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You're probably familiar with the "hometown discount," the millions of dollars that a player entering free agency is supposed to leave on the table so he can exhibit loyalty to the piece of laundry that acquired his rights (often with little or no in...

With the rest of this off week between the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl, I'll be taking a look back at the playoffs (today) and the season at large (Thursday and Friday) before diving back into Super Bowl coverage next Monday. Today, I...

Going deep inside the numbers to deliver everything you need to know about the opening day of the NFL playoffs.

The modern NFL is a game of matchups. Since the salary cap and the spread of strategic concepts throughout the league prevent a team from dominating the way that the 1980s Niners or the early-'90s Cowboys did, just about every team in football has on...

Patriots-Texans looked like Monday Night Football's most mouthwatering tilt for about 19 minutes of game time last night. By the time New England finished its third drive, the Pats had a 21-0 lead that the Texans never came close to challenging the r...

Monday night's Patriots-Texans game is exciting for a number of reasons. You can spin it as a possible matchup between the league's best offense and its best defense. Prototypical passing game versus resplendent running game. Perennial contender vers...

If season-ending injuries in the same game for Ray Lewis and Lardarius Webb weren't a Ravens fan's worst nightmare, seeing what the defense looked like without them on Sunday probably qualifies. Baltimore was blown off the field by the only other tea...

We all had our smart reaction to the RG3 injury, each and every one. After everyone expressed genuine concern and hope that Robert Griffin would be OK and recover from his "mild" concussion, everyone from the announcers to the fans in the crowd had t...

The Robert Griffin III trade on Friday night produced more than a marked uptick in celebrations on U Street; it set into motion a series of events that should have a profound impact on the NFL as it heads into free agency this week. We don't know how...

Our preview of free agency continues today with those teams who should go into free agency and hold steady, even if that's not what they actually end up doing. Of the four groups of teams that make up this free agent preview, this is the closest one ...

With the Divisional Round of the playoffs in the books, it's time to take a look at some of the numbers and storylines from this week's games in "The Fabulous and the Flops." And while we could just make this simple and pick guys like Vernon Davis an...

Part 3 of our team-by-team breakdown of this weekend's NFL playoff action.

While Monday's column focused on Tim Tebow and the weekend's confusing coaching decisions, there's a lot more to talk about. Players in each game came up big and small under the harsh glare of the bright postseason lights. Let's get past Tebowmania a...

As always, we detail the sordid and the successful every Tuesday in our weekly look back at the previous weekend's games; this is "The Fabulous and the Flops" for Week 15. This week, we'll identify the player who might qualify as the worst backup ...

In this week's "The Fabulous & the Flops," we mine the annals of futility to find comparable games for some of the week's worst performances. Which quarterback nearly beat out Blaine Gabbert for the least accurate game of the season? Which pair of el...

In this week's edition of "The Fabulous and the Flops," we identify the player who needs to accompany Ndamukong Suh to image-revamping school, show some love to the young talent who is making the absence of a major star seem like nothing, and basical...