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The NFL offseason is officially here for all teams.

We know the full draft order. We think 2010 will be without a salary cap. We don't know whether the NFL and its players will extend the collective bargaining agreement anytime soon.

We know the two-time defending NFC West champion Cardinals will have a new starting quarterback. We think the Rams will have a new one. We don't know for sure how the quarterback situations in Seattle and San Francisco will come together.

I'm back from the Super Bowl, gathering a few thoughts and getting ready to charge forward. Should be an exciting offseason.

The Colts' loss to the Saints prevented Peyton Manning from joining seven other quarterbacks with undefeated Super Bowl records in multiple starts.

The chart shows those seven quarterbacks, including 49ers great Joe Montana (4-0).

The Steelers' Ben Roethlisberger, 2-0 as a Super Bowl starter, has the best chance of joining Troy Aikman in the 3-0 club, which once featured Tom Brady.

Terry Bradshaw (4-0), Montana and Aikman held a significant advantage over more recent Super Bowl quarterbacks. Each played before salary-cap implications prevented their teams from stockpiling talent. The cap was in place while Aikman was playing, but the Cowboys weren't affected as much until later in the decade.

MIAMI -- Tony Dungy wasn't the only one who thought the Indianapolis Colts would blow out the New Orleans Saints in Super Bowl XLIV.

"I did too," Colts tackle Ryan Diem said Sunday night.

The Saints' 31-17 victory proved quite a few people wrong, most notably Dungy, who should have known better than to suggest Peyton Manning would breeze through the Saints' defense on his way to a second Super Bowl title.

"I think they're going to be so far ahead," the former Colts coach had told the New York Times, "that people are going to say, 'Oh, ho-hum, he played a good game, they won by two scores, the Colts won their second championship.' "

The comments created a ripple, but Dungy mostly got a free pass while Gregg Williams, the Saints' less stately defensive coordinator, took heat for suggesting the New Orleans defense would rough up Manning with "remember-me" hits.

Dungy's prediction read more like something from Rex Ryan at an MMA event than anything befitting the man NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has anointed as league ambassador. The prediction was so strong, so unflinching, so seeming inconsistent with Dungy's usual form that I figured he had to be right. Certainly Dungy wouldn't speak out so strongly if the Saints were the better team.

"I don't think it's going to be close," Dungy had said.

The Colts were going to win in a blowout.

"A blowout?" Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma said. "Well, it didn't happen."

The Saints needed overtime to beat the Vikings in the NFC Championship game even though Minnesota suffered from five turnovers, critical penalties and questionable coaching decisions. Logic said the Colts would never suffer so many mistakes. But logic would also fail to explain what the Saints were feeling. From their perspective, this was the only just outcome after the organization stuck it out in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

Manning and the Colts were a great team, perhaps even the better team on paper, but the Saints felt they were playing for a greater purpose.

"They are really hard to prepare for," Saints linebacker Scott Fujita said of the Colts, "but the Saints were on a mission and for us it was about much more than just football -- much more than just football.

"I think you could see the stadium, we must have had Colts fans outnumbered six, seven to one. Throughout the city all week, the black and gold just poured into Miami to take over the city. I'm getting text messages all week from friends in the U.K., friends in Italy, saying the whole football world is behind us. This is bigger than just the game. The Saints are the world's team."

The Saints defied convention with an onside kick to open the second half. They went for it on fourth down when a field goal would have been the politically safe call. Cornerback Tracy Porter jumped the route for the interception he returned 74 yards for the clinching touchdown with 3:12 remaining.

We could view these high-stakes gambles as the Saints' acknowledgment that taking chances was their only hope against Manning, but that would be missing the mark. The Saints bet big on themselves and won.

"We have been the best team in the NFC," safety Roman Harper said. "We knew nobody was going to give it to us. We have to go out there and take it. Nobody picked us, nobody believed in us but us and ourselves and our locker room and our city and our families. We went out and proved everybody wrong today."

Starting with Tony Dungy.

MIAMI -- You're invited to join the Super Bowl conversation beginning at 5:30 p.m. ET and running 60 minutes past game's end.

Here's the main link and here's the mobile link.

MIAMI -- A trip outside the stadium to a concession stand proved fruitful with a Patrick Willis sighting.

Willis, the 49ers' perennial Pro Bowl linebacker, was participating a phone-a-friend promotion. Apparently, fans could pay to have Willis call their friends.

I shot some quick video and uploaded it to Facebook. Security officials whisked Willis away before I could catch up with him.

MIAMI -- Official stadium-certified sweatshirts are running $92 at the Super Bowl.

These look like basic gray sweatshirts with Super Bowl logos and team helmets.

They are definitely official -- as in, officially out of my price range.

MIAMI -- Left tackle Walter Jones was near his peak for the Seahawks in the Super Bowl four years ago, controlling everyone the Steelers sent his way.

Jones will have a hard time recapturing that level of dominance as he fights back from knee surgery, but his sense of humor is apparently still intact.

Tweets the player teammates call Big Walt: "I have came to the concussion it is time for me to retire from football."

Concussion?

This appears to be the latest episode of Jones joking around about his retirement on Twitter. He might be finished, but there's no reason for him to retire at this point. His salary is $7.3 million for 2010.

It's tough to envision the Seahawks paying him that much given Jones' age and injury situation, but it's also tough to envision Jones signaling his retirement via Twitter on Super Bowl Sunday.

Jones has said in the past he wouldn't use Twitter to make such an announcement.

Update: Jones' Twitter account now says he meant to type conclusion, but a spellchecker changed it to concussion. In September, he teased fans by suggesting a decision was looming, only to follow up by saying he decided to see a certain movie with his kids. He then asked what people were thinking when they thought he was announcing his retirement, noting that he would not do such a thing on Twitter.

MIAMI -- Let's stretch our imaginations and pretend, for the sake of discussion, that each NFC West team had advanced to face the Colts in the Super Bowl.

If the Rams made it here, for example, the big story might be Peyton Manning vs. Keith Null.

(Please hold your laughter until the end.)

I've broken out the Colts' offensive starters and compared them to those for the Cardinals, 49ers, Seahawks and Rams. In the Rams' case, I wasn't sure who would start at left guard after Roger Allen suffered a serious knee injury in Week 17, so I've brought back usual starter Jacob Bell from injured reserve.

Putting together something similar for the defenses would be tough because the 49ers and Cardinals play 3-4 schemes, so the positions would not line up.

Enjoy the imaginary games.

MIAMI -- Rainy weather affected parts of Super Bowl week, but bright skies are lighting up Miami so far Sunday morning.

The forecast calls for clear skies through kickoff.

That should help both quarterbacks.

MIAMI -- A recent brainstorming session with AFC South blogger Paul Kuharsky was highly productive.

Paul pointed me in the direction of a Super Bowl production featuring many of the key players here in South Florida.

Cue the video.

Adam Vinatieri's part was my favorite for some reason.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The Pro Football Hall of Fame selection process has ended after seven-plus hours of mostly invigorating discussion.

Those of us on the committee are free to release what we know -- the names of the five remaining candidates -- once the announcement show begins on NFL Network at 5 p.m. ET.

The five remaining candidates are not necessarily Hall of Famers yet because each had to receive at least 80 percent approval in yes-no voting -- conducted as the meeting ended. We do not know results of the voting and we do not know results of the voting on the seniors-committee nominees.

I'll blog analysis here at 5 p.m. ET. The final results will be announced during the NFL Network show at about 5:25 p.m. ET.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The MVP and MVP runner-up are starting at quarterback in Super Bowl 44.

Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald, who knows the value of an elite quarterback, is going with the MVP.

"I gotta go with the Colts," Fitzgerald told Chicago radio station 670 the Score. "You can’t go against Peyton Manning. He’s incredible and whenever he steps on the field, his team has an opportunity to go out there and be victorious."

Sportsradiointerviews.com has a partial transcript and audio link. Fitzgerald talks about Kurt Warner, Matt Leinart and more.

I'm also taking the Colts for the same reason -- not that the Saints' Drew Brees is any slouch.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The playoff edition of the NFC West Gridiron Challenge fantasy game culminates with the Super Bowl.

My team has scored only 74 points in each of the last two weeks after racking up 155 in the wild-card round. It's a different game in the playoffs, as they say.

Beattie27 leads the nearly 2,000-team field heading into the final game, with five Colts players still active: Peyton Manning, Joseph Addai, Austin Collie, Dallas Clark and Matt Stover.

A few teams near the top have every position filled with Super Bowl players, including rward3636, who is tied for 10th overall (the ranking could change as other competitors join the group, which remains open to players in other leagues).

Rules prevented updating rosters after the championship round. That's something I'll keep in mind a little more prominently next time.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The Rams haven't won enough recently to let damaging perceptions linger.

It's not Billy Devaney's style, anyway.

Devaney, the Rams' general manager, has shown his pugnacious side a few times, including last season when ESPN analyst Mark Schlereth criticized the team's handling of 2009 first-round choice Jason Smith. Schlereth later clarified his comments.

Devaney sought to right another alleged wrong Friday while making the Super Bowl media rounds. According to Devaney, the Rams have never taken down photos of all-time franchise greats, as Marshall Faulk suggested in comments to Bernie Miklasz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Every new leadership group tries to establish its own program, but Devaney and coach Steve Spagnuolo would never trample on the team's history so flagrantly, the GM said. Hall of Famer Jack Youngblood has also been critical of the organization lately, questioning the decision to fire long-time trainer Jim Anderson.

"It always matters what great players' opinions are as to what we are doing and how we are doing," Devaney said. " 'Spags 'and I have a ton of respect for what they have accomplished and what they have meant to the Rams. They are always welcome. I have talked to Marshall in the past. I talked to Jack Youngblood when he was visiting this year.

"The one thing I really want to clear up, I don't know how this notion got out of us taking pictures down. Steve came in and the only pictures Steve took down were of current Rams players and they were individual shots. He said, 'I want pictures up, but I want five or six players. I want team pictures up.' That is what we did. There are pictures throughout the building of Marshall Faulk, Kurt Warner, Ricky Proehl and the Hall of Fame Rams, all the great Rams. That is throughout the building."

The Rams might need to smooth over some of these relationships with their alumni. Mostly, they need to win.