Daunte available today

Daunte Culpepper held his first press conference as a Miami Dolphin about an hour ago.

I'll be writing an entire story about it in tomorrow's (Tuesday's) paper, but here I'm going to give you the quickie points he covered and some of my take on what he said:

Culpepper said that playing in the season-opener against Pittsburgh remains, "my personal goal," but, "there is no timeline when I'll be ready to play."

That sounds to me like he's backing off comments he made to ESPN in which he said he would absolutely be ready for the start of the regular season, but I don't see that as a huge issue right now because he was walking without a limp and didn't seem to have significant swelling -- at least swelling obvious to the naked eye -- in the surgically repaired knee.

Culpepper will visit Dr. James Andrews, who performed the surgery, later this week for a followup but reported that on earlier visits, Andrews said if he had performed the surgery 100 times, it wouldn't have come out any better.

It was obvious that Culpepper was coached on what to say and not say during this presser because he was asked about the not-nice comments Minnesota coach Brad Childress has made about him lately and Culpepper completely took the high road, saying, "people say what they want to say."

He was asked if the Minnesota game which the Dolphins play Nov. 19 is circled on his calendar and Culpepper called it just, "another game."

Yeah right. The look on his face was telling. He's got that game marked, circled, outlined and highlighted. He wants to make the Vikings suffer that day and I get the feeling he won't be able to contain that feeling very long. Stay tuned.