Last week, the Arizona Cardinals made it known that they were willing to listen to offers for receiver Anquan Boldin.  G.M. Rod Graves strongly implied that they already had been listening to such offers.

Graves is now claiming that no offers have been received.

"Quite a few teams have called but we have no offers," Graves said Tuesday, according to Kent Somers of the Arizona Republic.

Translation?  We don't like the offers we've received, so now we're going to try to scoop up the toothpaste and put it back in the tube in the hopes that we can keep Boldin on the team.

Yeah, that Super Bowl appearance meant nothing.  They're still the Cardinals.

If the run-up to the draft weren't crazy enough, word is now emerging that the St. Louis Rams are considering two candidates with the second overall pick:  tackle Eugene Monroe, and quarterback Mark Sanchez.

The shocker is Sanchez.  The Rams have Marc Bulger under contract.  (Then again, I've recently suggested that now might be the time to trade him.)

It could be that the Rams are merely hoping to cajole one of the teams in the teens who supposedly are interested in Sanchez (Broncos, Redskins, Jets) into believing that the only way to be sure that they'll get the former USC signal-caller is to move all the way to No. 2.

Currently, the thinking is that moving to No. 4 will be high enough to get Sanchez, if the team that wants Sanchez makes the move when the fourth pick is on the clock.  If the Rams can move the target up two spots, they can trade down -- and also pick up some extra selections, in the hopes of filling more holes on a very bad roster.

Your eyes are not deceiving you.  Yes, this is Profootballtalk.com.  Yes, this is also the home of the NBCSports.com blogs.

For now, it's both.

We had a relatively minor outage at PFT on Tuesday.  (OK, it was actually a five-alarm fart-fest.)  And our friends at NBC (yes, we actually have friends) hooked us up with some bandwidth and rolling papers (I've got glaucoma). 

We're posting here until roughly 11:30 p.m. EDT Tuesday, at which time our primary residence will be ready to receive the PFT traffic.

So thanks again to our friends at NBC.  And we hope that Curran likes the package we left in his office.  Right on the carpet.

Titans running back Chris Johnson recently raised some offseason eyebrows by following a stellar rookie season with a decision not to show up for voluntary offseason workouts.

According to Jim Wyatt of the Tennessean, Johnson showed up on Tuesday, for the first time this offseason.

"I've said all along I expected Chris to come back and join the offseason program and he is here,'' coach Jeff Fisher said.  "Everybody else is here and I just assume he now is here and he is going to work.''

Technically, Fisher's comments run afoul of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, because they suggest that the voluntary workouts aren't optional.  But since the union currently is struggling to negotiate a contract with an Executive Director who should have been required to agree to terms before he was elected for the job, the union probably will let Fisher slide on this one.

With the draft less than four days away, the Detroit Lions still plan to have the No. 1 overall pick signed, sealed, and delivered discouraged before the picking process commences.

During a Tuesday press conference, G.M. Martin Mayhew said there's a very good chance that a deal will be done.

As we've heard it, the Lions have multiple tentative agreements lined up with potential first overall picks, with the Lions having to only pull the trigger as to the player in question.

In our view, it's all aimed at leveraging Georgia quarterback Matthew Stafford into taking an acceptable deal.

The problem for the Lions is that the first quarterback drafted last year with the third overall pick (Matt Ryan) arguably did better at the bargaining table than the first overall selection.

At No. 1, tackle Jake Long received a five-year, $57.5 million deal, with $30 million guaranteed.  At No. 3, quarterback Matt Ryan got a six-year, $72 million deal, with $34.75 million guaranteed.

So Stafford might be looking for a six-year deal worth more than $75 million, with more than $40 million guaranteed.

Meanwhile, there's talk that the Lions also are interested in working out a potential deal with Baylor tackle Jason Smith, which could create an awkward situation for agent Tom Condon, who represents both Stafford and Smith (and who represented both Long and Ryan a year ago).

One league insider has predicted that, if Stafford ends up being the pick, Condon will try to placate Smith by doing a monster deal for him in light of the slot in which he's eventually drafted.

In theory, this could cause some teams to shy away from Smith, if by picking him they could end up facing a moonshot that leads to a holdout.

There's a chance, however, that Condon will use Stafford's demands to maximize the contract given to Smith, and then attempt to finagle for Stafford at a lower spot a better deal that what Smith received -- just like Condon did in 2008 for Long and Ryan.

Regardless, Condon is mired in a clear conflict of interest.  Though the term sounds ominous, the concept is simple; the interests of Stafford presently conflict with the interests of Smith, as it relates to their prospects for being the first overall pick.

So Condon should be representing one or the other, or neither.  While the NFLPA allows such situation to exist, one thing is clear to us:  If Condon were a lawyer in this circumstance and continued to represent both clients, he wouldn't be a lawyer for much longer.

In response to the revelation that the NFLPA "hired" Executive Director DeMaurice Smith without obtaining his advance agreement to contractual terms, a NFLPA-certified veteran contract advisor has asked this simple question:  "I'm paying dues for this?"

The agent said more, including some colorful language that we'd at least quote with dashes if we were in our own home tonight.

But the point is a valid one.  At a time when plenty of folks employed by the NFLPA were worried about keeping their jobs, one or more people clearly weren't doing their jobs.

Of all the teams that have been eyeballing former West Virginia quarterback Pat White, most already have established and entrenched options under center.

Not so in Minnesota, where Sage Rosenfels recently has joined a revolving door of mediocrity that recently has feature non-future Hall of Famers like Gus Frerotte, Tarvaris Jackson, Kelly Holcomb, and Brooks Bollinger.

According to Alex Marvez of FOXSports.com, the Vikings worked out White on Tuesday.

Though he's regarded as a potential Wildcat-style presence, taking some snaps and fielding some punts and catching some passes, the smarter move (in our view) would be to focus on giving him a chance to develop as a passer.  Quarterbacks who can run effectively often find themselves relying on their legs as a crutch, and thus they never completely develop all of the skills needed to play the position.

So by plugging White into the lineup from time to time for the purposes of sometimes running and sometimes passing, a team might be blowing the opportunity to find out whether he can become a drop-back passer with the elusiveness that allows a guy like Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to keep plays alive long enough not to tuck it and run north-south, but to find an open receiver by moving east-west.

So let's see if we understand this. 

The NFL Players Association engaged in an elaborate process of identifying potential candidates to replace long-time Executive Director Gene Upshaw, weathering controversies and allegations relating to multiple candidates.  The ultimate hire was made at a time when the union needs unity more than it ever has during its existence.

And unity was the sole talking point in the aftermath of the process.  The union was unifired under a unanimous unification of unity.

But the union didn't determine in advance of the election process the contract terms that each of the finalists would accept.

Wow.

According to Len Pasquarelli of ESPN.com, new Executive Director DeMaurice Smith and the union are up to $5.6 million apart in their respective positions.

The two sides also are at odds regarding contract duration; Smith want's a five-year deal, and the union wants a three-year contract.  (The fact that Smith was elected to a three-year term makes his position in this regard a tad, well, goofy.)

We'll defer to Len as to the rest of the conflict.  The bigger point here is that someone screwed up royally when not determining the terms Smith and the other candidates would accept before a single ballot was cast.

It's a fairly important issue, don't you think?  And each finalist's financial expectations should have been factored into the selection process.

If, for example, Smith wanted $3.7 million per year and David Cornwell would have done it for $1.2 million, maybe Cornwell would have won the job on the first ballot.  Unanimously.  With unity.

Though we're not suggesting that the finalists should have been required to undercut each other in a reverse auction,-style process the financial terms should have been set before the election, and each of the finalists should have been required to sign the paperwork, with the contract being made expressly contingent on actually getting the job via the election process.

So, regardless of how this all turns out, whoever designed the haphazard procedure should be fired -- not only because Smith has acquired ample leverage by not being required to sign a contract at a time when the union held all the cards, but also because this dispute plays directly into management's hands by perpetuating the notion that the NFLPA can't get out of its own way.

A league source tells us that first-round prospect Andre Smith, who has more red flags than Milton Bradley (because they make the game Stratego . . . feel free to roll your eyes and groan now), will sign a representation agreement with Rick Smith of Priority Sports.

Published reports indicated that Andre Smith would sign with Ian Greengross after expiration of the five-day waiting period following Andre Smith's separation from Alvin Keels.  We also heard that Greengross was the first choice of Andre's mother.

Rick Smith has his work cut out for him.  In four days, he needs to try to reverse a series of blunders that began with a suspension from the Sugar Bowl, a horrendous set of Combine interviews, an unexpected departure from Indianapolis on the day that offensive linemen were due to work out for scouts, a Pro Day that featured a watch-it-wiggle/see-it-jiggle shirtless 40-yard dash, and the termination of his agent less than two weeks before the draft.

Without any of these issues, Andre Smith could have been the first overall pick.  We still see him falling to the Bengals at No. 6.

Linebacker Pierre Woods, a restricted free agent who found no takers prior to the expiration of the period for signing an offer sheet with a new team, has opted to stay with the Patriots, the team announced today.

Though the Pats didn't disclose the terms of the deal, Mike Reiss of the Boston Globe previously reported that Woods has signed his one-year, $1.54-million tender offer.

The fourth-year player previously played primarily on special teams.  As Reiss points out, Woods is a candidate to replace Mike Vrabel, who was traded to the Chiefs.