Cover-2

The league and the NFL Players Association are looking more and more like two locomotives on a collision course that will leave nothing in its wake except for lost dollars and disillusioned fans.

Even if one side or the other veers off the doomed path in time to avoid the loss of regular-season games, there still could be an awful lot of lost dough.

The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that NFL officials think the league could lose $1 billion to a work stoppage - even if the entire 2011 season is played. The Journal said that figure was presented to owners at the league's meetings in Chicago, which wrapped up on Tuesday.

According to the report, owners could lose $400 million in March, when many season tickets are renewed, and another $500 million if preseason games are canceled.

That's right: $500 million just for preseason games. You've heard of the preseason: That's when games are decided by players who would have trouble keeping up in the Big East.

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Chad Ochocinco has the solution for Cincinnati's woes: his mouth.

Ochocinco, who has been known to speak his mind from time to time, told reporters he's going to up the trash talk as a way to get the Bengals' offense going.

"I haven't been the Chad of old, the Chad that we're all used to - the boisterous, sometimes borderline cocky, arrogant," he said. "But that's the way I am and that's what everybody feeds off as a city and as an organization, and I haven't been that."

Even the city itself feeds off Ochocinco's trash talk? If that's the case, he should have started blabbing a long time ago and improved the area's 9.3 percent unemployment rate.

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Randy Moss is a lock for enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame once his playing days are over. It's not surprising considering how highly touted he was coming out of college in 1998.

Off-the-field issues, however, let Moss slip to the Minnesota Vikings at No. 21. One of the teams that passed over him was the Dallas Cowboys, who needed a receiver and had lavished attention on him during a trip to Texas before the draft.

He thought Dallas would select him and told his mother, who set her mind on Moss becoming a Cowboy. It didn't happen, and Moss' mother was upset.

"Just seeing her facial expression and how she looked, I really took that to heart, man," Moss told Dallas reporters in a conference call, "and I told myself any time I play the Dallas Cowboys I'm never going to forget that look."

It's one thing to get Moss' hopes up, but if you let down his mom, look out: Moss has scored 11 touchdowns and averaged 21 yards per catch against Dallas, the Vikings' opponent on Sunday, in seven games.

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Too much of anything is a bad thing. Just ask the San Diego Chargers. Heading into Week 6, the Bolts are now on their fifth long snapper of the season after signing rookie Mike Windt. That is certainly a bad thing.

The Chargers cut Ethan Albright after two punts were blocked last Sunday in a loss to Oakland. But Albright should consider himself lucky. His predecessors - David Binn, James Dearth, and Ryan Neill - all wound up on injured reserve.

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The Redskins' Anthony Armstrong caught his first touchdown pass against the Packers last weekend. He also couldn't keep the zipper on his pants up. Washington wore white pants on Sunday instead of gold, which is where the problem started.

"The zipper doesn't stay up on the white pants for some reason," Armstrong said. "Don't know why. Think I may have gained too much weight. I don't want to change them if we keep on winning, so I'll just keep on worrying about broken zippers and whatnot."

That's the definition of a team player.