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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Add Colts linebackers coach Mike Murphy to the team’s injury report. He is wearing a boot on his right foot.



I asked him what happened, so I will let him do the talking from here:

“I cracked the non-weight-bearing bone in my ankle. I was walking home with chicken wings and stepped off the edge of my walk and fell into the bushes on Friday and cracked my ankle. There was ice on the side. I didn’t drop the chicken wings though. And the guy that I was with had another batch. Instead of picking me up, he took my chicken wings in the house, then they came back to get me. I ate a couple of wings and put some ice on it.

“The next day when I got up and had to crawl to the bathroom I said, ‘I think maybe I better go see the trainers.’ I’ve just got to wear a boot and I’m probable. As long as I can get my pants on, I’m OK.”

Murphy said he already knows never to stand near a first-down marker, and that while the linebackers aren’t giving him any grief, he’s also not getting any sympathy.



“When they get hurt, you don’t ask them, you just expect them to go,” he said. “So they’re expecting me to do the same. I’ll be there. I won’t be moving fast though.”

A few days after creating a bit of a ruckus, Oakland Raiders corner Nnamdi Asomugha says he was kidding when he told me and a couple of other reporters he and New York Jets cornerback Darrelle Revis lobbied Jets coach Rex Ryan to put them on the field together.

Asomugha

While my blog about Asomugha’s comments was written with a fanciful tone and pointed out the proposal was fantasy, I did ask him several followup questions in an attempt to measure his sincerity.



“I’m dead serious,” Asomugha told me on the Sun Life Stadium field after Sunday night’s Pro Bowl. Since his comments were posted, other outlets, most notably Pro Football Talk, speculated about possible tampering charges for the Jets.



“The only thing we were ‘dead serious’ about was the fact that it would be fun to one day play on the same team. That’s all,” Asomugha wrote in an e-mail to San Francisco Chronicle reporter David White. “We were two guys enjoying the Pro Bowl and completely clowning around during the week. We were playfully recruiting each other; I was talking about getting him to Oakland and vice versa.”



Asomugha also wrote he’s “a proud Oakland Raider” and wanted to terminate any notions he wants out.



White goes on to explain that Asomugha is known as a jokester with a deadpan delivery.

The NFL is tapping Chinese commentators to bring football to China. NBC’s Ed Flanagan reports. (NBC News Web Extra)

The NFL is tapping Chinese commentators to bring football to China. NBC’s Ed Flanagan reports. (NBC News Web Extra)

MIAMI — How many football lives does Darren Sharper have?



We’ve counted him out at least twice before. There was his departure from Green Bay after the 2004 season, one spurred because the Packers thought he was in marked decline. The next season, Sharper was an All-Pro in Minnesota.



After last season, the Vikings thought he couldn’t help them anymore, and like the Packers, they let him depart via free agency. After two months on the market, New Orleans signed him to a one-year deal worth about $1.5 million.



In 2009, he was an All-Pro once again.



Sharper’s career renaissance with the Saints has been a testament to conditioning, motivation and smart instincts. More than anything, however, it provided a template for how to use, waste and misjudge the specific skills of a player.



In 2004, the Packers blamed a lack of speed — rather than a knee injury — on Sharper’s decline in play. From 2006-08, the Vikings squeezed him into a Cover 2 scheme that minimized his playmaking abilities.



In his All-Pro years of 2005 and 2009, however, Sharper played in less rigid schemes that emphasized player flexibility. In those two years alone, he intercepted 18 passes and returned five for touchdowns. During the three years in between? Nine interceptions and one touchdown.



Many followers of the NFC North seem astounded by Sharper’s production this season in New Orleans, where he is one of the primary reasons the Saints will appear in Super Bowl XLIV. To me, it’s pretty simple. He could have been doing this all along — in the right scheme.



“Playing in the style I played in Minnesota, I was kind of a protector,” Sharper said. “I was the guy that kept everything in front of us and tired to prevent the big play. In [the Saints] defense, I’m allowed to be a playmaker and trust my instincts and attack the football. It’s two different worlds, from where I was last year and where I am this year. That’s the biggest difference.”

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MIAMI — Anyone advocating Jerry Rice as the greatest player in NFL history can bury the opposition in statistics.



Rice averaged 1,145 yards receiving and more than 10 total touchdowns per season — for 20 NFL seasons.



Rice caught 69 touchdown passes — more than the career totals for Art Monk, Michael Irvin, Charlie Joiner, John Stallworth and numerous other Hall of Fame receivers — during a five-season span ending in 1993. Rice then caught 28 touchdown passes over the next two seasons, more than half the career total for Hall of Famer Lynn Swann.



He retired holding NFL records for:

• Touchdowns (208), receiving TDs (197), receiving TDs in a season (22), consecutive games with a TD reception (13), TDs in Super Bowls (8), receiving TDs in a single Super Bowl (3) and postseason TDs (22).
• Receptions (1,549), consecutive games with a reception (274), receptions in Super Bowls (33) and postseason receptions (151).
• Receiving yards (22,895), receiving yards in a season (1,848), receiving yards in Super Bowls (589), receiving yards in a Super Bowl (215), postseason receiving yards (2,245) and seasons with at least 1,000 yards receiving (14).

Rice, whose selection to the Pro Football Hall of Fame is a formality Saturday, probably enjoyed the greatest NFL career. He was probably the greatest wide receiver despite some arguments for Don Hutson. But was he the greatest player, period?



“Oh, yeah,” Hall of Fame defensive back Rod Woodson said almost reflexively during Super Bowl media day.



Woodson, perhaps mindful of history as a member of the NFL’s 75th Anniversary team, then showed he could still backpedal a bit.



“I mean, he is definitely up there,” he said. “I don’t think one player is the greatest player ever, but he is in that water-cooler conversation. Now, if you say greatest receiver, absolutely. But the greatest player, to make him the most dominant player ever in NFL history or just say pro football history, that is a profound statement. But I can say that he will be in that argument time in and time out.”



The conversation might include Otto Graham, Jim Brown, Sammy Baugh, Lawrence Taylor, Joe Montana, Johnny Unitas, Hutson, Walter Payton and Barry Sanders among players no longer active. And that list is probably shortchanging defensive greats such as Deacon Jones and Dick Butkus.



But Ray Lewis, arguably the greatest defensive player of the current era, didn’t hesitate in singling out Rice.



“I don’t know what argument you are going to make why he is not,” Lewis said.



And that might be what separates Rice from the rest. There really isn’t a great case against him. No one played at such a high level for as long with such grace.



“Jerry Rice doesn’t rank in the all-time greats,” said Saints safety Darren Sharper, a five-time Pro Bowl choice and member of the 2000s All-Decade team. “He is the greatest receiver and maybe the greatest football player of all time.”



Maybe?



“I can’t comment on eras that I didn’t perform in,” retired cornerback Deion Sanders said, “but the era I performed in, Jerry Rice is the best football player to play in that era.”



On what grounds beyond the numbers?



“Work ethic, precision, routes, physical toughness, awareness, that hunger,” Sanders said. “Jerry stayed hungry until the day he retired.”

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Highlights and notes from Wednesday’s media session with the Colts.



Peyton Manning understands what a Super Bowl win would mean to New Orleans, so he understands that to many fans the Colts are wearing the black hat.



“We certainly understand we may not be the team that everybody is cheering for in this game,” he said. “We’re OK with that… I think as far as non-New Orleans Saints fans, non-Colts fans, somebody is going to pick a team to follow and they will probably pick the Saints. That’s fine.



“We talk about all the stories this week, when it comes down the game though, it gets down to the X’s and O’s and I think the more you can block out from the outside, the better off you’re going to be.”



Cornerback Jerraud Powers, who missed the AFC Championship Game and did not practice last week with a left foot injury, said he doesn’t know how much he’s going to practice but has no doubt he will play against the Saints.



That’s big. With Dwight Freeney expected to be limited, the Colts can’t afford a big hit in the secondary. With Kelvin Hayden, Powers and Jacob Lacey as the top three corners, Indy is in good shape. Pull Tim Jennings further up the pecking order and it could be trouble.



Players on IR have the option of attending media sessions, a team official told me. I saw Anthony Gonzalez and Jim Sorgi Tuesday and I chatted with Marlin Jackson Wednesday at the availability at the team hotel. Jackson told me he didn’t have a choice — that he was told to attend.



Bob Sanders has been invisible so far. A player told me he’s with the team but was not part of the team photo taken on media day.



While Howard Mudd is preparing for the last game of his career, Tom Moore has no idea what the future holds.



“My plans go up to Sunday,” he said. “I don’t like to complicate my life.”



My frienemy Tim Graham told me this stat from Tuesday’s Mudd column (link above, you need to read it) is too good not to mention a second time: Ryan McCrystal of EPSN Stats & Information tells me since sacks became an official stat in 1982, no one has been sacked more than John Elway (516). At his current pace Manning would break that record at some point during his 29th season in the league, just before his 50th birthday.



How crazy is that?

MIAMI — The story has been told many times. Former New York Giants tailback Tiki Barber fumbled 35 times over four seasons from 2001-04. After adjusting the way he held the ball from a mechanical perspective, Barber put the ball on the ground only nine times during the final three seasons of his career.



So as he made his way around the Super Bowl media center Wednesday, Barber was a natural target for questions about Minnesota tailback Adrian Peterson — who has an NFL-high 20 fumbles over the first three seasons of his career.



Barber minced few words during an interview with SIRIUS NFL radio, saying Peterson “loses awareness” when he’s running and that “any looseness” with the ball makes it vulnerable to fumble. And then Barber endorsed what we discussed last month: A fundamental offseason intervention to correct the problem.



Said Barber: “Adrian Peterson, I think, needs to be told directly, almost as an affront to his pride, ‘You are hurting your team. You’re becoming more of a liability than you are an asset to your football team.’ And that hurts. When Coach [Tom] Coughlin told that to me, it hurt me and I had to find a way to correct it, but … he told me how to fix it, and I took it to heart and it really helped me craft my game. And Adrian Peterson needs some of that same tough love, because right now it’s hard to get tough on Adrian Peterson because he’s so damn good.”



Indeed, Peterson fumbled twice and was responsible for a botched handoff in the Vikings’ 31-28 loss to New Orleans in the NFC Championship Game. At one point in the second half, the Vikings had to stash him on the sideline to let him calm down. In between, he scored three touchdowns and gained 122 yards.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Bill Cowher believes even if the Indianapolis Colts win the Super Bowl on Sunday, the New England Patriots should be considered the best team of the past decade and scoffed at the idea the Spygate scandal had any impact.



The debate about the best team of the aughts includes three teams. Only the Patriots and Cowher’s former team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, won multiple championships. The Colts would win their second with a win over the New Orleans Saints.



“I think the decade still has to go to New England,” Cowher said Tuesday at a CBS Sports news conference to preview the Super Bowl. “But the Pittsburgh Steelers went to a lot of championship games, won two Super Bowls. The Colts I’m not so sure within the last five years they haven’t been the most consistent football team.



“But you go back to the body of work and the consistency, and I think New England CLEARLY is above everybody else. They never had that one down year. They’ve been on the brink from when they first won in 2001 until this past year they were in the playoffs. They’ve been the most consistent team.”



The Patriots went to four Super Bowls and won three. The Steelers went to two Super Bowls — one with Cowher and another with Mike Tomlin — and won them both.



Cowher gushed about Patriots coach Bill Belichick, citing him as influential to philosophies Cowher applied to the Steelers. Cowher attributed the Steelers’ ability win 16 straight regular-seasons games in ’04 and ’05 to lessons learned from how the Patriots conduct themselves.



“The humility that they won with, that’s what set them apart,” Cowher said. “I learned a lot from their ability to respect an opponent every week, to not get caught up with it.



“I remember taking a lot from the way the New England Patriots handled success. To me, they epitomize that. How you handle success and not get caught up in it makes them role models.”



The primary objection to any discussion about the Patriots’ greatness is the videotaping scandal that entangled the organization in 2007. I asked Cowher whether Spygate should taint what the Patriots accomplished.



The Spygate investigation included two victories over Cowher’s Steelers in the ’01 and ’04 AFC Championship Games.



Cowher seems to absolve the Patriots for any wrongdoing.



“Listen, there’s people stealing signals all the time before that,” Cowher said. “You have ways to hide those things. We had wristbands for our defense. I remember trying to get offensive plays and see what the formations were. Everybody knows.



“You’re trying to gain a competitive edge. Did that go beyond it? To a degree. Do I think that helped them win football games? No. You still have to go out and play the game. I still have a hard time believing that was a difference in a game.”

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A quarterback with Kurt Warner‘s experience might qualify as a coach on the field.



Peyton Manning could probably use a whistle out there.



Warner’s former Arizona teammate, Aaron Francisco, experienced the Manning difference after signing with the Colts.



“They are similar in a lot of ways because they are such great quarterbacks, they study a lot and they add such great leadership to the team on and off the field,” Francisco said. “But I’ve just never seen anyone run practice the way Peyton Manning has.”



Run practice? Isn’t that for the real coaches?



“He is out there coaching the receivers, the running backs, the linemen, everything,” Francisco said. “When I was hurt for six weeks with my ankle injury, I was watching the offensive side of practice that I really don’t get to see when I’m in on defense. I’ve never seen nothing like it. I mean, the coaches are just standing on the side, not coaching, and he is doing all the coaching. It’s crazy, but it’s real awesome and I see why he is such a great quarterback.”



Manning is a four-time MVP, but no one has considered him for coach of the year — yet.