After more than a month of holding out, Tennessee Titans RB Chris Johnson has accepted a new deal for 5 years and $53.5 million. A new contract had been contingent upon Johnson receiving $30 million in guaranteed coin, and this new deal indeed satisfies his demand. Johnson was set to make just $800,000 this year, after serving as the most prolific RB in the NFL over the past 3 seasons. I’d say that a $12 million raise should satisfy the man who only days ago had a very blunt Twitter message for his critics:

“Can these fake Titan fans STFU on my timeline I don’t have a regular job so don’t compare me to you and I can care less if uthink I’m greedy.”

Aw, he seems sweet. So who is ready to start the pool on when his hamstring snaps?

A few days ago, I wondered in Internet print if Peyton Manning, he of almost $90 million in guaranteed coin for the remainder of his career, would be ready for the start of the season. Today, we know that answer is a whopping, “Oh hell naw.” According to the Indianapolis Star, the Colts all but confirmed that Manning’s surgically-repaired neck isn’t taking him off the PUP anytime soon. Well, at least not for Week 1.

That’s because it’s Kerry Collins time! The Colts signed the 38-year old veteran this morning, due to a complete lack of faith in backups Curtis Painter and Dan Orlovsky. Collins had retired after a 6-10 season with the Tennessee Titans, good enough for 4th in the AFC South last year. In fact, now that he’ll be playing for his old team’s division rival, I have a preview of what Titans fans will look like…

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In news that proves why I should wait another week before writing 10,000 words about fantasy football and attractive women, the Tennessee Titans shocked Chris Johnson – Nay, the world! – when they announced that they were prepared to make him the highest paid running back in NFL history. Titans GM Mike Reinfeldt said that as soon as Johnson ends his holdout and returns to camp, he will honor the elite RB with the contract he deserves.

“We’re willing to make him the highest-paid running back in the history of the NFL,’’ Reinfeldt said. “That’s kind of where we are. … We’d like to have him here, and we’d like to be fair with him.” (Via The Tennessean with one hell of a Burnsy-esque photoshop)

When asked how he plans to pay that kind of money, Reinfeldt responded: “Have you seen the rest of this roster? We could sign two of him.” As for Johnson, he claims this is all completely news to him.

“I am surprised,” Johnson said of Reinfeldt’s “statement about offering to make me the highest-paid running back. Neither me nor Joel have received any offer from the Titans. Maybe they talked, but I guarantee we never received any offer.”

Johnson has every right to be skeptical of Reinfeldt’s statement, but it wouldn’t hurt for the mouse to take the cheese and just show up to camp. As long as Reinfeldt isn’t standing there with a giant check for “$1,000,000,000,000,000″ and whispering, “Do us a solid and don’t cash this until 2017,” it could be in Johnson’s best interest to go. But some people disagree.

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Former Tennessee Titans wide receiver Randy Moss announced via his agent yesterday that after 13 seasons he has retired from the NFL. Or you could perhaps say that no teams wanted to bother with the 34-year old pain in the ass anymore. Either way, one of the most exciting, explosive, and maddeningly arrogant athletes to ever play pro football is done.

Now the poets of the printed word can spend the next few months celebrating or denigrating the man who once gloriously disgusted Joe Buck. Peter King called him a first ballot Hall-of-Famer while Michael Rosenberg asks the standard questions. Mike Florio gave Moss the clap. I mean, 10 claps. And you can be sure that the rest of the cliche clan will be close behind.

Too bad it’s all premature.

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Below is a video of Randy Moss talking to incarcerated kids at the West Virginia Industrial Home for Youth. Your first impression of that sentence might be “so what, is this like Michael Vick going into a Petsmart and telling pet owners not to roll their dogs in glass,” but I don’t want to go there. At least, not all the way there. Moss is doing a good thing by talking to these kids, and from the video he appears to have reached the point in his life where he’s going to be a sane, rational grown up. Good for him.

Of course, I’ve never understood the “who better to talk to kids about poor choices than somebody who has made so many of them” talking point, as I would much rather hear about it from someone who figured it out beforehand and didn’t have to beat his girlfriend or sh:t-talk the Marshall plane crash first. But I also don’t think being good at football should excuse you from rolling your pets in glass and setting them on fire, so I might not be on the wavelength of your average at-risk football teen.

In all seriousness, more athletes should participate in programs like these, and fewer in programs where they try to out-dance Kendra Wilkinson.

[H/T Last Angry Fan]

Tennessee Titans running back Chris Johnson got a visit from the Orlando Police Department on Tuesday. The reasons for that visit are conflicting; the police say they saw an unusual amount of television cameras at his house, so they investigated to make sure nobody was dealing drugs. Johnson says it was because he’s young, black and famous. No word on whether or not Johnson had money hanging out the anus.

The report, from his Twitter:

Y did the police just walk in my condo saying they think it’s drug activity because it’s alot of traffic but it was the MTV camera crew. … Hard being young, black, and rich

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