With Alabama and LSU gearing up for the Game of the Century Saturday night, tune into NFL Network’s “Around the League Live” at 5 p.m. ET Friday and have some fun with Cincinnati Bengals tackle Andrew Whitworth, who won a BCS title at LSU when Nick Saban coached the Tigers, and Buffalo Bills rookie defensive end Marcell Dareus, who played for Saban’s national championship club at Alabama.

Losing a game to a division rival is hard. But for the Cowboys, losing one of their best linebackers might be the hardest thing to overcome after Sunday’s loss to the Eagles.

You have probably heard the phrase “a team is only as strong as its weakest link.” In the NFL, the difference between a team’s weakest link and their strongest can determine the outcome of a game.

Leading up to Sunday, we did a little tape study and tried to find a few links that could be broken.

When the Playbook research staff digs into a new batch of coaching tape, we dig deep.

While cooking up “All-22″ content for the Week 2 Playbook shows at the end of the week, we spend much of our Mondays and Tuesdays watching every game. And we mean every game.

Every Wednesday this season, the research staff at “Playbook” will be taking your questions through email (playbook@nfl.com) and on Twitter (@NFLN_Playbook, with #askplaybook hashtag), and answering them in this blog. Here is the first batch of questions we’ve selected.

The new CBA, including its rookie wage scale, has definitely decreased the price tag for top-five picks, but the repercussions for missing are still huge. Before you have even played a down, before you have even had your first jersey stitched, draft analysts and fans are asking whether you are a star or a bust.

If the season started today, and your only guide to which quarterback you would take was based on preseason play, who ya got: Michael Vick, Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Matthew Stafford or Drew Brees?

Panthers owner Jerry Richardson asked quarterback Cam Newton not to get any tattoos or piercings while he is a Carolina Panther. Should teams be able to restrict players from getting tattoos or piercings? We asked our experts in the latest Instant Debate, and their answers will appear on NFL.com later today.

As the second round unfolds and teams make their second picks of the draft, overall strategies become more transparent.

The third annual NFL.com mock draft, like its predecessors, was an interesting endeavor in looking at how the first round could ultimately play out, with NFL Network and NFL.com analysts playing the roles of general managers.

Gil Brandt still believes in Tim Tebow as a viable NFL quarterback, but he does buy into the notion that John Elway and John Fox might not share his opinion — and that they very well could take a quarterback with the second overall pick in the draft.

As I expected, Marcell Dareus and Mark Ingram did not disappoint Wednesday.

One of the main threads of chatter throughout the NFL Scouting Combine has been about the depth and talent of the defensive linemen, whom coaches and GMs pointed to all week as the strength of the draft. Within that group, the conversation narrows to Nick Fairley versus Marcell Dareus as to who the top interior lineman available has been.

The first group of defensive linemen is done with the 40-yard dash, so we have some unofficial times to pass along.

There’s no rest for the weary. We’ve reached Day 5 of the NFL Scouting Combine, and many of the draft’s top prospects along the defensive line and at linebacker will work out at Lucas Oil Stadium.