Despite the fact that Profootballtalk.com is one of our favorite NFL sites — at least in so part due to its delightful penchant for rumormongering — we’re going to need to put a bounty on PFT editor Mike Florio.

Seriously, we typically enjoy the ridiculous tabloid speculation coming out of PFT (it’s like Drudge Report for the NFL), but we don’t like it when we think he’s picking on our favorite team. In two postings since the Trotter release, he’s tried to invent imaginary scandals based on (a) alleged insider info from the locker room or (b) his own fantastical creativity:

POSTED 9:33 a.m. EDT; UPDATED 9:51 a.m. EDT, August 23, 2007

TROTTER RELEASE SPARKING LOCKER ROOM REVOLT?

We’re hearing rumblings that the release of linebacker Jeremiah Trotter has sparked a locker-room revolt against management.

Trotter was regarded as a T.O. guy — an in-house supporter of the talented but troublemaking wideout who disrupted the team in 2005 as he tried to get more money. And, as we hear it, some of the guys on the team who are the most upset about Trotter’s release are the other T.O. sympathizers.

But it’s not just the remaining pro-T.O. crowd that is unhappy about Trotter being gone. Quarterback Donovan McNabb has expressed his own questions about the move.
…

It would be easy to assume that McNabb is speaking out because he knows that he could be the 2008 version of Trotter. Maybe there are multiple motivations at work here, with McNabb thinking about about his own interests down the road, and the team’s interests right now.

There is some suspicion that the release of Trotter was driven by coach Andy Reid’s desire to justify keeping linebacker Matt McCoy, a second-round pick in 2005 who has been unable to stay in the starting lineup. If Trotter had stayed, McCoy could have been the odd man out. McCoy currently is listed as a backup at the weakside linebacker position.

Regardless of the motivation, folks who wear the uniform apparently aren’t pleased. Whether it affects the team’s performance in any way is a different issue. We doubt that it will, but we think that Reid needs to do some in-house damage control in order to get past this one.

This plus his note Tuesday (”TROTTER EXIT A DRY RUN FOR MCNABB?”) in which he used the Trotter release as an excuse to talk shiznit about Dunavin? Yeah. That’s just bad talk radio nonsense right there. (Also, talking about McNabb when REX GROSSMAN IS STILL THE STARTER IN CHICAGO just feels like he’s looking for scandals rather than focusing on the big-market QBs on good teams who are under some real pressure as Week 1 approaches.)

Anyhoo, we’re still fans, PFT, but we have to put the bounty on you. Felt we owed it to you.

(Also, shouldn’t you be getting after the Britt Reid thing a little bit harder?)

Link:
ProFootballTalk