Rams still in no rush to choose starting center

Nick Wagoner

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/20753/rams-still-in-no-rush-to-choose-starting-center

EARTH CITY, Mo. — More than halfway through training camp and the preseason, the St. Louis Rams are still in no rush to choose a starting center.

According to coach Jeff Fisher, it’s an ongoing process that might not get clarity until the last possible minute.

“It’s going to be a really good race,” Fisher said. “We probably won’t make a decision until the opener or until kickoff.”

One would think the Rams will probably make a decision before they kick off Sept. 13 against the Seattle Seahawks, but in the three-way competition among Tim Barnes, Barrett Jones and Demetrius Rhaney, none have separated from the pack just yet.

Barnes started the preseason opener against Oakland, and Rhaney started the second against Tennessee. Most likely, Jones will get his chance to run with the first team Saturday night against the Indianapolis Colts.

At that point, all three will have had their chance to work with the starting group and the first round of cuts will be made. But it doesn’t mean the Rams will stop the rotation they have going in the middle.

“The thing is, that’s why we wanted to get guys working with [quarterback Nick Foles] every day,” offensive line coach Paul Boudreau said. “We rotate the centers so one period Timmy is working with him, the next period Barrett is working with him and we have been doing it day to day.

“So it really doesn’t matter who the center is now.”

But while it might not matter much now, it certainly will when the season starts. The Rams have been patient with letting the competition play out. Some would argue that approach isn’t ideal to build chemistry on the line, especially since the center is the guy primarily responsible for making the protection calls at the line of scrimmage.

So while there seems to be a lack of urgency to make a decision and settle in with Barnes, Jones or Rhaney, the counterargument to that is rushing into a decision could lead to choosing the wrong player, and then having to start all over again.

Given the relative lack of playing experience among Barnes, Rhaney and Jones, it’s easier to understand why the Rams don’t want to rush into a choice. Barnes is the only one of the three to start a game (he has got four), Jones has only played in spot duty and Rhaney has never appeared in a regular-season game.

Which is why Boudreau is preaching patience while putting a premium on deciphering which of the three candidates is best equipped to step in and handle all of the mental aspects that go with playing the position. Which is why Jones is probably a slight favorite with a chance to bolster his case by playing well against the Colts.

“I have confidence that whoever wins this job is going to be because of earning it,” Boudreau said. “It’s not because of longevity or we drafted a guy. I don’t give a [darn] about that. It’s one of those deals where you get into the game and you want the best five up there. So who is going to keep it all calm, who is going to make the right call and who is going to make us get in the right protections as far as getting in the game and knowing what to do.”

Until the Rams are sure they have the player who can do all of those things, they’re content to keep watching and waiting to make a decision.

Rams mailbag: Estimating Todd Gurley’s impact

Nick Wagoner, ESPN Staff Writer

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/20592/rams-mailbag-estimating-todd-gurleys-impact

EARTH CITY, Mo. — Slowly but surely, we are inching closer to the start of the NFL regular season and the St. Louis Rams’ Sept. 13 opener against the Seattle Seahawks.

After Sunday’s second preseason game, the Rams will be halfway through their exhibition schedule. There’s plenty of time for things to get sorted out until then, but there’s also plenty of questions on your mind so let’s not waste any more time.

As always, you can find me on Twitter @nwagoner. Please use hashtag #RamsMail to submit questions.

RanGotBeatz @Ran_215beatz
Do you really think TG will have the type of impact he’s supposed to have?

@nwagoner: I suppose the answer to that question starts with what your perspective is on what type of impact you believe Todd Gurley is supposed to have. For me, I don’t think we can expect him to come in and instantly become the game-breaker that he was drafted to be. Some of that is a function of his rehab from the knee injury and some of it is from the likelihood that his offensive line is going to take some time to develop.

I expect Gurley to have a very limited role or potentially even sit the first game or two before he slowly starts working his way into the mix. He probably won’t take on a full workload until a bit later in the season. If he comes in at that pace, then I suppose the answer for this year is no. We all know he brings a lot of talent to the table but as with any rookie — let alone ones coming off major knee injuries — there’s always the possibility he won’t pan out and play to his draft status. Gurley is no exception.

Alex Ramatowski @DJRamification
Hypothetical but do you see a scenario where Rams win Super Bowl and still move to LA?

@nwagoner: No, I don’t. And by no, I mean I don’t see a scenario in which the Rams win the Super Bowl. Yes, crazier things have happened and the Rams even won their title in 1999-2000 as a major surprise,so we know you can never say never, but this is just too far-fetched to me. But to get to the heart of your question, the Rams’ record will have very little to do with whether they stay in St. Louis or go elsewhere. If they win and attendance is high, it won’t hurt St. Louis’ case to keep the team. If they lose and nobody shows up, it won’t help St. Louis’ cause. But neither will be much of a deciding factor. This decision will be made by 32 owners that first and foremost want to make the decision that increases their own bottom lines and offers the best long-term option to keep that bottom line improving.

Seger Mounce @ciggyyy
With EJ Gaines going down, do you think the Rams will keep Brandon McGee or Imoan Claiborne?

@nwagoner: As of right now, I don’t really see how one could make the case to keep McGee. He’s barely played or practiced in nearly a year. Claiborne has flashed some ability in the preseason and camp, and as I wrote back when they signed him, he’s one of the undrafted rookies with the best chances to make the roster. That doesn’t guarantee anything though. He still needs to perform and win the job, and it would help him if he can prove capable on special teams. And the Rams could always surprise and keep just four corners. That’s not many but they’ve done it in the past and they could go heavy at safety. With the many nickel permutations they have available on the roster, that’s not out of the question.

Nicholas Zuckerman @NZuckerman79
Is Isaiah Battle going to see much playing time or start this year? I don’t think he played at Oakland

@nwagoner: He played and had his ups and downs. As you’d expect, he’s a serious work in progress in pass protection, but he shows signs of being a very good run-blocker. He’s not going to start this year, barring some major injury issues, and playing time is probably a similar situation. First things first, he needs to make the roster. I expect that to happen, but the Rams are going to have some tough decisions to make come cut-down days.

Jerseyram1 @Rdvez1
Is this a make or break season for Fisher/Snead, especially with all of the RGIII resources they have had to rebuild?

@nwagoner: As I’ve said and written in this space many times, I don’t believe that’s the case. I understand and even agree with those who believe they should be under a lot of scrutiny going into this year, but the sense I get from Rams Park is that isn’t the case. Of course, things are always subject to change and a really awful season might change some thinking, but with another year left on their deals and the potential for relocation on the table, it seems the Rams are committed to the patient approach.

Baltimore and the Four Pillars of Football Success

How does a team remain good for the long term? The Ravens have undergone a massive makeover since their Super Bowl win in February 2013 but have stayed solid where it matters most—with an owner, GM, coach and QB all committed to the same goal and on the same page

by Peter King

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/08/05/nfl-baltimore-ravens-formula-success

OWINGS MILLS, Md.—Late on a recent practice morning at the Ravens’ training camp, newness was on display. It’s not a one-season makeover here, but a continuing cycling-through the roster while remaining competitive. Rookie wideout Breshad Perriman, with a twisting catching of a Joe Flacco throw deep downfield. Maxx Williams and Crockett Gilmore alternating with the ones at tight end. Timmy Jernigan and Carl Davis starring in the defensive-line rotation. Kyle Arrington, the New England import, starting as the slot corner.

Watching on the sidelines, I began to wonder, Two-and-a-half years since the Ravens won the Super Bowl, and this team looks so different. How different is it?

A little research, with an assist from PR aide Patrick Gleason, revealed that 17 of the 22 Baltimore starters from the Super Bowl 47 victory over San Francisco are not here. Ninety players in camp. Only five current Ravens were on that Super Bowl team: guards Marshal Yanda and Kelechi Osemele, quarterback Joe Flacco, and linebackers Terrell Suggs and Courtney Upshaw.

The secondary, mostly wiped clean. The defensive line, gone. Virtually every skill player—Torrey Smith and Jacoby Jones and Ray Rice and Bernard Pierce—gone.

“Well, San Francisco’s had a lot of change from that game too,” GM Ozzie Newsome said.

True. But not as much—the Niners have seven of 22 starters from the Super Bowl in training camp this summer. And there’s one other big difference: The Ravens are in position to contend for the Super Bowl. The Niners will be hard-pressed to make the Super Bowl this year. San Francisco is a great example of a very good team hitting a bump in the road and struggling to keep the car out of the shop.

Not Baltimore. This is year eight of a run that just might have five or six prime seasons left. That’s what’s so special about what this franchise has built. The Ravens are not afraid to say goodbye to solid contributors via free-agency or trade—Haloti Ngata, Arthur Jones, Pernell McPhee, Torrey Smith, Corey Graham, Dannell Ellerbe—because of the draft picks that come Baltimore’s way either through trade or from the compensatory-pick system. And there are four other reasons:

Steve Bisciotti.
Ozzie Newsome.
John Harbaugh.
Joe Flacco.

What do consistently good teams have in common? An owner who empowers his staff and gives the personnel side and coaches the resources to win. A general manager who can take the slings and arrows of change, who can keep his front-office staff together and who can work well with a strong-minded head coach.

A coach who doesn’t have to buy the groceries, but who wants to at least push the cart down the aisle at the store, and who can keep good assistants together and command a room, year after year. And a quarterback in mid-prime. Flacco is 30, has started every Ravens game since 2008 and looks to be immune to injury. Plus, he laughs at distractions.

“The most important thing I’ve learned about this level of football is to always be open-minded,” Flacco said. “Things change. Coaches change, your receivers change. Have a good attitude about it. Be open to change. I actually don’t mind it. Last year we had [offensive coordinator] Gary Kubiak, and he was great to work with. Now Marc Trestman comes in, and there’s stuff I’ve learned from him that has made me better. So change is really not a bad thing.”

Arrington, the former Patriot, sees the common elements of long-term successful teams now that he’s been a Raven for the preseason. “It starts at the top,” he said, “from the owners and front office and coaches, good leadership and a consistent quarterback. If you have that, and everyone has the same attitude, then you can plug different guys in and still win. It’s proven.”

But there’s something else. It’s something important, and it has torn asunder relationships on teams that looked to have the four important men at the top.

It’s about staying in your lane. One major factor on teams that have a strong coach and quarterback and have remained good for a long time is that people take care of what’s asked of them and don’t worry about other people’s responsibilities. Interesting little anecdote: At a hotel in New England during last year’s playoffs, I saw a sticker on the front door of a hotel with the Flying Elvis logo and the oft-repeated words of Patriots coach Bill Belichick: “Just do your job.” In New England, “Just do your job” has become a pop-culture mantra, and Belichick is the yogi.

Last week at Steelers camp in Latrobe, Pa., I asked coach Mike Tomlin about the Steelers’ perennial success, and about the franchise’s unparalleled coaching stability—if Tomlin finishes his current deal in 2018, it will mean three men will have coached the team over 50 years. Tomlin was clear about why that’s happened. “With the Steelers, we have very few questions organizationally about the division of labor,” Tomlin said. “They just don’t exist. There is total clarity there. And when you have total clarity there, you can focus on the things that matter. We waste very little time creating challenges because of our comfort, our continuity, our clarity.”

I got plenty of hate from western Pennsylvania last winter when I suggested thatJohn Harbaugh reminded me of Chuck Noll. The venom was spewed because Noll won four Super Bowls and coached the Steelers for 23 years. Harbaugh has won one NFL title and coached the Ravens for eight years.

The era is different. Noll fit Pittsburgh perfectly, and there was no question that he would stay with the Steelers for the long haul. He passed endorsement deals off to his players. He had zero interest in fame. There is no reason to think, in this age of egos and multimillion-dollar career advancement, that Harbaugh would be a lifelong Ravens coach. He may well leave at some point, or get fired because teams are more impatient these days.

I cannot say that Harbaugh will be in Baltimore for 23 years. But I can say that he stays in his lane. I have seen him doing so—and I have seen others in Baltimore stay in their lanes when Harbaugh gets bull-headed about something that he feels is important. And ultimately, they all get along well—and seem to genuinely like each other.

Harbaugh is a good coach for this era because of his mindset entering camp each year, which he relays to his players. “Every year it’s the same,” he said after this early-camp practice. “Basically, ‘This is a football.’ That’s how we start camp, how we start every season. That’s the Vince Lombardi way. Don’t assume anyone knows anything. With so many new people every year, that’s the way it has to be.

Harbaugh brought up the famous Bill Parcells quote about coaching—“If they want you to cook the dinner, at least they ought to let you shop for some of the groceries.” He respects that opinion but doesn’t agree. “To me it’s not the best way to do it,” he says. “Ozzie and I, we’re shopping together. We’re buying the groceries together. Two heads are better than one.

The thing I’ve learned is neither guy is going to throw a trump card on the table. The times Ozzie and I have disagreed vehemently on things, I walk in the next day and I say to him he’s probably right, and he says to me that he sees things my way a little bit. You have to have that in this job to succeed.”

Words to live by—and win by—today in the NFL.

Rams notebook: Barron is working his way back slowly

Joe Lyons

http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football/professional/rams-notebook-barron-is-working-his-way-back-slowly/article_8ec0f020-579f-54d8-a9bb-e83ec336978f.html

Rams safety Mark Barron is not ready to push it just yet.

“I’m fine. I’m just trying to be careful, to make sure I don’t back-track,’’ he said following a recent practice at Rams Park. “I had surgery on the same knee a couple of years ago and I’m just trying to be patient. It’s tough not being out there because I love playing this game.

“Training camp is definitely important, but the main thing is making sure you’re ready for the start of the season.’’

Barron, a fourth-year pro out of Alabama, did not take part in organized team activities early this summer and spent the early days of training camp working on the side with team trainers. He has upped his workload in recent days but does not know if he will see action Friday when the Rams open their preseason schedule against the Raiders in Oakland.

“The preseason means different things for different players,’’ the 25-year-old Barron said. “It’s important to get out there because you want to play and try to get better. But you also want to be smart about it, especially if you’re not ready physically.’’

Barron, who was drafted seventh overall by Tampa Bay in 2012, was acquired by the Rams in October in exchange for fourth- and sixth-round draft picks. He made two starts and played in nine games with the Rams last season, finishing with 23 tackles (16 solo), three sacks and a pass defended.

“It was an adjustment, most definitely, but the guys here helped make the transition pretty easy,’’ said Barron, who started all 37 games he played with the Bucs. “Of course, I’m even more comfortable now, but even last year, coming in at midseason, I felt comfortable from the start with these guys.’’

Defensive coordinator Gregg Williams took advantage of Barron’s size (6 feet 2, 213 pounds), strength and versatility to add some interesting wrinkles down the stretch last season and has even more plans for 2015.

“We didn’t ask him to do some of the things last year that we’re asking him to do this year,” Williams said. “We’re trying to learn more about him and, you know, he’s also going from the bottom floor all the way to the top floor, learning the entire defense now. He did a great job in what we asked him to do last year. Now can we do more?”

Barron added: “In some ways I know what to expect, but Coach Williams, he always seems to have something different up his sleeve. Being in my first camp here has been a learning experience, but it’s going good, it’s moving forward.

“It’s a great defensive unit with talent from top to bottom and I think we’re all looking forward to seeing what we can accomplish this year.’’

PRESEASON TV CREW set

Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk and Rams Pro Bowler Torry Holt will again join veteran play-by-play man Andrew Siciliano on the broadcast team for Rams’ exhibition games.Siciliano and Faulk are teaming up for the fifth consecutive year, with Holt as part of the team for the third straight season. The sideline reporters are St. Louis sportscaster Martin Kilcoyne and new StLouisRams.com reporter Dani Klupenger.For the seventh consecutive year, KTVI-FOX 2 will serve as the flagship station for the Rams in the preseason, airing games Friday against the Raiders in Oakland as well as home contests against the Indianapolis Colts on Aug. 29 and the Kansas City Chiefs on Sept. 3. Fox Sports will nationally broadcast the team’s preseason game Aug. 23 against the Tennessee Titans in Nashville.

With the exception of the Tennessee game, the Rams’ preseason games will be re-aired by KPLR 11 at 5 p.m. on the following Sunday.

MINORITY COACHES visit

The Rams had four visiting coaches in Earth City to take part in the Bill Walsh NFL Minority Coaching Fellowship, which provides opportunities for minority coaches to observe, participate and gain coaching experience. The group included Regi Trotter, a secondary coach from Missouri Western, and Southern University wide receivers coach Chris Coleman, who were with the Rams for OTAs.Kenny Holmes, who played for Jeff Fisher at Tennessee from 1997-2000, was here for the start of camp but has returned to the University of Idaho, where he coaches the defensive line. The only coach still in camp is Kade Rannings, an offensive line coach from the University of Montana.RAM-BLINGSEarly-afternoon thunderstorms may have been a factor as the Rams drew 876 for their next-to-last training camp workout in Earth City. Camp will wrap up Tuesday with a practice to start at 5:30 p.m.Another sizable group of players sat out Monday’s practice: DE Chris Long, DT Doug Worthington, CBs Trumaine Johnson, E.J. Gaines and Brandon McGee, RB Isaiah Pead, TE Brad Smelley, LB Kory Toomer and OL Cody Wichmann.

Running back Tre Mason and safety Maurice Alexander dressed out after missing the last couple of workouts because of injury but did not do much.

Marcus Roberson, a second-year cornerback, is getting a lot of work with the starters.

There is no news on Gaines, who left practice after being stepped on late last week; Fisher said that the second-year cornerback from Mizzou is seeing a foot/ankle specialist.

• Visitors at Rams Park on Monday included NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport and USA Today’s Lindsay Jones as well as scouts from the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League.

http://bigthink.com/neurobonkers/the-real-miracle-of-acupuncture-that-anyone-still-believes-in-it

The Real Miracle of Acupuncture: That Anyone Still Believes In It

by SIMON OXENHAM

Unlike plenty of other mystic beliefs, the practical nature of acupuncture has the benefit of making it readily falsifiable through the form of a sham study. In a sham study we can compare genuine acupuncture, in which real acupuncturists provide treatment, to sham acupuncture in which researchers go through the motions, randomly poking or randomly pretending to poke their patients with needles. More research has been done into acupuncture than practically any other kind of alternative medicine, yet the evidence from thousands of studies points conclusively to the fact that acupuncture, at worst, is completely ineffective and, at best, is no more effective than a placebo. Astoundingly, the benefit of acupuncture is so poor that in plenty of studies, even compared to no treatment, the benefits of acupuncture are practically impossible to notice.

In 2013 David Colquhoun wrote a fascinating and damning review of the evidence against acupuncture in the journal Anesthesia & Analgesia. It is often alleged that acupuncture is an ancient medical practice that has been refined and revered for thousands of years. In reality acupuncture is indeed an ancient medical practice, but it has in fact been in decline for thousands of years. In 1822 it was actually banned from the Imperial Medical Academy by Emperor Dao Guang. It wasn’t until 1966 that it was revived by Chairman Mao Zedong, but even he didn’t actually believe in it. Mao stated: “Even though I believe we should promote Chinese medicine, I personally do not believe in it.” Yet despite all these obstacles, acupuncture has resurrected itself in the 21st Century, in a Western world that has (arguably rightly) become fearful and suspicious of mainstream medicine.

“There is now unanimity between acupuncturists and nonacupuncturists that any benefits that may exist are too small to provide any noticeable benefit to patients. That being the case, it is hard to see why acupuncture is still used. Certainly, such an accumulation of negative results would result in the withdrawal of any conventional treatment.” — David Colquhoun

At this point in the conversation, plenty of otherwise perfectly rational people will often say something along the lines of: “Yes, it is clear that any effect is completely due to the placebo effect … but so what? Surely, the benefits of the placebo effect are better than doing nothing at all.” Indeed, as we are only now beginning to understand, the placebo effect is so powerful that it still works even when you are fully aware that an intervention is only a placebo.

Here’s a tip for arguing with people that aren’t entirely rational: If they use the word “surely,” you can be pretty damn sure that whatever they say next is likely to present you with a massive hole in their argument. The simple answer is that all medicines involve a placebo effect. Acupuncture and other alternative medicines are not somehow unique providers of the placebo effect’s wondrous power. This is why for a genuine medicine to be approved, it must not just be better than nothing; it must be shown in a placebo-controlled trial to be more effective than a placebo. This principle is the very foundation of modern medicine. Indeed, any randomized, controlled trial worth its salt will not just test against a placebo, it will test against the next best alternative treatment (but that’s a subject for another post).

Despite the wealth of evidence debunking acupuncture, we continue to see poorly conducted trial after poorly conducted trial popping up, with credulous claims from journalists in otherwise sane publications.

“Almost all trials of alternative medicines seem to end up with the conclusion that more research is needed. After more than 3,000 trials, that is dubious. … Since it has proved impossible to find consistent evidence after more than 3,000 trials, it is time to give up.” — David Colquhoun

Recently, plenty of newspapers fell hook, line, and sinker for an extraordinarily laughable acupuncture study on, wait for it… rats. After I’d finished chortling at the idiocy of trying to test acupuncture’s effect on pain on anything other than a human, I downloaded the paper, which The Guardian breathlessly described as: “the strongest evidence yet that the ancient Chinese therapy has more than a placebo effect when used to treat chronic stress,” almost as if more evidence than no evidence is somehow a claim that deserves some kind of medal.

Before we launch into a full-frontal takedown of this paper (don’t worry, it won’t take long), let’s first consider the fact that any surrogate outcome study designed to support particular claims made by acupuncturists is pretty much entirely pointless before acupuncture can be shown to be effective, i.e., actually reduce symptoms. The fact that the study was conducted on rats takes the study out of the realms of the foolish and into the realms of the downright ludicrous.

The study consisted of bathing rats in ice baths for an hour per day for 14 days and running current through the rats’ with electrified needles, as if this bears any relation to what happens in your high street acupuncture clinic. Surgeon and author of the outstanding Respectful Insolence blog, David Gorski, examined the study in admirable detail before suggesting an alternate explanation for the results:

“Having a needle stuck in the leg and having current run through it hurts less than having a needle stuck in the back and having current run through it. There’s no way of knowing because we can’t ask the rat.”

I don’t have much time for critics of animal trials for life-saving treatments, but this is a trial that animal rights activists might want to take a serious look at. It is inconceivable that bathing rats in ice baths and jabbing them with electrified needles for the purposes of justifying a Chinese medical practice debunked hundreds of years ago could have any possible productive outcome. It certainly doesn’t tell us anything useful about acupuncture, except maybe that certain acupuncture scientists have even less of a clue what they are doing than we ever gave them credit for.

http://www.phillymag.com/birds247/2015/05/26/bradfords-acl-what-are-the-odds/

…

To get a better understanding for the situation, we spoke with Dr. James L. Carey, Director of the Penn Center for Advanced Cartilage Repair and Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. From Dr. Carey’s vantage point, does the fact that Bradford is coming off two ACL ruptures make it more likely that he will sustain a third?

“No,” he replied. “In my opinion, I don’t think that he’s at an increased risk for a third injury any more so than his other knee or the knees of any other NFL quarterback.”

The odds of re-injuring the same knee are relatively low. According to Carey, studies have shown that the probability of re-tearing a reconstructed ACL is about three to six percent. (Those studies were on the general population, not just football players. But they line up with other findings that suggest the chance of a recurrent injury to the same knee amongst NFL players within two years is about five to six percent.) Meanwhile, the probability of tearing the other knee — or the “native ACL” — is higher, around nine to 12 percent.

“You would think the reconstructed ACL would be more at risk. And it’s really changed our behavior a lot in how we treat these athletes when they return to play,” said Carey. “For example, bracing used to be pretty common after ACL reconstruction. At this point, I guess the question is: which knee do you want to brace? The other knee is actually at a higher risk in general.”

The reason for the lower odds? Part of it, Carey theorizes, is that the tissue used to reconstruct may be a little bit bigger than the native ACL. If the original ACL is seven millimeters, say, it might have been replaced with a nine millimeter graft, so there’s more give. Also, because of all of the attention that leg receives during rehab, it’s not uncommon for patients to feel that the reconstructed side is the stronger of the two.

Bradford turned out to be part of that three-to-six percent group that ruptured the same ACL twice. What to make of it? Carey likened an ACL tear to pulling out a kitchen drawer just hard enough that it jumps off the rails and hits the ground. Oftentimes, you fix the stop, put the drawer back in its grooves and the issue never comes up again. But in some cases, the same elements come together and the drawer pops back out.

“I think it’s just kind of one of those freak deals,” said Bradford at his introductory press conference. “From everyone I’ve talked to – our team doctors in St. Louis, Dr. [James] Andrews, they just thought that it was one of those things where they felt like I got hit a certain way two times and regardless of whether my ACL was an original, a repair, it was going to tear. So I think it just happened.”

“We’ve done our due diligence in terms of talking to Dr. Andrews in terms of what we are getting,” said Chip Kelly. “So we feel very confident in where Sam is.”

While the chances of a re-tear are pretty low, Carey said that athletes that have had multiple ACL ruptures in the same knee are at greater risk for cartilage damage and arthritis. So there could be some long-term effects down the road.

Bradford’s injury history goes beyond ACLs, of course. He missed a chunk of games in 2011 with a high ankle sprain. Was sidelined most of his junior season at Oklahoma with an injury to his throwing shoulder that eventually required surgery.

At some point, don’t you have to say that a player is injury-prone?

“I think it’s mostly the environment that the athletes are in,” Carey opined. “In football, there are a lot of ankle sprains and ACL ruptures. It’s part of the nature of the game. I think all of the athletes are vulnerable to these injuries — it’s part of the game — but I don’t think that any one athlete is systematically more prone to these injuries than any other athlete, really.”

Though there can be contributing factors, from style of play to training. Kelly puts a big focus on the latter, as we know, utilizing sports science and personalized regimens to try and maximize output and reduce the chance of injury.

To that end, Carey cited the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons’ findings that “neuromuscular training programs could reduce ACL injuries.”

“Basically for every 109 patients that they treated, they prevented one ACL,” said Carey, who added that such programs have the best chance of preventing non-contact injuries. “So I think there is a benefit. Between the preseason and training camp, the Eagles probably touch about 109 players, and they can save an ACL. And in a game like the NFL, which is a game of inches and seconds, boy, one player can be a huge thing.”

Especially if that player turns out to be your starting quarterback.

Chip Kelly, football’s most intriguing figure, is also its most unknown

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/footballs-most-intriguing-figure-chip-kelly-is-also-its-most-unknown/2015/07/24/e65e4b72-3086-11e5-8353-1215475949f4_story.html

On a Monday afternoon nearly two years ago, a woman in her mid-forties settled into a long Metro ride, Dupont Circle to Landover, bound eventually for FedEx Field.

Jennifer Jenkins hadn’t been to an NFL game since she was a little girl, football making so much noise during one part of her life that for a long time she tuned it out. But this day in September 2013 was different: Chip Kelly was coaching his first NFL game, his Philadelphia Eagles playing the Washington Redskins.

Kelly, 51, coaches football in a way that calls attention to himself, but he keeps much of his life off limits. Even the profiles that have been written give little sense of him away from the field, apart from the occasional mention of how he is a lifelong bachelor, seemingly married to the game.

Wearing neither team’s colors, Jenkins reached the stadium that afternoon and an old friend from her native New Hampshire pushed a ticket into her hand. She found her seat near the 50-yard line, behind the Philadelphia bench, surrounded by the hopeful, the jeering and the curious.

A while before the game, she pulled out her cellphone and sent a text message to the Eagles’ rookie head coach, the man who had been her husband for seven years.

‘A different kind of weirdo’

The most interesting man in football walks through the doors at Eagles headquarters, toward an outdoor lectern. It is late May, and more than 100 reporters have gathered under a tent.

During the next 13 or so minutes, Kelly will be asked about the action-packed way he spent his offseason: engaging (and prevailing over) former general manager Howie Roseman in a front-office power struggle, trading away quarterback Nick Foles (who passed for 40 touchdowns the past two seasons) and acquiring Sam Bradford and Tim Tebow (who appeared in a total of seven games the past two years), and dealing with former Eagles running back LeSean McCoy’s suggestion that Kelly has spent the past two years pruning “all the good black players” from Philadelphia’s roster.

“I’m not governed by the fear of what other people say,” Kelly says, and his first 30 months as an NFL coach have shown even more proof of that. Since that debut game at FedEx Field in 2013, the Eagles have parted ways with more than half of the players who suited up — including McCoy, wide receiver DeSean Jackson and guard Evan Mathis, with their combined eight Pro Bowls.

Kelly is sarcastic and dismissive of reporters; he declines most every interview request, including one for this story, and refuses in any forum to answer questions about his personal life. His family has been ordered to keep quiet in public about Kelly, and Mike Zamarchi, the coach’s longtime buddy, says Kelly’s friends are “sworn to silence.” Players, too, are kept at a distance, and so are fellow coaches: Mike Bellotti, the former Oregon coach and athletic director who was Kelly’s boss for three years, knows little more about Kelly than that he hates green vegetables and loves beer. “I’m not sure I would consider that I know Chip,” Bellotti says.

There are holes in the Kelly story, unanswered questions and mystery that have grown his legend as much as anything. His middle name is absent from many public records, and even Mark Saltveit, who has written two biographies of Kelly, has had trouble accounting for a six-year period of Kelly’s life, between his final game as a college player at New Hampshire and his graduation from the school.

After one of his four seasons as Oregon’s head coach, Kelly spent part of one summer by running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain; later a story circulated that his 6,300-square-foot house in Eugene contained little more than a couch and a television. It was bizarre, but because it was Kelly, it was also believable.

When he took over the Eagles, players saw his quirks and emphases up close. Kelly asked them to supply daily urine samples, to document their sleep and heart rates, to practice while a network of speakers blared drill cadences and favorites from Ricky Martin or “The Lion King.” “There’s plenty of weirdos in the NFL,” one of Kelly’s former players says. “He’s just a different kind of weirdo.”

Who, it should be pointed out, led Philadelphia to the NFC East title that first year. In the time since, Kelly has been called a genius and an innovator, a narcissist and a cowboy, a revolutionary and a racist. It’s possible his act will get him fired, but because it’s Kelly, it’s just as believable he’ll win multiple championships. “Every time I’m talking to him,” the former player says, “I’m standing there wondering what the hell he’s thinking.”

‘He likes to ask why’

Jenkins was a senior at New Hampshire when a friend introduced her to Kelly on Thanksgiving day in 1989. The Manchester city football championship was that day, a reason to celebrate no matter the winner, and so she and Kelly, four years older than Jenkins, talked for a long time.

He was 25 and shy, but when he spoke his words were thoughtful and energetic; football was more than a passion — even then, as Jenkins put it in a recent telephone conversation, the game was a “way of life” for Kelly. He was ambitious and bright, the son of a trial lawyer who believed in challenging the establishment, one of four brothers, a young man determined to leave his mark on the world.

“I don’t know when he became inquisitive, but I know he likes to ask why, and I know he likes to understand why things are happening,” says Bob Leonard, who coached Kelly as a high school player. “Even as a kid he was like that.”

Jenkins and Kelly kept seeing each other, she learning that he was a reader but had no patience for fiction; he read self-improvement books before it was trendy, and his impatient intellect led some people to mistake him for aloof. Jenkins stayed in New Hampshire when Kelly took his first college coaching job in 1990, working with the defense and special teams at Columbia University, but after two seasons he was back home.

A few weeks before Kelly’s first game as New Hampshire’s running backs coach, his name spelled “Chip Kelley” in the school’s 1992 media guide, he and Jenkins stood in front of about 250 guests and married. “A great party,” Jenkins says now, and it is around this time that she wonders if she should continue. She figures Kelly wouldn’t like her sharing all this.

Difficult to define

At Oregon the coaches learned that a good way to kill a conversation with Chip Kelly — in the football offices, on the golf course, over burgers and beers — was to expand the discussion.

“In terms of football, he’s awesome; he’s willing to talk about anything,” Bellotti says. “But beyond that, he does play things very close to the vest.”

Nick Aliotti, who spent six years alongside and under Kelly as the Ducks’ defensive coordinator, can’t remember one conversation in which the men talked about family. When Bellotti elevated Kelly from offensive coordinator to head coach in 2009, Kelly asked Bellotti, who became Oregon’s AD, to continue making public appearances and meeting with boosters because Kelly didn’t like making small talk. Bellotti, who has spent all his life on the West Coast, figured that’s just how people from the Northeast must be; Aliotti assumed the disconnect was because he’s nine years older than Kelly — and that Kelly is acerbic and unyielding. “I like the guy a lot,” Aliotti says, “but he can piss you off.”

There was no doubt, though, that the man knew how to coach, keeping players motivated and challenged. At New Hampshire, he might run the single-wing offense one game and the spread the next; to mix it up, one week the Wildcats attempted six passes, former New Hampshire quarterback Ryan Day says, and the next they threw it 65 times.

Kelly relied on efficiency — more offensive plays means more potential for points — and thought about ways to simplify a complex game. One way was abandoning long and nonsensical play calls; one season at New Hampshire, he nicknamed deep routes after long-distance phone companies: “AT&T” meant the pass was going to the A receiver, “Nextel” bound for the X.

He experimented with concepts and plays, took an interest in sports science, and refused to change. Aliotti once confronted Kelly about running practices too fast; the Ducks’ defensive staff had little opportunity to coach players and make adjustments. Kelly didn’t care. Now Aliotti admits Kelly’s attitude and increased tempo forced the defense to adjust, helping shape Oregon into one of the nation’s most feared all-around programs.

“He was never afraid of what people thought or afraid to fail,” says Day, who’s now the Eagles’s quarterbacks coach.

Players on Kelly’s first Eagles team saw their new coach as a look into the NFL’s future — but also as something of a curiosity. He had seemingly come out of nowhere, having never been a head coach before 2009 and spending most of his career in the relative anonymity of the Atlantic 10 Conference.

Kelly’s first impressions showed a coach who spoke often about being quick and efficient, but also a man unafraid to spend hours cycling through PowerPoint slides about the effects of alcohol, marijuana, sleep and water on an NFL player’s body. It seemed Kelly valued each morning’s urine test — plastic specimen cups waiting in locker stalls, jersey numbers written in black ink — as much as how a player performed during practice or a game.

“He wants guys who care about that stuff,” Eagles tight end Brent Celek said, “because that stuff does matter. A lot of the guys who are in our facility think the same way.”

Kelly backed up his methods with science and commitment, but what some saw as a revolution, others saw as misguided. One NFL player compared Kelly with Elon Musk; another referred to the coach’s methods as “Orwellian.” Regardless, each day players were greeted at the team facility by screens revealing who had completed the morning routine — an iPad soreness and mood survey, the results of a heart-rate monitor, and of course the urine test — showing players’ head shots and a background that turned green when the daily assessment was completed.

“Most people were very receptive to it, [but] some guys were like: ‘What are we doing; why are we doing this?’ ” a former Eagles player says, adding that as quickly as players learned how to cheat the hydration test, adding a splash of water from the urinal, Kelly ordered the system revamped to discourage diluters.

Kelly was approachable and, many times, jovial. But like at Oregon, his emotions and background story were largely out of bounds. Players pondered Internet rumors about their coach and wondered aloud about his psychological chemistry. “I don’t know if he was always the underdog or something or if his parents were always hard on him,” the former player says. “But it’s always like he’s got a chip on his shoulder.”

It had become common to wonder about the truths in Kelly’s life, and when he made those unavailable, the convenient response for anyone in his orbit was to accept legend as fact.

Why such a secret?

In 2011, Jenkins read an article in the New York Times that described bachelor coaches and how, even in the image-conscious and political world of college football, Kelly had never been married.

“Why does everything say that you weren’t married?” Jenkins said a friend recently asked her. “I just roll my eyes.”

It used to hurt, she says, as if seven years of her life had been washed away. But now she finds the humor in it. Jenkins’s former co-workers knew the real story, and a friend joked about calling a sports radio show to reveal that the friend had been in Kelly’s wedding party. After enough strangers told Jenkins they didn’t believe her, she began carrying a wedding photograph on her iPhone. “Nobody talks about it,” she said. “But everybody knows.”

Why, Jenkins sometimes asked herself, was this considered a secret? It didn’t seem like one to her, and if it was, the artificial intrigue was either the most NFL thing ever or the most boring secret of all time. The truth was no more scandalous than Kelly’s middle name (Edward) or how he spent those six years between playing at New Hampshire and graduating (coaching junior varsity football, Jenkins said, and working as a gym teacher as he slowly completed his degree requirements).

As for the marriage, the years had simply come and gone in New Hampshire, Kelly an assistant on his mentor Bill Bowes’s staff and Jenkins working at the university. They lived in Durham for a while, and then Kelly took a coaching job at Johns Hopkins, moving to Baltimore for one year while Jenkins remained in New Hampshire.

Kelly rejoined Bowes’s staff yet again in 1994, and four years later he and Jenkins had begun to drift apart. They were no longer living together, and in 1999 they divorced.

Football, as the most important thing in Kelly’s life, was a strain, Jenkins admits. But the game cannot be blamed for the demise of their marriage. Like many other things in Kelly’s seemingly complicated life, reality was simple: For a long time they were happy, and then after a while, they weren’t.

“It wasn’t his fault because he was focused on football,” she said. “That’s just not the way we’ve ever — that’s not it. That’s not what happened.”

She took a breath.

“We were just young,” she said, preferring to keep the details to herself.

Back into the breach

A few days from now, a quiet patch of land near the corner of South Broad Street and Pattison Avenue will come to life. Ninety players will file into the Eagles’s training complex, equipment will be moved onto the practice fields, and the results of a dramatic offseason — led mostly by the actions of a private man and daring coach — will soon begin to reveal themselves.

Will Foles and McCoy be remembered as foundation blocks or expendable pawns? Was it wise or foolish to cut ties with Mathis, the guard named to the last two Pro Bowls, and sign John Moffitt, who spent the past two years retired from the NFL and facing criminal charges? Has Kelly, who now possesses full control over Philadelphia’s football operation, taken on too much responsibility?

“You start chasing perception,” Kelly said during that standing-room-only news conference in late May, “and you’ve got a long life ahead of you, son.”

For a few weeks, Kelly disappeared into the silence, returning to New Hampshire and his summer home — a football man passing the days until it was time to return to work. One day in July, a text message popped into Kelly’s phone. Jenkins does this sometimes, a joke she thought Kelly might like or, because she’s superstitious, the same note of encouragement she sent the last time the Eagles won. Even at the end of their marriage, she said, they have remained friends.

Jenkins is 47 now, living most of the year in Washington; she started a care package business called MommaLu Remedies, and like Kelly, she has never remarried. These last two years or so, Jenkins has, for one identifiable reason, found herself supporting the Eagles.

“I want him to win. I want him to be successful,” she says. “It’s everything that he has worked for.”

Sometimes Kelly texts back immediately; other times days or weeks come and go. Jenkins knows he’s a busy and complicated man, probably off somewhere trying to answer the most glaring question: Can he make the leap from football’s most interesting man to one of its most successful?

Next Sunday, after seven months of intermittent noise, hopeful and curious players will push through the doors and flood the practice fields. Kelly will jog onto the turf behind them. Then the speakers will fire up, the football season beginning, music and instructions so loud nothing else can be heard.

Earl Thomas unsure he’ll be ready for Week One

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co…arl-thomas-unsure-hell-be-ready-for-week-one/

After Seahawks safety Earl Thomas had surgery to repair a torn labrum in his shoulder in February, word was that there was “no doubt” he’d be ready to play when the Seahawks open the regular season.

The lack of doubt was a bit surprising given the six-to-eight month timeline given for a full recovery from the surgery and it seems that the passage of time has allowed some doubt to creep into Thomas’s head. Thomas told Ed Werder of ESPN reports that while he is making steady progress in his rehab from the surgery, he’s not expecting to be cleared for the early portion of training camp and that he’s uncertain about his status for the season opener against the Rams in St. Louis.

“I’m unsure about everything at this point,” Thomas said. “I will find out more when I get back to Seattle on [July] 30th when I take my physical.”

That’s obviously not ideal for the Seahawks given Thomas’s importance to the team’s defense, but it would be far worse to rush in hopes of getting back for Week One if taking a more patient approach makes it likelier that Thomas will be 100 percent for a greater number of games.

With almost two months to go before the Seahawks take the field for the first time in the 2015 season, there’s plenty of time for Thomas’s status to become more certain and it will surely be something they’re watching closely in Seattle.

Key Rams for 2015: Offensive tackle Greg Robinson

Nick Wagoner

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/19610/key-rams-for-2015-offensive-tackle-greg-robinson

EARTH CITY, Mo. — Before the St. Louis Rams report for training camp next week, we’re taking a look at five players returning to the team who will need to provide more if the team is going to be a playoff contender in 2015.

We continue with offensive tackle Greg Robinson.

Why more is needed: It’s probably not fair to Robinson to expect him to become one of the primary bedrocks of the offensive line in just his second season, especially given how much of a learning curve he had when he entered the league. But he was the No. 2 overall pick in the 2014 NFL draft and many would argue that draft position alone should bring expectations for production right away. No matter where you come in on that discussion, though, there’s no doubt that the Rams need Robinson to take a big step forward this season. That’s because, despite starting just 12 NFL games, Robinson is the second-most experienced projected starter on the team’s offensive line going into the year. Adding more pressure to the job is the fact that Robinson plays the most important position on the line and will be responsible for new quarterback Nick Foles’ blind side. Robinson flashed potential as a rookie but was better at guard than he was at tackle after moving to the outside. There’s no denying the size and ability that Robinson has but the Rams simply don’t have the time to be patient with him. Robinson had offseason toe surgery but should be at full strength and ready to go when the season starts.

What the Rams need from him: Left guard Rodger Saffold is the only starter on the line with more starting experience than Robinson but Robinson is already in a position where he needs to become a leader for a young line. Beyond that, the Rams need him to play and produce like a former No. 2 overall pick. For Robinson, that means showing rapid improvement, particularly as a pass blocker. Robinson had a tendency to get lost in pass protection, particularly when defensive lines ran stunts and games at him and was also occasionally over aggressive in the run game. The Rams need Robinson to handle talented pass-rushers without having to offer much help and be a hammer in the run game. If he can do that, it would allow rookies Jamon Brown (right guard) and Rob Havenstein (right tackle) and whoever starts at center a little more leeway to get help from tight ends and running backs in pass protection.

Outlook: The good news is that none of the issues Robinson had as a rookie seemed to be physical and were correctable simply by gaining more experience and learning the nuances of the position. Robinson earned praise from the coaching staff during the offseason for his commitment to sharpening up that aspect of his game and Robinson said he and Saffold spent a lot of time together studying film and ironing out details. Likewise, Robinson can settle in at left tackle and devote himself to the position rather than bouncing between guard and tackle like he did as a rookie. It seems unlikely Robinson will make the leap to a Pro Bowl level or better but there are plenty of reasons to believe he’ll be markedly better in 2015.

How Do Court Reporters Keep Straight Faces?

These are from a book called Disorder in the Courts and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and published by court reporters that had the torment of staying calm while the exchanges were taking place.

ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, ‘Where am I, Cathy?’
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
_______________________________
ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you sexually active?
WITNESS: No, I just lie there.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?
WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can’t remember which.
ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?
WITNESS: Forty-five years.
_________________________________
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget..
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
____________________________________

ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He’s 20, much like your IQ.
___________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid
____________________________________________

ATTORNEY: She had three children , right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death..
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
___________________________________________

ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I’m going with male.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor , how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral…
_________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?

______________________________________
And last:

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No..
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.

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Though he’s been a member of the Rams for only a short time, quarterback Nick Foles has already made enough of a positive impact to trigger talk of a contract extension.

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Todd Gurley’s rehab from an ACL tear is progressing to the point where the St. Louis Rams running back is eyeing next month’s training camp for his return to the field.

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When the St. Louis Rams used the 10th choice of the 2015 NFL Draft on Georgia running back Todd Gurley on April 30, it might have been the surprise pick of the first round.

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NFL general managers who don’t have a franchise quarterback in their stable are constantly on a quest to find one.

http://www.rams-news.com/which-non-nfc-west-team-will-give-the-rams-problems-in-2015/%5DWhich Non NFC West team will give the Rams Problems in 2015?
There is no question that the St. Louis Rams have an extremely tough schedule in 2015.

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If Nick Foles were to ever go down, Austin Davis would once again have to come in and try to save the Rams’ season.

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Meet Dr. Erin Shannon, the holistic practitioner several Rams and other athletes swear by

By Elisabeth Meinecke

http://www.foxsports.com/midwest/story/meet-dr-erin-shannon-the-holistic-practitioner-several-rams-and-other-athletes-swear-by-061615

ST. LOUIS — In 2011, Joe Buck was having the worst year of his broadcast career.

Early on, he’d visited vocal expert Dr. Steven Zeitels for help with a vocal cord that had been paralyzed from nerve damage. If anyone could fix the problem, it was Zeitels, whose Rolodex of clients, from Adele to Steven Tyler, read like a Grammy awards list. But his prognosis on Buck was bleak: While there were outlier cases, the rule of thumb was if his voice didn’t return to normal in three months, it likely wasn’t going to — ever.

It’s over, the FOX Sports broadcaster thought when he heard the news. Not being able to talk at full volume, in his profession, was crippling. He felt embarrassed and grew reclusive. He didn’t want to talk on the phone. He didn’t want to be social.

That October, however, during the National League Championship Series, Buck ran into childhood friend Dr. Erin Shannon. The two were almost like siblings — they’d grown up in the back of the Cardinals’ radio booth together, he the son of legendary Cardinals voice Jack Buck, she the daughter of the elder Buck’s broadcast partner, Mike Shannon. Now a practicing psychologist, Erin had recently incorporated a form of holistic treatment known as energy medicine into her work with professional athletes and had experienced success helping them rehab from physical ailments.

“I can help you,” she told Buck. “I can fix you.”

Buck, at that point, was willing to try anything. They began a series of noninvasive treatments, and as the major league postseason progressed, so did Buck’s rehabilitation — so much so that by the time David Freese hit one of the most electrifying home runs in World Series history, his call was memorable enough to help capture an Emmy for outstanding play-by-play that season.

“(It) was ironic and weird that I won it for that year because the year wasn’t good,” Buck admits. “But the postseason was really good, and that’s specifically when I worked with Erin.”

He continued sessions with her through the NFL season and visited Zeitels again in early 2012. The doctor took a first look, then a second at the previously paralyzed vocal cord. He was blown away.

“It’s moving,” Buck says Zeitels told him. “It’s fine.”

Buck admits there are still some days even now, three years later, when he’ll struggle with his voice, but that there are other days when he feels it’s even better than before the problem arose. Overall, he feels close enough to 100 percent on a daily basis that he thinks no one would ever notice he had an issue.

“I’m forever indebted to (Erin) for all of it,” he says.

***

Dr. Erin Shannon is a holistic practitioner with more than 22 degrees and certifications in both Eastern and Western medicine, and her ability to help athletes — and yes, at least one prominent broadcaster — recover from injury, or improve the mental side of their game, has drawn players from around the world to seek her help. Some of the toughest guys in the NFL walk through the doors of her St. Louis office, and she’s also treated MLB, NHL, MLS and NBA players, and even MMA fighters.

One of her biggest advocates is husband and St. Louis Rams defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, who has witnessed her success helping athletes heal from injury quicker than their estimated recovery time. Some of her biggest fans are the clients who’ve felt the results, such as Buck.

“She’s got a great diagnostic ability to figure out what’s wrong with somebody,” Buck says. “And, I think, maybe as importantly — or even more importantly — how to fix it.”

The field of energy medicine itself is based on an understanding of the body that’s rarely encountered in traditional Western medicine.

“It is literally the electric energy that runs through our body, just like blood runs through our body,” Shannon explains.

It hinges on the belief in a strong mind-body connection, a common theme in Eastern medicine, and its noninvasive approach, Shannon says, complements Western medicine’s work. She’s well versed in both schools of thought, but it’s the former that has proved game-changing in her work with professional athletes.

One energy medicine service particularly useful to athletes is the ability to maintain strength in their muscles post-surgery, even when they cannot work out. Using visual imagery and energy techniques, an athlete can prevent atrophy and shorten his or her recovery period by as much as 50 percent. So, if they’ve had surgery, say, on their right leg, they can walk into the training room however many weeks later without atrophy in the limb.

“We will cut recovery times in half,” Shannon says. “And recovery is 100 percent, meaning we don’t have weakness in that leg.”

According to Shannon, the process involves releasing the memory of the trauma from the muscle tissue and the fascia.

“I’m about as much science as I can be with it, and I’m about helping people.”

“The body remembers the trauma,” she explains. “The mind might be sleeping from the anesthesia, but those muscles feel you cutting.”

The technique can even help target a nagging health concern that hasn’t required surgery. Shannon once treated a client who’d been cut from a professional team due to a recurring hamstring problem. He’s since played professionally for four seasons (and counting).

Because her approach to an athlete’s health, however, is holistic, Shannon’s treatments generally provide both mental and physical benefits. Rams defensive end William Hayes initially came to her because of tightness issues and lower back pain, but says the sessions make him feel better mentally, too.

“I went to work a lot of times saying, ‘I’m tired today, I’m not going to have a good day,'” he says. “She put in my mind to always say positive thoughts, and when you say positive thoughts, your body actually reacts to it. And I find that to be very true.”

In fact, the common refrain among Shannon’s clients is her help with the mental side of their sport, which they believe many athletes ignore, to their detriment.

“I think so often guys get so caught up in, ‘Oh, I need to lift weights, I need to take care of my playbook, I need to take care of running,'” says Rams defensive end Chris Long, another Shannon client. “Football is such a mental game. It’s such an emotional game as well, and I think a lot of what she does can cross over into that.”

Linebacker James Laurinaitis agrees. He heard about Shannon’s work through some of his teammates and became a client of hers last year. He’s been most drawn to the mental aspect of her techniques, or “mental coaching,” as he calls it, and says he noticed a difference even in training camp.

“I think as an athlete you always have self-doubt in certain areas,” he says, “so having that mental ability to kind of flip your thought process and try to really tell your mind that maybe things aren’t as difficult as you think they are, and don’t be afraid of certain things — I really found myself throughout the year, and really throughout training camp, just kind of using the techniques that she’s taught about really positive self-talk and really getting rid of all the negative kind of baggage that can weigh you down throughout a game.”

Shannon’s husband, meanwhile, sees how guys who earn their pay exuding strength and fearlessness can gain an advantage from having an outlet to purge vulnerabilities.

“Sometimes it’s hard for a guy like that to let the door down and be honest with a coach. Talk about a weakness. Maybe get tears in his eyes,” Williams says. “The fact that she, from a psychological aspect, has been tremendous with these guys on being able to get them through some tough times in their life, some tough days in their life, some tough situations in their life, things they’re going through, has been monumental.”

In addition to the emotional and physical aspects of her practice, Shannon also aids athletes in developing a skill that all superstars in sports have: Instinct.

People often say an athlete is “in the zone” when the player is at peak performance. At that moment, the athlete’s focus, control and ability to anticipate opponents seem almost inexplicable, and thus a cliche phrase covers what observers can’t explain. Often, the athlete can’t articulate it, either.

Shannon can.

“It’s that moment of optimal awareness where time slows down, crowd noise goes away, and you feel your senses heightened,” she explains. “You can feel like you can sense what everybody’s movements are going to be. You can sense the trajectory of the ball. You can feel the wind.”

Just like continuous reps help build a certain muscle group or skill, Shannon’s techniques can strengthen an athlete’s ability to get back to that heightened sensory state, enabling him or her to perform at peak level, again and again.

“The greatest athletes know how to get there, and they can get there all the time,” she says.

If it all still sounds hard to quantify, that’s because it is. Even Shannon’s athlete patients have a hard time articulating what she does.

“You should go in and see Doc Shannon,” they’ll tell one of their buddies.

“Why, what does she do?”

“Just go in and see it, because I can’t even explain it to you.”

***

Originally, Shannon was supposed to be the athlete, not the doctor.

She grew up in St. Louis, the youngest child of Mike and Judy Shannon. Her father’s ability to beat a life-threatening kidney disease at age 30 while playing for the Cardinals helped teach his children that determination could conquer anything. Her mother was the kind of person who always made those around her feel better — “St. Judy,” people called her.

Their youngest daughter, meanwhile, planned to be an Olympic runner, but an injury in high school cost her a college scholarship, her Olympic dreams and, she admits, her identity. With no idea what she wanted to do, the self-described jock enrolled at Loyola Marymount University and became an English major. She took one psychology course, found it ridiculously easy, and was shocked when she saw other kids taking notes in class. To her, the information was almost intuitive — so intuitive that psychology courses became her version of an easy A.

Erin Shannon is the daughter of Mike Shannon, a former Cardinals player and the club’s longtime radio voice.

Eventually, one of her professors, the granddaughter of a famous psychologist, began touting Shannon as a psychology prodigy, which, despite the A’s, stunned her as much as anyone. Shannon ended up switching her major and, per her usual habit of going all-in whenever she decided on something, took so many credits that she was able to graduate in around two years. In masters and graduate programs at Pepperdine, the pattern of ease continued; she tested out of classes containing material she’d never studied before.

Meanwhile, she learned to survive an adventuresome psychology internship in the Los Angeles public school system, which was rife with gang wars. Kids who looked at the young, slender graduate student and thought they had the advantage soon learned otherwise — even the ones who smuggled guns past the school’s security scanners. Raised in the adrenaline-saturated environments of locker rooms and clubhouses, Shannon refused to be intimidated.

She married a St. Louis businessman and, after graduating from Pepperdine, moved back to the city and soon landed a post-doctorate fellowship at Washington University in the psychiatry and genetics departments. She was the school’s first-ever dual fellow in those departments, but upon having her first child she resigned to become a stay-at-home mom.

When her family’s financial circumstances changed several years later, she found herself having to go to work — for the first time — in private practice. At the time, Shannon had no idea what a psychologist earned, or any idea how to set up a business. She gritted her teeth and went about it anyway. She took out a $600 ad in the Ladue News once — even that was more than she could afford — and hoped for the best. She still doesn’t know how, but people started coming.

She became interested in Eastern medicine after it eased her mother’s pain during the last days of her battle with brain cancer. Driven by the memory, and angered that, despite all her medical training, this was the first time she’d been exposed to techniques that may have helped her mother earlier in her illness, Shannon began reading about various forms of energy medicine. Once she started, she kept going, which is how she ended up with 22-plus degrees or certifications combined between her Eastern and Western training.

“You need to stop getting all the degrees,” Shannon says her brother finally told her. “We take you seriously. Stop. You know enough.”

“If I have an addiction, it’s learning, researching, studying,” she says. “And I’ll always do that. I’ll always have to stay up an extra hour and read the newest research article. I’ll always have to learn the newest, best, extra-special thing for my patients, because I feel like I need to know and they deserve the next newest thing, and science will always give us something new.”

After four years of intense research and training in energy medicine, she took on her first sports client in 2011, an older pitcher who’d been having trouble with his arm. She helped fix the problem, and by the end of the following week, her practice was flooded with athletes. Trying to raise six kids, and soon to be divorced, she’d stumbled on a surprising gap in sports medicine. Big-time agents started sending clients. She even had international patients. She found herself sleeping in her office like a gypsy, trying to keep up with the demand.

She made it work. Shannon now balances a full-time practice and parenting responsibilities, and has found new support along the way. On Sept. 28, 2012, she was on her way to a Rams-Seahawks game when she met Gregg Williams. Two years later, they were married.

Still, she remains driven by the memory of her mother’s illness — had she known about these techniques earlier, she wonders, would things be different? Could she have saved her mother? Haunted by the thought, Shannon found a measure of personal healing through determination: She would let no one else suffer as her mother had.

***

As an NFL defensive coordinator, Williams is not interested in fluff science — he’s interested in results. And the results he’s seen from his wife’s work with athletes are impressive. In fact, he admits he’s somewhat awestruck by it.

“It’s amazing on how she’s been able to get some of these guys to bounce back faster from an injury because of some of her methods of energy medicine and holistic medicine that has got guys healthy quicker,” he says. “Obviously, whenever a guy sees that, he’s all in because it’s about availability, it’s about production, it’s about performance, and they have to be on the field to do that. And she’s been able to help that and extend careers and quicken up rehab.”

Rams defensive coordinator Gregg Williams has seen firsthand what his wife’s methods can do to speed his players’ recovery times.

He believes her work is a “missing ingredient” in the NFL, although he’s had players as far back as the early ’90s who’ve used some of the techniques.

“There are a few teams in the league from a psychological aspect that are doing this, and they are doing it and it’s been producing results,” he says. “I do know there are players in every different city that’s out there that understand (energy medicine) and they have been doing this on their own.”

In fact, Shannon — who is currently writing The Warrior Whisperer, a book due out this Christmas, about her practice — emphasizes the history of these techniques while discussing people’s concerns about any religious implications of her practice. She says the ancient Chinese used these methods, and that they’ve been practiced across a variety of religions. She tries to keep her approach as scientific as possible, her main focus being results for the athletes who come to her for help.

“I’m about as much science as I can be with it, and I’m about helping people,” she says. “I’m about anything and everything that I can use to help people. And if it works, then I use it. And this works.”[

Quick Progressing with Shoulder Rehab

Myles Simmons

http://www.stlouisrams.com/news-and-events/article-1/Quick-Progressing-with-Shoulder-Rehab/00539de0-65ed-43e1-a9a2-18b36d03184d

Wide receiver Brian Quick has been working diligently to get back to full strength after suffering a season-ending shoulder injury last Oct. 26 against the Chiefs. While the wideout is still limited in what he can do on the field, head coach Jeff Fisher said on Thursday that Quick is coming along well.

“We’ll have to watch him, keep him out of contact, but he’s running routes against air,” Fisher said. “He’s catching and progressing nicely.”

It’s been a long process to rehab an injury so extensive that it surprised the wide receiver.

“That’s what really kind of got me,” Quick said. “It was pretty bad.”

But he said his mindset has been in the right place to physically recover.

“Anybody can give up and think it’s over,” he said. “I thought the opposite.”

On Thursday, he gave plenty of credit to the Rams’ head athletic trainer Reggie Scott and assistant athletic trainer Byron Cunningham for their assistance in the process.

“Byron working with me this offseason — we came together and worked really hard,” Quick said. “When I say ‘we,’ he put a lot into it. And I definitely came in and put in the work as well.”

The wide receiver said he felt he turned a corner about two months ago, while working through some drills with Cunningham.

“They saw I was coming along a little bit further than expected, so we just went from there,” Quick said.

Now at OTAs, the wide receiver has been able to participate in some positional drills, but he’s not been cleared to do much else quite yet.

“It’s always hard, coming out here seeing these guys work, and you have to sit down and watch them,” Quick said. “You want to be out there so badly, but you have to just be patient. It’ll come.”

The wideout has to be smart with how he maneuvers his shoulder at this point, a task made easier by the trust he’s gained from the training staff. Quick said that he’s gotten hold of how his body will react to different movements he makes on the field, and how he catches balls.

So while there is still no set schedule for Quick’s full return, he said that once it happens, he’ll be primed to make an impact.

“I know that when it’s time, I’m going to be ready,” Quick said.