It might be the heart of the offseason and the slowest part of the NFL news cycle, but the league never sleeps. It rarely cedes the sporting spotlight longer than a day or two. Here are some thoughts on a few of the latest NFL happenings. As always, enjoy Father’s Day and those you love.

$.01--Eugene Monroe professed his support for the legalization of medical marijuana, and advocated strongly for the NFL to remove it from the list of banned substances. For his advocacy--in part at least--he is now an ex-Raven. Baltimore opted to cut their presumptive starting left tackle instead of dealing with Monroe’s controversial position.

Sure, he’s coming off shoulder surgery and his run blocking has really fallen off. And yes, they did draft Ronnie Stanley at No. 6 overall to eventually assume the left tackle duties.

Those facts provide cover for the Ravens, who have actively tried to steer away from any sort of public controversy or media/fan scrutiny since the Ray Rice incident and fallout. Monroe would still be a Raven if he wasn’t an outspoken marijuana proponent.

I’m not a pot guy. Never smoked it or really had any desire to try it, as my first real exposure to it was some hoodlum toking a bit too much at a Ratt concert and throwing up Spaghetti-Os all over my boots. Yet I agree with Monroe’s core point: medicinal marijuana is an option worth exploring in much greater depth in light of the opioid epidemic we have in this nation, and in professional sports.

I took opioids after my recent open heart surgery. I hated them, the way they made my head feel detached from my body and the permanent irritable insomnia and constipation they caused. My body did tell me it wanted them, however, and that was a very difficult desire to ignore. I don’t know if it was addiction; I’m not qualified or experienced enough to say. All I know is that even when the pain in my sawed sternum subsided, my body still told me it wanted more Oxycodone.

If medical marijuana doesn’t do that sort of physiologic damage, the NFL needs to have a serious conversation about it. I applaud Eugene Monroe for taking a stand. Fresh from folks lamenting the lack of athletes taking any sort of controversial positions in the wake of the death of the loquacious, impassioned Muhammad Ali, we should be more receptive to Monroe speaking out…even if we disagree with his platform. 

$.02--A little over a week ago, the NFL rumor mill spun the Andrew Luck contract negotiations to the forefront. Many highly credentialed reporters heralded that a blockbuster deal was “imminent”.

It’s been 10 days and still no new megadeal. The definition of “imminent” is pretty fungible, but most would say we have eclipsed the appropriate range. The talk of the talks has gone strangely silent.

Make no mistake, Luck will have a massive new deal before the start of the season. His next contract will break NFL barriers, from total value to guaranteed dollars to the widely speculated insertion of a clause that guarantees the quarterback a minimum percentage of the Colts’ salary cap. It’s a bridge to a new land that both sides are apparently willing to cross, even though there should be a lot more questions about Luck’s growth curve and ongoing turnover issues. Eating up an unprecedented portion of Indianapolis salary cap won’t help embattled GM Ryan Grigson (or his successor) build up the team around him, either.

It’s the silence surrounding the negotiations that intrigues me. Beat reporters from Gregg Doyel to Stephen Holder, guys who are paid to report on the pulse they’re feeling, haven’t written or Tweeted about it in days. National dirt diggers like Ian Rapoport, Adam Schefter and Pro Football Talk have all shut down the flurry of notes they posted on the Luck contract talks and how close the sides were to announcing a deal. That was all nearly two weeks ago.

Something is going on here. I won’t even pretend to know what it is, but I know what it is not. It is not Colts owner Jim Irsay plugging leaks. It is not the Schefters of the world giving up on prospecting, either.

My guess, and again it’s just a guess, is that the Luck camp is cooling its heels a bit. The only real urgency on their part is to take the money and run before the Colts start looking a little more critically at his game. It’s fashionable to slam Pro Football Focus for their grading and scoring, but the independent eyes there say Luck was one of the worst QBs in football last year. They put Luck as the 99th-ranked player overall of the best players in the league right now.

That is probably too pessimistic, even for my long-critical opinion on Luck. Simply because of the value of his position and how the Colts have dedicated the last two offseasons to building up the offense around him, and because he has an uncanny knack for overcoming his own bonehead mistakes, Luck belongs higher. But enough higher that he justifies the biggest contract in NFL history? I don’t think so.

The guess is that the Luck camp is self-aware enough to realize there are a lot of inherent negatives that come along with that sort of groundbreaking deal. Even the most loyal Colts and Luck sycophants, and there are many, will demand more from him because his massive cap hit dictates he play near flawlessly for the team to succeed. They will be more willing to acknowledge his stagnated development and complain about his oft-abysmal performance early in games. When you’re making 15% of the team’s salary cap and more than the GDP of neighboring Johnson County, you probably shouldn’t rank 35th in QB Rating in the second quarter of games, as Luck has done over the last two years.

$.03--More rain fell in Baltimore, as 2015 first-round pick Breshad Perriman suffered another knee injury. Fortunately it was just a passing shower and not a downpour…

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Ravens&#39; WR Breshad Perriman does not have a torn ACL and &quot;will be fine for the season&quot;, per source. Received stem-cell injection today.</p>&mdash; Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) <a href="https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/742740120994906112">June 14, 2016</a></blockquote>

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Still, the wideout’s availability for the beginning of the season is a big question. This comes after he missed his entire rookie season with a separate knee injury, a partial PCL tear that did healed neither properly nor quickly. He became one of the first casualties of a virulent injury bug which ravaged Baltimore last year.

The Ravens were counting on Perriman to step up in his second year and be no worse than the No. 3 wideout. The underrated Kamar Aiken is a very solid starter, and if pugnacious veteran Steve Smith has anything left after a brief retirement and recent injury of his own, the starting duo will be fine. But the depth cupboard behind them is barren without Perriman. Expectations for his debut must be tempered. For you fantasy folks, you’ll want Aiken. 

$.04--It hasn’t garnered nearly the publicity of Ndamukong Suh’s huge new contract last offseason, but the NFL has a new top dog on the defensive salary department. Fletcher Cox usurped the title from Suh with his new six-year, $106M deal. $63M is guaranteed, a new record for defensive players.

When I relayed this news to my wife on the day the news broke, her expression was telling…

“Shouldn’t I at least have an idea of what team he plays for?”

I suspect there was a lot of that sentiment with the casual NFL fan. Cox isn’t exactly a household name. For the uninformed, Cox plays defensive tackle for the Philadelphia Eagles. He plays it incredibly well too, albeit in relative obscurity. The four-year veteran from Mississippi State has been second-team All-Pro in each of the last two seasons.

Cox doesn’t rack up gaudy numbers like Aaron Donald or even Suh, who has already restructured his contract so the Dolphins aren’t so paralyzed by his massive cap hits. He tallied 9.5 sacks in 2015 after netting 12 total over his first three seasons.

The Eagles are betting on Cox to soar, and though the dollar figures seem awfully high, it’s a pretty prudent investment. He’s still an ascending talent, just 25 years old. Cox appears to be a perfect fit for Jim Schwartz’s attacking 4-3 front, where he will play the exact role Suh rode to fame. Philly has a strong group of linemen around him and that should facilitate Cox’s name being a lot more known amongst the casual fan. For a team betting on a strong defense to carry them back to playoff relevance, locking up Cox is a strong step in the right direction. Teams that don’t have top shelf quarterbacks, and Philly most certainly does not, can afford to pay more for guys like Cox.

Cox’s status as the highest-paid defender will be short lived. Von Miller and the Denver Broncos are working on a new deal, and various rumors have put the numbers there in the aforementioned Andrew Luck range of unfathomable amounts of guaranteed cash and cap room. 

$.05--It’s Father’s Day, and on this day I typically devote this entire space to celebrating it. Last year’s piece marked my return to writing after heart surgery, and a couple years prior I dealt with the loss of my last grandparent and my beloved father-in-law two weeks apart that winter. Needless to say, it’s always an emotional time.

This year I opted to keep it smaller in scale. It’s a joy to be a father, and it’s a joy to still have my own father. One of the things I keep noticing is how much I’m reminded of my dad in my own mannerisms and how I handle certain situations. I never noticed it much before, but now I see it a lot. I also see my dad in my son, and that brings me great joy. Even the negative qualities which transcended the generations, the quick temper and the unbridled competitive nature, I cherish seeing them both above and below me on the family tree.

The past year has seen both of my kids explore new sports, which is a great thrill. My son, now almost 11, has taken up tennis, a sport I played in high school but haven’t really done since Andre Agassi still had hair. My daughter, now 7, took a beach volleyball camp last summer and is hooked. That being our family sports business, I’m thrilled she loves it and hope to someday play in a tournament with her. My son also has gotten more involved in volleyball, and that produced a recent proud dad moment.

Our gym offers pickup volleyball a couple nights a week. It’s supposed to be for adults, but the other folks were gracious enough to let Layne participate when we needed an extra body. He proved right away he understood the concept of the game, and he quickly got accepted into the group. Volleyball is an interesting dynamic in that players are typically quite open to letting folks participate yet also quite reluctant to accept people into the fold until they prove they know the game and can really play. Layne made that step, at least with the ragtag group of mostly B-level (that’s akin to good backyard volleyball) players. Last week there was a lineup where my Layne was sandwiched between me and my wife on the front line, and he gave my wife--an excellent volleyball player--a legit great set. She put it away, as she almost always does, and seeing how happy he was that he accomplished something on an adult court.

My daughter continues to play basketball at a higher level than most of her peers. Playing against a big brother will do that for a spunky, athletically coordinated girl. She did a camp where she was one of two girls playing with, and against, about 20 boys. Watching her dribble better than most, and shuffle her feet with her arms out on defense like she was playing for Tom Izzo, was really awesome for me as a parent. I still play basketball several times a week, as I have for most of my adult life. The fact both of my kids are more fundamentally sound at the game before they’re even in middle school makes me proud as a parent.

Thanks for sharing the joy of parenthood. And hopefully by the time you read this, my long-suffering devotion to the Cleveland Cavaliers will be rewarded with the first professional sports title for any team I actively root for. Here’s hoping the next proud moment as a dad I have is taking my kids on the 5-hour drive to an unprecedented championship parade in my hometown of Cleveland. Hopefully my dad can come too.