What about Bob?

Now that Willis McGahee is facing a few weeks off because of knee surgery, it could be the rookie from Rutgers (and New Rochelle).

In addition to a reader asking about the battle for the starting left guard on the 1-15 Dolphins, someone else asked in our previous "live chat" about Rice. He has had a nice camp so far, in fact, and McGahee's injury is only highlighting his strengths.

Rice is a very nice fellow. I especially enjoy talking to football players who are as short as I am.

(A gold star to anyone who knows why this picture accompanied this post.)

You can certainly make the case, because Ogden was simply one of the most dominant left tackles in the game's history.

He retired this week after a long and illustrious career with the Ravens. I put him right up there with Anthony Munoz at the top of the class.

I plan on visiting with him during the festivities for the 2013 Pro Football Hall of Fame, where he will join Michael Strahan, Brett Favre, Warren Sapp, Larry Allen and Junior Seau (if he retires this year).

Don't have any particular Ogden moments that stick out - other than his regularly crushing opponents with more pancake blocks than an IHOP - but I do have one of Munoz.

Late in his career with the Bengals, he was playing in a game against the Bruce Coslet-coached Jets at Giants Stadium. Toward the end of the game, he had suffered the latest in a string of knee injuries.

Knowing that his team would have received a delay-of-game penalty if he'd stayed down, Munoz got up, and literally hopped a good 35 yards to the Bengals' bench before the next play. His injured leg was dangling.

He had torn his ACL.

It's not unusual to see football players fight in training camp. Or even mini-camp.

But to have nearly all 85 players on your team involved in fisticuffs during a practice in early May?

Whoa.

Welcome to the NFL, coach Harbaugh.

The Ravens have called a 1 p.m. press conference, at which veteran quarterback Steve McNair will announce his retirement.

It's somewhat of a surprise, although not a complete shocker. McNair had indicated publicly that he was ready to return from shoulder surgery, but he had not lived up to expectations after being traded from Tennessee.

The Ravens have been looking especially hard at quarterbacks in this year's draft, and it's possible McNair might not have beaten out Kyle Boller for the starter's job this season.

McNair is the second high-profile quarterback to retire this off-season. Packers quarterback Brett Favre announced his retirement last month.

Former Ravens coach Brian Billick, fired after last season, will teach a course in sportswriting as part of a mass communications class at Towson University outside Baltimore.

This is actually not as insane as it might sound.

Billick started off in the NFL as an assistant public relations director for the 49ers. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in communications from Brigham Young University.

He also turned into one of the most quotable and forthcoming head coaches in NFL history.

I will ask him how the course went after it's all over. I'm sure he'll have some interesting things to say.

My younger brother, Bill, went to Towson and became a sportswriter for the Baltimore Sun. He is now a real journalist covering real stories for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. He has been to Iraq several times. He also wrote about a sect of Lubavitcher Jews tailgating at Packers games.

Man, they're dropping like flies.

The Ravens have released veteran center Mike Flynn.

After a 5-11 season, the Ravens have parted ways with Brian Billick. The team will make Billick's firing official at a 3:30 p.m. news conference.

This one is a bit of a surprise, since Billick had been told late in the season that he'd be back, in part because of the rash of injuries that negatively impacted the team this year. But Billick's credibility was questioned inside the locker room, and team owner Steve Bisciotti decided he needed to go in a different direction.

Bisciotti and general manager Ozzie Newsome will immediately begin their search for a new head coach.

This one can't wait. We are certain this will go down as the comment of the week, but we had to give this a special shout-out before then.

It's a song written by a reader who identifies himself as "richie g" in response to our earlier Samari Rolle post about Rolle's complaints that an official called him "boy."

Here it is. Copyright pending:

That's Samari" (to the tune of (That's Amore)

When you think you are great
But the team's 4 and 8
That's Samari

Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis has a message to his teammates as they look to recover from last week's upset loss to the Browns: It's not what happens when you fall down. It's about how you pick yourself up.

In fact, Lewis wants to share the message with you ... on his own blog, no less.

Here's a look at his latest installment on Yardbarker.com.

A snippet from Lewis:

"Message of the Week: It's never about the fall. What is your mindset thru the journey. Character is found thru adversity.

Because the season is young, you have to ask yourself as a team, 'What's the big picture?' And the big picture is Arizona [Super Bowl XLII]. When you find yourself in a hole, whatever the hole may be, when you find yourself losing a game like we lost to Cleveland, giving them the game the way we did, you have to understand everybody's going to go through that. Everybody's going to go through a downside. But the bottom line is, what do you do when you come back to practice? Do you worry about what you messed up in Cleveland, or do you say, 'When I come to practice I'm going to get better.' As a team, we've got to understand one thing: OK, we lost. We're 2-2, let's deal with it. And that's why my message is what it was. You can stay stuck in misery, you can stay stuck in doubt, you can stay stuck in fear. But, when you've got your eye on the prize, there's only one thing that matters, and that's the next week – win, lose or draw."