Dak wrote:

I thought the O-line for the Cardinals did enough to open some holes for their RB and did a good job picking up the blitz.

I thought the opposite of the Rams’ O-line. Hill didn’t have a lot of time to set up and find open receivers, and I don’t know if there were a lot of open receivers. Arizona’s blueprint of hitting the QB all game and winning in the 4th quarter worked again. That bad pass to Bailey that could have gotten the Rams into Cardinals’ territory was a result of a game of pressure and hits … when he had a chance to finally burn Arizona, he threw the ball quickly and was inaccurate enough that Bailey couldn’t pull in the pass.

The defense was fine. I’ll take 12 points every time, especially when they were put in some very tough situations by the offense and had to be on the field so much.

you nailed it. Rams didn’t run block well….and the Cards did…

this allowed the Cards to run a balanced offensive attack.

the back breaker was not scoring the TD when they had 1st and goal in the 4th….

Next year, with Bradford and Quick, with this existing D, the Rams will be a force to be reckoned with.

Rams defense was great back then, very underrated.

They pitched at least 1 shut out every year from 1973 to 1979.

1973 2 shut outs
1974 2 shut outs
1975 1 shut out
1976 1 shut out
1977 3 shut outs
1978 1 shut out
1979 3 shut outs, the 3rd in the NFC Championship game.

they didn’t hold anyone scoreless again until 1985, when they did it twice, to KC and Dallas, unfortunately they got skunked against the Bears in the NFC Championship.

I think that would be a great trade for the Giants.

A young hungry QB with that has not taken a pounding in the past 1 1/2 seasons for a QB that has thrown 40 interceptions and 11 fumbles the past 1 1/2 seasons…

Sam is what the RAMS have been missing this year, not Eli Manning.

Cap hit would also be bigger with Eli than with Sam, even before Sam re-structures his contract.

Maddy wrote:

Some running QBs figure it out. Steve Young was too quick giving up plays and resorting to the run early in his career. Run-first type QBs need to become run-when-they-have-to type QBs. It worked out for Young.

I heard Young talk about this on his weekly segment on local SF radio. Sid Gillman tied Young’s legs with a rope to avoid Young from scrambling.

SY: Well, I was throwing the ball a lot (at BYU), so I had some concepts that were taught to me by (quarterbacks coach) Mike Holmgren in college. But I also ran around like crazy. Ironically, it was in the USFL with (Hall-of-Fame coach) Sid Gillman. People don’t remember that Sid Gillman was my coach. He was an old crotchety guy, but he was the first one to basically say, ‘You can’t just run around.’ … I remember, he literally tied my feet up. He got a rope and said ‘OK, you can’t go anywhere. What are you going to do? You can’t move. What’s your next plan?’ So that got me thinking about that.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 5 months ago by joemad.

this link has a vid on Burwell thoughts on Washington’s team name….

BTW, when Washington played SF a few weeks back in SC, there was protests out side the stadium.

Burwell Vid = http://www.stltoday.com/sports/football/professional/senators-to-nfl-change-redskins-racist-name/article_0c235df6-4c64-51cb-a41b-988a03593e3e.html

Burwell a Washingtonian, and fan of the team, no longer used the team name.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 5 months ago by joemad.

I liked all the divisional games from 2012. I wasn’t sold on Bradford and Fisher at the beginning of 2012, but they ended up undefeated against the NFC west that year.

The game that sold me the most on Bradford and Fisher, wasn’t even a victory, it was the tie in SF… (Rams had 2 OT games against SF that year)

The Rams had a 3 game losing streak, just coming off a 45-7 loss to New England in the UK, and were facing a very good SF team with Alex Smith that just lost the NFC Championship the year before… there was no chance in hell that the RAMS would win….. they didn’t win, but they didn’t lose either.

Rams knocked Alex Smith out of San Fran and opened up the Kraperdick era.

Bradford and the RAMS played very tough that day in a pretty hostile environment, Bradford impressed me that game, tough as nails.

1st play in OT, Bradford hit Amendola with an 80 yard bomb that was nullified by a horrible offensive alignment penalty, the flag was dropped after crybaby Harbaugh lobbied the refs… turned out, the call was not correct.

Each team missed FGs in OT….

It was the only tie game that I have ever attended at any level of play.

these were pretty good

Good to hear that the NFL did not fine the players, I hope the RAMS won’t fine nor suspend them either.

Folks need to remember, the police doesn’t “control” the RAMS, nor does the police “control” the NFL.

some cool photos GRITS, wish I was there with you.

BBQ Turkey on the Weber Charcoal grill…. been doing it for the past 18 years for every Thanksgiving and almost every Christmas…….. BTW, On Christmas of 98, my wife when into labor with kid #2…. the bird was left unmanned on the grill and never made the dinner table.

for the past 4 years, we’ve brined it overnight before putting it on the grill.

Home made neck and giblet gravy (my own simplified Emeril Legasse recipe)

Garlic mashed potatoes

Smoked ham

Tossed green salad from the bag.

homemade stuffing with sausage, (not linguicia)

and of course, canned cranberry sauce with the indents from the can.

Kid #1 has been vegetarian for the past 4 years….any veggies ideas besides the bean and rice staple that you may have WV would be greatly appreciated.

BTW, Over the years, I created my mathematical cheat sheet below on grilling the perfect turkey, based on weight: I have found that a 12 lb turkery is the most optimal to brine and grill on the charcoal grill.

10 lbs = 120 min
11 lbs – 130.62 min
12 lbs = 141 min
13 lbs = 151.125 min
14 lbs = 161 min
15 lbs = 170.625
16 lbs = 180 min

# 2 and # 3.

Fisher stuck with Austin Davis too long.

and to think, just 3 weeks ago, there wuz doubts about “Greg The Leg”….

URL – http://theramshuddle.com/topic/greg-zuerlein-needs-to-be-replaced/

he was one the key’s, if not the key, to victory last week…

GREG IS THE MAN!

PA Ram wrote:

Rivers is playing hurt.

Bad ribs or some such thing. He’s a tough guy but if the Rams hit him and hit him?

Yes–the Rams CAN win this game.

But as a Rams fan I know that what you see this week may not look like next week. I HOPE they win. But I’m not making any bold prediction.

hurt his knee yesterday and was able to play through it….

I won’t be surprised if we see Clemens next week.

wv wrote:

========================================
LOOK, MA, GREAT HANDS! L.A. receivers Flipper Anderson and Henry Ellard are mama’s boys

by RICHARD HOFFER

Originally Posted: September 10, 1990

HENRY Ellard and Willie (Flipper) Anderson may produce more
electricity than the Hoover Dam when it comes to catching a football.
But off the field, these two Los Angeles Rams don’t generate enough
juice to jump-start a toaster. Low voltage? Anderson, who at least
has a nickname, is so far out of touch with his celebrity that on the
rare occasions when he indulges in nightlife he sallies forth to
sleepy San Bernardino, not Los Angeles. Mostly he hangs out in Chino
Hills — a development so thoroughly suburban it could be from the
Nick at Nite lineup — and trades Nintendo games with the
neighborhood kids. Ellard, who once had a tag (he was known as
Grasshopper at Fresno State), likes to cap a perfect day with a stop
at a fast-food restaurant. Actually, a perfect day for Ellard would
be making a fast-food pickup without stopping, as he speeds home to
Fresno, Calif., in his fast car.

Flipper and Grasshopper. Remember when players were known by their
urban street names? Apparently, these are less flamboyant times in
the NFL. Now our heroes are likened to helpful porpoises and athletic
insects. But forgive these two guys for their astonishing
ordinariness. They are, by their own admission, both mama’s boys;
Anderson is as likely to check with ”Mom-Mom” on the relative
merits of Bible translations (”Just stick with the King James,
baby,” she tells him) as Ellard is to surprise his mother with an
Eldorado. There is not much that can be done with mama’s boys. Nor,
in this case, much that needs to be.

”Mama did good,” says Rams quarterback Jim Everett. ”Besides,
they’ve got great hands.”

They’ve got great hands, legs, feet, hearts — all the parts
necessary for world-class pass catching. Last season, Anderson’s
second and Ellard’s seventh with the team, they combined for 2,528
yards receiving. The idea that two Ram wideouts could have topped
1,000 yards in the same season, first time ever on this club, ought
to alarm the rest of the league, which had its hands full when L.A.
coach John Robinson was doing his Woody Hayes impression. But now,
Ellard and Anderson give a team long known for Eric Dickerson running
off tackle — about 38 times a game — a quick-strike offense.
Anderson, who caught 44 passes for 1,146 yards, led the NFL with an
average of 26 yards per catch in ’89. Ellard, with 70 receptions for
1,382 yards, ranked second with a 19.7 average, a career high.
These numbers do not suggest blandness to opposing cornerbacks.
San Francisco 49er Ronnie Lott, one of the best at defending the
likes of Anderson and Ellard, knows what he’s going to do if Anderson
ever appears to be duplicating his performance against the New
Orleans Saints last season, when he caught 15 passes for an
NFL-record 336 yards. ”I’m going to call timeout, walk off the
field, out of the stadium and into the parking lot,” says Lott.
That Ellard and Anderson are causing such excitement in the league
is not entirely their doing. Robinson, who was known as ”28-sweep”
when he was producing tailbacks at Southern Cal, and as ”47-gap”
when he was calling Dickerson’s number at Anaheim, had long ago
decided the Rams needed to pass in order to win. He just didn’t have
the passer.

So Robinson landed Everett — he was the third player chosen in
the ’86 draft but couldn’t come to terms with the Houston Oilers —
in one of the biggest trades in club history. And in ’87 he hired
offensive coordinator Ernie Zampese from San Diego to update the
Rams’ passing game. Soon the 5 ft. 11 in., 182-pound Ellard, who made
All-Pro in ’84 as a punt returner, began getting reminders from
Zampese that he had entered the league as a wide receiver.
”This Coach Zampese came into the film room one day,” Ellard
recalls, ”and said, ‘Henry, you’re an All-Pro receiver. You got a
chance to catch 60, 70, 80 balls.’ ” In reply, Ellard did his Travis
Bickle impersonation (”You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me? Cause
there’s no one else in the room.”) and finally said, as gently as he
could, ”I don’t know, Coach. I just don’t see how that can be
done.”

By the ’88 season — with Zampese’s system in place, with
Everett’s beginning to flower and with Dickerson’s carrying the ball
for the Indianapolis Colts — Ellard caught a team-record 86 passes.
The Rams were forever changed, but Robinson is not without a
lingering regret. ”Part of me still wants Henry returning punts,”
he says.

Ellard was 1988’s surprise. Anderson was 1989’s. Although he had
caught Troy Aikman’s passes at UCLA, which should have qualified him
for some extra attention in the ’88 draft, Anderson was not
considered to be much of a pro prospect. One service that rated
college players for the draft had him 16th among wide receivers,
behind even Don McPherson, who was a quarterback at Syracuse.
Robinson claims to have coveted Anderson all along, but the fact is,
Anderson was the Rams’ fourth pick — and their second at wide
receiver. ”We thought he’d slide,” Robinson says. ”We didn’t think
Aaron Cox would.” All the same, Cox, a first-round pick out of
Arizona State, started ahead of Anderson their rookie year.
Anderson didn’t much care, though. ”I was in the NFL, just kind
of amazed to be a professional,” he says. ”Practice every day, no
school, money in your pocket.” Do you have the picture of a guy
wandering around Anaheim with a goofy grin on his face? Everett
remembers Anderson in his rookie year this way: ”A guy learning to
talk and chew gum at the same time.”

Last year Anderson worked so hard in the preseason that Zampese
was using him as an example of team dedication. It was embarrassing,
of course, but Anderson was well prepared when Cox hurt his hamstring
in a preseason practice and Flipper became a starter opposite
Ellard. Still, it was Ellard’s show and Anderson didn’t figure to
catch too many more balls than the 11 he had pulled in the year
before. ”Henry was having a great year,” Anderson says, ”and I was
only catching two, three balls a game.” All the same, he allows,
”Most were for big yardage, leading to scoring drives.”

Anderson certainly wasn’t as reliable as Ellard, whose precision
routes, in a passing offense where timing is prized, remain a marvel.
”Every step has a purpose,” says Everett of Ellard. Anderson is six
feet and 172 pounds, and his gift seemed to be speed, although it’s a
speed nobody can agree on. Everett calls it ”a gangly speed.” Steve
Axman, who was UCLA’s offensive coordinator, says, ”It’s a stiff
kind of speed.” Lott says: ”Well, it’s speed, but not burner-burner
speed.”

Whatever kind of speed, it was not a speed particularly impressive
to Anderson’s coaches or quarterbacks. And the fact that he was never
exactly where he should be when he should be did not increase
anybody’s confidence in him. Yet Everett discovered that Anderson
somehow got to the ball before anyone else. ”He’s got a Charles
Barkley attitude,” Everett says. ”Every ball belongs to him.”
Robinson was impressed with ”the enormous number of catches he made
with the guy right on him. He has the speed to threaten the defensive
back but more than that, he can time the ball and go up and get it.”

The rest of the league got a good example of Anderson’s timing
last November, when the Rams played the Saints at the Superdome. The
Friday before, Ellard had injured his hamstring, and the entire
offense was plunged into doubt. ”I mean, I’d been having some big
games with Henry,” Everett says. Ellard was, in fact, on a 100-catch
pace. ”So I’m wondering, Who’s going to pick up the slack. But then
we got into this rhythm.”

There hasn’t been so much syncopation in New Orleans since the
arrival of Dixieland. Anderson, who had caught only 19 passes in the
first 12 games of the season, says, ”I felt like Michael Jordan
scoring 60 points out there.”

Late in the game, Ellard, an interested bystander, came by to tell
Anderson he was approaching the NFL record for yardage in a game,
which happened to be held by Henry’s best friend and Fresno neighbor,
Stephone Paige of the Kansas City Chiefs. ”Some best friend,”
sniffs Paige, managing a laugh now.

”It’s funny,” says Everett, ”but on the final play before the
winning field goal, Aaron Cox and Flipper are running the exact
same pattern. I throw to Flipper, he catches. Yet when I looked back
at film of that game, I see that Aaron was 10 steps ahead of his man
and Flipper was double-covered. Sometimes you feel like you’re
throwing a football through the tire of a Hyundai, but that day, with
Flipper, it felt like throwing a ball through the tire of a John
Deere tractor.”

This is no longer the surprising development it once was. Both
Ellard and Anderson are now, according to the hard-to-please Zampese,
”legitimate,” high praise indeed from Zampese. Everett, if he was
skeptical at first, can now imagine himself throwing the ball into
the Grand Canyon. Neither Ellard nor Anderson doubted their
particular destinies. Both were raised to believe they were special,
although Ellard has fallen somewhat short of the U.S. presidency his
mother had predicted back in Fresno.

”Well, that’s what she says she wanted,” Ellard says, ”but she
always sensed something about me, always knew I’d end up doing
something different. She picked up on that and kept me in line, kept
me levelheaded, as if for a purpose.”

Perhaps his mother, Margaret, didn’t truly believe Henry would be
president, but she was positive he wasn’t going to play football.
None of her boys — there were five (and three sisters) before Henry
came along — were allowed to play any sports. Sam Lane, Henry’s half
brother, says his mother’s involvement in The Church of God and
Christ, ”a holiness church, very strict,” prohibited fun and games.
”But when Henry was seven, I saw him do a gainer off this truck
inner tube we used for a trampoline. I figured he had some athletic
talent.”

Lane, 15 years older, began working out with Henry, throwing a
football to him in the street. Henry definitely had talent. Lane
talked their mother into letting Henry play a little Pop Warner.
Margaret, who had divorced Henry’s father, Jeremiah, years before,
worked a late-night shift as a registered nurse to hold the family
together, and because she could not rule her kids the way she liked,
it was successfully argued that Henry’s reckless energy might be more
safely harnessed at football practice. ”She began to see the sense
of it,” Lane says.

Still, it was slow going. Henry remained so small that when the
neighborhood kids saw him come home from practice, they assumed he
was the equipment manager. He cried to his mother every day, certain
he was going to be ”a shrimp” all his life. In fact, though he
did grow, he wasn’t a starter on a team until his junior year in high
school.

Track seemed the more likely sport for him. By the eighth grade he
could jump his height (5 ft. 6 in.) and long-jump 17 ft. 2 in.. At
Fresno State, where he specialized in the triple jump, he bounded to
a world record of 56 ft. 5 1/2 in. into the wind — now do you know
why he was called Grasshopper? — only to be topped a few days later
by Willie Banks. Ellard still wonders what he could have achieved if
he had devoted himself to the event. On the other hand, ever since he
watched Bob Hayes fly down a sideline, he knew which sport was more
important to him.

At the time, hardly anyone who dreamed of playing for the Dallas
Cowboys thought of going to Fresno State. But it was important to
Ellard to stay close to his mother. ”Just hooked on my mama,” he
says. He lived at home, though he tried dormitory life for one
semester. ”Too crazy,” he says. Fresno State was a wide receiver’s
delight, and Ellard got all the balls and attention and home cooking
he needed to ensure his being drafted in 1983 by the pros.

And once he collected on his first NFL contract, Ellard tried to
buy his mother a new house. She resisted, so he refurbished the old
one. (He later talked his mother into moving into the first house he
bought in Fresno.) Then he bought a new Eldorado and put it into her
garage. ”Her eyes lit up,” he says happily. (Of course, he owed her
a car; as a junior at Fresno State he had pointed out a 1972 Gran
Torino and she had quickly produced the financing for his first
automobile.) And all the while, he and the rest of Margaret’s
children conspired to marry their mother off to — guess who? —
Jeremiah. ”Storybook ending,” Ellard says of the recent remarriage.

Henry and his wife, Lenora, have a five-year-old son, Henry Jr.,
and a three-year-old daughter, Whitney, but he has never really left
his mother. He built a 5,000-square-foot house near his mother’s
house in Fresno, and during the season he travels the 250 miles
between there and Anaheim in his customized Mercedes as if it were a
local commute. He likes fast food and fast cars, his only weaknesses.
”Three and a half hours,” he says, of a drive that should take
longer. ”But I know where the patrol cars hide.” When he’s running
his routes, nobody can touch him.

Anderson at least has moved away from home in Paulsboro, N.J. But
he is no more removed from the influence of ”Mom-Mom” — Helen
Hamilton, the maternal grandmother who, with her husband, Robert,
raised him — than Ellard is from his mother. ”She worries about me
out here,” says Anderson, almost embarrassed. ”She tells me to
watch out for the women, and when I’m in a bar, to watch my drink.
It’s still funny when she talks to me about drinking. And Saturday
nights it’s always, ‘You’re going to be in church tomorrow?’ ”
Hamilton might well worry about any environment less holy than her
household, or her Faith Tabernacle Church, where she is pastor to
”100 faithfuls.” Imagine her anxiety with Flipper in L.A. ”You do
hear so much of what goes on out there,” she says.

But Anderson can adjust to any environment; just check out his
childhood. Anderson’s mother, Verna, was just 15 when he was born,
and she had ambitions of going to college. As she pursued them, the
family settled into an unusual arrangement: Flipper and Verna were
closer to being brother and sister, while Helen, even then a pastor,
assumed the role of mother. (Verna is now a devoted fan, who, through
her job at an airline, has been able to travel to most of Flipper’s
games.) Anderson’s father, Willie Anderson Sr., who is now a minister
in nearby Camden, N.J., remains in close contact with the family. And
Flipper, raised by grandparents in a stew of seven uncles, considers
it all to be as ordinary as Ozzie and Harriet. For the record, none
of these people nicknamed him Flipper. That was done by Aunt Pearl, a
distant cousin of Flipper’s, who thought his crying sounded just like
the critter then popular on TV.

Church was less a problem for Anderson than it was for Ellard. His
grandmother’s charismatic faith allowed sports, providing they could
be played in the few hours when Sunday school, church services or
revival meetings weren’t going on. At Paulsboro High, Anderson
somehow fitted in wrestling, sprinting, basketball and, of course,
football.

Anderson has tried to recreate this environment in a subdivision
of starter homes well beyond the L.A. glamour that his grandmother
worries about. There isn’t so much church, and only his
three-year-old daughter, Shardae, by a former girlfriend, visits
regularly. Otherwise, his life is as wholesome as his grandmother
could hope for. After workouts, Anderson blocks out the hours from
noon to two for All My Children and One Life to Live (”Got to see my
stories,” he says), naps and then plays golf, a sport he has become
addicted to in just three months. He returns home to cook, using
recipes he learned in his grandmother’s kitchen.

Reports of this modest life, relayed back to Paulsboro, reassure
his grandmother, who can’t help worrying whenever the kids are out of
sight. And there are so many to keep track of. Hamilton is the
natural mother of 13 and has raised nine other children who were
family or somehow wandered into her care. A boy with a ”bad break”
had dropped by that morning. He may or may not stay; it’s up to him.
”I wish I had a house with 20 rooms,” she says. One ”bad boy” she
took in is now a youth minister. Others, from broken homes, ”kids
nobody cared about,” have come and gone on to college or become
successes in one way or another.

For example, Flipper. ”All my children made me proud,” she says.
Mama’s boys always do.

http://www.si.com/vault/1990/09/10/122612/look-ma-great-hands-la-receivers-flipper-anderson-and-henry-ellard-are-mamas-boys

Of all the Rams teams I’ve followed since I was kid, the mid to late 1980’s Rams were my favorite, specifically, the brief Dickerson era with Jim Everett. It’s too bad that Jerry Rice and Joe Montana where in the same division.

Underrated teams, underrated defenses, and underrated coaching staff. Like Chuck Knox’s teams, the Robinson teams deserved a trip to the Super Bowl.

I was interested to see what Austin Davis had, and I’ve seen enough. I’m glad to finally see that Hill is doing what he was brought here to do, replace Kelen Clemens.

Austin Davis is no Kelen Clemens. let’s hope that Hill is better than Clemens was last year just to give us some entertaining football.

I only wish that Fisher made this change to start Hill sooner.

Let’s run table! 7-0 Denver, Chargers, Raiders, Washington, Cards, Giants and Seahags.

The loss last week vs the Cards and the loss against the Cowboys were there for the taking, and Austin Davis didn’t do that. Didn’t do it in Philly either.