that coordinators, coaches or administrative people might be headed out of town as soon as tomorrow. There are big discussions happening between head coach Lovie Smith and the top team officials this afternoon where we can assume some of these changes will be decided. Lovie Smith is respected by his players and by fans, when things are going well. There will definitely need to be some big shifts in attitude and style for some parts of the team. Hopefully this will get their team back on track.