The candidates for next year's Pro Football Hall of Fame were announced Saturday. There are 131 preliminary candidates including NFL Football greats Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith. The list will be reduced to 15 finalists for the Pro Football Hall of Fame in January 2010.

Philadelphia Eagle's quarterback Donovan McNabb is likely not to play in Sunday's home opener against the New Orleans Saints. The Eagles head coach Andy Reid made this announcement today amidst speculation that McNabb's cracked rib injury might hold him back from playing in the NFL game on Sunday.

Thursday night football is in its third week. ESPN provided its schedule for Thursday night college football games in July and this . schedule has almost become as important as its Saturday prime time lineups on ABC and ESPN. This is the first year of ESPN's SEC TV contract, which is great exposure for college football and plenty of great match-ups.

Week one of the NFL season isn't even over yet, and here we have our first high-profile injury. Brian Urlacher, Chicago Bears LB, is out for the season.

It's sad to look around the San Francisco Bay Area and see that the posters promoting the 49ers are all about Mike Singletary. The face of the 49ers is their head coach, not a player. If the 49ers get anywhere this year, it will be all Singletary, however, and that was demonstrated on Sunday with tough, smash-mouth 49er football bringing down the Arizona Cardinals 20-16.

A rookie coach and a rookie QB led the New York Jets to an opening day win over the Houston Texans, 24 - 7. It kept Jets head coach Rex Ryan from suffering embarrassment after the rather cocky statements and boasts he made prior to this season.

The Dallas Cowboys, perhaps reveling in the fact that they no longer have Jessica Simpson (QB Ton Romo's ex-girlfriend) as a distraction, opened up theh 2009 season with a 34-21 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

The NFL is now offering viewers a chance to watch NFL games free online. All games are available on the NFL site on a subscription basis but now the blacked-out games will be available for free in the affected home markets. This season, due to the economy, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell confirmed that as much as 20 percent of this season's games could be blacked out.

Brett Favre, oft-criticizied the last two seasons for being fickle in terms of retiring (or not), did just enough to help Minnesota to win against the Cleveland Browns. He did not, however, carry the Vikings. The game, rather, was carried on the shoulders of RB Adrian Peterson.

Football fans are not happy as it appears that NFL Field Pass is down. Today is the first Sunday of the NFL season and fans are finding that NFL Field Pass has limited accessibility. NFL Field Pass is a paid Internet radio service that allows subscribers to listen to live and archived audio broadcasts of NFL games.

Sluggish NFL ticket sales led to the decision that blacked out games will be shown online. The games will be free in the affected markets, according to the NFL's announcement, and will be available for 72 hours beginning at midnight on the day of the game. However, they will not be available during "Monday Night Football" telecasts according to a league announcement.

The Pittsburgh Steelers began their defense of their Super Bowl title Thursday night as the NFL season opened. with the same madcap offensive surge that helped secure last season's crown. The Troy Polamalu injury cast a pall over the game, however.