Raiders coach Lane Kiffin finally spoke to Walker by phone on Wednesday morning, more than two days after Walker was discovered unconscious and beaten on a back street near the Las Vegas Strip following a night of partying. Walker was released from a hospital after treatment for a concussion and facial injuries.

“The info that I have is he’s going to be fine,” Kiffin said. “Training camp won’t be an issue. … But until our guys look at him, I don’t want to say (the extent of Walker’s injuries).”

Kiffin said Walker was scheduled to fly to Oakland on Wednesday evening in time to attend the final session of the Raiders’ organized team activities on Thursday, though he obviously won’t suit up with quarterback JaMarcus Russell and his new teammates. Oakland opens training camp July 25 in Napa.

Brett Favre cackles through six days’ worth of pure gray stubble, and Michael Strahan flashes that gap-toothed grin after someone brings up that infamous phantom sack—that someone most likely being Warren Sapp, laughing with delight through all five courses.

But don’t stay up too late, fellas. You’ll need to save your strength for tomorrow’s induction speeches, which are bound to exceed their allotted time.

“Probably a lot of foolishness will be talked about, will be my guess,” said veteran Green Bay Packers tackle Mark Tauscher, who helped protect Favre from the likes of Strahan and Sapp for the better part of a decade. “Those guys are great characters, and very good football players. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of great stories exchanged—and most of them will be embellished quite a bit.”

Their stories might be embellished, but their football resumes certainly don’t need to be.

“We’ve said we’re not going to talk about repeating or doing that, just becoming a better team,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do. You look at a lot of things from last year that we did not do well. From an offensive standpoint, there’s a lot of things.”

Manning spoke before a record crowd of about 1,000 people attending a College Football Hall of Fame luncheon. He answered questions about New York’s Super Bowl-winning season, his college career at Mississippi and growing up the younger brother of Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning and the son of former New Orleans Saints quarterback Archie Manning.

Manning said the focus for the Giants this season is to find a way to learn from last season, when they turned around their season with a six-game winning streak after losing their first two.

“Last year we got where we were by playing our best football at the end of the season,” he said. “We’re trying to hold that for a whole season now, week in and week out that we’re playing at our best.”

Manning compared the Giants beating the unbeaten New England Patriots in the Super Bowl to the U.S. hockey team winning the gold medal in the 1980 Olympics. The U.S. team lost to the Soviet Union in exhibition games before beating them in the Olympics, just as the Giants lost 38-35 to the Patriots in the regular-season finale.

“We knew we could run up and down the field with them,” he said. “We knew the game before we had chances to win that game, so we were very confident going into that game.”

Nicholas Kaczur, 28, wore a wire to help agents build a case against his alleged supplier, Daniel Ekasala, according to Ekasala’s attorney.

A Drug Enforcement Administration agent said in an affadavit that a cooperating witness—whose name was not revealed in the document—wore a recording device during three drug buys last month. In each of the deals, the witness bought 100 OxyContin pills from Ekasala for $3,900 in cash, the agent wrote.

Ekasala’s lawyer, Bernard Grossberg, said Kaczur was that cooperating witness.

Kaczur denied to The Boston Globe that he participated in the investigation, telling the newspaper, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, bro.”

Kaczur has an unlisted telephone number and could not be reached for comment Wednesday. His agent, Vance Malinovic, did not return messages left by The Associated Press.

Stacey James, a spokesman for the Patriots, would not comment on Kaczur. He referred questions to the U.S. attorney’s office, which declined to comment.

Schweigert is a free safety, having started 42 games in four seasons with the Oakland Raiders. He lost his starting job late last season and was released by the Raiders last month.

“It feels like a thousand-pound bear’s been lifted off my chest. It’s time for a fresh start,” Schweigert said. “In Oakland, I felt as if my time was up there. It was a deal where I wasn’t in their future. I feel like I’m in the Redskins’ future.”

Schweigert said he’s been told that Landry is the projected starter at strong safety. Landry finished last season at free safety after the death of Sean Taylor, with Reed Doughty starting at strong safety.

Defensive coordinate Greg Blache said it was too early to say where Landry will line up.

“He could start as a free safety or a strong safety,” Blache said. “Right now, there’s no need to rush into that.”

Landry was one of two players—along with cornerback Shawn Springs— unexpectedly absent Monday as the Redskins began another set of offseason practices. Coach Jim Zorn said he had not heard from either player. Although the practices are technically voluntary, unexcused absences do not sit well.

“They had the opportunity to be here,” Zorn said. “They just didn’t show.”

Among the excused absentees was receiver Santana Moss, who was ill following a weekend-long, multiparty celebration of his 29th birthday.

Zorn also said that safety Vernon Fox has undergone left knee surgery for the second time this offseason. Fox had surgery in January and re-injured the knee during minicamp last month.

Fox joined receiver Antwaan Randle El, sixth-round draft pick safety Kareem Moore, linebacker Rocky McIntosh and cornerback Carlos Rogers as players unable to practice because of knee surgeries. All except Rogers expect to be ready by the start of training camp next month.

Baker wants to renegotiate his deal, but the Jets have so far declined. As a result, the veteran has boycotted the team’s voluntary organized team activities.

“Anytime you encounter these, there are going to be different factors that go into it and we deal with all those factors as they come up,” Mangini said Thursday. “The important thing for me is to keep Chris up to date with what’s going on and I know that’s important to him, as well, and that’s what I’ll keep doing.”

Baker, in his seventh season with the Jets, is entering the third year of a four-year deal which averages to about $1.65 million annually. The tight end, coming off a career-high 41 catches for 409 yards, has said he was told by the team last season that it would be willing to redo his contract if he had a productive year.

“Everyone has a difference of opinions and I respect the difference of opinions,” Mangini said. “It’s always going to be the case in any situation, and that’s where it is.”

The situation is similar to that of Pete Kendall last year, which culminated in general manager Mike Tannenbaum trading the left guard to Washington before the season. Spicing things up is the fact Baker and Kendall have the same agents.

“Things are going to proceed as they proceed and Mike does a great job of that,” Mangini said. “I’ll handle the football side of things and make sure he is as prepared as he possibly can be when he gets here and then when he is here as well.”

Once billed as the ultimate complimentary receiver to Marvin Harrison, Wayne has carved out his own rightful place among the NFL’s best.

His receptions total has increased in each of seven NFL seasons, and Wayne is ready for the hardest part—improving those numbers again in 2008 after a career-best year in which he caught 104 passes and produced a league-high 1,510 yards receiving.

It’s a challenge that Wayne, as usual, relishes.

“It’s definitely going to be tough,” he said Saturday as the Colts held their second day of mandatory mini-camp. “I feel like I should be able to do that, that I should be able to take advantage of it.”

“SORRY, PATS”

The Patriots owner felt vindicated by the Boston Herald’s apology after a season—and offseason—of reports the NFL’s most successful franchise of the decade had spied on opponents.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell found no more wrongdoing by New England, which had been punished for taping New York Jets coaches in the 2007 season opener. Former Patriots video assistant Matt Walsh produced no tape of a St. Louis Rams walkthrough before the 2002 Super Bowl while meeting with Goodell on Tuesday.

And the newspaper that first reported on Feb. 2 the existence of such a tape said it had made a mistake and apologized in headlines on the front and back pages and in a brief story.

“I think I speak for all Patriot fans,” Kraft said in an interview with The Associated Press. “We’re relieved that this is over and you see that this is nonsense and we were unfairly accused and we’re moving on.

Because of a variety of trades, the Raiders’ second pick in the draft didn’t come until the fourth round, when they selected safety Tyvon Branch out of Connecticut. They also added receivers Arman Shields (fourth round, Richmond) and Chaz Schilens (seventh round, San Diego State), and defensive end Trevor Scott in the sixth round from Buffalo.

Considering that Kiffin cut one of his third-round picks last season, defensive end Quentin Moses, before the start of the regular season, these four players know that getting drafted offers no assurances in the NFL.

Or, HBO predicts, one heck of a reality series.

The cable network is bringing its “Hard Knocks” franchise back to Cowboys training camp this summer, and HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg already is predicting best-ever ratings for his five-show series. Even with the Olympics as competition, he’s confident his weekly program will be overflowing with juicy story lines—with his cameras getting exclusive behind-the-scenes access.

“It’s fair to say this thing should go through the roof,” Greenburg said Wednesday.

Greenburg opened a news conference by joking about going to Cabo San Lucas or wherever else is necessary to tell the full story. It was an obvious reference to the getaway trip Romo and Simpson made during the bye a week before Dallas’ playoff game in January, a vacation that didn’t sit well with fans, especially after the Cowboys were upset by the New York Giants.