Tomorrow, teams in the NFL have to announce whom they're keeping and whom they're releasing. After that happens, it’s free agent signing time. So Tomorrow is the start of football's Hot Stove Heater, or whatever it is they call it in the NFL. Yep, it's the time of year where one can sit around and dream up any ole thing (Daunte AND T.O. to the Rai-duhs!) even though it'll never happen and only makes people extremely disappointed when it doesn't happen. See Giants fans still better that the Giants never signed Vlad. As much as we love all this, we much prefer baseball's free agent dreaming as the salary cap weighs way too much in all of this and let's just say SFist barely made it through Physics for Poets.

This year we find the Bay Area teams at opposite sides of the salary cap spectrum. The Niners got rid of some deadweight (like Ahmed Plummer) and are rolling in dough. That sounds great except the Niners front office still appears to be Dysfunction Junction and unable to agree on much of anything. Good luck with that, Niners fans.

On the other hand, the Raiders are about $20 million over the salary cap. Luckily, they can hack off some of it with a few moves and contraction renegotiations (something we have to give the Rai-duhs credit for because Al always seems to find a way of signing who he wants). Which brings us to the biggest question out there, wither Kerry Collins?

Collins has one of the biggest contracts on the team, $8.5 million, and a 7-21 record. Rumors of the Raiders getting a new QB have been circulating pretty much the exact moment the refs blew their last call in the Stuporbowl. The first big rumor was of reuniting Daunte and Randy (kind of like the upcoming Clerks 2!)by trading for Daunte Culpepper. That probably won't happen as the word is now that the Vikings owner wants to keep Daunte.

Now what's being rumored is that Al has his pompadour all in a tizzy over Texas QB Vince Young. Young is a apparently dumb as dirt, throws like a girl, and put on maybe the single greatest athletic performance in a sporting event a few months ago in the Rose Bowl. We doubt this will ever happen as Young will probably be drafted a bit earlier (we're thinking Tennessee) and Young doesn't display many of the attributes loved by the Al-ster (big arm, immobile, old). But still, we can dream, can't we? We think Young would be fun to have here, not just because we think he'll be really good but because he's already taken to talking about himself in third person. We love those people.

The question, then, is what will Art (Shell, not Davis) and the Other Walsh decide to do or even if they know what to do-- Walsh, after all, is a few days removed from being Basil Fawlty at some bed-n-breakfast in Idaho. Considering how long both Art (Shell, not Davis) and the Other Walsh have been out of football, one wonders if they've even had time to digest all this as they've probably just been introduced to the computer.

Our hunch? Collins stays but kisses some money goodbye. Shell's previous teams had QB's similar (Jay Schroeder and Jeff Hostetler) to Collins anyways-- big, dumb, white boys with rockets for arms, although Hostetler does have a Superbowl title to his name and an awesome moustache. And, who else is out there? If Daunte does stay with the Vikes that would leave such heavyweights as Jay Fiedler, (the Greatest Jewish Ivy League QB in NFL history), Josh McNown (blah), Jon Kitna (career backup), Aaron Brooks (killed us in fantasy football in '04) and Gus Frerotte (no). Speculating a little bit gets you Brian Griese (dude hurt himself tripping over his dog) and Chad Pennington (dude tears out his shoulder throwing out the trash). Oh, and there is Drew Brees, but he's so good we see him signing elsewhere, like Miami. You choose-- South Beach and an up-and-coming team or Oaktown and as much as we like our brethren across the Bay, we don't think that's close.

So what are we saying? Kerry in 2006.