NFL: Analyst: Reid is 'worst' at game management

Don't invite Mike Lombardi and Andy Reid to the same wing-eating contest.

Lombardi, a longtime NFL executive who once worked in the Eagles' front office, and who now works as an NFL Network analyst, heavily criticized Reid's clock-management skills in a New York Times article Thursday.

That's no surprise. In weekly online analyses, Lombardi frequently rips coaches for giving away games with bad judgment. He wrote this season that Reid was "my all-time worst game manager."

"Andy Reid should outsource it to India," Lombardi told The Times in a telephone interview this week.

Near the end of games, Lombardi told the paper, coaches must decide who is the bigger opponent - the other team or the clock.

"It's about strategically giving your team the best chance to win," he said. "That's really the essence of it. How to do that? There's 1,000 different ways, based on the situations. Those situations present another set of circumstances that you have to spend a lot of time reviewing, understanding, preparing for. The game is going to happen so quickly, if you're not prepared for it, it could affect you."

Let's talk football. Tom Brady just wants to talk about the game. The New York Jets won't let him.

Day after noisy day, the mouths to the south keep moving. The New England quarterback tries to evade their onslaughts as if they were 300-pound pass rushers.

The latest blitz: Jets cornerback Antonio Cromartie called the mop-topped leader of the New England Patriots an expletive.

"I've been called worse," Brady said, brushing it off like the heavy snow that fell on Foxborough. "I'm sure there's a long list of people who feel that way."

Cromartie made his comment Tuesday to the New York Daily News and didn't back off Wednesday, although he said he's never met Brady.

"Why should I regret it? That's how I feel," he said. "As long as I'm in the NFL and he's in the NFL, there's going to be a hatred."

Seattle wants QB back. Coach Pete Carroll said the Seahawks would like to bring quarterback Matt Hasselbeck back for the 2011 season.

Asked directly about Hasselbeck's future with the franchise during his weekly news conference on Wednesday, Carroll said the team would like to do "everything we can" to have Hasselbeck return for an 11th season with the franchise.

Seattle plays at Chicago on Sunday in the NFC divisional playoff. Hasselbeck's current contract expires at the end of this season.

"That's the first I've heard of that. I didn't know he said that," Hasselbeck told Chicago reporters during a conference call Wednesday. "We've had good communication all year long."

Hasselbeck added that he wants to play on a winning team and one that's "headed in the right direction."

"That's kind of been our goal here," he said. "If we can get that done here and I can be a part of it, that'd be awesome. If not, I understand."

Coaching carousel. John Fox finally arrived in Denver early Wednesday afternoon to meet with the Broncos about their head coaching vacancy after his flight out of North Carolina was delayed three times by winter weather.

Fox met with John Elway, who is leading the team's second head coaching search in two seasons, to see if he was a good fit with the Broncos, who are coming off a franchise-worst 4-12 season.

San Diego named Rich Bisaccia to run its special teams. The Chargers were plagued by poor play on kick teams all season and let coordinator Steve Crosby go after they finished 9-7. Bisaccia is a former Tampa Bay Buccaneers associate head coach.

Rams offensive coordinator Pat Shurmur has emerged as the leading candidate for the Cleveland Browns' head coaching job, according to league sources, who said Cleveland hopes to hammer out a contract with the former Eagles quarterbacks coach within the next 48 hours and introduce him at a news conference by Friday.

Injury report. New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez said his right shoulder was feeling the best it had in "three, four weeks," and he was a full participant in practice for the first time in nearly a month.

Damien Woody, the Jets' starting right tackle, was placed on injured reserve with a left Achilles' tendon injury.

Statistically speaking. The NFC's top-seeded Atlanta Falcons committed only 58 penalties this season - tops in the NFL by a significant margin. Second-best Miami (which missed the playoffs) had 72.

Green Bay, Atlanta's opponent on Saturday, ended the regular season with 78 accepted penalties, tying for third-best in the league.

"It's all coaching," the Packers' Mike McCarthy joked. "Players had nothing to do with it."

Stadium building. The front man for one of two Los Angeles-area groups trying to bring the NFL back to the nation's second-largest market believes the city will soon get a team. AEG president and CEO Tim Leiweke said his group was focused on a number of initiatives, including a naming rights deal for the proposed downtown stadium. He says AEG would "worry about the team at the appropriate time."

Another group, Majestic Realty Co., has the necessary approvals for a suburban stadium.

The Minnesota Vikings said they were willing to pay about a third of the cost of their desired new stadium, but won't help pay for a roof even if state lawmakers insist it needs one.

Vikings vice president and stadium point man Lester Bagley said the Vikings would prefer an outdoor stadium, but understood that might not win legislative approval when lawmakers take up the team's request for a stadium funded in part by taxpayers.

The legislature wants a stadium that can be used for other, non-football events.