How the hell do you people remember all of this?

I can’t remember what happened last week.

I had to think for a few second who they played. It was the Cards, right?

I hope no one is offended by this but it’s just my opinion, of course.

Religion is a crutch that most humans need or seem to believe they need. Humans want a God.

The form that takes for individuals depends on many things but one of those things–by far the largest is where you are born. In other words–most of the time–your religion is handed to you by your parents or your country.

In America–that form is Christianity.

In Saudi Arabia–it’s Islam.

No one in the world is born one or the other. You are fed it from a young age.

So in terms of attraction–it’s a vehicle for you to get to God. You just happen to have the vehicle your parents gave you. How it runs, what’s under the hood–you’ll find out that stuff later–or you won’t really care. It runs–good enough.

How many Christians have ever read the Bible? The video makes the point about people not really knowing what’s in there. And of course as you do gain knowledge you simply ignore the parts you don’t like, and highlight the ones you do.

The Bible, for example–has a lot of weird crap in the OT. People don’t worry about clothes with mixed threads. They laugh at that old law. But that God is a warrior too, don’t forget–for HIS people. He kills or has people kill all in HIS name. Who can say that some future highly charismatic individual pulls that stuff out and creates a sect from it where Christians become radical? The text will never change. People will pick what they want and interpret things as they want to suit their particular needs.

That’s religion.

I often thought that if Jesus came down tomorrow and made a speech on all the networks, that five minutes later Fox news or MSNBC would be ripping him a new one. It would depend on if he said what they wanted to be said.

I approach it more from trying to understand it on the flawed human level.

If someone wants to find peace in the Koran–they will. If they want to find peace in the Bible, they will.

It’s complicated and certainly the bigger problem may be the radical schools that exist in places like Saudi Arabia–where certain interpretations are pushed into someone’s brain from a young age.

There is a push in this country to change history books–to teach religion in schools right next to science. What will that look like one hundred years from now? Is science shoved out the door in favor of the religious text? And what interpretation of the text gets pushed? What version? If America feels threatened it may be the warrior God type version and less the Jesus one.

No one is immune to that.

But maybe it’s a bigger question than just the text and attraction of it for a certain population. Religion is more complicated that that.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by PA Ram.
• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by PA Ram.

And New England isn’t “other teams” plural. All the Patz example (singular) shows us is that if your line becomes a problem, it’s better to have Brady. Other than that, we already know from Rams history alone that when an OL gets damaged past a certain point, it falls off in effectiveness. (See Bulger, 2007-9, which is basically 3 successive years of extensive OL injuries).

Well, you probably will have a different example for any team I would name but the Packers(I know they have Aaaron Rodgers) have had a beat up line this year.

http://espn.go.com/blog/green-bay-packers/post/_/id/25719/packers-get-most-of-offensive-line-back-only-corey-linsley-still-out

I watch different games on GamePass and my ears perk up when I hear announcers talking about this or that team’s offensive line woes. Now is every line as bad as the Ram/s line? Nope.
But everyone deals with it to one degree or another. The Rams are not the only victim to this sort of thing, this year, last year or any year.

And New England, to my recollection won that first game of the season with those three rookies and they played pretty well. Even when the Rams were healthy it didn’t play particularly well.

What I’m saying about the Rams are that it’s always one excuse or another. Bad line, bad QB, bad receivers. Bad OC. Maybe it’s all those things, maybe it is a combination but it is surely someone’s responsibility to get things fixed and it has not happened.

Bad drafting, bad free agent signings? Sure–it plays a role. Saffold’s injury history is no mystery. When you have a round robin of three centers and take the best of the worst bunch, you don’t have anything great there–look how long they held Barrett Jones–why? the guy could never get on the field and when he did he wasn’t anything special. And because of your “elite” LT, drafted 2nd, you have to shuffle the line constantly so someone can babysit him. That’s a circumstance that they have to take responsibility for. They have failed at building a proper line and while we wait for “young guys to develop” or “guys to heal” The defense gets another year older and Gurley gets beat up in the backfield.

I find it an interesting point that Coach O makes about Barnes. And I truly hope he is salvageable. But the Rams need to make some tough decisions on who is salvageable as they build for next year.

At this point they have a lot of offense to build, from the line to the QB to a true #1 receiver. That’s no small feat.

It’s a good question and unfortunately, I don’t have an answer for you.

I personally am not a fan of organized religion. It’s more of a controlling tool for the powerful over the weak. This is not to say I am not spiritual but I think that’s a very personal individual thing. While I love much of the eastern philosophy of Taoism and Buddhism, that too can be warped into a cult with corrupt leaders. All organized religion can.

This is not to say that all churches are corrupt. Many many of them do good charitable work. And in times of personal crises if someone finds solace in the church–good for them. But it should never mix with government or politics. That’s dangerous. Any religion that wants to establish a theocracy is out of line.

I read the Koran once–or at least some of it. And I can’t remember much about it except it’s organized from the smallest passage to the largest, I believe. Jesus is in there but he’s not God. I remember it sounding very much like a text that tried to correct some things in the Bible.

And yes–Muhammad was a warrior.

At the time I was reading it I wasn’t looking for anything specific, I just was curious about it.

I also read parts of the Bible and was shocked with some of the things in there because when I was younger and went to church they didn’t talk much about those things.

I am probably more amazed by how a female could be attracted to organized religion because they don’t seem to take a high view of women.

I do believe that all religions can be hijacked by maniacs. Islamic scholars make this claim in regard to ISIS. I heard one guy calling their interpretation of things “bizarre”. It is a death cult, an apocalyptic cult so maybe it’s unfair to judge all of Islam by that particular group. But clearly there are threads in the different schools that are disturbing.

And yet–there are certainly peaceful Muslims.

I know this doesn’t answer your question. I hope someone can answer it because I’d love to read about that.

One thing that bothers me is that Boras was the tight ends guy and they have not looked too great this year–particularly, you-know-who. Cook’s blocking is abysmal. I just slowed down a play they ran against the Cards on what should have been Gurley running to the outside. Both tight ends don’t block anyone on the play.

ANYONE!

And they have to make the key blocks. Cook literally runs past them.

Did he think he was going out for a pass?

Boras did not straighten out that situation.

This feels more like a “somebody has to fall on the sword” move than an actual attempt to upgrade the situation. I don’t think they can at this point. But…we’ll see.

They’ve discarded Foles and Cignetti.

We’ll see if that’s enough to get to average or at least–not horrible.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 1 month ago by PA Ram.

I remember when they made this pick I wasn’t thrilled.

I wanted Watkins but if they were going to go OT I was okay with Matthews. Yes–they raved about Robinson’s upside but at least with Matthews you knew what you were getting. While he struggled a bit his rookie season he has had an excellent second year. Robinson is still lost.

Okay–black knight wins.

But I came very close to posting the dead parrot sketch as a metaphor for the Rams. Lol!

Oh what hell:

zn wrote:

PA Ram wrote:

I look at Shottenheimer leaving and the difficulty getting a replacement and I wonder how much of that are OCs feeling boxed in with Fisher’s offensive philosophy

It’s not like Fisher’s “philosophy” (which I think is frequently misunderstood anyway) is rare, uncommon, or strange.

According to the logic you’re using there, no coordinator would want the Seattle job. Or the 49ers job in the Harbaugh years. And so on.

Fact is, the league consists of different offensive approaches, and they all manage to find coordinators.

I don’t buy this idea that what Fisher wants on offense (a balanced attack with play-action and which takes shots and aims at big plays) is all that unique, strange, different, dated, uncommon, or “wrong.”

.

Yeah–I’m throwing a lot of stuff out there, I get that. But why does Fisher fail, time and again–on that side of the football? I guess I’m wondering if he places his OCs in such a tight box that they’re afraid to do anything? When was the last time he had a great offense? I’m guessing the McNair/George era was pretty good for him but I can’t remember if they were top 10. But after that…what has he had on that side of the ball? I’d have to spend longer chasing stats then I feel like right now. But let’s say that his philosophy has nothing to do with it. What about coaching? The line coach? Boudreau? Yes–there are injuries–everyone has them. But this line is an epic fail. Certainly you can expect a dropoff with injuries but this is horrible–and it wasn’t great to begin with. And if it’s the injuries/youth excuse well–than there are questions about player selection–how it was built. It can’t be bad luck every year. It can’t be injuries every year. All teams go through that. I’m beyond that excuse. What is this team doing so wrong?

If you get beyond the broad strokes of injuries, youth, poor QB play—what are the fundamental issues? And who takes responsibility for that? It’s okay for an offense to be average. This offense is so far below average it couldn’t see it with a telescope.

It’s clear that mistakes were made in different areas and are still being made–but I have no confidence–even after another draft and free agency–that Fisher is the guy to fix it. He may be the most overrated coach in the history of the NFL. Who–with his track record–has coached this long?

But I get that he will be back next year–and I give him full credit for building a great defense. But we can’t have half a coach.

This sums up how it has gone this year:

Jim Thomas ‏@jthom1 5m5 minutes ago
Fisher said he literally was asking for place-kicking volunteers when Zuerlein replacement Zach Hocker strained his quad during pregame.

Maybe they should not be punting on 4th down. Maybe they should be going for it. Maybe that’s the key. At least that would stop the 3 and out stuff–break the pattern. They’d be on 4 and out and that might give the defense the rest it needs.

zn wrote:

PA Ram wrote:

So I live with it and can mostly function fine but once in awhile it acts up.

Which is why we have to think about your replacement in the next poster draft.

You are not as useful to us if your arm goes numb and you can’t type.

I mean sure yeah, great posting career and everything PA, but, posting is a “what have you typed for me lately” business.

Just the cold hard merciless truth.

Well, as you know, posting is a young man’s game. Sure–someday I will retire and become a posting analyst, using some sort of speech-to-text system to make comments on things like Nittany’s use of certain adjectives to describe the QB situation of the Rams, or how Zooey historically gets off to a slow start, but finishes pretty well, or how wv_ram’s career has been pretty much on the same track as those French films he likes, or how you will sometimes process birthday notices a little late and it’ll all be good.

And I haven’t completely ruled out getting that nerve burned yet. Pennsylvania posters are like quarterbacks—hard to replace. i like to think of myself as the Nick Foles of the board.

I have a pinched nerve in my neck and it affects my arm from time to time. I’ve had a shot in my neck and that helped but every now and then I still have some weakness or numbness or some pain. It sucks. At one point they suggested they could burn the nerve which didn’t sound like something I’d want to do.

So I live with it and can mostly function fine but once in awhile it acts up.

Not with Nick Foles in the driver’s seat. He’s already beaten them once. I’d be surprised if they show up for this beatdown.

I tell you though–in all seriousness–if the Rams win only one more game this year I hope it’s this one. I don’t think I could stand Arian’s smug attitude if they beat the Rams. Sweep that loudmouth.

I tried reading the book but it was a mess.

I hated it. Considering the way the characters in the book move around and watching what they did with the characters in the film with actors portraying different roles I just scratched my head and dismissed it. Never saw the film.

I don’t mind reading difficult books within reason–but this book went too far for me.

I also skipped “The Martian”. While the book was okay–it was more a technical manual. I am sure the film took a lot of that out and focused on the action but I just wasn’t up for it.

Austin Davis looked like….Austin Davis by the way.

Makes an incredible play followed by complete lack of awareness and ineptitude.

Watching the hapless Browns makes me think: “It could be worse–I could be a Browns fan.”