Now that’s funny, PA!

• This reply was modified 9 years, 8 months ago by rfl.

zn wrote:

But then no one can know 32 teams the way we know the Rams.

Yeah, man, I know what you mean.

But then, we’re not offering information on Raiders and Falcons out there on the web as if we are experts.

I guess I figure that, if you set up as an expert offering information claiming credibility, you ought to know what you’re talking about. Or, at least, know the LIMITS of what you know.

Hmmmmmmmmmm.

I think I agree with the sentiment expressed in the headline.

But I disagree with the approach. Granted–it isn’t Bernie’s approach–he is reporting on PFF and is skeptical on some levels.

I think that it’s a mistake to look at the roster, player by player, and add up the scores to see if the talent level is high. There are too many variables at play. 1 example. Did Barksdale regress? Was he exposed as a poor player when playing next to a stiff? Or was his game distorted downwards playing next to a stiff? Playing on a sound OL, would he be likely to be at least average? I think that’s a damn hard question to answer.

So, to me, it isn’t really about individual players. And I think it’s fair to at least IMAGINE that a number of guys would look better under better circumstances. One more example. I think JJ looks bad playing back, off the WRs. His player personality thrives when he is playing aggressively, in the WR’s pocket. Playing off, he goes passive and is actually encouraged to gamble, hoping to make something happen. In a more aggressive scheme, I would bet he’d make fewer blunders and more plays. But that’s just me.

But this does not lead me to a generally optimistic assessment of the roster’s talent level. I think the headline is correct. The roster remains “short of talent.” But I am thinking of units, not individuals. And to me, the problem is that we still have major problems at key units.

No roster can claim to be solid with the mess we have on the OL. We have 1 proven, solid vet, and Saffold gets hurt a lot. Robbie will PROBABLY be OK, but he is our LOT and he hasn’t done it yet. We have another working man’s tackle, but we don’t know if Barksdale will sign with us. So, even with the 3 guys we might be optimistic about, we have serious question marks.

That leaves 2 key positions with no decent answer on the roster. And it leaves a bunch of back ups who have shown us very little. AND, we have a 10 year history of erratic, often horrendous OL play. Sure, a lot of that is due to injury. Which makes our reliance on Saffold even more questionable. And we have ALSO run a lot of lousy OL out there.

WV is right. Without a solid OL, we ain’t going anywhere this year. But we are AT LEAST 2 significant moves away from having a solid OL. After 3 years of roster building, with draft picks and 2 major FA signings, this ain’t good. You can’t claim to have a solid roster with such a crucial unit this far off track.

Then there is QB. What can I say? We have a very good starter who hasn’t played in nearly 2 years and whose knees are highly suspect. We don’t have ANYONE else on the roster, with the 2 guys from last year unsigned and unimpressive. Apparently, the FA market is piss poor, and the draft promises no better than a developmental project. This is the freaking QB we are talking about. With no real Plan B after a vet FA who can’t be trusted to remain healthy.

On offense, that leaves TE and RB, where we are very good (I believe that Tre M behind a quality OL would be in the Pro Bowl) and WR, where we are improved … but not proven to be even average. Maybe, MAYBE if we solidfy the OL and Bradford stays healthy, the O will come together. Maybe not. And what are the odds, really, of Sam remaining healthy the OL being solid?

On the other, the D is really good, right? Well, the DL is unquestionably good and the DBs have stepped up. But how far? And LB? I dunno? How much is talent limits? How much is scheme? Who knows?

I think we CAN say that, apart from Aaron, Robert, Brockers, and, perhaps, McDonald, we cannot really say we are overflowing with talent. There’s promise there, indeed. And limits and question marks … and who knows?

We’re pretty good on STs. They can make a difference, but a limited one. And Legatron has proven to be suspect in the clutch.

All in all, I think it IS justifiable to say what Bernie said. Our talent is not unquestionably enough to lift us over the hump. After using a lot of draft picks. It is better, not bad, but not enough in itself to get us anywhere. And there is a 3-4 man anchor dragging us down in the OL.

Even without worrying about the lame duck year, it actually may STILL be at least a year of rebuilding early to expect a break through. Year 4 may still be too soon.

Think about that. Or, don’t, if you don’t fancy a really depressing mindset.

I ain’t no draftnik. Whaddo I know?

But IF MARIOTA FELL TO US …

I would conclude that he is a bust waiting to happen. If 9 teams pass on him, many with desperate needs for QB, then I would assume that they are seeing bad things in his game.

Nobody with that high a profile will fall that far without good reason. We saw last year that Johnny Football fell for very good reasons and the Browns were fools for taking him.

I just don’t want him in horns. At all.

Lovie has a chance to do the Rams a great favor by drafting the guy.

You guys are, I think, doing the very best that can be done right now trying to make sense of a bowl of spaghetti. Lots of good thoughts here.

I am note sure why TD is convinced the Rams will stay in StL. That still seems a far-fetched idea for me, given that Kroenke clearly wants LA. But what do I know.

I share Zooey’s concerns about weird swaps of parts of franchises that might undermine the whole meaning of the team. I might be done with the NFL if that happens. I’d sure miss you guys!

Right now, though, I really worry about this upcoming season. I won’t repeat what I’ve said before, but this year is going to be weird: 1) a possibly lame duck franchise 2) trying to break out into playoff contention after a decade in the wilderness. Weird. Very weird.

Imagine the bitterness if the Rams were to, say, lose in the 2nd round of the playoffs with a team clearly on the rise … and then head out to LA leaving StL fans in disgust.

Imagine the strangeness of a playoff game in the Ed with the team about to leave?

You know, if it becomes increasingly clear by, say, midsummer that it will be hard for Kroenke to take the team west, the team ought to begin to reassure StL fans.

If not … well, all concerned might be better off with another year of 7-9. Except of course for die hard Ram fans. But no one cares about us anyway, as Z says.

Herzog wrote:

So you think it’s more of a coaching issue? I personally feel like he has a couple of blind spots, but I am not nearly knowledgable enough in NFL schemes to back that statement up.
Last year I really thought it was the younger players not always doing what they were suppose to. But the last few games made me think it was more than that.

I do think it was coaching. Obviously, that’s a matter of interpretation, and I am in the minority on this point here on this board. Not sure I know of anyone who shares my view.

I felt that Williams’ schemes were frequently unsound, and it cost us. I thought …

He deployed the front 7 in unsound ways that left us vulnerable to the running game and …

He negated our pass rush by playing the DBs off the WRs and conceding way too much underneath

I would also suggest that our defense was not that young. Our youngest contributors were Donald, who dominated, and Gaines, who played very soundly all year. Most of the rest of these guys had been here. We actually had quite a few true vets. Our run D sucked much of the time, and this was under the leadership of J L, who cannot by any stretch be called young.

And this is my real point. Whether or not the problem was Williams, the caution is to NEVER assume that a unit or a player will automatically improve in a 2nd year. Expectations of improvement are so easy to make–“Look for X to get better in a 2nd or 3rd year,” a ubiquitous fan/pundit cliche–but so rarely actually play out.

We ALL expect the defense to improve last year as young players matured under the leadership of a veteran coach. It didn’t happen until the season was effectively over.

Beware of expectations until there is abundant evidence of an ESTABLISHED player, unit, or team. And even then it ain’t no sure thing!

Sorry, just playing out my role as the board curmudgeon.

zn wrote:

Weinke says that taught him each quarterback must be treated differently, and he’s not interested in completely overhauling anyone’s mechanics.

I think this is crucial.

There is in sports a strong tendency to develop a theoretical consensus of the “right way” to perform an athletic task. Then, athletes are judged against that consensus. I think this can be counterproductive in two key ways.

1) A great deal of the evaluation of college QBs that we hear picks at their mechanics over and against a theoretical ideal. As I’ll explain later, I think is can be very misleading. I am not saying mechanics don’t matter. I am saying that personal idiosyncrasies lead to variation in mechanics among successful QBs. It would require a very shrewd eye to accurately perceive the difference between “incorrect” mechanics that impair performance and those that merely reflect the distinctive physical and kinesthetic package of a particular human athlete. The draft assessments we see, I think, are seldom really aware of that distinction. One would hope that a teams’ FOs are making more precise assessments, but league batting averages in drafting QBs are not generally reassuring.

2) Instruction and player development can go badly wrong when they force athletes to emulate a theoretical ideal. If such instruction disregards the athlete’s idiosyncratic athletic makeup, it can do more to destroy performance than to emulate it. I think this is what Weinke is referring to, and it rings true to me. It is surely possible to enhance performance through mechanical adjustments, but it is just as surely crucial to work within the scope of who the athlete is rather than trying to force him to emulate an ideal that doesn’t fit his package.

This is a tricky business, and one faced by performance coaches in various sports: hitting and pitching coaches in baseball, shooting coaches in basketball, etc. I don’t really know much about QBing. But I do know something about golf instruction, and I have to believe that QB evaluation and instruction will have instructive parallels.

Of course, in golf, there is no draft. Players declare themselves pros on their own judgment, and then they compete, succeeding or failing on the score card. Most turn to swing coaches at some point, with varying degrees of success. And it’s in the area of instruction that we can, I think, gain insight into the complex interplay between mechanical correctness and individual performance.

Golf instruction has evolved a theoretically correct swing, albeit with competing models. Talented young people today who are privileged to grow up with Country Club instruction often end up with nearly identical, ideal golf swings, each stage of which has drawn approval from swing coaches. Today, the swings of lots and lots of young guns look pretty much like that of Adam Scott, the pro that the TV announcers advise us all to emulate.

But wait. Consider these names. Bubba Watson. Jim Furyk. Dustin Johnson. Freddie Couples. Ken Green. Nancy Lopez. Raymond Floyd. Lee Trevino. Arnold Palmer. Miller Barber. Walter Hagen. Gene Sarazen. What do they all have in common? Swings that are “wrong” according to the theoretical consensus. All pros, most of them great champions. And all of them “guilty” of habits that most swing coaches attempt to “correct” when they see them in amateur students. Zinger had an impossibly strong grip. Cory Pavin had a remarkably weak one. Many of them take the club back “wrong,” outside or inside the “correct plane.” Hell, Bubba hits the ball falling backward, which is something I cannot even imagine doing well.

They have something else in common. At impact, their hands and club heads are in virtually the same place. They just have different ways of getting there. So what gives? Is the consensus theory “wrong” in talking about the problems that arise from swinging into “incorrect” positions?

Well, it’s tricky. Swinging back and through purely on plane requires minimal adjustments and allows for effective results with the simplest motions. The adjustments necessary due to deviations from the pane are inherently complex and can be devilishly hard to make consistently. A hacker who comes to a pro swinging back excessively to the inside and swinging down across the line will get poor results forever if something doesn’t change. There’s a reason that the pro tries to change the mechanics of that back swing.

And yet, there are pros who swing back to the inside. They then compensate. And the compensation works for a couple of reasons. Properly paired deviations from the ideal can be effective. The pros are immensely talented. And, oh yeah, one other point. The pair of compensations FIT the golfer’s kinesthetic personality. They work for THAT GUY’S (or gal’s) body.

Generic golf instruction preaches the gospel of the ideal swing. But effective golf instruction adapts those principles to the individual. Martin Hall recently had a School of Golf segment which was a rare example of acknowledging that golfers differ. He looked at idiosyncratic swings of great golfers and discussed the compensation that made them work. Take the club back inside, and you need to compensate with a dipping lead shoulder. Take it outside and your outside shoulder must rise. The solution is not about matching the ideal. It’s about making 2 deviations from the ideal that match each other. And Hall has, of late, increasingly been acknowledging that golfers must work with their physical makeups. Each golfer’s swing draws on a wide array of variables–strength, flexibility, mass, height, hands (strength, dexterity). I would argue that each golfer has a particular kinesthetic formula is a factor almost never discussed. “Feel is not real,” and all golfers work within their widely differing feels for the game.

All of this means that generic golf instruction lies … in a key sense. It offers the ideal swing as a universal solution that will make the game easier. But if my body/mind dynamic simply doesn’t work that way—it doesn’t!–trying to tear down my mechanics to emulate Adam Scott will be, quite simply, impossible. If a golfer is to have any success, s/he must work with his/her natural instincts. An effective teaching pro (good luck finding one) will understand what to work with, what can be changed, and the compensations that can work. The goal is to deliver the club head into the ball, and different human beings find different ways to do that. Ask the Natural Golf guys who keep Moe Norman’s legacy alive.

Furyk says that, when he was young, he experimented with a more conventional backswing. It was never natural, something he could trust. So he kept his strange backswing (which feels correct to him) and built in the compensations that allow him to hit balls so well and consistently that he won a U. S. Open. And a good golf coach must work with the individual. Zinger is emphatic: if you meet with a pro and don’t instantly see improvement, quit him or her and go find someone else whose instruction works FOR YOU!

OK, back to football. As with golf, one can formulate a theoretical ideal of passing mechanics. And surely there is merit to this. Bad footwork or hand habits can impair performance. Lots of great QBs probably do display similar techniques. But we can all think of effective QBs who deviated from the ideal. I have hazy memories of Johnny Unitas flicking the ball from a low trajectory. Kenny Stabler tossed darts. etc. etc. Like golfers, QBs are human beings who must perform drawing on a particular kinesthetic package. The test of the QB is getting the ball to a point in time and space, not looking like Aaron Rogers in doing it. There will inevitably be a range of mechanical options for doing that, although, again as in golf, any discipline will likely be needed in making adjustments and compensations.

The point is that, ultimately, a QB must perform out of who he is. And an effective QB coach has to be sensitive to the essence of what made the QB good in the first place. There will be room for adjustments. But, as Weinke says, you don’t tear down a QB’s mechanics for the sake of a theoretical ideal. I am heartened to hear our new QB coach voluntarily display awareness of all of this.

And I hope that the Rams’ assessment of college QBs this year is able to see beyond the theoretical ideal and to evaluate the actual athlete. I have a feeling Weinke will help there as well.

Hoo, boy.

I’ve talked before about how an OL has to project power into and through the block.

Man, this guy does that. I know–it’s a highlight reel. But, what impresses me is that he can move his feet and then explode into the guy with great force. And here’s the thing–he does it to small, fast, athletic guys!

If you’ve never tried it, you have no idea how difficult it is to square up, hits, and extend your block on athletic LBs and DBs who make their living by avoiding full contact. It requires tremendous athleticism. And then to stay on the block through 7, 8, 9 steps … wow. That’s what all OL coaches plead for and seldom get.

This guy is the anti-Jason Smith. Smith moved his feet, but then went narrow and couldn’t project any power. This guy explodes through his man like a focused load of grape shot. Impressive.

Z makes a good point about the meniscus. Dunno if that’s a long term concern or not.

But, Lord, this guy really BLOCKS well! The actual blocking. Incredible.

zn wrote:

“He went through the school justice system,” Smith said, according to the Tampa Bay Times. “He was cleared. He went through our court system and he was cleared. Exonerated.”

Smith said that Winston should be not condemned for the mistakes he made in school.

“They’re bad decisions and believe me, he’s been drug across the mud,” Smith said.

Well, apart from the incomprehensible grammar and mixed cliches …

This is a remarkable level of rationalization.

The school system cleared him. Must be OK.

Man, I am glad we have little chance of drafting the guy.

It’s Brady, yes. But it’s also Belichek.

This is what the guy does. He prepares his team to prevail. He prepared his offense to beat SEA’s defense. How?

By having discipline and patience based on a remarkably simple, yet profound key: go vertically. And take a bit at a time. This isn’t talent, nor is it scheme, per se. It’s just seeing the angle to take to beat what the other guy does well.

That TEAM is ALWAYS ready to maximize its chances of success. ALWAYS.

People talk about QBs lifting teams. Well, a coach like Belichek raises the ceiling of his team–whatever its talent level–a story or two at all times. He gives them an angle to focus on, calls on them to be patient and trust their preparation, and commands discipline and execution.

In the NFL, coaches matter more than any 3-4 players. The great coaches get their teams playing competitive, disciplined football at all times, maximizing their capability.

We’d do well as Ram fans to remember that!

The sense I get from these threads:

The most promising prospects that we are likely to have any shot at would be …

Grayson

Petty

Am I getting that right?

I just listened to the video.

The guy was talking about the Browns somehow getting Sam inexpensively, maybe for a 2nd.

Ridiculous. Utterly preposterous. No freaking way we trade Sam for less than a meaningful shot at a good young QB and other considerations.

We have a fine QB. He is injury-prone, but he gives us a decent shot at quality QB play.

CLE has nothing at QB. They are far more desperate than we are. Which the video was all about.

How that translates to us trading Sam for pocket lint is an absurd notion.

zn wrote:

He just did not always speak of them well, or at least, did not for an instant drop the claims of class superiority.

Exactly correct. He became a politician, Tory, I believe, and retained that aloof attitude of superiority. I don’t think I would like the guy as a man. But as a general … amazing.

That’s what fascinates me about the guy. The entire British military system was the worst sort of aristocratic cronyism. Stories are legion about the inept, fatuous, self-important jackasses who commanded British armies simply because they felt entitled. Wellington himself SHOULD have been a disaster!

By comparison, Napoleon had instituted a merit-based system that allowed young men from the lower classes to rise through the ranks through demonstrations of military skill. That was one of the bases on which Napoleonic gloire was built. The average British officer was not much of a match for the average French counterpart.

And yet … Wellington was just a born general. By some sheer chance, he HAPPENED to have a brother who was the Viceroy of India and inherited command of British troops there. Again, he SHOULD have been a disaster. But he simply excelled, winning major battles against impossible odds.

And, though I am always an Anglo-phile, I should NOT enjoy the fact that Wellington helped the British East India Company squeeze the last ounce of profit out of the sub-continent. But, he is a remarkable guy.

By the way, you mention Nelson. The British navy, like the army, was an aristocracy. It was very hard to make captain without upper class connections.

However, the difference was that the navy required … voyages at sea. Naval officers were required to put time in actually sailing ships, a demanding task in the days of sail. Their levels of technical mastery simply had to be high, and they had to provide leadership under profoundly stressful conditions–maritime weather. So, naval officers achieved much higher, more widespread levels of professional qualification than did army officers. In that sense, Nelson represented a system that tended (obviously, with many exceptions) to produce effective leadership. Wellington emerged improbably from a system that rewarded mediocrity and sloth.

A fascinating era.

Well, that is a point. The networks split the 2 conferences, so I guess that would make a difference.