With all due respect to actual reporters (as opposed to cut & paste mavens), can someone explain to me how this qualifies as a scoop? Seriously, it would be a bigger story if someone reported the Cardinals were keeping Denny Green beyond December. Or even that he still had the slimmest of chances to save his job over the next 6 weeks.

Admittedly, the Steve Mariucci element is slightly newsworthy, but Dennis Green being a lame duck in Phoenix is kind of like Kurt Angle’s painkiller addiction. “Confirming” either is sort of like proving the existence of gravity in 2006.

The NFL has finally ruled on the Ricky Manning situation, and make no mistake about it : under the Roger Goodall administration, if you call someone “fag”, “fucking jew” and proceed to beat him up, you’ll be suspended for one entire game. For the 9-1 Bears, said penalty should have a chilling effect on all future plans to verbally and physically harrass laptop users.

Tiki Barber (27 yards, 10 carries) has taken issue with the Giants’ play calling during Monday’s 26-10 loss to Jacksonville. The Hartford Courant’s John Altavilla jots it all down.

Barber seemed confused about offensive coordinator John Hufnagel’s decision to abandon the run after the Jaguars had early success stopping it and the Giants fell behind, 13-3. Barber felt the focus should have remained on the ground instead of switching to an up-tempo offense.

“Yeah, it’s a challenge, but we are not scared of anyone,” Barber said. “We have played against the best defenses in this league … and we’ve run the ball. We’ve done effective things. We have executed in the pass game.

“So I think you put yourself halfway to failure to say we can’t do something because of another team’s personnel. It’s a slap in the face of me and a slap of my front five guys. We don’t take to that very kindly.”

Tiki’s remarks were played on WFAN this afternoon, summarily followed by Mike Francesca and Chris Russo unloading on the running back for having the unmitigated gall to suggest he wanted the ball more than ten times a game.