from http://www.espn.com/blog/los-angeles-rams/post/_/id/38503/despite-talent-influx-jared-goff-remains-most-important-ram

Aaron Donald: The NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year led the league with 91 total pressures even though (A) interior lineman traditionally face constant double-teams and (B) Donald held out all summer in search of an elusive pay increase. Everything the Rams will do on defense will begin up front with Donald, quite possibly the game’s best player — period. But first he’ll have to show up. Donald did not take part in the offseason program and is once again determined to stay away from the Rams until they reward him with a lucrative contract extension.

nittany ram wrote:

Leslie O’Neal is on the list tied at #19. He was a Ram briefly.

Yeah I forgot about ole LO’N. 96-97, 17 sacks. He signed with Brooks and then the next year found himself in a Vermeil training camp. He left after 97 and was replaced by Wistrom. That was LO’N’s last harrah–next 2 years he was with the Chiefs and didn’t do that much. Then he was done.

Good catch. I am going to edit my list and add him.

The list cuts off at 100 so it doesn’t show Larry Brooks. REVISED BY EDIT. Brooks, in spite of missing time with injuries, had 74.5 sacks, including an 11 sack season in 74 and a 14.5 sack season in 76. That’s doing as well as Donald’s best 2 years in one year (74) and better than Donald in the other (76).’

I should do a complete list that includes all Rams great sack artists, including those who don’t make the 100 sack cut-off. For example Leonard Little (87.5). Robert Quinn (62.5). D’Marco Farr had a couple of strong seasons (95, 11.5; 99, 8.5). Etc.

• This reply was modified 6 years, 2 months ago by zn.

Southern California now has arguably the greatest …

* baseball player (Mike Trout)
* football player (Aaron Donald)
* basketball player (LeBron James)

… burger chain.

— Alden Gonzalez (@Alden_Gonzalez) July 2, 2018

Kam Chancellor: Time for the next chapter https://t.co/Mn1XKu4VCs

— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) July 2, 2018

==

Kam Chancellor tweets that he’s played his last football game. Word was he’s been down around 200 pounds or so and this has been coming. Still, end of an era. https://t.co/DMxN1iUsy1

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) July 1, 2018

==

Now former #Seahawks S Kam Chancellor isn’t officially retiring, he just wasn’t cleared medically to play again. Big difference. That means $6.2M this year and $5.2M of his base salary next year are guaranteed.

— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) July 1, 2018

Quarterbacks and Pressure 2017

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2018/quarterbacks-and-pressure-2017

…

2017 saw a massive improvement for Jared Goff, optimism for Jimmy Garoppolo and Deshaun Watson, and the first time two players had positive DVOA under pressure. Also: will Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson ever change their style the way Ben Roethlisberger has?

…

The average pressure rate in 2017 was 31.6 percent, which was the highest since 2010. Do keep that in mind if you want to compare this to past seasons, such as 2016 when the pressure rate was 27.1 percent. It was just a tad over 23 percent in our data for the 2010 and 2011 seasons.

…

…

… we were spooked by Jared Goff in this study a year ago after what he did for the Rams in 2016 as the No. 1 overall pick. His DVOA without pressure was -45.2%, easily the worst of any qualified passer since 2010. Quarterbacks under 10.0% rarely ever recover, but what would Goff do from this far down? Enter rookie head coach Sean McVay, some new wideouts, and some new offensive line starters, and Goff shot all the way up to 83.4% DVOA without pressure, ranked No. 2 in the league and the seventh-highest season since 2010. Needless to say, we’ve never observed a year-to-year improvement like that one before. Goff still wasn’t too hot when pressured (21st in DVOA), but when kept clean in that YAC-heavy scheme, he had a field day in 2017.

InvaderRam wrote:

the only problem as i see it is watkins came in late, so yeah, at the beginning maybe they had to limit how they used him.

but he was a veteran receiver. a lot of this falls on watkins too.

Don’t mean to overplay this issue but it keeps coming up. In The Slow Time Before Camp, it’s an issue people keep writing about.

So here’s more. From an obviously very pro-Chiefs perspective.

—

Sammy Watkins earning rave reviews as Chiefs challenge him by moving him all around

The Chiefs’ new receiver is handling the added responsibilities that Andy Reid’s offense requires

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/sammy-watkins-earning-rave-reviews-as-chiefs-challenge-him-by-moving-him-all-around/

Sammy Watkins has been with the Chiefs for a little more than three months, but he’s already demonstrating his potential to thrive in Andy Reid’s demanding but dynamite offensive system. After giving Watkins a three-year, $48 million deal in free agency, the Chiefs have thrown the gauntlet at Watkins by asking him to move all over the place and challenging his mind.

So far so good, according to Reid, who acknowledged that he has “overloaded” Watkins to this point.

“We’re moving him all over the place, and he’s handled it,” Reid said, per ESPN’s Adam Teicher. “We’ve overloaded him with that. That’s how we do it in this offense. That’s something new for him. You can tell he’s a guy that takes it away from here and studies. When we’re doing all these different formations, you’ve got to do that. You just can’t get it all when you’re here. You’ve got to go back and you’ve got to review, and he’s done that and he’s really limited the mistakes for all we’ve given him.”

It might be difficult to pick up, but Reid’s offense gets results. Reid, who is entering his 20th season as an NFL head coach (14 years with the Eagles and this will be his sixth with the Chiefs), has trotted out a top-10 scoring offense 11 times. In 2017, he turned Alex Smith into the league’s highest-rated passer and top-rated deep-ball thrower. Now, after trading Smith to Washington, Reid is developing 2017 first-round pick Patrick Mahomes into the franchise’s new long-term quarterback. To help Mahomes develop into the kind of quarterback he’s shown flashes of being in preseason outings and one regular-season game, Reid brought in Watkins, who is expected to add another dimension to an already explosive offense.

“He made some catches sometimes that I don’t know how they’re possible,” Mahomes said.

On his part, Watkins called mastering Reid’s offense “a mental challenge.”

“This offense is the broadest offense I’ve ever been in,” Watkins said. “It’s definitely a mental challenge. But I think that’s what kind of gets me up every day to study the plays and come out here encouraged. Anybody can get the ball and I’ve got to learn all the positions. I can’t just learn one position. I have to be focused and tuned in, in meetings. You have to do that off-the-field work and stay in your [playbook].

“You just get more opportunities on linebackers [and] safeties. It’s definitely easier working against a linebacker or getting open against safeties.”

Watkins, a former first-round pick of the Bills, hasn’t lived up to expectations coming out Clemson due to a variety of factors, with injuries being one of them. In four seasons (three in Buffalo and another with the Rams), Watkins has played in 52 of 64 possible games, catching 192 passes for 3,052 yards and 25 touchdowns. On a per-season basis, those numbers average out to 763 yards and 6.25 touchdowns. So Watkins hasn’t been great, but he also hasn’t been bad. He’s been solid. It’s only because of his first-round billing that he’s viewed by some as a disappointment.

He’s joining an offense, though, that should maximize his talent. If anyone knows how to get the most out of talented playmakers, it’s Reid. Just look at how he’s used Tyreek Hill, Kareem Hunt, and Travis Kelce.

“He’s a full-speed guy,” Watkins said of Reid. “Every day you come out here, every rep, it’s full speed. That’s just going to help me translate that during the game. He’s helped me in this short amount of time with just being a compete receiver, not just being [a receiver who just runs go-routes]. I’ve got to learn the whole route tree. The standard that he wants … he’s called me out in meetings. That’s what you want as a player. I take full advantage of all those things.

“I’ve never been in an offense like this, around a coach that just feels like he’s obsessed with the game and makes you want to be obsessed with it, too, to know more about the offense. The more you break it down the more you can be available and switching different positions.”

So, let’s set reasonable expectations for him. A year ago, Watkins played in the best offense of his career in Los Angeles with Todd Gurley running the ball, Jared Goff throwing the ball, and of course, Sean McVay calling the plays. Despite the setting, Watkins didn’t submit an optimal stat line, catching only 39 passes for only 593 yards. Eight touchdowns salvaged his season.

Setting expectations is difficult because we don’t really know how Mahomes will fare in what is essentially his first season. But there’s reason to expect Watkins, if he can stay healthy, to see his stat line grow. For all of the improvements Goff made last season, he still wasn’t the best deep-ball thrower. Writing for Music City Miracles, John R. Kinsley explained that Goff’s accuracy on throws that traveled at least 16 yards in the air was 43.9 percent last season. According to Kinsley, Goff was accurate on six of 20 passes that went 16-plus yards in the air and targeted Watkins.

Meanwhile, in a very small sample size, Mahomes has shown the ability to make incredible throws deep downfield.

Those throws will likely target Watkins in 2018. Again, we don’t know if Mahomes will perform on deep passes over the course of an entire season. We don’t know if Watkins can stay healthy. And we do know that the Chiefs boast a wide array of weapons, all of which will be incorporated into the offense.

But the Chiefs did not give Watkins a monster contract so that he could be a sporadic home-run threat. Based on the quotes above, we should expect them to keep him involved by moving him around the field, creating mismatches against slower linebackers in the slot, and asking him to do things he hasn’t really done in years past.

Watkins is just one reason why the Chiefs are going to trot out one of the most intriguing offenses in the coming season.

NFL suspensions:

1 game: Josh Brown repeatedly terrorizes his ex-wife

3 games: Jameis Winston sexually assaults an Uber driver

4 games: Tom Brady asks ball boys to underinflate footballs

16 games: Martavis Bryant uses marijuana

— Michael David Smith (@MichaelDavSmith) June 28, 2018

Comic W. Kamau Bell Thinks White Liberals Need to Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

The comedian reflects on the Starbucks implicit bias training and his own experience getting kicked out of a café in Berkeley.

BRANDON E. PATTERSONJUN.

link: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2018/06/comic-w-kamau-bell-starbucks-elmwood-cafe-racism/

In the two and a half months since the arrests of two African American realtors at a Philadelphia Starbucks in April, dozens of other racist incidents in public spaces have grabbed national headlines. The encounters have forced a shift in the national dialogue on race and policing. Now, that conversation isn’t just about officers—it’s also about customers and bystanders, who sometimes make frivolous calls to 911 because of inherent biases about people of color.

But although the conversation may be new, the encounters themselves are not. Stand-up comedian W. Kamau Bell, who hosts the CNN show United Shades of America and has a new Netflix special called Private School Negro, was asked to leave a coffee shop in Berkeley, California, by an employee who assumed he was pestering a white woman who was actually his wife. For this episode of Bite, I talked to Bell about the encounter, the implicit bias training Starbucks offered in thousands of stores in May, and the responsibility he thinks white people have to do something when they witness instances of racism.

Mother Jones: So, as black folks, it often feels like there’s nothing we can do that doesn’t run the risk of sparking a police call. We can’t go to Starbucks. We can’t go to Waffle House. We can’t barbecue. You’ve had this particular experience before back in 2015, when you were kicked out of Elmwood Cafe, a coffee shop in Berkeley, as you were attempting to show a children’s book to your wife (who happens to be white) and her friend. An employee assumed you were trying to sell them the book. What has gone through your mind as you’ve watched these other incidents happen over the past month and a half?

W. Kamau Bell: For me, especially with the Starbucks thing, it’s a way to tell America as a whole, and by that I mean white America, that these aren’t individual incidences that are just happening. It’s not just random occurrences of racism—that racism is throughout the fiber of this country.

MJ: Has Elmwood Cafe subsequently reopened?

WKB: Yeah, they’ve now reopened under a new name, but they haven’t changed a bit of paint.

MJ: In the same location?

WKB: Same location. It looks exactly the same. If you weren’t really following the story you would just think, “Oh, they must have had a plumbing issue. Now it’s open again.” There’s nothing currently that makes it look or feel different.

MJ: So they get to opt out of the consequences of having an unflattering spotlight on them over this racial incident, but we don’t get to opt out of the consequences of being black.

WKB: Yeah. I mean that’s the thing for me. I don’t tell the Elmwood story because it’s about the Elmwood. I tell the Elmwood story because it’s about America. And because I’m a black person with a platform and privilege and resources, I can actually sort of help other people who would never pay attention to other stories of racism pay attention to this. Basically, every conversation about racism is the way to go, “So, we had the transatlantic slave trade.” It’s a way to go back to the history of how this country was founded. How the country is founded is still a big force in how the country is currently run.

MJ: You did a little tweetstorm about Elmwood after the Starbucks incident. You tweeted that the Elmwood coffee shop specifically needed to “untrain” racism in its staff: Even if it didn’t necessarily create the problem, that the problem is an institutional one that existed before Elmwood existed. I wonder if you think what occurred at the Starbucks training sounds effective to you, and if not, or even if it does, what other kinds of interventions have you seen that have led people, especially white people, to behave more fairly in similar kinds of situations?

WKB: I mean, apparently the Starbucks training was effective enough that Howard Schultz decided he needed to quit Starbucks and run for president! [Laughs.] So apparently it worked for him. Nobody predicted that outcome: “Wow, we didn’t end racism, but I think I should be the president!”

So for me it’s like, you can’t think it’s going to happen. First of all, we thought they were going to be closed for a whole day, and they weren’t. And then we found out they were closed for a few hours. Then the other thing I found is that the training was the same for every Starbucks in the country. So like, the Starbucks in Minneapolis—that’s mostly run by black people—is getting the same training as the Starbucks in predominately white areas, which is just like, that’s not how it works. I’m sure that means that the black people in southwest Minneapolis were like asleep or on their phones.

That kind of thing is never going to work, in the same way that you don’t train somebody to be a barista in a few hours. You train them over time, and then you check in on their training every now and again to make sure the lattes are still the right temperature, or whatever that is (I don’t know how to make lattes.) But you sort of monitor their ability to continue with doing things the right way with coffee, and it’s the same with racism. And the thing all these companies need to realize, or we all need to realize: You have to have an investment in ending America’s racist practices—not just the racist practices in your building. And I think that’s true of all these things as far as transphobia, homophobia, you know, ableism, sexism.

MJ: You tweeted after Starbucks about telling your six-year-old daughter about what happened to you in Berkeley back in 2015. Could you talk about how you decided it was time to talk to your child about that incident, and what other kinds of conversations about race you have with your black child? And how you think white parents should approach conversations about race with their children who are your daughter’s age?

WKB: Before my six-year-old heard about the incident that happened at Elmwood, she was already maybe not the most woke six-year-old, but she’s definitely, if they could measure, she’s in the top 5 percent of six-year-olds.

MJ: Well, she is your daughter.

WKB: She’s my daughter. But then, there’s kids out there who are kids of Black Panthers. So I’m gonna say that those kids may be more woke than my kids. But so when it happened, my daughter was three, three and a half. At the time we were like, we do need to have more thorough conversations with our kids about racism, which we did. We bought books about Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr. So she knows about the history of racism in this country now, thanks to us and her school.

But then we were basically walking to the library in Berkeley, and we walked past the Elmwood Cafe. And as we walked past, the woman who was then the manager, who’s now the owner, sort of looked at me and smiled. Now, I have a hard time believing that she didn’t recognize me as me, after everything they went through. So I don’t think she was just smiling at a citizen of Berkeley. So at that moment, something came over me. And I just looked at [my daughter] and I said, “Sami, let me tell you a story.” And it was like it felt like I’m going to take advantage of this moment where I’m feeling all these intense feelings about the fact that this woman just smiled at me, and also that we’re passing this place that is regularly part of Sami’s life and she doesn’t realize it because she’s always in this neighborhood and always sees this café.

So I just started to tell her the story. She understands that black people have been treated historically poorly in this country and currently it still happens. But to hear it happened to her dad and her mom and her baby sister—she just kept going, “That doesn’t make any sense. But why did they kick you out?” I was like, “I think it was because of racism.”

She was just like, “It doesn’t make any sense.” And she kept saying it over and over again and all I can say was like, “Yeah Sami, racism doesn’t make any sense.” There’s no need to explain more because it doesn’t make any sense. You know you can explain like how it benefits white people in this country to have a system of racism run the country. But still, at a basic level, it doesn’t make any sense, especially when you’re teaching a kid about a society of fairness and equity and inclusion, which is what she’s learning about. For me and my wife, Melissa, our thing is just, give the kids all the information you think they can handle and they’ll let you know when they’ve had enough.

MJ: These kinds of incidents sometimes go differently when white people intervene. I wonder if you think white bystanders have a responsibility to do something in the moment, besides just film.

WKB: I think the Starbucks incident proves the value of intervention in those situations, even if the intervention is just like, “I’m going to film this and upload it immediately” instead of like, “I’m going to film this and hold on to it.” Some white people are probably aware that their skin privilege gives them the ability to step into situations that it does not give black and brown people. So I think that yes, white people do need to do more. I mean, I understand that sometimes safety is an issue. But clearly when you’re in a Starbucks, you’re in a safe place, and there’s many ways to intervene. You can step up like their friend did and step in the middle of it and say, “What’s going on here?” We can’t expect white people to be John Brown. But there’s something between John Brown and going like, “Ah, it’ll probably be fine.”

If you want to be a white ally, or as Alicia Garza from Black Lives Matter says, a white co-conspirator, then you gotta get in and you gotta roll up your sleeves and get dirty somehow, whether that means putting your body on the line or at least putting your reputation on the line.

Watkins: Andy Reid helping me become complete WR

Herbie Teope

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000938691/article/watkins-andy-reid-helping-me-become-complete-wr

Wide receiver Sammy Watkins’ acclimation process has gone well since joining the Kansas City Chiefs on a three-year, $48 million free-agent deal in March.

Despite being on a new team, Watkins turned heads during organized team activities and he embraces the opportunity to absorb coach Andy Reid’s offensive scheme.

“This offense is the broadest offense I’ve ever been in,” Watkins told reporters on the last day of OTAs, via the Chiefs’ official website. “It’s definitely a mental challenge, but I think that’s what kind of gets me up every day to study the plays and come out here encouraged because anybody can get the ball and I’ve got to learn all the positions.

“I just can’t learn one position. I have to be focused and tuned in, in meetings. You have to do that off-the-field work and stay in your [play] book.”

Watkins raises a good point when it comes to Reid’s version of the West Coast offense.

Reid’s offense typically spreads the ball around, which has contributed to just five wide receivers producing a 1,000-yard receiving effort in a single season between two teams since Reid became a head coach in 1999: Tyreek Hill(2017), Jeremy Maclin (2015), Terrell Owens (2004), Kevin Curtis (2007) and DeSean Jackson, who did it twice (2009-10).

Hill wasn’t alone in 2017, as tight end Travis Kelce also topped the mark with 1,038 yards receiving.

With the 6-foot-1, 211-pound Watkins, who possesses 4.43 speed in the 40-yard dash, the Chiefs add another downfield threat and he produced 1,047 yards receiving while with the Buffalo Bills in 2015.

Watkins’ production has slipped the past two seasons, but he spent the offseason workout program learning new responsibilities while under Reid’s close eye.

“He’s helped me in this short amount of time with just being a compete receiver, not just being a, ‘Oh, he just runs go-routes,'” Watkins told reporters. “I’ve got to learn the whole route tree. My standard that he wants, he’s called me out in meetings, which that’s what you need as a player, and I take full advantage of all those things.”

While the offseason workouts are accomplished without pads and no-contact practices, the early returns on Watkins are positive.

“We were moving him everywhere,” Reid told reporters on the final day of minicamp two weeks ago, via the team’s official website. “He hasn’t had to do that in his career; we had him all over the place. I thought he handled it very well.”

Should Watkins continue his progression throughout training camp, the Chiefs’ offense will give opposing defense plenty to think about in 2018.

Watkins, Hill, Kelce and second-year running back Kareem Hunt are a more than capable set of weapons for quarterback Patrick Mahomes.[

zn wrote:

[NOTE. 1-10 are: Eagles, Falcons, Saints, Patz, Vikings, Chargers, Steelers, Cowboys, Rams, Jagz]

Rams played 6 of this list’s top 10 and went 3-3 against them.