Pancake wrote:

I think so WV. I really do. I think the Rams have an elite Defense that can carry them pretty far this year. If the Offense clicks the Rams are going to be a scary team to face for everyone.

Well, when Fisher looked at last years team, he HAD to
see that they had a lot of pure talent,
but the bonehead miscommunication was killing them,
the QB injuries were killing them,
the OLine mess was killing them,
and at times the Run D was bad,
and the killer Turnovers were…um, killing them.

So, they simplified the verbiage, brought in a new QB, drafted young healthy studs on the OLine,
and brought in Fairley the DT and Ayers the LB.

Not to mention the addition of Gurley.

So…I’m expecting playoffs. This will be a better team than
last year.

w
v

• This reply was modified 10 years, 8 months ago by wv.

Sorry Rick.

mark
———
“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I would prefer it if the D just shut up,
and played. I dont want to read about them
‘talking’ about how good they can be.

w
v

Pancake wrote:

I think SK gives Fisher a pass because of all the “moving” turmoil. I happen to believe the Rams are moving and who else is more experienced dealing with that scenario than Fisher. Nobody.

On the other hand I agree with WV that the team has turned the corner. At least from a talent stand point. I think the Rams will put up 10 wins this season and potentially more. We might be talking Fisher extension instead.

We are gonna see some good football this year Pancake.
I’m excited.

w
v

rfl wrote:

… OK. Let’s stipulate that he deserves that.

Alright, give him that year. Let’s say Foles stays healthy and plays decently, at a mid-table level. And let’s say there are no crippling waves of injuries anywhere else … for once.

And let’s say we STILL go 6-10 or 7-9. With all the talent acquisition and raising of the potential ceiling … you would STILL give Fisher ANOTHER year to break out of mediocrity? Really?

You’re a far more <nobr>patient</nobr> man than I am.

Well, I am pretty patient in general. So there’s that.

But as for your example….I just cant conceive of that actually happening. I mean with the talent this team
has the only thing that will derail it, imho is injuries. I just reject the idea that they could stay healthy and STILL lose. I cannot even imagine that.

If it happens then, I guess I will be….nonplussed.

w
v

rfl wrote:

That’s not too good, is it?

Think maybe a wildly erratic run defense might have something to do with it?

Yes, i think so. But I imagine it also reflected some of the
bonehead communication issues the D was plagued with. I think.

And i am ‘guessing’ the play-action stats got better the second
half of the year. Granted, the Giant game was a disaster.

So, what are the biggest question marks this year? OLine and Run Defense?

I think Foles will be solid, if the OLine comes together.

w
v

zn wrote:

Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss): You were on the Indianapolis?

Brody (Roy Scheider): What happened?

Quint: Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin’ back, from the island of Tinian to Laytee, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know how you know that when you’re in the water, chief? You tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know… was our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week.

Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin’. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it’s… kinda like ol’ squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark comes to the nearest man and that man, he’d poundin’ and hollerin’ and screamin’ and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn’t go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he’s got…lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll’s eye. When he comes at ya, doesn’t seem to be livin’. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin’ and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin’ and the hollerin’ they all come in and rip you to pieces.

Y’know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don’t know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! I don’t know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin’ chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well… he’d been bitten in half below the waist.

Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He’s a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

=======================

Everyone knows the story of the Indianapolis speech, right? I think everyone automatically loved that scene the first time they saw it, and for a lot of us, it ranks as one of the great movie scenes ever…and of course Shaw nailed it.

The monologue is not historically accurate in every detail but I have always seen survivors of the Indianapolis praise it.

Two sources, Speilberg on the scene:

http://www.scriptmag.com/features/spielberg-reveals-the-definitive-word-on-the-jaws-uss-indianapolis-speech

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/49921

Steven Spielberg I owe three people a lot for this speech. You’ve heard all this, but you’ve probably never heard it from me. There’s a lot of apocryphal reporting about who did what on Jaws and I’ve heard it for the last three decades, but the fact is the speech was conceived by Howard Sackler, who was an uncredited writer, didn’t want a credit and didn’t arbitrate for one, but he’s the guy that broke the back of the script before we ever got to Martha’s Vineyard to shoot the movie.

I hired later Carl Gottlieb to come onto the island, who was a friend of mine, to punch up the script, but Howard conceived of the Indianapolis speech. I had never heard of the Indianapolis before Howard, who wrote the script at the Bel <nobr>Air Hotel</nobr> and I was with him a couple times a week reading pages and discussing them.

Howard one day said, “Quint needs some motivation to show all of us what made him the way he is and I think it’s this Indianapolis incident.” I said, “Howard, what’s that?” And he explained the whole incident of the Indianapolis and the Atomic Bomb being delivered and on its way back it was sunk by a submarine and sharks surrounded the helpless sailors who had been cast adrift and it was just a horrendous piece of World War II history. Howard didn’t write a long speech, he probably wrote about three-quarters of a page.

But then, when I showed the script to my friend John Milius, John said “Can I take a crack at this speech?” and John wrote a 10 page monologue, that was absolutely brilliant, but out-sized for the Jaws I was making! (laughs) But it was brilliant and then Robert Shaw took the speech and Robert did the cut down. Robert himself was a fine writer, who had written the play The Man in the Glass Booth. Robert took a crack at the speech and he brought it down to five pages. So, that was sort of the evolution just of that speech.

We shot it twice. The first time we attempted to shoot it Robert came over to me and said, “You know, Steven, all three of these characters have been drinking and I think I could do a much better job in this speech if you let me actually have a few drinks before I do the speech.” And I unwisely gave him permission.

He went into the Whitefoot, which was a big sort of support boat that we always took our lunch breaks on and all the bathrooms were on that boat, it was a big tug boat, and he went into the hold with my script girl Charlsie Bryant and I guess he had more than a few drinks because two crew members actually had to carry him onto the Orca and help him into his chair. I had two cameras on the scene and we never got through the scene, he was just too far gone. So, I wrapped the company at about 11 o’clock in the morning and Robert was taken back to his house on Martha’s Vineyard.

At about 2 o’clock in the morning my phone rings and it’s Robert. He had a complete blackout and had no memory of what had gone down that day. He said, “Steven, tell me I didn’t embarrass you.” He was very sweet, but he was panic-stricken. He said, “Steven, please tell me I didn’t embarrass you. What happened? Are you going to give me a chance to do it again?” I said, “Yes, the second you’re ready we’ll do it again.”

The next morning he came to the set, he was ready at 7:30 out of make-up and it was like watching Olivier on stage. We did it in probably four takes.

I think we were all watching a great performance and the actors on camera were watching a great performance; Roy and Richard. Richard was in all the shots because Roy was in a cutaway in a separate part of the cabin of the boat, but obviously on Richard’s face… you can see Matt Hooper in character, but you can also see Richard Dreyfuss in complete awe and admiration of this great actor.

Great stuff.

w
v

TrenchRam wrote:

I love Fisher’s style of football and he’s done a lot of impressive things. I really do expect the defense to do amazing things this year as long as the CB play holds up. Drafting has been solid if not spectacular. He has his players’ respect and – for the most part – has kept them from collapsing through some pretty bad stretches.

I worry about the slow starts, and I don’t think it’s being soft. He just keeps going into the season with disastrous plans: the spread offense, relying on Richardson and Pead to run the ball, last year’s abysmal start on defense and the iffy OL depth. The wideout play was actually pretty good last year, especially before Quick got hurt, but it still seems to me like part of the trend of taking big chances. While that gamble paid off, it was still a pretty big gamble to go into camp with the options that they had.

The lack of discipline really concerns me, too. I feel like it’s a Fisher thing. Personal fouls, constant mental errors, and players out of position just seem like symptoms of teams that lack discipline. I love smash mouth football. I love seeing an OL and a great back just break down a D. I love seeing defenses win games even more. You’ll never hear me complain about a hard fought 7-3 game involving 2 great defensive teams. The thing about that approach, though, is that you can’t make big mistakes and win consistently. Fisher teams seem to make a lot of big mistakes.

Finally, It seems to me that Fisher’s staff are poor tacticians. They so consistently play strong first halves only to get beat up in the second half. I don’t know Xs and Os well enough to have an informed opinion on this, and I only watch the games live these days so it’s especially hard to tell. They just seem to be outcoached in a lot of second halves.

I have hope for this year, but I have worries too. This could be an 10-6 team, but it could be a 6-10 team too. If we don’t see something much better than what we’ve seen so far, he should go.

Always good to hear from you,
Trench.

w
v

Zooey wrote:

bnw wrote:

The majority will press for further 2nd amendment protection.

Right. Because in the face of tragedy, most Americans’ first response is to hug their guns more tightly.

But given what most americans have been taught,
thats the appropriate response, right?

I mean, most americans have been drenched in disinformation,
misinformation, and propaganda for so long….thats all they know: hug your guns.

Its the system.

w
v

i dunno. I dont have anything ‘new’ to say on the subject
of violence in America. I assume we all agree there
are gigantic underlying causes that have very very little
to do with whether or not the “gun laws” are loosened or tightened.

I know in my public-defender-practice, over the last ten years,
I’ve seen more and more and more humans turn to violence
because of the desperate situations they find themselves in.
By desperate situations i mean economic and psychological.
I am also seeing a HUGE jump in mentally-ill folks. Just a huge jump
in the numbers. Perhaps people are drinking too much fracked-water,
I dunno.

w
v
‘Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons? ”
Michael Foucault

NERam wrote:

wv wrote:

I wonder what that means exactly. WHY did they shorten the verbiage on offense. Are the Rams players dum?
Is it a bad idea to do that? Good idea?

w
v

Twins Right Ace Right 999 H Balloon.

Whatta ya think? Is this “complex”, or simplified?

Well, it would confuse me: in my day, we just said “everybody go long”

w
v

I think the Dallas practices may be somewhat important.
Kinda moves against that ‘fisher is soft’ meme.
Dallas is feisty.

w
v

Note the quick release. …back when the rams actually
threw over the middle…

• This reply was modified 10 years, 9 months ago by wv.

I am surprised the corporate-PR-folks are just getting around
to this. I figured they had this kind of thing
in place a long time ago.

w
v

rfl wrote:

Whether or not it’s disagreement, I think we see it differently.

I am often skeptical of “trajectory” arguments in general. I think that, each year, numerous teams are either better or worse than a “trajectory” projection from the previous year would suggest.

Ok. Always a pleasure reading your thoughts, RFL. We probably see some
things differently, sure.

I’ll tell ya, the Giant game and the Cardinal game were major disappointments for me.
Really annoying. The Seattle game…well, playing Seattle in Seattle is just a nightmare
so i didnt expect much in that one.

We been waiting a long time RFL — I’m tellin ya, this is our year 🙂
Top seven D. Efficient O. Great Special teams. Playoffs.
You’ll see.

w
v