The Red Zone Report

Defensive end Jason Taylor could miss the season opener for the Redskins after he suffered a sprained knee Saturday night against the Panthers. Taylor, who started 130 consecutive regular-season games in Miami before being traded to Washington last month, will be out 10 days to two weeks – and that’s very good news considering the injury [...]

If you sign a $72 million contract, you should be starting in the NFL, so the Falcons naming rookie Matt Ryan as the team’s starter at quarterback isn’t much of a surprise. New Atlanta coach Mike Smith declared an open competition at quarterback during training camp between Ryan, Chris Redman, Joey Harrington and Shockley. And Redman [...]

Matt Leinart had a very ugly preseason game on Saturday against the Oakland Raiders, and it may have cost the former Heisman winner the starting quarterback job with the Cardinals. ESPN.com is reporting that the Cards will name Kurt Warner as the team’s starter after Leinart had three interceptions in the first half and completed just [...]

The New York Giants shocked the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII mainly because of the excellent pressure the G-Men’s front four put on Tom Brady. Now that unit is missing its two best players. Defensive end Osi Umenyiora, who was the focal point of that line this year with Michael Strahan’s retirement, has been lost [...]

Either the San Francisco 49ers have found a diamond in the rough like the Cowboys did with Tony Romo (or the Niners did years ago with Jeff Garcia), or the fact that J.T. O’Sullivan is now a starting quarterback in the NFL says a lot about the league’s lack of quality at that position. San Francisco [...]

Not sure what Dave Wannstedt was waiting for, but the Pitt coach finally announced that Bill Stull would be the Panthers’ starting QB this season. Stull took the majority of first-team snaps in practices and clearly outperformed his competition, so this is hardly any surprise. The redshirt junior completed 14-of-20 passes for 177 yards and a [...]

Cal, an overlooked sleeper in the Pac-10, will start Kevin Riley over Nate Longshore at quarterback, at least for the beginning of the opener against Michigan State. Riley, who led Cal to a 21-point comeback to earn Armed Forces Bowl MVP honors last season, emerged in the last portion of training camp. Riley was 36-of-56 for [...]

Cincinnati coach Marvin Lewis made an interesting announcement this week, saying that if the season opened today that Chris Perry would be the Bengals’ starting tailback over incumbent Rudi Johnson. Now, this mainly could be a push to Johnson, who has had a lingering hamstring injury all through camp and hasn’t done much. But Perry has [...]

Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck has taken part in just one full practice since hurting his back on a throw during the first quarter of the exhibition game against Minnesota Aug. 8 and could miss the rest of the preseason. He did some drills last Thursday and went through all of Monday’s session, but he walked off [...]

Boise State has named freshman Kellen Moore as its starting quarterback, which is significant in that Moore will be the first freshman quarterback to start the season opener for the Broncos and the first freshman to start a game since Bart Hendricks in 1997. Moore had been in a battle with senior Bush Hamdan, and Hamdan [...]