



Confidential player surveys and anonymous front-office evaluations are good for cheap, easy Internet traffic. Few of us can resist scanning the results, even if it's akin to some pathetic grade-school slam book or anonymous Internet bullying.





As such, it's become a staple of modern "journalism" and this week, like most, it left another group of scorned players and coaches trying to brush off critics they can't confront.

Pro Football Weekly allowed an unnamed "rival GM" to continue his recurring battle of insults with a named Detroit Lion, center Dominic Raiola. Meanwhile, The Sporting News publicized the latest anonymous player poll, which promptly bashed the New York Jets' Rex Ryan as the league's "most overrated coach."

On Wednesday, Raiola and Ryan were confronted with the results. The men who aren't man enough to put their names to the attacks – and the media that provided them the forum – weren't.

Unnamed sources should be used for conveying sensitive information. Sometimes an identity needs to be protected for a truth to come out. To offer anonymity for pointless, mean-spirited NFL rip jobs is ridiculous. This isn't Woodward and Bernstein stuff.

Polls that offer confidentiality can yield interesting and insightful information that readers won't get any other way. If asked to choose the best quarterback or coach, a voter could choose someone outside their organization with no fear of hurt feelings.

Nothing is gleaned from "most overrated" or just about any other negative question. It's just a chance for the voters to unload and the rest of us to laugh. As for allowing a hidden GM to have a one-way punk session on a helpless player, well, that is just a sad grasp for relevancy.

[More: Bears will allow player to miss a game for daughter's birth]

Raiola fought back aggressively Wednesday in what is now his second round of insults with Pro Football Weekly and some nameless general manager. Last month the unnamed GM blasted the Lions executives, coaches and players. Raiola defended his teammates and bosses at the time calling it "a coward statement" because no one attached their name to it.

Undeterred, the GM responded to the response via PFW on Sunday. He decided to double down on Raiola.

"I saw Dominic Raiola called me out, asking who the aimless, anonymous GM is who criticized the great Lions," PFW quoted the aimless, anonymous GM. "Who is this person? It's the guy who rejects you every time he watches your tape and thinks you are a complete fraud. It's the guy who didn't think you could play when you came out of college and still doesn't think you can play now.

"If he spent as much time working the other muscles in his body as he does his jaw, he might have had the chance to be an average backup," the GM continued. "You can put that in print."

You can put that in print! Ah, what a tough guy, a line right out of a movie or something. There's a clique of seventh-grade girls somewhere who are so impressed.

Raiola, clearly upset and wearing a T-shirt that read "God forgives, Detroit doesn't", called the GM and PFW "gutless." [PFW has since taken down the GM's quote.]

"If you're his family, how do you even call this guy a man of your house?" Raiola asked reporters.

The answer: There's no way he'd admit to his kids he acted so cravenly.

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