Looks Like Someone Has a Sixpack of the Mondays

1. Even though we are in the middle of a real dead period on the NFL calendar, there is still plenty going on that merits discussion and debate. We will get to all of that debate, but I thought it more important to clean up some Hogs Haven business today. Plus--and I can't stress this enough--Game 7 tonight between the Caps and Rangers has me in KNOTS. GO CAPS!

2. As most of you know, we put out a call to the readership about a month ago to add some fresh writing blood to the site. Our initial intention was to add maybe two or three voices to Hogs Haven. The response blew us away. I had no idea we had so many journalism majors in our midst (good thinking...a real growth industry). We quickly realized we could do more than just add a person or two to pick up some feature writing. By adding more than just this paltry amount, we felt like we could start exhaustively pursuing topic ideas, and get a huge amount of content out there for people to pick and choose from on any given day or week.

3. I know some of you have chastened a bit at the increase in content, but please know that there is a real method to our madness. Kevin and I felt that pulling in anywhere from 10-15 writers would allow us to properly cover series of topics. For example, we could propose that each person pick a few players from one side of the ball or the other, and talk about ways in which those players need to improve to either make the team or contribute to the team more meaningfully in 2013. The result of this exercise--that we are in the middle of now--is a plethora of reading material all dedicated to a single debate.

4. Given the way we changed tracks throughout this process, we had a first group we went back out to, and then a second group. Initially, we invited Bernhard Samuel, Jeff Rhodes, Ricky Allen, James Dorsett, Mike Harar and Jeff Newman to help us out. We followed that up with invites to Mark Voltaire, Paul Conner, John Wood, Jason Ma, Sean Patterson, Joe Lavoie and Alonzo Macon. I would like to thank these guys for being true to their word--they all indicated a willingness to contribute to the team and all of these guys have taken their new assignments in stride. They are adding a great deal of knowledge to our site. We like to think of Hogs Haven as the source of not just the arguments, but also of the answers and resolutions. I think you can find all of that in the new posts going up regularly on this site now.

5. Why am I telling you something that pretty much everyone has already figured out? How could you even ask me something like that? For those that need somebody to blame for the added volume of set pieces, now you have someone to blame. For those of you that need someone to hold up and shower with praise and complimentary words for doing something right, look no further than the guy with two thumbs pointing to himself as he writes these words (and Kevin).

6. In addition to adding these writers to fill out the overall experience, we also continue development of a new podcast coming soon. I should be able to provide better details in the next week or so. We intend to start it up here soon, and we will be working with some folks who are much better on the production side than Kevin and I. The days of the Hogs Haven Staff Meeting Podcast held via Skype are in the past. Please stay tuned for this and...

GO CAPS!