NFL notebook: Blackmon gets career started with Jaguars
BY Associated Press
Saturday, May 05, 2012
5/05/12 at 3:33 AM
Justin Blackmon's first day with the Jacksonville Jaguars was uneventful.
No circus catches. No touchdown receptions. Not even a noteworthy play.
He finished Friday's practice drenched in sweat and saturated in information stemming from new coaches, new teammates, a new system and lots of catching up to do.
He says: "Right now, I'm just a sponge trying to take it all in."
In 911 call, Seau found with no sign of life: A 911 call from the home of Junior Seau released Friday captures the voice of a woman who is horrified to find the former NFL linebacker in a spare bedroom with a gunshot wound to the chest.
"My God, my boyfriend shot himself! Oh my God!" the eight-minute call begins.
Oceanside police released the recording one day after the San Diego County medical examiner's office ruled the death a suicide. The family plans to donate Seau's brain for research into football-related injuries.
The caller is nearly hysterical and breathing heavily during much of the call as emergency workers guide her through life-saving measures that failed.
She told the dispatcher that he did not have a pulse and that his chest was not moving.
"I just came home from the gym, and he's in our spare bedroom, and he shot himself, and it looks like he shot himself in the chest," she says after the dispatcher transferred the call to the fire department.
Union files grievance in bounty case: The NFL players union has challenged Commissioner Roger Goodell's authority to suspend players who participated in the New Orleans Saints' pay-for-pain scandal and wants him removed from hearing appeals.
The union filed a grievance late Thursday, one day after Goodell suspended four players who participated in bounties from 2009-11. The complaint says Goodell is prohibited from punishing players for any aspect of the case occurring before the new collective bargaining agreement was signed last August. It argues that a CBA system arbitrator, and not Goodell, has the right to decide player punishment under such circumstances, as well as rule on any appeals.
Luck begins working out with new Indy teammates: All Andrew Luck wanted to do was stay composed on the field.
He could have fooled anyone.
While Luck acknowledged that he was still trying to get acclimated to a new playbook, a new locker room and new teammates, those who watched closely on Friday said the new Indianapolis Colts quarterback looked a whole lot like the one they remembered at Stanford.
"He's the same Andrew, as brilliant as ever," said tight end Coby Fleener, Indy's second-round pick and one of Luck's college teammates.
