Broncos Offense … Bottom of Bird Cage 6/4

It is the 155th day of the year.

It was on this day in 1584 that Sir Walter Raleigh established the first English colony on Roanoke Island in old Virginia (now North Carolina). On June 4, 1876 the first Transcontinental Express train arrived in San Francisco, some 83 hours, 39 minutes after leaving New York City.

And born on June 4, 1937 in New York was Robert James Marcella. Nobody but his family and early friends knew him by that name; they called him by his nickname, Gino. His professional name was Gorilla Monsoon (right).

In the 1960s and 1970s, he was one of the biggest names in professional wrestling. He started first as a villain in the 1960s, doing battle with heavyweight champ Bruno Sammartino all over the world. Then in the 1970s, he became a good guy, in fact sometimes wrestling with Sammartino as a tag team. Remarkably, in those days Sammartino, Gorilla Monsoon, Killer Kowalski, George “The Animal” Steele and others were some of the biggest sports figures in the country. This was long before Vince McMahon created the WWF, now WWE that we know today.

Once his career inside the ring was over, Monsoon because one of the voices and faces of the WWF, providing commentary and doing interviews.

Gorilla Monsoon passed away in 1999 at the age of 62 in New Jersey.

From the Denver Post: The Broncos are just over halfway through an 11-day passing camp, and for all the talk of progress, things haven’t always been running so smoothly for Kyle Orton and Chris Simms.

The quarterbacks, in the early stages of a duel to see who starts, often have found themselves on the receiving end of some profanity-laced tirades from coach Josh McDaniels.

“I hope nobody heard me swearing too much today. But that’s just part of this time of the year,” McDaniels said Wednesday. “We don’t slow down for anybody at this point of the year, because we’re going to try to put as much on their plate as we can handle, as coaches, and sometimes they can’t handle all of that at the same time, but that’s just part of the learning process.”

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It’s too bad the Chiefs don’t actually see the Broncos until two games in December, because me thinks this Denver offense is going to take some time to get up and running. This will be a test of Josh McDaniels mettle as a coach, if he can get these guys to run this offense in the first year with even half the efficiency of what went down in New England.

From the Contra Costa Times columnist Cam Inman:
Gene Upshaw’s legacy as the NFL Players Association’s executive director is a daunting one, and it is very much alive. DeMaurice Smith is about to encounter this big-time. He is Upshaw’s successor, and Wednesday he commences labor negotiations with the NFL.

NFL fans should be worried. We certainly don’t know Smith like we knew Upshaw, from his Pro Football Hall of Fame career as a Raiders guard to his 25 years of service as the NFLPA czar. Upshaw found a way to get it done, and football flourished. Then pancreatic cancer suddenly took his life last August, creating a swarm of uncertainty in an already shaky labor situation between the NFL and its players.

“Gene was an unbelievable note taker, and that is a blessing,” Smith said Monday while visiting the 49ers facility, part of a whirlwind national tour. “I can’t fill his shoes. I didn’t go in with that goal.

“He set the marker, the point on the horizon. It’s important to recognize what the job is about. “… When you talk about a legacy, as long as I keep focused on the players, it will work out.”

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This is an interesting column on the new head of the NFL Players Association and the shoes he must fill with the passing of Gene Upshaw. There’s no question that Upshaw will go down as the biggest force in labor history when it comes to pro football. What Smith must do is simply maintain what Upshaw established. But that’s a little bit like being UCLA’s basketball coach after John Wooden or the Miami Dolphins coach after Don Shula.

From the San Jose Mercury News: So how does Santa Clara’s stadium deal with the San Francisco 49ers stack up with agreements crafted in other towns — deals that, in some cases, have led to painful unexpected costs for the cities that signed them? As the City Council prepares tonight to take up a plan that calls for contributing about $114 million in public subsidies for a $937 million stadium, that question has risen to the top of what’s been a years-long, simmering debate.

But for at least one stadium finance expert who reviewed the lengthy deal for the Mercury News, the answer was somewhat bullish. Even should several key financial projections fall short, “You’re still going to end up with a better deal than just about any other city has received,” said Roger Noll, a Stanford economist and frequent critic of public stadium subsidies.

That, combined with strong political support for the project, led Noll to predict that the council will vote to place the plan on a citywide ballot sometime next year. At the heart of the deal is a pledge by the 49ers to insulate the city’s operating funds from any costs, even unexpected ones, during the 40-to-60-year life of the stadium.

The team has agreed to cover all overruns during construction and operation of the facility, while also promising direct rent payments to the city no matter what. Santa Clara would continue to own the land, which is currently a parking lot for the Great America theme park.

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If the 49ers and Santa Clara actually pull this off it will be a major upset. The state of California is about to go bankrupt, and just about every municipality and governmental body is struggling under the weight of services for the millions that have sought life in the Golden State. This is not a new development and that’s why the stadium situations for the NFL’s three teams in California are the worst in the league. If Al Davis was smart he would go in with the Niners on this stadium deal.