Not exactly free agency central

With a weekend that's going to be filled with work, family duties and reffing basketball, it will be tough for me to stay on top of the opening days of free agency.

But the Vikings are doing their part to help me out, as the team isn't doing much anyway – other than completing the trade with Houston to acquire quarterback Sage Rosenfels.

Two interesting tidbits from the linked Vikings Update story. Contract talks with Matt Birk broke off Thursday night and Heath Farwell has not been re-signed. The news about Birk isn't unexpected. The Farwell news is. The Vikings coverage units struggled terribly in 2008 and Farwell has always been the team's top coverage guy. If he signs elsewhere, that's a big blow to any plans new special teams coach Brian Murphy has to improve this area.

Update
Access Vikings is reporting the Vikings could be interested in wide receiver Michael Clayton and defensive back/kick returner Chris Carr.

I'd suggest checking in regularly with Judd Zulgad on the Access Vikings blog and Sean Jensen at the Vikings Now blog to track any potential free agency moves by the Vikings. Both reporters were on top of things during last year's free agency period.

Based on what the Vikings haven't done so far, we could be looking at a 2007-like free agency period where the Vikings made only mid-level signings (Shiancoe, Ciurcui) and didn't grab any big name players. That might not be a bad thing, just the way things are falling this year where there aren't a lot of good players available and the ones that are, like Albert Haynesworth and Ray Lewis, are going to get big contracts and don't play positions of need for the Vikes.