zn wrote:

There’s a lot of tip-toe-ing and ‘balancing of interests’
talk going on now.
(and there’s lots to balance — San Diego,
Oakland, St.Louis, LA, the NFL, season ticket sales, etc etc)

Exactly WHEN are we gonna know something concrete?
Is there a time-table here? Some dates
where something has to be decided?
Or is everyone going to be in limbo
all during the offseason and season?

w
v

There is no set in advance target date in 2015 that would change anything.

Doesn’t mean things won’t change or clarify or whatever…but there is no set in advance time it must happen by.

well damn

weird team, weird year

Do you think it will affect
the play on the field?

w
v

InvaderRam wrote:

yeah. the rams should be publicly owned. screw these billionaire owners.

So, u are calling for revolution,
then?
“Free the Rams!” ?

w
v

Former Rams Players, Coach Sound Off on Relocation Talk
Brendan Marks posted on January 30, 2015 17:25

[www.insidestl.com]
http://www.insidestl.com/insideSTLcom/STLSports/STLRams/tabid/137/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/16322/Former-Rams-Players-Coach-Sound-Off-on-Relocation-Talk.aspx

CBS Sports 920’s Joe Roderick and Jay Randolph Jr. were in Arizona this week for Super Bowl XLIX and spoke to several former Rams players and coach Dick Vermeil.

The subject of the possibility of the Rams leaving St. Louis came up repeatedly, and we wanted to share each of their thoughts on the topic. Feel free to click on each person’s name to listen to their complete interview.

Marshall Faulk: “I haven’t spoke on this in this manner yet, but I’m going to say it. I’m disappointed that the powers to be in the city of St. Louis waited until now to make a proposal,” Faulk told Joe Roderick and Jay Randolph Jr. “If I was (Rams owner Stan Kroenke), I’d be just as upset. Why do you wait so long? And now we’re looking at this man like ‘oh please don’t take your team.’ It’s a business. That’s how the Rams got there.”

Kurt Warner: “I’m a St. Louis guy and being that the St. Louis Rams are synonymous with a huge part of my history, I want the Rams to stay in St. Louis. I’m also realistic and understand the connection to LA. I understand how it’s a natural fit to take the Rams back there because when we were going good in St. Louis and we’d go out to LA, we’d have a million fans there that followed us. If you’re a player that played in the history of St. Louis, it’d be a shame if a team’s not in St. Louis. If you’re one of those fans that have been a part of that whole thing and, great sports town, to not have a team, I think that’s a travesty too. I just believe and hope that they stay in St. Louis. It’s unfortunate the way it looks like it’s going.”

Torry Holt: “Selfishly I would love to see the team stay in St. Louis. We got some good history there. The city loves the Rams. They show us so much love when we go back. But I understand it’s a business. For Kroenke and a lot of these owners it’s the bottom line. I think moving to Los Angeles for obvious reasons makes sense to him. It’ll be interesting to see how that whole process shakes out. It won’t be an easy process. I know on my Twitter timeline the fans are going crazy.”

Orlando Pace: “Anytime you get to where you win a Super Bowl in the community, all of your football memories are in St. Louis, it means something. You don’t want to be the St. Louis (football) Cardinals, who are really without a home. When we get together we want to be able to come back to St. Louis, celebrate as a team and do it in the community we won. I think everyone who played in St. Louis probably feels the same way.”

Dick Vermeil: I would like to see them stay. I think Stan Kroenke will do what’s best for the team as a business and a team. To me that’s what they are now. If he sees it’s not going to be the best thing for the organization as a company, then they’ll go back there. I hope he doesn’t.

Jack Youngblood: “I didn’t like (former Rams owner Georgia Frontierre) when she moved it to St. Louis. I understood why. I totally bought into that. The thing of the stadium is the big issue. To have a house that can fascilitate a franchise and a Super Bowl. I see where Kroenke is going…I think the govenor of Missouri should be given at least a chance to listen to what he wants to do.” (Youngblood talks more about St. Louis stadium situation)

Adam Archuleta: “I grew up here in the desert…so when I went to St. louis it was a bit of a culture shock. And I got to be honest I didn’t like it, I didn’t enjoy it. But then as the years went on and especially when I left I started to say, ‘OK, that’s what was special about St. Louis, that is a really cool, really unique town.’ I wish I would’ve taken more advantage of playing there quite honestly. I think St. Louis is a great town. I think if the Rams do move to Los Angeles it would be unfortunate. I think the fans in St. Louis are great fans. I think they deserve a football team. But I also undertand the economic part of it as well. When you’re a business owner…if the city can’t compete…I do understand where they’re coming from. St. Louis certainly deserves a football team and they’re some of the best fans I’ve been a part of.”

I’m expecting an outstanding game.
Two best coaches, two best organizations.

I’m real curious to see what Brady
can do against that Seahawk secondary.

I cant imagine this game being a blow out.
Should be a great game.

Seattle wins it with a long kick,
of an over-inflated-ball
in overtime.

w
v

• This reply was modified 10 years, 1 month ago by wv.

nittany ram wrote:

I don’t know, man. Maybe you should be more pissed at your politicians than at Kroenke. That’s a multi-billionaire businessman there, and St. Louis took him for granted, seems like. That stadium pitch was a year late. The Ed upgrade pitch was a complete bullshit waste of time.

Food for thought.

Yeah. I think that’s a fair assessment.

I cant think of an
Owner, i like.
They remind me of the Gamesters
of Triskalion

w
v
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjRLtYZB-2Q

joemad wrote:

To earn beneficial officiating a team has to … start winning. And it has to do that BEFORE it starts getting good calls. This is a universal principle of sports. To be winners, a team must overcome bad officiating. Hell, even winners get bad calls.</P>
<P>This is the thing about our lack of competitiveness. When we get a bad break, we fold. We just collapse. You know, these big plays against us on D–they didn’t decide the game. They just faced us with adversity which we have consistently proved unable to overcome. You know that feeling we all get–one play and we feel it slide away? We feel that because it keeps happening. Indeed, the fact that one could say that a bad break in the 2nd Q could cause us to lose … that whole idea rests on the assumption that we would be unable to overcome it in a whole half of football. A correct assumption, BTW.</P>
<P>See, winners don’t think that way. They absorb blows, limit the damage, and figure how to win. That’s what it means to be a winner. You don’t let bad calls in the 2nd Q crush you. </P>

yes, I understand about the need of overcoming adversity and bad officiating…. But it’s tough to do with a 3rd string QB or a QB that has been a journeyman back up most of his career…(not to mention with the youngest roster in the league) There is a reason why those guys are 3rd string or journeyman back ups,,…..You can’t necessarily blame that on coaching, because based on the data the RAMS had in preseason, they chose the most optimal route.

1) You had a ROY QB coming off his best season before he got hurt in Carolina in 2013…. A QB that also played well in 2012….
what did you want the Rams to do to prep for a 2nd ACL injury on their starting QB in 2014 that would have prevented this?…sign Mark Sanchez instead of Hill? Draft Manziel? what would you have done different?

If you think they couldn’t overcome adversity this season, they did a few weeks later in Santa Clara against this same SF team…..

You can’t say that a team playing with 2nd stringer and 3rd QBs while missing Chris Long that defeated Denver, Seattle, and SF, lacks competitiveness…..they certainly didn’t win those games based on talent, but maybe it was coaching.

Well, as i’ve said before,
the 2014 Rams were the “weirdest”
Ram team, I’ve seen in my 40+ years
of watching’em.

I mean, pick an adjective.
Any adjective, and it’ll be true
in some sense, of the team last season.
They were all kinds of stuff.
A mixed bag of weird stuff.

w
v

rfl wrote:

wv wrote:
True, rfl, but its also true that there was a trajectory on defense.
It got better. There were still some awful mistakes in the second half
of the season, but i dont see you acknowledging that there WAS
a trajectory of improvement. Which might lead to optimism. Yes?

w
v

LOL. My friend, I agree. We need to see all sides of the situation. I guess I feel that’s what I am trying to do.

Let’s just look briefly at the question of a trajectory of improvement. Was it there?

Well, yes. It would be foolish to deny that the defense wasn’t playing better in that shutout streak than it was weeks 1-5.

But then recall that the trajectory slipped and eroded again in the last few games. AZ came in with a beat up offense and we let them run steadily enough to outscore us. I thought that we slipped in that game. Then, the NYG game was a reversion to our worst habits. And the SEA game again featured, if I recall, a late collapse.

As I say, ALL of it counts.

And by the way, there are trajectories and there are trajectories. They were still playing lousy defense IN WEEK 5! There was little indication of anything more than a month into the season.

Then, a few weeks later they are playing at historical levels.

In my view, that is not a normal trajectory of improvement. That’s weird.

And, it has to be in context. It was the 2nd year in a row in which essentially the same guys started out horrible, got better, and then faded out again down the stretch. If we are going to assess the organization, we need to look at why a defense expected to be very good in ’13 started poorly, recovered, looked to be great in ’14, AGAIN started poorly, improved, then AGAIN fell off late.

Is that “trajectory” one to build optimism on? Well, optimism is a subjective state, and each guy chooses for himself.

For me, I try to look at it all. And what I see gives me hope and lingering concern.

Of course, it is great to see flashes of greatness in the unit. As a fan I HOPE that this becomes the norm for our defense.

But right now, it isn’t for me an EXPECTATION. Because, as the talent has risen, the two constants have been inconsistency and competitive slackness. Apart from a few games, I have not seen a MONEY defense over 2 seasons. As the article says, this has been true in wins as well as in losses.

So, here are my keys looking forward. You can decide whether they add up to optimism or not.

* The talent is fine. Exciting. Good enough for an elite defense.
* We need to stop or at least contain the run 90% of the time, as good defenses do. Teams cannot game plan to run on us because we are so vulnerable to cutbacks and big plays.
* The schemes have to stop blitzing recklessly and playing soft coverage. Conceding the chains does far more damage than a few long passes.
* The unit needs to get more stops and get off the field.
* We need to concede fewer than 20 points in all but a very, very few games. (I know–scores of turnovers count there!)
* The defense needs to prove that it can consistently get stops with the game on the line.
* None of the above is a matter of getting a couple guys at positions X, Y, and Z.
* We need to start playing consistently tough football, whatever our talent level.
* And we need to do so on the freaking field in league games that count.

When I see us doing the above–all of which, by the way, is frequently accomplished by limited but tough defenses not as talented as ours–THEN I will become genuinely optimistic.

To this point, the improvement I’ve seen adds up to a competitive minus. Sadly.

Well, I’m not sure I agree that the Rams defense faded significantly
At the end of the year. The Giant game was a defensive disaster for sure.
But the Arizona and Seattle games? I thought the Defense played
“well enough to win” if the offensive line and QB had played solid.

All in all, I think the trajectory on DEFENSE
was much different than in the first coupla months.

The last game was in Seattle – the hardest place to play in
the NFL – and the Rams D game up 13 points.
(Irvin returned an INT for a TD in the 4th quarter you will recall)
It was the Rams offense – Oline+QB – that got outplayed.
The Rams rushed for 42 yards, passed for 203.
Again, the problem was the Oline and QB.

Against the NYG, the defense gave up 30+ points,
128 yards rushing and 386 passing to Eli. Total defensive meltdown.
Odell Beckham 8 for 142, R.Randle 6 for 132
Williams had 26 rushes 110 yards.

Arizona – Cards got 12 points.
Stanton had 131 yards passing. 143 yards rushing.
Yes, the D didn’t stop the run, but its also true it bent and bent
And didn’t break. The offense bent and bent and broke.

QB – Oline – themz iz the problem. The defense was indeed ‘weird’
and had some bad games, but overall it was certainly “playoff caliber”
by midseason or so. Not 85 Bear caliber, but certainly in this age
of passing and offense – it was “playoff caliber.”

w
v

Yeah JJ is an odd player. So much physical quickness and talent
but is he a liability in the long run? Can they ever
count on him to be reliable? Can you win playoff game
after playoff game with a corner like JJ ?

Sure would be nice if they could find
another EJ Gaines late in the draft.

To catch the Seahawks they are gonna
have to find a diamond or two
in the later rounds or in the UDFA poool,
i would think.

w
v

Zooey wrote:

The drought is actually going to be a big deal this summer. We’ve gone a few years with subnormal snow. The bottom picture is a more accurate level of where we are right about now because we had some rain in November and December (I drove past the lake a month ago, and it’s more like the last picture). But we is in for some trouble in Cali.

Ok, is this the thread where we talk about the
big earthquake that is supposed to dump California
into the Ocean?

Because I hope Kroenke has accounted for that.

Ya know. Maybe an inflatable stadium or somethin.

We only had an inch of snow in appalachia, btw.
But it was odd because it was shaped like
little pasta shells and wheels and rigatoni’s.
Is this the thread for discussing snow
shaped like pasta?

Ok, Go Rams.

w
v

I’d like to see a journalist do a real good piece
on cheating in football. I looked around and there is very
little written on it. There’s little hints here and there
that its been going on for a long time in various ways,
but apparently nobody has done a big in-depth article on it.
I’m sure the NFL doesnt want to see one, either.

I’d just like to see the deflate thing and the spying thing
put in context

DV mentions a ‘spy’ who dressed up as a painter
http://www.rams-news.com/could-the-greatest-show-on-turf-beat-the-current-seahawks-defense-vermeil-audio/
and reported to a Dallas coach. And ive posted
about George Allen hiring a spy to spy on Dallas.

I just wish i had a better idea of the big-picture.
The context.

w
v
=============================
http://forums.denverbroncos.com/showthread.php?177825-NFL-investigating-Broncos
McD = Belichick ??? (Merged)

I was afraid of this………..

TAPING PRACTICES IS NOTHING NEW

Regardless of whether the Patriots did or didn’t videotape the Rams’ walk-through practice prior to Super Bowl XXXVI, it’s not the first time that such allegations have been raised.

As Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports wrote in the days following the discovery that the Pats were taping defensive coaching signals during a Week One game against the Jets, the Broncos were suspected at one time of secretly videotaping Chargers practices.

Wrote Cole: “The San Diego Chargers increased their security several years ago at a hill overlooking the practice field at the team facility during weeks when they played the Denver Broncos. Why? It turns out Broncos coach Mike Shanahan had been hiring spies to videotape the Chargers practices. The NFL had been aware of it for several years (at least one NFL official had seen one of the tapes), but didn’t step in because it was considered a team issue.”

Such stories tend to support the rumor that Patriots coach Bill Belichick included with the materials surrendered to the league extensive evidence of cheating by other teams.

Further bolstering the belief that the Pats weren’t the only team doing what they were caught doing are the comments of former Cowboys and Dolphins coach Jimmy Johnson. The Boston Herald has posted the transcript of a WFAN interview that we first mentioned on September 29, during which Johnson said that the videotaping of defensive coaching signals was a widespread practice.

“I did it with video and so did a lot of other teams in the league,” Johnson said on September 28. “Just to make sure that you could study it and take your time, because you’re going to play the other team the second time around. But a lot of coaches did it, this was commonplace.”

And this kind stuff is nothing new. Way back in 1967, Lee Grosscup wrote an item for Sport magazine that delved into the issue of spying in football.

The bigger issue with what the Patriots did against the Jets is that the Pats continued to do something that the league had specifically told teams not to do, and that the Jets decided to make a sufficiently big deal about it that it set off a media firestorm.

The staggering penalty applied to the Patriots ($250,000 fine and loss of a first-round pick) and coach Bill Belichick ($500,000 fine) created the impression that this really was a big deal, regardless of the fact that it had been going on for an extended period of time.

And by hitting the Pats so hard, the league backed itself into a corner. If the videotaping of defensive coaching signals compels such a harsh sanction, evidence that such things have been occurring on a widespread basis would potentially shake public confidence in the sport.

But at a time when folks are chasing (as we think they should) the question of whether the Patriots cheated in connection with Super Bowl XXXVI or any other postseason game since 2001, we think that resources and effort also should be devoted to exploring whether and to what extent there has been cheating by other teams.

Maybe that’s why teams like the Steelers and Eagles aren’t willing to blame spying on losses to the Pats in the 2004 AFC title game and Super Bowl XXXIX, respectively. Maybe the problem in both cases isn’t that either of the teams within Senator Arlen Specter’s territory were the victims of skullduggery. Maybe the problem is that they didn’t take enough steps to prevent themselves from being victimized by practices that were an open secret prior to Week One of the 2007 regular season.

I think Bob Brown was the best of
all of those allpros. And the rams traded
him for next to nothing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Brown_%28offensive_lineman%29

Just a quote from Tomsula,
i thot was interesting:

http://www.ninersnation.com/2015/1/17/7525283/jim-tomsula-coaching-philosophy-49ers/in/7313196
“How do I know where you’re at and where you’re going unless I talk to you, and you let me know where you’re at, what you feel, and your thoughts. So now, if we can open that up, now you’ll tell me, you’re the player, I’m the coach. You’ll tell me where I need to go in coaching you. You’ll tell me how I can help you. And a big thing for me, I firmly believe a coach works for the player. Demand your coaching. Now, there’s structure, there’s a chain of command, we’ve all gotta stay with that, or you have chaos. OK, so, it’s built in a structure environment, but coaches essentially, what do I do? My job is to help my players perform better on Sunday. That’s game day. So, everything we do is to maximize a player’s ability, and his value on Sunday, within a team concept.”

w
v