Larry Brown Sports

It has been more than five years since the New England Patriots were caught videotaping their opponents’ signals, but there are plenty of people who are not ready to let it go. Marshall Faulk is one of those people, as the former St. Louis Rams running back feels he was personally affected by the spygate scandal.

On Tuesday, Faulk spoke with CSNNE.com’s Tom E. Curran and said he is never going to be over getting “cheated” out of a championship.

“Am I over the loss?” Faulk asked. “Yeah, I’m over the loss. But I’ll never be over being cheated out of the Super Bowl. That’s a different story. I can understand losing a Super Bowl, that’s fine … But how things happened and what took place. Obviously, the commissioner gets to handle things how he wants to handle them but if they wanted us to shut up about what happened, show us the tapes. Don’t burn ‘em.”

Members of the media were shown the tapes before they were destroyed, and from what we hear they were exactly what you might think — the Patriots videotaping opposing coaches giving signals. The more Faulk ranted, the more it became clear that he still believes the Patriots taped the Rams’ walkthrough prior to the Super Bowl back in 2002.

Read The Rest of the Story…

If you put any stock into what Marshall Faulk says, the list of potential suitors for Peyton Manning may not be as long we think. With Manning and Colts owner Jim Irsay having held a joint press conference on Wednesday to announce their divorce, Manning is officially on the market. Early speculation indicates a number of teams are interested in Manning, including but not limited to the Dolphins, Jets, Texans, Seahawks, and Redskins. According to Faulk, you can forget about latter two.

“If you’re in the NFC, you’re out. The Mannings (won’t) play a regular-season game,” Faulk said Wednesday according to The Huddle. “They’re not gonna stop each other from going to the Super Bowl.

“Meeting in the Super Bowl? How great would that be for the family? How great would it be for Archie to have his two boys playing against each other in the greatest game that there is?”

First of all, Faulk is acting like the potential of the Manning brothers meeting in the Super Bowl is a brand new concept. In case Marshall has forgotten, Peyton has not been injured for the last eight years. The potential of the Manning brothers playing each other in February isn’t something that could have only be brought about by Peyton’s release.

Faulk says Manning may talk to NFC teams, but only as a “bargaining chip.” Between Faulk’s opinion and those who believe Peyton would never play in the same city as Eli, I guess there really aren’t that many teams who are in on the Manning sweepstakes after all. Looks like the Maimi billboard is going to reign victorious over the Arizona billboard.

In only his third season as an NFL starter and the first that he has played all 16 games, Matthew Stafford put up video game numbers. He threw for 5,038 yards and 41 touchdown passes. The NFL became an extremely pass-happy league this past season, but Stafford is only the fourth player ever to throw for more than 5,000 yards in a season, with Drew Brees having done it twice and Tom Brady and Dan Marino once each. You could argue that puts Stafford in pretty impressive company, but Hall of Fame running back Marshall Faulk is not impressed.

“Throwing for 5,000 yards in the NFL right now is nothing,” Faulk said according to MLive.com. “I don’t want to take anything away from it. As much as people throw the football now, you better have 5,000 (yards) if you have Calvin Johnson.”

Spoken like a true running back. Teams obviously do pass a lot more, but if throwing for 5,000 yards is “nothing” I’m not sure why only three other quarterbacks have done it in the history of the game. Does having Megatron help? Of course, but we’ve seen superstar receivers do absolutely nothing on many occasions because they have lousy quarterbacks throwing it to them.

Throwing for 5,000 yards will probably become more common now that teams have made passing a focal point, but that doesn’t mean those who accomplish the feat don’t deserve credit. It’s not a coincidence that the four people to do it are Stafford and three Hall of Famers.

Former St. Louis Rams star and future Hall of Fame running back Marshall Faulk answered a few questions about Pete Carroll and the USC sanctions recently at the Jim Mora Celebrity Golf Tournament.  He raised what I think is a valid point when talking about how penalties like the ones USC is facing have a huge effect on the school’s players but the coaches get to walk away with nothing but a hit to their legacy.  Here’s what Faulk had to say, courtesy of Pro Football Talk via SeattlePI.com:

I love Pete, and I’m not quite sure how they’re gonna turn out, but I’m sick and tired of seeing programs get in trouble, and coaches can move on, but the players at USC can’t go to bowl games,” Faulk told Jim Moore of SeattlePI.com.  “There’s got to be some accountability and responsibility.  I’m not just blaming Pete; I’m talking about guys in that situation. . . .

Couldn’t agree with Faulk more here.  While Pete Carroll is raking in millions in Seattle for however long he lasts, the players who committed to USC either have to alter their plans dramatically and change schools, or accept the fact that they can’t play in a bowl game.  What’s the worst that can happen to Carroll?  He gets called a cheater and everyone moves on.

Another interesting topic Faulk hit on was the concept of players like Reggie Bush and O.J. Mayo accepting money while they’re in college.

Read The Rest of the Story…

As far as I had always heard things, the relationship between Rams running back Steven Jackson, and the man he eventually replaced at the same position, Marshall Faulk, was a good one. I remember hearing stuff about Faulk serving as a mentor to Jackson, even though Jackson was drafted in the first round to share time with Faulk and take the starting role. That must have been all P.C. stuff because apparently that’s far from the truth. Faulk sure made it seem like there are still hard feeling between himself and Steven Jackson when he joined The Monty Show on Sporting News Radio. Asked if he was surprised Jackson’s holding out, he said:

“I am surprised he’s holding out. I don’t know where he’s getting his advice. He’s played four years and he’s played every game once and he’s been hurt three times. I know if I was in the front office, even if it wasn’t Steven, even if it was someone else on another team, it would be hard for me to justify giving them a lot of money, regardless if he was ‘the team’.”

Marshall does qualify the statement by saying he’d have a hard time paying any player who’s holding out. That’s somewhat interesting to me because I’ve read that Faulk once held out himself. But Faulk took his comments to a more personal level. Talking about Steven Jackson running in Faulk’s shadow he said:

Read The Rest of the Story…