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znModeratorNeoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world
The word has become a rhetorical weapon, but it properly names the reigning ideology of our era – one that venerates the logic of the market and strips away the things that make us human.Stephen Metcalf
Last summer, researchers at the International Monetary Fund settled a long and bitter debate over “neoliberalism”: they admitted it exists. Three senior economists at the IMF, an organisation not known for its incaution, published a paper questioning the benefits of neoliberalism. In so doing, they helped put to rest the idea that the word is nothing more than a political slur, or a term without any analytic power. The paper gently called out a “neoliberal agenda” for pushing deregulation on economies around the world, for forcing open national markets to trade and capital, and for demanding that governments shrink themselves via austerity or privatisation. The authors cited statistical evidence for the spread of neoliberal policies since 1980, and their correlation with anaemic growth, boom-and-bust cycles and inequality.
Neoliberalism is an old term, dating back to the 1930s, but it has been revived as a way of describing our current politics – or more precisely, the range of thought allowed by our politics. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, it was a way of assigning responsibility for the debacle, not to a political party per se, but to an establishment that had conceded its authority to the market. For the Democrats in the US and Labour in the UK, this concession was depicted as a grotesque betrayal of principle. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, it was said, had abandoned the left’s traditional commitments, especially to workers, in favour of a global financial elite and the self-serving policies that enriched them; and in doing so, had enabled a sickening rise in inequality.
Over the past few years, as debates have turned uglier, the word has become a rhetorical weapon, a way for anyone left of centre to incriminate those even an inch to their right. (No wonder centrists say it’s a meaningless insult: they’re the ones most meaningfully insulted by it.) But “neoliberalism” is more than a gratifyingly righteous jibe. It is also, in its way, a pair of eyeglasses.
Peer through the lens of neoliberalism and you see more clearly how the political thinkers most admired by Thatcher and Reagan helped shape the ideal of society as a kind of universal market (and not, for example, a polis, a civil sphere or a kind of family) and of human beings as profit-and-loss calculators (and not bearers of grace, or of inalienable rights and duties). Of course the goal was to weaken the welfare state and any commitment to full employment, and – always – to cut taxes and deregulate. But “neoliberalism” indicates something more than a standard rightwing wish list. It was a way of reordering social reality, and of rethinking our status as individuals.
Still peering through the lens, you see how, no less than the welfare state, the free market is a human invention. You see how pervasively we are now urged to think of ourselves as proprietors of our own talents and initiative, how glibly we are told to compete and adapt. You see the extent to which a language formerly confined to chalkboard simplifications describing commodity markets (competition, perfect information, rational behaviour) has been applied to all of society, until it has invaded the grit of our personal lives, and how the attitude of the salesman has become enmeshed in all modes of self-expression.
In short, “neoliberalism” is not simply a name for pro-market policies, or for the compromises with finance capitalism made by failing social democratic parties. It is a name for a premise that, quietly, has come to regulate all we practise and believe: that competition is the only legitimate organising principle for human activity.
No sooner had neoliberalism been certified as real, and no sooner had it made clear the universal hypocrisy of the market, than the populists and authoritarians came to power. In the US, Hillary Clinton, the neoliberal arch-villain, lost – and to a man who knew just enough to pretend he hated free trade. So are the eyeglasses now useless? Can they do anything to help us understand what is broken about British and American politics? Against the forces of global integration, national identity is being reasserted, and in the crudest possible terms. What could the militant parochialism of Brexit Britain and Trumpist America have to do with neoliberal rationality? What possible connection is there between the president – a freewheeling boob – and the bloodless paragon of efficiency known as the free market?
It isn’t only that the free market produces a tiny cadre of winners and an enormous army of losers – and the losers, looking for revenge, have turned to Brexit and Trump. There was, from the beginning, an inevitable relationship between the utopian ideal of the free market and the dystopian present in which we find ourselves; between the market as unique discloser of value and guardian of liberty, and our current descent into post-truth and illiberalism.
Moving the stale debate about neoliberalism forward begins, I think, with taking seriously the measure of its cumulative effect on all of us, regardless of affiliation. And this requires returning to its origins, which have nothing to do with Bill or Hillary Clinton. There once was a group of people who did call themselves neoliberals, and did so proudly, and their ambition was a total revolution in thought. The most prominent among them, Friedrich Hayek, did not think he was staking out a position on the political spectrum, or making excuses for the fatuous rich, or tinkering along the edges of microeconomics.
He thought he was solving the problem of modernity: the problem of objective knowledge. For Hayek, the market didn’t just facilitate trade in goods and services; it revealed truth. How did his ambition collapse into its opposite – the mind-bending possibility that, thanks to our thoughtless veneration of the free market, truth might be driven from public life altogether?
When the idea occurred to Friedrich Hayek in 1936, he knew, with the conviction of a “sudden illumination”, that he had struck upon something new. “How can the combination of fragments of knowledge existing in different minds,” he wrote, “bring about results which, if they were to be brought about deliberately, would require a knowledge on the part of the directing mind which no single person can possess?”
This was not a technical point about interest rates or deflationary slumps. This was not a reactionary polemic against collectivism or the welfare state. This was a way of birthing a new world. To his mounting excitement, Hayek understood that the market could be thought of as a kind of mind.
Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” had already given us the modern conception of the market: as an autonomous sphere of human activity and therefore, potentially, a valid object of scientific knowledge. But Smith was, until the end of his life, an 18th-century moralist. He thought the market could be justified only in light of individual virtue, and he was anxious that a society governed by nothing but transactional self-interest was no society at all. Neoliberalism is Adam Smith without the anxiety.
That Hayek is considered the grandfather of neoliberalism – a style of thought that reduces everything to economics – is a little ironic given that he was such a mediocre economist. He was just a young, obscure Viennese technocrat when he was recruited to the London School of Economics to compete with, or possibly even dim, the rising star of John Maynard Keynes at Cambridge.
The plan backfired, and Hayek lost out to Keynes in a rout. Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, was greeted as a masterpiece. It dominated the public discussion, especially among young English economists in training, for whom the brilliant, dashing, socially connected Keynes was a beau idéal. By the end of the second world war, many prominent free-marketers had come around to Keynes’s way of thinking, conceding that government might play a role in managing a modern economy. The initial excitement over Hayek had dissipated. His peculiar notion that doing nothing could cure an economic depression had been discredited in theory and practice. He later admitted that he wished his work criticising Keynes would simply be forgotten.
Hayek cut a silly figure: a tall, erect, thickly accented professor in high-cut tweed, insisting on the formal “Von Hayek” but cruelly nicknamed “Mr Fluctooations” behind his back. In 1936, he was an academic without a portfolio and with no obvious future. Yet we now live in Hayek’s world, as we once lived in Keynes’s. Lawrence Summers, the Clinton adviser and former president of Harvard University, has said that Hayek’s conception of the price system as a mind is “as penetrating and original an idea as microeconomics produced in the 20th century” and “the single most important thing to learn from an economics course today”. This undersells it. Keynes did not make or predict the cold war, but his thinking wended its way into every aspect of the cold-war world; so too has Hayek’s thinking woven itself into every aspect of the post-1989 world.
Hayek’s was a total worldview: a way of structuring all reality on the model of economic competition. He begins by assuming that nearly all (if not all) human activity is a form of economic calculation, and so can be assimilated to the master concepts of wealth, value, exchange, cost – and especially price. Prices are a means of allocating scarce resources efficiently, according to need and utility, as governed by supply and demand. For the price system to function efficiently, markets must be free and competitive. Ever since Smith imagined the economy as an autonomous sphere, the possibility existed that the market might not just be one piece of society, but society as a whole. Within such a society, men and women need only follow their own self-interest and compete for scarce rewards. Through competition, “it becomes possible”, as the sociologist Will Davies has written, “to discern who and what is valuable”.
What any person acquainted with history sees as the necessary bulwarks against tyranny and exploitation – a thriving middle class and civil sphere; free institutions; universal suffrage; freedom of conscience, congregation, religion and press; a basic recognition that the individual is a bearer of dignity – held no special place in Hayek’s thought. Hayek built into neoliberalism the assumption that the market provides all necessary protection against the one real political danger: totalitarianism. To prevent this, the state need only keep the market free.
This last is what makes neoliberalism “neo”. It is a crucial modification of the older belief in a free market and a minimal state, known as “classical liberalism”. In classical liberalism, merchants simply asked the state to “leave us alone” – to laissez-nous faire. Neoliberalism recognised that the state must be active in the organisation of a market economy. The conditions allowing for a free market must be won politically, and the state must be re-engineered to support the free market on an ongoing basis.
That isn’t all: every aspect of democratic politics, from the choices of voters to the decisions of politicians, must be submitted to a purely economic analysis. The lawmaker is obliged to leave well enough alone – to not distort the natural actions of the marketplace – and so, ideally, the state provides a fixed, neutral, universal legal framework within which market forces operate spontaneously. The conscious direction of government is never preferable to the “automatic mechanism of adjustment” – ie the price system, which is not only efficient but maximises liberty, or the opportunity for men and women to make free choices about their own lives.
As Keynes jetted between London and Washington, creating the postwar order, Hayek sat pouting in Cambridge. He had been sent there during the wartime evacuations; and he complained that he was surrounded by “foreigners” and “no lack of orientals of all kinds” and “Europeans of practically all nationalities, but very few of real intelligence”.
Stuck in England, without influence or respect, Hayek had only his idea to console him; an idea so grand it would one day dissolve the ground beneath the feet of Keynes and every other intellectual. Left to its own devices, the price system functions as a kind of mind. And not just any mind, but an omniscient one: the market computes what individuals cannot grasp. Reaching out to him as an intellectual comrade-in-arms, the American journalist Walter Lippmann wrote to Hayek, saying: “No human mind has ever understood the whole scheme of a society … At best a mind can understand its own version of the scheme, something much thinner, which bears to reality some such relation as a silhouette to a man.”
It is a grand epistemological claim – that the market is a way of knowing, one that radically exceeds the capacity of any individual mind. Such a market is less a human contrivance, to be manipulated like any other, than a force to be studied and placated. Economics ceases to be a technique – as Keynes believed it to be – for achieving desirable social ends, such as growth or stable money. The only social end is the maintenance of the market itself. In its omniscience, the market constitutes the only legitimate form of knowledge, next to which all other modes of reflection are partial, in both senses of the word: they comprehend only a fragment of a whole and they plead on behalf of a special interest. Individually, our values are personal ones, or mere opinions; collectively, the market converts them into prices, or objective facts.
After washing out at LSE, Hayek never held a permanent appointment that was not paid for by corporate sponsors. Even his conservative colleagues at the University of Chicago – the global epicentre of libertarian dissent in the 1950s – regarded Hayek as a reactionary mouthpiece, a “stock rightwing man” with a “stock rightwing sponsor”, as one put it. As late as 1972, a friend could visit Hayek, now in Salzburg, only to find an elderly man prostrate with self-pity, believing his life’s work was in vain. No one cared what he had written!
There had, however, been hopeful signs: Hayek was Barry Goldwater’s favourite political philosopher and was said to be Ronald Reagan’s, too. Then there was Margaret Thatcher. To anyone who would listen, Thatcher lionised Hayek, promising to bring together his free-market philosophy with a revival of Victorian values: family, community, hard work.
Hayek met privately with Thatcher in 1975, at the very moment that she, having been named leader of the opposition in the UK, was preparing to bring his Big Idea off the shelf and into history. They huddled for 30 minutes on Lord North Street in London, at the Institute for Economic Affairs. Afterwards, Thatcher’s staff anxiously asked Hayek what he had thought. What could he say? For the first time in 40 years, power was mirroring back to Friedrich von Hayek his own cherished self-image, a man who might vanquish Keynes and remake the world.
He replied: “She’s so beautiful.”
Hayek’s Big Idea isn’t much of an idea – until you supersize it. Organic, spontaneous, elegant processes that, like a million fingers on a Ouija board, coordinate to create outcomes that are otherwise unplanned. Applied to an actual market – one for pork bellies or corn futures – this description is little more than a truism. It can be expanded to describe how various markets, in commodities and labour and even money itself, form that part of a society known as “the economy”. This is less banal, but still inconsequential; a Keynesian accepts this description happily. But what if we bump it up one more step? What if we reconceive all of society as a kind of market?
The more Hayek’s idea expands, the more reactionary it gets, the more it hides behind its pretence of scientific neutrality – and the more it allows economics to link up with the major intellectual trend of the west since the 17th century. The rise of modern science generated a problem: if the world is universally obedient to natural laws, what does it mean to be human? Is a human being simply an object in the world, like any other? There appears to be no way to assimilate the subjective, interior human experience into nature as science conceives it – as something objective whose rules we discover by observation.
Everything about the postwar political culture lay in favour of John Maynard Keynes, and an expanded role for the state in managing the economy. But everything about the postwar academic culture lay in favour of Hayek’s Big Idea. Before the war, even the most rightwing economist thought of the market as a means to a limited end, to the efficient allocation of scarce resources. From the time of Adam Smith in the mid-1700s, and up to that of the founding members of the Chicago school in the postwar years, it was commonplace to believe that the ultimate ends of society and of life, were established in the non-economic sphere.
On this view, questions of value are resolved politically and democratically, not economically – through moral reflection and public deliberation. The classic modern expression of this belief is found in a 1922 essay called Ethics and the Economic Interpretation by Frank Knight, who arrived at Chicago two decades before Hayek. “The rational economic criticism of values gives results repugnant to common sense,” Knight wrote. “Economic man is the selfish, ruthless object of moral condemnation.”
Economists had struggled for 200 years with the question of how to place the values on which an otherwise commercial society is organised beyond mere self-interest and calculation. Knight, along with his colleagues Henry Simons and Jacob Viner, were holdouts against Franklin D Roosevelt and the market interventions of the New Deal, and they established the University of Chicago as the intellectually rigorous home of free-market economics that it remains to this day. However, Simons, Viner and Knight all started their careers before the unrivalled prestige of atomic physicists drew enormous sums of money into the university system and kicked off a postwar vogue for “hard” science. They did not worship equations or models, and they worried about non-scientific questions. Most explicitly, they worried about questions of value, where value was absolutely distinct from price.
It is not just that Simons, Viner and Knight were less dogmatic than Hayek, or more willing to pardon the state for taxing and spending. It is not the case that Hayek was their intellectual superior. But they acknowledged as a first principle that society was not the same thing as the market, and that price was not the same thing as value. This set them up to be swallowed whole by history.
It was Hayek who showed us how to get from the hopeless condition of human partiality to the majestic objectivity of science. Hayek’s Big Idea acts as the missing link between our subjective human nature, and nature itself. In so doing, it puts any value that cannot be expressed as a price – as the verdict of a market – on an equally unsure footing, as nothing more than opinion, preference, folklore or superstition.
More than anyone, even Hayek himself, it was the great postwar Chicago economist Milton Friedman who helped convert governments and politicians to the power of Hayek’s Big Idea. But first he broke with two centuries of precedent and declared that economics is “in principle independent of any particular ethical position or normative judgments” and is “an ‘objective’ science, in precisely the same sense as any of the physical sciences”. Values of the old, mental, normative kind were defective, they were “differences about which men can ultimately only fight”. There is the market, in other words, and there is relativism.
Markets may be human facsimiles of natural systems, and like the universe itself, they may be authorless and valueless. But the application of Hayek’s Big Idea to every aspect of our lives negates what is most distinctive about us. That is, it assigns what is most human about human beings – our minds and our volition – to algorithms and markets, leaving us to mimic, zombie-like, the shrunken idealisations of economic models. Supersizing Hayek’s idea and radically upgrading the price system into a kind of social omniscience means radically downgrading the importance of our individual capacity to reason – our ability to provide and evaluate justifications for our actions and beliefs.
As a result, the public sphere – the space where we offer up reasons, and contest the reasons of others – ceases to be a space for deliberation, and becomes a market in clicks, likes and retweets. The internet is personal preference magnified by algorithm; a pseudo-public space that echoes the voice already inside our head. Rather than a space of debate in which we make our way, as a society, toward consensus, now there is a mutual-affirmation apparatus banally referred to as a “marketplace of ideas”. What looks like something public and lucid is only an extension of our own pre-existing opinions, prejudices and beliefs, while the authority of institutions and experts has been displaced by the aggregative logic of big data. When we access the world through a search engine, its results are ranked, as the founder of Google puts it, “recursively” – by an infinity of individual users functioning as a market, continuously and in real time.
The awesome utilities of digital technology aside, an earlier and more humanist tradition, which was dominant for centuries, had always distinguished between our tastes and preferences – the desires that find expression in the market – and our capacity for reflection on those preferences, which allows us to form and express values.
“A taste is almost defined as a preference about which you do not argue,” the philosopher and economist Albert O Hirschman once wrote. “A taste about which you argue, with others or yourself, ceases ipso facto being a taste – it turns into a value.”
Hirschman drew a distinction between that part of one’s self that is a consumer, and that part of one’s self that is a supplier of reasons. The market reflects what Hirschman called the preferences that are “revealed by agents as they buy goods and services”. But, as he puts it, men and women also “have the ability to step back from their ‘revealed’ wants, volition and preferences, to ask themselves whether they really want these wants and prefer these preferences”. We fashion our selves and identities on the basis of this capacity for reflection. The use of one’s individual reflective powers is reason; the collective use of these reflective powers is public reason; the use of public reason to make law and policy is democracy. When we provide reasons for our actions and beliefs, we bring ourselves into being: individually and collectively, we decide who and what we are.
According to the logic of Hayek’s Big Idea, these expressions of human subjectivity are meaningless without ratification by the market – as Friedman said, they are nothing but relativism, each as good as any other. When the only objective truth is determined by the market, all other values have the status of mere opinions; everything else is relativist hot air. But Friedman’s “relativism” is a charge that can be thrown at any claim based on human reason. It is a nonsense insult, as all humanistic pursuits are “relative” in a way the sciences are not. They are relative to the (private) condition of having a mind, and the (public) need to reason and understand even when we can’t expect scientific proof. When our debates are no longer resolved by deliberation over reasons, then the whimsies of power will determine the outcome.
This is where the triumph of neoliberalism meets the political nightmare we are living through now. “You had one job,” the old joke goes, and Hayek’s grand project, as originally conceived in 30s and 40s, was explicitly designed to prevent a backslide into political chaos and fascism. But the Big Idea was always this abomination waiting to happen. It was, from the beginning, pregnant with the thing it was said to protect against. Society reconceived as a giant market leads to a public life lost to bickering over mere opinions; until the public turns, finally, in frustration to a strongman as a last resort for solving its otherwise intractable problems.
In 1989, an American reporter knocked on the 90-year-old Hayek’s door. He was living in Freiburg, West Germany, in a third-floor apartment in a stucco house on Urachstrasse. The two men sat in a sunroom whose windows looked out on the mountains, and Hayek, who was recovering from pneumonia, pulled a blanket over his legs as they spoke.
This was no longer the man who had once wallowed in his own defeat at the hands of Keynes. Thatcher had just written to Hayek in a tone of millennial triumph. None of what she and Reagan had accomplished “would have been possible without the values and beliefs to set us on the right road and provide the right sense of direction”. Hayek was now cheerful on his own account, and optimistic about the future of capitalism. As the journalist wrote, “In particular, Hayek sees a greater appreciation for the market among the younger generation. Today unemployed youth in Algiers and Rangoon riot not for centrally planned welfare state but for opportunity: the freedom to buy and sell – jeans, cars, whatever – at whatever prices the market will bear.”
Thirty years on, and it can fairly be said that Hayek’s victory is unrivalled. We live in a paradise built by his Big Idea. The more closely the world can be made to resemble an ideal market governed only by perfect competition, the more law-like and “scientific” human behaviour, in the aggregate, becomes. Every day we ourselves – no one has to tell us to anymore! – strive to become more perfectly like scattered, discrete, anonymous buyers and sellers; and every day we treat the residual desire to be something more than a consumer as nostalgia, or elitism.
What began as a new form of intellectual authority, rooted in a devoutly apolitical worldview, nudged easily into an ultra-reactionary politics. What can’t be quantified must not be real, says the economist, and how do you measure the benefits of the core faiths of the enlightenment – namely, critical reasoning, personal autonomy and democratic self-government? When we abandoned, for its embarrassing residue of subjectivity, reason as a form of truth, and made science the sole arbiter of both the real and the true, we created a void that pseudo-science was happy to fill.
The authority of the professor, the reformer, the legislator or the jurist does not derive from the market, but from humanistic values such as public spiritedness, conscience or the longing for justice. Long before the Trump administration started demeaning them, such figures had been drained of salience by an explanatory scheme that can’t explain them. Surely there is a connection between their growing irrelevance and the election of Trump, a creature of pure whim, a man without the principles or conviction to make for a coherent self. A man without a mind, who represents the total absence of reason, is running the world; or at least ruining it. As a Manhattan real estate wiseguy, though, Trump, hey – he knows what he knows: that his sins have yet to be punished in the marketplace.
znModeratorDoctors warm to single-payer health care
Single-payer health care is still a controversial idea in the U.S., but a majority of physicians are moving to support it, a new survey finds.
Fifty-six percent of doctors registered either strong support or were somewhat supportive of a single-payer health system, according to the survey by Merritt Hawkins, a physician recruitment firm. In its 2008 survey, opinions ran the opposite way — 58 percent opposed single-payer. What’s changed?
Red tape, doctors tell Merritt Hawkins. Phillip Miller, the firm’s vice president of communications, said that in the thousands of conversations its employees have with doctors each year, physicians often say they are tired of dealing with billing and paperwork, which takes time away from patients.
“Physicians long for the relative clarity and simplicity of single-payer. In their minds, it would create less distractions, taking care of patients — not reimbursement,” Miller said.
In a single-payer system, a public entity, such as the government, would pay all the medical bills for a certain population, rather than insurance companies doing that work.
A long-term trend away from physicians owning their practices may be another reason that single-payer is winning some over. Last year was the first in which fewer than half of practicing physicians owned their practice — 47.1 percent — according to the American Medical Association’s surveys in 2012, 2014 and 2016. Many doctors are today employed by hospitals or health care institutions, rather than working for themselves in traditional solo or small-group private practices. Those doctors might be less invested in who pays the invoices, Miller said.
There’s also a growing sense of inevitability, Miller said, as more doctors assume single-payer is on the horizon.
“I would say there is a sense of frustration, a sense of maybe resignation that we’re moving in that direction, let’s go there and get it over with,” he said.
Merritt Hawkins emailed its survey Aug. 3 and received responses from 1,003 doctors. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
The Affordable Care Act established the principle that everyone dese
znModerator
znModeratorNo way Aaron Donald skips the season
Mike Florio
No way Aaron Donald skips the season
The report from ESPN’s Adam Schefter regarding the pessimism surrounding the Aaron Donald holdout includes a claim from an unnamed source that the Rams defensive tackle may sit out the entire season. Regardless, there’s no way that will happen.
Apart from the fact that hardly any who huff and puff about skipping a full season ever do, Donald gains nothing by not playing this year. He gets no compensation (duh) and, more importantly, he doesn’t get a year of credit toward finishing his contract.
The Rams hold Donald’s rights for two more years. If he skips the full season, they’ll still hold his rights for two more years.
The key will be to show up on time to get the benefit of the Joey Galloway ruling from nearly a generation ago. League insiders believe eight games are the most that can be missed by a player under contract in order to comfortabley take advantage of the Galloway ruling.
Donald already has forfeited a year of service toward free agency, but that doesn’t matter since he’s under contract for two more years. If he misses more than eight games, he risks being in the same position next year that he’s in this year.
znModeratorIt’s a start.
znModerator
znModeratorI won’t walk anyone through this, so don’t ask. You just have to believe me or not.
Ah. So. You’re holding out.
People believe you ag.
znModeratorRams enjoying Sammy Watkins’ speed and juice down the field
Josh Alper
Rams enjoying Sammy Watkins’ speed and juice down the field
Wide receiver Sammy Watkins hasn’t been a member of the Rams long enough to have the entire offense down, but what he’s done in practice with the parts he has grasped has left him with plenty of admirers on his new team.
One catch Watkins made over the middle on Wednesday left quarterback Jared Goff shaking his head and looking around to make sure that everyone else was seeing what he was seeing. Goff said it was “obviously a special play and special player” and coach Sean McVay appears to be on the same page with his quarterback.
“When the ball’s in his hands, you could feel his speed and his juice down the field,” McVay said, via the Los Angeles Times.
McVay said that they’ll get Watkins involved in Saturday’s game against the Raiders and it won’t be a surprise to see him make a few big plays for the Rams in that contest. Talent has never been Watkins’ issue, but staying healthy has been an obstacle that the Rams can only hope will be less troublesome in L.A. than it was in Buffalo.
znModeratorCraigMatson wrote:
The vet DBs overall looked good to Snead and McVay in those Feb March team workouts and so they chose not to take a corner in the draft mainly because of Hill and Jordan and finally Webster’s signing.
Jordan has talent and probably has more than a few fans from the Show Me State still dialed in to the Rams and rooting personally for him.
I expect he has a bright future as a starter or nickel corner and he obviously should have been drafted.
He was not unknown to most draftniks. We got lucky to sign him as a priority UDFA. Lots of teams had to know about him. He was even in the East West Shrine game. So either the Rams gave him bigger bonus or he wanted to be a Ram a ways before.
Jordan is big enough to play some FS also. Even if we lose Joyner and Tru next year we still have something left with Webster, Jordan and Johnson.
znModeratorThe Monuments Must Go
An open letter from the great-great-grandsons of Stonewall Jackson.By Jack Christian and Warren Christian
Dear Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney and members of the Monument Avenue Commission,
We are native Richmonders and also the great-great-grandsons of Stonewall Jackson. As two of the closest living relatives to Stonewall, we are writing today to ask for the removal of his statue, as well as the removal of all Confederate statues from Monument Avenue. They are overt symbols of racism and white supremacy, and the time is long overdue for them to depart from public display. Overnight, Baltimore has seen fit to take this action. Richmond should, too.
In making this request, we wish to express our respect and admiration for Mayor Stoney’s leadership while also strongly disagreeing with his claim that “removal of symbols does [nothing] for telling the actual truth [nor] changes the state and culture of racism in this country today.” In our view, the removal of the Jackson statue and others will necessarily further difficult conversations about racial justice. It will begin to tell the truth of us all coming to our senses.
Last weekend, Charlottesville showed us unequivocally that Confederate statues offer pre-existing iconography for racists. The people who descended on Charlottesville last weekend were there to make a naked show of force for white supremacy. To them, the Robert E. Lee statue is a clear symbol of their hateful ideology. The Confederate statues on Monument Avenue are, too—especially Jackson, who faces north, supposedly as if to continue the fight.
We are writing to say that we understand justice very differently from our grandfather’s grandfather, and we wish to make it clear his statue does not represent us.
Through our upbringing and education, we have learned much about Stonewall Jackson. We have learned about his reluctance to fight and his teaching of Sunday School to enslaved peoples in Lexington, Virginia, a potentially criminal activity at the time. We have learned how thoughtful and loving he was toward his family. But we cannot ignore his decision to own slaves, his decision to go to war for the Confederacy, and, ultimately, the fact that he was a white man fighting on the side of white supremacy.
While we are not ashamed of our great-great-grandfather, we are ashamed to benefit from white supremacy while our black family and friends suffer. We are ashamed of the monument.
In fact, instead of lauding Jackson’s violence, we choose to celebrate Stonewall’s sister—our great-great-grandaunt—Laura Jackson Arnold. As an adult Laura became a staunch Unionist and abolitionist. Though she and Stonewall were incredibly close through childhood, she never spoke to Stonewall after his decision to support the Confederacy. We choose to stand on the right side of history with Laura Jackson Arnold.
Confederate monuments like the Jackson statue were never intended as benign symbols. Rather, they were the clearly articulated artwork of white supremacy. Among many examples, we can see this plainly if we look at the dedication of a Confederate statue at the University of North Carolina, in which a speaker proclaimed that the Confederate soldier “saved the very life of the Anglo-Saxon race in the South.” Disturbingly, he went on to recount a tale of performing the “pleasing duty” of “horse whipping” a black woman in front of federal soldiers. All over the South, this grotesque message is conveyed by similar monuments. As importantly, this message is clear to today’s avowed white supremacists.
There is also historical evidence that the statues on Monument Avenue were rejected by black Richmonders at the time of their construction. In the 1870s, John Mitchell, a black city councilman, called the monuments a tribute to “blood and treason” and voiced strong opposition to the use of public funds for building them. Speaking about the Lee Memorial, he vowed that there would come a time when African Americans would “be there to take it down.”
Ongoing racial disparities in incarceration, educational attainment, police brutality, hiring practices, access to health care, and, perhaps most starkly, wealth, make it clear that these monuments do not stand somehow outside of history. Racism and white supremacy, which undoubtedly continue today, are neither natural nor inevitable. Rather, they were created in order to justify the unjustifiable, in particular slavery.
One thing that bonds our extended family, besides our common ancestor, is that many have worked, often as clergy and as educators, for justice in their communities. While we do not purport to speak for all of Stonewall’s kin, our sense of justice leads us to believe that removing the Stonewall statue and other monuments should be part of a larger project of actively mending the racial disparities that hundreds of years of white supremacy have wrought. We hope other descendants of Confederate generals will stand with us.
As cities all over the South are realizing now, we are not in need of added context. We are in need of a new context—one in which the statues have been taken down.
Respectfully,
William Jackson Christian
Warren Edmund Christian
Great-great-grandsons of Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” JacksonznModerator5 key questions for Rams: How they have been answered
Vincent Bonsignore
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/sports/20170817/5-key-questions-for-rams-how-they-have-been-answered
IRVINE >> Sean McVay called his Rams together on a sun-splashed Thursday morning moments after a loud horn sounded to end practice.
Thirty seconds or so later, the chorus of 80 players yelling “Rams” could be heard bouncing across two football fields, nearby locker rooms and weight rooms and a UC Irvine campus springing back to life after summer vacation.
And with that, the first Rams’ training camp presided over by new head coach Sean McVay was officially in the books.
Ahead is a game against the Raiders in Oakland, and then the Rams are back to official headquarters in Thousand Oaks. Soon they will be settling into a normal regular-season routine as they navigate through the final two preseason games and the approaching 2017 season.
The Rams faced five key questions heading into camp three weeks ago, key aspects of their operation they’d have to address to help ensure a rebound from last year’s 4-12 record.
Let’s take a look at those questions — and the verdicts — with training camp now over.
OFFENSIVE LINE MUST GET SQUARED AWAY
The addition of free agent left tackle Andrew Whitworth changes the whole dynamic of an offensive line that was ranked among the worst in the NFL last year. It takes a position of weakness and makes it a strength, and with Rodger Saffold a fixture at his natural left guard spot and veteran John Sullivan the starting center, the middle and left side of the Rams offensive line is settled.
But while the Rams have peace of mind on the left side, the right side is still a bit unsettled. They went into training camp hoping the moves of Rob Havenstein from tackle to guard and Jamon Brown from guard to tackle would solidify the right side, but after a week of camp Havenstein was back at tackle and Brown back at guard.
Havenstein has fit right back in at tackle, but not so much Brown, who faces a big couple of weeks ahead as the Rams decide whether he can be counted on as a starter or if a change needs to be made.
It’s a concern, obviously, but collectively the offensive line appears much improved from last year, and the veteran leadership of Whitworth, Saffold and Sullivan should be a boon to Jared Goff and help Todd Gurley get back on the right track. If Brown – or a replacement – can lock down right guard with Havenstein anchoring the right side, the Rams could be decidedly better along the offensive line in 2017.
VERDICT: Headed in the right direction
GOFF NEEDS TO TAKE CONTROL
Almost everything the Rams did this offseason was with their second-year quarterback in mind. From making the change from the defensive-minded Jeff Fisher to the offensive-minded McVay, to rebuilding the coaching and personnel infrastructure around Goff, the objective was to enhance his chances of reaching his ceiling.
Aside from a hiccup to begin the last week of training camp in which Goff was bitten by the interception bug – he chalked up two shaky days of practice to pushing some boundaries and vowed to learn from it – Goff has looked solid thus far.
He’s making good decisions on the majority of his throws, seems to be adapting to the new offense under McVay and has done a nice job spreading the ball around to a rebuilt receiving corps bolstered by the recent addition of Sammy Watkins.
It’s obvious Goff is developing a nice rapport with free agent pick-up Robert Woods, second-year tight end Tyler Higbee and rookie wide receiver Cooper Kupp. Throw Watkins into the equation and all of a sudden there is a deep arsenal he can tap into.
Just as importantly, Goff seems much more comfortable in his demeanor and role as the starting quarterback, right down to the confident manner in which he handles media responsibilities as his personality and sense of humor begin to emerge.
It’s a small thing, but telling.
VERDICT: Promising
IT’S TIME FOR GURLEY TO REAPPEAR
Todd Gurley burst onto the scene as a rookie in 2015 with 1,106 yards and 10 touchdowns in 13 games.
Then he limped through 2016 with 885 yards and six touchdowns.
Yes, Gurley was running behind an offensive line that couldn’t consistently open holes and alongside a quarterback and wide receiver group incapable of challenging teams downfield.
Yes, there was a lack of creativity in the coaching staff to figure out solutions.
But there also is evidence to suggest when Gurley did have room to run, he didn’t always make the most of it.
Gurley looked more decisive in camp running behind an improved offensive line and in the new offensive scheme under McVay.
But the lack of tackling in camp makes it hard to truly judge. The next two weeks of preseason games should give us a better handle on things.
VERDICT: Incomplete
PASSING GAME WEAPONS NEED TO EMERGE
The Rams went heavy on wide receiver help through the draft and free agency while also adding a new vertical tight end threat. The hope was newcomers Woods, Kupp, Gerald Everett and Josh Reynolds would combine with holdovers Tyler Higbee, Tavon Austin, Nelson Spruce, Pharoh Cooper and Mike Thomas to lift a receiving group that struck little fear in the hearts of opposing defenses.
Kupp and Woods have settled in nicely, Higbee has the potential to be a major weapon for Goff, and Reynolds made an immediate impression when he returned to practice this week after being sidelined because of leg issues.
Nevertheless, it was obvious the Rams lacked a difference-maker on the perimeter through the first two weeks of training camp.
That all changed late last week when they traded cornerback E.J. Gaines and a future second-round pick to the Buffalo Bills to bring in Watkins, a dynamic playmaker who immediately adds the home-run threat the Rams lacked in the middle of their batting order.
Watkins added to the previously retooled receiving corps could mean a major difference in how the Rams attack opposing defenses and in how opponents defend them. In the process, Goff and Gurley could benefit greatly.
VERDICT: Rams might be onto something
SEAN McVAY MUST MAKE AN IMPACT
The Rams had an accountability, leadership and teaching problem under Fisher, with players privately complaining about a lack of urgency to get problems fixed and a sentiment that they weren’t being empowered to lead.
The hiring of McVay, 31, was expected to improve those deficiencies by establishing a new culture in which players are held accountable but also given a voice.
McVay, along with the experienced coaching staff he constructed, has brought a level of teaching, passion and creativity that was obviously apparent during training camp, and the players in turn seem to be responding.
McVay’s first go-round as a head coach appeared to build off the groundwork he laid during the offseason, and as the regular season approaches and unfolds it’s imperative he continues to nurture the culture and identity he hopes to be the foundation of his team in the future.
VERDICT: Absolutely
znModeratorHighlights From Thursday’s Rams Practice
Rich Hammond
link: http://www.ocregister.com/2017/08/17/highlights-from-thursdays-rams-practice-2-2/
A brief look at the Rams’ training-camp practice on Thursday:
BIG MOMENT
It’s been a nice week for the Rams’ receivers. First, Sammy Watkins showed up and made some nice catches, and rookie Josh Reynolds flashed some moves. On the last official day of training camp, one of the veterans stood out, as Robert Woods made a couple nice catches in traffic, including one long ball for a touchdown.
INJURY REPORT
Coach Sean McVay didn’t offer an official list in advance of Saturday’s preseason game at Oakland, but it seems likely that the players who were held out for most of practice this week won’t play.
That would include cornerbacks Kayvon Webster, Nickell Robey-Coleman and Mike Jordan, which would leave the Rams rather shorthanded beyond starter Trumaine Johnson.
Receiver Tavon Austin, running back Lance Dunbar, offensive lineman Andrew Donnal and linebackers Samson Ebukam and Nic Grigsby also remain out.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“We’ve gotten a lot of things accomplished. We’re not where we want to be, but we’re going in the right direction. That’s what you feel good about.”
— McVay, on reaching the end of training camp.
DEPTH CHART
The arrival of Watkins, and good practice efforts from Reynolds, clearly have turned up the heat on receivers such as Nelson Spruce and Paul McRoberts, who presumably were on the 53-man roster bubble even before Watkins’ arrival in a trade last week.
Spruce made the roster out of training camp last year but missed the season with injuries, while McRoberts spent most of 2016 on the Rams’ practice squad.
“With the uncertainty and the unpredictability with the injuries and different things that can occur,” McVay said, “I think you get yourself caught up in worrying about things that you can’t control and that’s when it affects your ability to be your best. Those guys aren’t players that do that and I think that’s why you appreciate what they bring to this team right now.”
HEADING NORTH
The Rams are done at UC Irvine. They will have a walk-through practice Friday at Cal Lutheran in Thousand Oaks, then resume practice there Tuesday, after Saturday’s preseason game at Oakland.
“I couldn’t be more pleased with the way the guys competed, went about the meetings, and when we practiced every single day,” McVay said. “It’s been a great group to be around, both coaches and our players.”
August 17, 2017 at 9:37 pm in reply to: hoax: Anonymous didn't take over neo-nazi site Daily Stormer #72744znModeratorThe hypocrisy from those that hate is… stunning, even after everything that’s happened so far.
Is that hypocrisy though? Putin is more like them than not.
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znModeratorOk, but can we at least leave the Horse on the pedestal? Surely the horse wasn’t a racist. What was his name?…Pegasus? Trigger? Mr. Ed?
w
vI believe his name was Eichmann.
znModeratorIn a sense he’s like a bigger, stronger Stevie Smith or DeSean Jackson.
that’s kinda what i was thinking. desean only bigger but also a little slower.
And stronger, and more aggressive with the ball.
znModeratorRams dealing with reported threat of Aaron Donald regular-season holdout
RICH HAMMOND
IRVINE – When will Aaron Donald show up? Or, more to the point, will he show up?
Donald’s contract holdout seemed to take a turn toward contentiousness Thursday morning when ESPN reported, through unnamed sources, that Donald might not join the Rams for the start of the season.
Those sources, almost certainly, did not come from UC Irvine, where the Rams wrapped up their 18-day training camp Thursday. The Rams have declined, publicly and privately, to divulge details of their negotiations with Donald’s agent, Todd France, who previously didn’t respond to interview requests.
It seems clear that, with Donald’s holdout approaching the three-week mark, and the Sept. 10 season opener on the horizon, someone is attempting to turn up the heat on the Rams.
Will it work?
“Whether that report is true or not,” Coach Sean McVay said Thursday, “we’re continuing to try to find a solution, and we’ve got some time until that does come. We’ve got to always have contingency plans in place, but like I said, that doesn’t change our approach. We’re still trying to find that solution and get Aaron here and be a part of what we’re doing. And if not, we need to be ready to adjust.”
The Rams play a preseason game Saturday at Oakland. After that, the practice schedule gets tighter. Most of the defense already has been installed, and not only has Donald missed all of training camp, but he also missed most of the team’s voluntary offseason program.
Even though Donald unquestionably is one of NFL’s most talented players, getting him up to speed on the new system of defensive coordinator Wade Phillips before Sept. 10 could be an issue.
That assumes, of course, that Donald’s holdout doesn’t continue into mid-September. Fellow defensive lineman Michael Brockers said he remains confident Donald will show up before then.
“Oh yeah. Oh yeah,” Brockers said. “I have a good feeling he will come back. It’s just about the (contract) numbers and stuff that I don’t want to get into. But I know he will be back sometime soon.”It’s a complicated, perhaps unprecedented situation. Donald, 26, is a dominant defender who has made the Pro Bowl in each of his first three seasons. But under the NFL’s rookie-contract structure, Donald is set to make approximately $1.8 million this season. The Rams recently picked up his contract option for 2018, when he would make almost $6.9 million.
Donald seems to be thinking bigger, perhaps north of the six-year, $114-million deal Ndamukong Suh signed with Miami in 2015, one that included $60 million in guaranteed money.
The issue for the Rams is, they have Donald locked up for two more seasons and a reasonable salary. They seem open to signing him to a major, long-term contract, but as always in contract talks, factors such as monetary structure and option years can be stumbling blocks.
Meanwhile, Rams players continue their on-field work. The defensive line took a big hit less than a week into camp when starting end Dominique Easley tore his ACL. The Rams have been going with Ethan Westbrooks and Louis Trinca-Pasat as bookends for Brockers, their defensive tackle.
“It’s a ‘you’ve just got to go on’ type of thing,” Brockers said. “You don’t want to make it a distraction, and it’s really not a distraction. We understand the business, and we let that be that, and we take care of what we can control. That’s what it’s really about. It’s not a distraction.
“We know what we’re going to get when he comes back. He’s a plug-in guy, so as long as we can get him up to speed on the plays, and stuff like that, we’ll be fine.”
It’s also an unenviable situation for McVay, the Rams’ first-year coach who has worked hard to foster a team-first mentality since his hiring in January. Now, his team’s best player is holding out.
McVay said he doesn’t take it personally and, in fact, when Donald spoke briefly in June at a youth football camp, he was effusive in his praise of McVay’s acumen. McVay and other Rams executives have been careful to express their respect for Donald and not escalate the holdout situation.
“I can appreciate about Aaron is, he loves this game,” McVay said. “He’s all about the right stuff. He’s one of those players that coaches love to work with. He’s one of those players who, he’s why you coach, to be around players like that. You also respect and understand that this is how people make their living.
“It certainly isn’t something, now that I have a better understanding, that I take personally. It’s something where our organization and Aaron’s people are trying to come to a solution. We’re hopeful, and we’re still optimistic, that we’ll be able to get that done.”
znModeratorSo yer sayin Martin Sheen got it wrong?
Yes. That is what I am saying.
And therefore, I am in favor of tearing down all those old statues of Martin Sheen.
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znModeratorAdam Schefter
1 hr ·
Facebook Mentions
·
Rams DT Aaron Donald’s holdout is threatening to last into the regular season, per league sources. One source speculated that he could envision Donald sitting out 2017, though a lot can change in any negotiation in a hurry. But the fact that such strong thoughts exist now provides a snapshot into where the two sides are today: not particularly close to a deal. The two sides will stay in touch, but today there is pessimism about how long Donald’s holdout could last.znModeratorWhat kind of WR is Sammy, btw?
w
vI’m not the best “who does a receiver compare to” type.I just have impressions. My impression is that he’s stronger and more physical than Holt but he has a lot of Holt’s best attributes too. A lot of SW’s game is competitive juices. He fights for contested balls and goes after the ball, attacks it. Fiesty, Kind of fearless. In a sense he’s like a bigger, stronger Stevie Smith or DeSean Jackson. Deep threat who’s not just that. I don;t think the Rams have had a guy like him that I can remember.
…
2014 scouting report:
ANALYSIS
STRENGTHS Exceptional football playing speed — can flat out fly and take the top off a defense. Has world-class track speed. Extends outside his frame and plucks the ball. Outstanding body control and agility. Tracks the ball well over his shoulder and is a natural hands-catcher who can make an average quarterback look good. Consistently turns 2-yard gains into 15-yard chunks — possesses big-time playmaking ability and is very effective creating in the open field on bubble screens and quick-hitting short/lateral tosses. Superb run-after-the-catch ability. Good burst out of his cuts to separate. Has game-breaking return ability and is a threat to score every time he touches the ball. Has a strong support structure (mother moved to Clemson following Wakins’ 2012 drug arrest and he has steered clear of any trouble). Will be a 21-year-old rookie.
WEAKNESSES Production results heavily from a gimmicky offense. Routes could use some more polish. Does not consistently work the middle of the field. Could improve field awareness. Is still immature and could require some time to acclimate to an NFL playbook. Could stand to improve ball security and do a better job fielding punts.
DRAFT PROJECTION Round 1 (top 10)
BOTTOM LINE A legitimate No. 1-caliber receiver who stepped onto the field as a true freshman and made an immediate, game-changing impact. Was slowed by injuries as a sophomore, but responded with a strong junior season and capped his career as one of the most impactful receivers in school history. Has rare speed, soft hands and the big-play ability to challenge NFL defensive backs as a rookie.
-Nolan Nawrocki: http://www.nfl.com/draft/2014/profiles/sammy-watkins?id=2543457
znModeratorThings can change, of course, but if cuts were today, I'd have Watkins, Woods, Kupp, Austin, Cooper, Reynolds as Rams' WRs.
— Alden Gonzalez (@Alden_Gonzalez) August 17, 2017
August 17, 2017 at 12:29 pm in reply to: car drives into counter-protestors in charlottesville #72721znModeratorRegime Change in Charlottesville
If you understand why that Civil War statue really went up, the debate over removing it looks a lot different.==
More on this:
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Did Confederate symbols gain prominence in the civil rights era?
A major catalyst in the run up to the deadly clashes in Charlottesville, Va., was the city’s decision to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
As the nation reeled from the violence, some political analysts sought to place Confederate symbolism in a broader historical context to help explain the turmoil around the Aug. 11-12 weekend.
“The idea of putting up (Confederate) monuments actually didn’t happen right after the Civil War. It happened during the 1960s,” MSNBC analyst Joy Reid said on NBC’s Meet The Press, Aug. 13, 2017.
Reid went on to say that Confederate symbols were political statements aimed at African-Americans.
American history features two periods when Confederate symbolism spiked: around the turn of the 20th century and the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. As a group, most Confederate statues went up in the earlier period.
Early 20th century: Confederate monuments multiply
A sharp uptick in the construction of Confederate monuments took place from the late 1890s up to about 1920. That’s according to a Southern Poverty Law Center study that took a nationwide inventory of the more than 1,500 Confederate symbols in public spaces.
This chart from the study shows the increased pace of construction around the turn of the 20th century, with blue dots signifying monuments on courthouse grounds, red dots indicating other sites (including monuments) and green dots representing schools.
Several cross-currents explain the explosion of Confederate symbolism in this period.
This was an era of generational change during which Civil War veterans, dying of old age, were venerated by their children and grandchildren, experts told us.
“Organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans came into being,” said Charles S. Bullock, III, a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia. “Civil War veterans were honored in parades. There is a Confederate Memorial Day which pre-dates the National Memorial Day.”
But as a victorious North fixed its gaze on a prosperous future, the American South was mired in poverty that would persist for generations. The monuments were a way to look back to an idealized past.
“Tributes to the Confederacy — placing statues, naming streets and other public facilities — were part of the Lost Cause ideology that focused on an idyllic era of stately mansions, beautiful women and gallant Confederate officers,” Bullock said.
But the monuments also implicitly symbolized slavery and white violence, the experts said.
“On the surface, they were memorials to the Confederacy and their heroes,” said Karen L. Cox, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. “Yet, they were also built during a period of racial violence and strong beliefs about Anglo-Saxon (i.e. white) supremacy.”
“The fact that they were placed on the grounds of county and state courthouses was intentional,” she added. “The message: white men are in charge.”
The period between 1890-World War I saw whites reassert control over the South by enforcing Jim Crow laws, taking control of southern governments and systematically disenfranchising and disempowering African-Americans, said Jonathan Leib, a professor of geography and chair of the department of political science and geography at Old Dominion University.
Racial segregation also got a major endorsement at the federal level during this era. In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Plessy vs. Ferguson which upheld the constitutionality of state laws that racially segregated public facilities that were “separate but equal.” (Nearly 60 years passed before the Court would declare such segregation “inherently unequal.”)
“This was also a moment when the nation itself began to repair the wounds of the late war by agreeing on the inferiority of African Americans,” said Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard Kennedy School. “Racial segregation became the law and custom of the nation at precisely the moment when many of these monuments were built.”
Another monument born roughly of this era, a statue of Robert E. Lee installed in Charlottesville in 1924, now figures as a present-day flashpoint.
Civil rights era: Confederate flag gains prominence
The second period when Confederate symbols exploded was the civil rights era.
But it was the Confederate flag — not monuments — that gained prominence during this time, as Reid later clarified in an email to PolitiFact and in a Aug. 15 appearance on MSNBC.
The flag became a symbol of opposition to desegregation.
“It was the choice to fly Confederate flags, more so than the building of new statutes, on government property that became a popular show of resistance during the civil rights era,” Muhammad said. He added the decision to fly the flag was a clear sign of protest against the federal government’s growing enforcement of civil rights.
It was during this era when the Ku Klux Klan came to embrace the Confederate flag, notes the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Reid said, “the idea of putting up (Confederate) monuments actually didn’t happen right after the Civil War. It happened during the 1960s.” She added that Confederate symbols were political statements aimed at African-Americans.
Reid’s comment that Confederate symbols are political statements aimed at African-Americans is backed up by history, say experts.
But she is wrong that Confederate monuments were built during the civil rights era. Roughly 75 percent were erected before then, according to a comprehensive study of Confederate symbolism. It was during the civil rights era that the Confederate flag gained prominence, which she later clarified.
znModeratorRams, Steelers taking very different approaches with high-profile holdouts
Mike Florio
Rams, Steelers taking very different approaches with high-profile holdouts
At a time when the Steelers repeatedly are squeezing running back Le’Veon Bell to show up for training camp, the Rams are applying a much different approach to defensive tackle Aaron Donald.
Appearing on Thursday’s PFT Live, Rams G.M. Les Snead declined to characterize Donald’s expectations for a new contract, praised his ability to disrupt an offensive line even during OTA sessions, and said nothing about Donald’s ability to be ready for the season based on his decision to boycott practices and preseason games. And Snead would have every right to pressure Donald.
Donald, unlike Bell, is under contract. He’s violating the contract by not being at camp. The Rams have every right to chastise him for not being there, but they’re not.
Bell isn’t under contract. He’s merely exercise the rights that the Steelers gave him by exercising their right to apply the franchise tag. And yet the Steelers are now consistently calling him out for not showing up.
Some will say that people like G.M. Kevin Colbert and coach Mike Tomlin are merely answering the questions they’re asked, but Snead could use that same excuse as cover for lambasting Donald, if he wanted.
The end game for Donald is less clear than it is for Bell. At a salary of $12.1 million this year, Bell likely will show up in time to cash every check, even if he isn’t prepared for Week One. Donald, at a salary of only (only?) $1.8 million, would be losing less by skipping games.
Here’s another big difference between the two: The Steelers could still yank the $12.1 million offer, at any point before Bell signs it. If, as it appears, they aren’t willing to offer him more money or any other inducement to get him to show up and if, as it appears, Bell isn’t willing to show up without it, the exasperation that comes through in comments from Colbert and Tomlin could morph into a decision to pocket the $12.1 million and wish Bell luck in his effort to get a similar deal in early September.
August 17, 2017 at 10:14 am in reply to: Goff, McVay, 8/16, vids & transcripts, + 2 McVay audios, including Mike & Mike #72714znModeratorRams quarterback Jared Goff joins Marcellus Wiley and Kelvin Washington to discuss his first year in the league and in LA. What he sees in the offense thus far and his reaction when the team acquired Sammy Watkins.
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August 17, 2017 at 10:08 am in reply to: sizing up McVay (La Canfora, John Sullivan) … good reads #72713znModeratorJohn Sullivan on Rams’ offense: ‘We’re not going to be an easy out’
Alden Gonzalez
IRVINE, Calif. — It has been eight years since veteran center John Sullivan joined legendary quarterback Brett Favre on the Minnesota Vikings, the last stop in what became a Hall of Fame career.
But hearing Favre’s name still makes Sullivan’s right buttock sting.
“He used to smack your ass so hard,” Sullivan, now the Los Angeles Rams’ starting center, said after a recent practice. “You’d be standing in a walk-through and you had to keep your head on a swivel because you just knew if Brett came up behind you, you were getting one, and you were going to have a handprint on there for a couple days.”
Sullivan was Favre’s center in 2009, the year he made the Pro Bowl and led the Vikings to the NFC Championship Game at the age of 40. He still laughs at all the times Favre used to make stuff up as he went along. Like that one two-minute drill in Pittsburgh, when Favre didn’t bother calling plays or protections. At one point he barked instructions to one of his receivers, yelled at Sullivan to snap him the ball and completed a five-yard out. The offense and defense was so flat-footed that the linemen didn’t even make contact with one another.
“He was an amazing player in terms of having a very natural feel for the game; instincts,” said Sullivan, also Favre’s center during his final season in 2010. “You talk about a youthful exuberance about the sport — he was 40 years old and he was playing like he was a 10-year-old kid in the backyard. It was refreshing for everybody. I was a 23-year-old kid fresh out of college, and even for me it was refreshing at that point in time.”
Sullivan, now 32, is surrounded by youth these days. His quarterback, Jared Goff, is 22, the youngest among the 10 players Sullivan has ever snapped the ball to in an NFL game. His boss, Sean McVay, is 31, the youngest head coach in NFL history.
Sullivan played under McVay last year, when McVay was in his last of three years as the Redskins’ offensive coordinator. Back issues began to plague Sullivan after a six-year run of being one of the game’s better centers. He started 93 of a possible 96 regular-season games from 2009 to ’14. He spent all of the 2015 season on injured reserve, the product of two back surgeries, then lost the starting job in 2016 and was released at the end of August.
Rams center John Sullivan on Sean McVay: “He’s an incredible motivator, amazing with the X’s and O’s, and so far proving himself as a great head coach in terms of leading this organization and changing the culture …” Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports
The Redskins picked him up on Sept. 27, shortly after starter Kory Lichtensteiger injured his calf. It was a Tuesday, heading into Week 4, the day of the Redskins’ walk-through. Sullivan flew into Washington, D.C., that morning, worked out, signed his contract and went straight into an offensive meeting before even having a chance to text his wife.There, he met McVay.
“You’re going to these offensive install meetings, and he is so on the screws on every single detail,” Sullivan said. “But he’s not micromanaging. It’s just pointing out things that you can be looking for, and really coaching in the classroom in terms of being detail-oriented. He was incredibly impressive. I didn’t know his age at that point. I didn’t know he was 30. And even to this day, it doesn’t make any difference. He’s an incredible motivator, amazing with the X’s and O’s, and so far proving himself as a great head coach in terms of leading this organization and changing the culture, and making sure that everybody buys into our message. That’s just a connected team, with a ‘We Not Me’ slogan.”
Sullivan started only one game during that 2016 season, then re-joined McVay with the Rams, where he will replace former starter Tim Barnes at center. McVay believes Sullivan is fully healthy now. His presence in the room, with the knowledge he has of his offense, “has helped immensely,” McVay said.
“He’s one of the more impressive players I’ve ever been around, just in terms of his above the neck and the way that he’s able to translate things from the meeting room to the grass,” McVay went on about Sullivan. “He truly is one of those linemen — like we talk about with the quarterbacks — that’s an extension of the coaching staff. He’s got a great grasp of what we want to get done. He knows why, so he’s able to help his teammates out. He’s been a breath of fresh air.”
More than the offense, though, Sullivan knows McVay. He knows his thought process on protections, he knows the way his offenses function, and he knows how he likes to attack. McVay is trying to do for the Rams what he did for the Redskins, even though his new personnel is significantly younger and less accomplished. He’s going from Jordan Reed and Vernon Davis to Tyler Higbee and Gerald Everett, two tight ends who have combined for 11 career catches. He’s going from Kirk Cousins to Goff, who’s coming off a disastrous rookie season. He’s going from DeSean Jackson and Pierre Garcon to Sammy Watkins and Robert Woods, two former Bills teammates together again on the Rams.
“We scored a ton of points last year, and that’s the expectation here in Los Angeles now is we’re going to do that exact same thing,” Sullivan said. “We’re going to use all the facets of the game to attack teams, and we’re going to try to put defenses on their heels, make them defend the entire field.”
It’s been a long time since the Rams put opposing defenses on their heels. They have finished outside the top 20 in defense-adjusted value over average after each of the past 10 seasons. The past two years, they were last in the NFL in yards. This past season — a 4-12 season — they were held below 300 total yards in 10 games. Sullivan isn’t willing to set concrete expectations for what McVay can do for this offense, but he is confident in one thing.
“We’re not going to be an easy out for any defense we play,” Sullivan said. “We’re going to come out, we’re going to attack you, and we’re going to execute as well as we possibly can. We’re very process-oriented. We focus on coming out here and working the right way every single day. And the belief is that if you do that, the results will follow. We’ll see.”
znModeratorPeter Dinklage urges ‘Game of Thrones’ fans to stop buying direwolf-lookalike Huskies
Peter Dinklage is pleading with Game of Thrones fans to not be hasty with their pet purchases.
In tandem with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the actor hopes to discourage Thrones fans from getting Huskies solely for their similarity to direwolves, giant animals that are a part of the hit HBO fantasy series.
In a statement from PETA, the organization says the sled dogs are in demand because of the show’s popularity. But often, it says, once owners understand the commitment the dogs require, they are abandoned. ABC7 News and KRON4 found evidence of this trend in the Bay Area.
“Please, to all of Game of Thrones’ many wonderful fans, we understand that due to the direwolves’ huge popularity, many folks are going out and buying Huskies,” Dinklage, who plays Tyrion Lannister, says in the statement from PETA. “Not only does this hurt all the deserving homeless dogs waiting for a chance at a good home in shelters, but shelters are also reporting that many of these huskies are being abandoned — as often happens when dogs are bought on impulse, without understanding their needs.”
Dinklage, a vegetarian, stressed the seriousness of pet selection. “Please, please, if you’re going to bring a dog into your family, make sure that you’re prepared for such a tremendous responsibility and remember to always, ALWAYS, adopt from a shelter,” he said.
August 17, 2017 at 1:18 am in reply to: Goff, McVay, 8/16, vids & transcripts, + 2 McVay audios, including Mike & Mike #72698znModeratorHead Coach Sean McVay – August 16, 2017
(On how WR Sammy Watkins looked in practice)
“I think he looked really good. He’s got great hands, the ability to run through the football, when the balls in his hands you can feel his speed and his juice down the field, so I thought it was good to get him out here. He was comfortable with some of the things that we were asking him to do, so it was great to have (WR) Sammy (Watkins) out there and getting in the mix today.”(On if he is starting to get excited for what Watkins means for this offense or if expectations are tempered because of how much he needs to learn)
“Well, there’s certainly a lot of work ahead, but I think as soon as we were able to acquire Sammy there was excitement because you see what he’s done over the course of his career. What I’ve been really pleasantly surprised with is just what a great person he is, a great communicator, how quickly he’s picked things up. He’s able to articulate his role and responsibility within the framework of some of the things we’re asking him to do. He’s been very impressive in that regard and then seeing him out here where we’ve really kind of got him involved a lot more than yesterday – he did a great job, so it was good to have Sammy today.”(On if he thought Jared Goff responded well today)
“Yeah, I think he did. Again, the nice thing about going against each other for so long, there’s a lot of familiarity on both sides and I think we’ve consistently had a good back and forth battle. I thought he did have a better day today than the last couple, but getting that work from our defense where (defensive coordinator) Wade (Phillips) and our defensive coaches do an excellent job of mixing up some of the looks, especially on the back end with what those quarterbacks are seeing has been excellent work and it’s only going to help us moving into the season.”(On how mixing Watkins into the offense helps Goff)
“I think it helped today because Sammy was able to make a handful of plays. Certainly you always want to try to distribute the ball to all five eligible (receivers), but Sammy’s number was called a handful of times today and he did a great job delivering and Jared made good, accurate throws. It was good to see those two connect on a handful of plays today.”(On if Watkins will get some work with Goff on Saturday)
“Yeah, that’s the anticipation, that’s the expectation. We’ll play our starters – the goal is a little bit more, probably through the first quarter. We’ll see how that goes, but Sammy’s going to be a guy that is a big part of our plans offensively and we expect to get him involved on Saturday.”(On being able to utilize the different skillsets that his wide receivers possess)
“It does. I think it’s nice when you have a good, complementary group where everybody has something unique about their game. But, I think you also want to be mindful of these guys can all do a little bit of everything as well. You don’t want to be predictable, but you want to be able to put guys in positions where they’re doing things that they do best, but also being mindful of what the defense is looking at and what you’re presenting to them. So, I think the more versatility that you can have at the receiver position, the more beneficial it’s going to be to our group as a whole. Right now, with getting some of the guys back – you look at (WR) Josh Reynolds and (WR) Mike Thomas and then adding Sammy we definitely have added some speed to our group with those three for sure back out on the field and you feel it.”(On how important it is to have C John Sullivan who was in his offense last year)
“It’s helped immensely. I think (C) John Sullivan, not only just because he had some familiarity with what we’ve done and what we’re doing here. He’s one of the more impressive players I’ve ever been around just in terms of his above the neck and the way that he’s able to translate things from the meeting room to the grass. He truly is one of those linemen, like we talk about with the quarterbacks, that’s an extension of the coaching staff. He’s got a great grasp on what we want to get done, he knows why so he’s able to help his teammates out. He’s been a breath of fresh air and I’m very glad that John’s here with us.”(On if center is truly a position that is an extension of the coach in many ways)
“Yeah, I think especially if you have the right kind of guy. When you really look at it, the more that you kind of get to know about this game and the more that you have an appreciation for everything that goes on up front – the more value that you have for that center spot. And when you’ve got the right guy that can command that room, can make all the calls, do the communication, it’s a really huge benefit. They’re vital in being able to utilize the cadence as well, the center and the quarterback working in unison and then everybody else kind of following their lead. John’s presence here has definitely been felt. He’s been a great mentor like (T Andrew) Whitworth to a lot of our younger linemen and I can’t say enough about the way he goes about every single day. Like I said, I’m extremely happy to have John here.”(On if Sullivan seems fully healthy)
“He does. With a lot of those guys, especially some of those veteran players –we’ve been mindful where I think (Director/Sports Medicine and Performance) Reggie (Scott) and (strength and conditioning coach) Ted (Rath) have done a great job putting together a maintenance program where we’re still able to get their work on the field, they’re also able to take advantage of all the walk-thrus that we have. But, it’s about getting them healthy to the season and being able to do that while also giving some younger guys a chance to maybe get some reps that they wouldn’t get otherwise. I think it’s worked out well for us throughout the course of training camp and so far, so good.”(On the cornerbacks who are out and if anyone is more concerning than others)
“No, it’s really just being precautionary with a handful of them, when you look at (CB) Trumaine (Johnson) took limited reps today, but we’re just being smart with those guys with that maintenance program. (CB) Kayvon (Webster), we’re continuing to monitor his ankle day-to-day. But, he could play if he had to push it right now. Just because of where we’re at, we want to be smart with those guys and a lot of the time it ends up just being some of those nagging injuries that those skilled players, those receivers and those corners you have to be really careful with.”(On with all the ball protection drills in practice, if he anticipates zero fumbles on Saturday)
“You look at it and it starts with me, I’ve got to do a better job of emphasizing it and it’s like we talked about too, you try to mimic and emulate those game like situations, as much as possible in practice, but when you’ve got three guys collapsing on you and to the Cowboys’, they do a great job with (defensive coordinator/defensive line) Coach (Rod) Marinelli and (head) Coach (Jason) Garrett of emphasizing and taking the ball away. We’ve got to be mindful of protecting, especially in those congested areas. Looking forward to seeing how we improve on Saturday.”(On situation with DT Aaron Donald)
“If there was, I wish I could tell you. No, not right now there’s not. It’s something that we’re hopeful that is going to get done sooner than later. I know that (general manager) Les (Snead) and his staff have been in dialogue with (DT) Aaron (Donald) and his agents and something that we’re looking to get solved. But, in the meantime, guys are getting better and I’ve been pleased with the way that our team has handled this. One of our great players that I know everybody would like to have around, but been really proud of the way that we’ve handled it as a whole and not letting it affect our ability to move forward while also respecting and appreciating how valuable he is to us.”(On whether he expects to know ahead of time when Donald will return)
“No, it would be something that you would have an idea. Because, I would like to think that as soon as there’s some information on that front that’s relevant that’s something that everybody would be in tune with.”(On if the Donald situation is something he continually communicates with the players about)
“Yeah. You talk about things and I think you want to have that open clear and honest communication with our guys. That was something we addressed right away and if any of the players have any questions with regards to what’s going on they know that they can come see me and talk about it, but I think the great thing about our team and really our coaching staff as a whole is you don’t ever want to have any grey. You want to operate where we’re very open and clear with at communication like we talked about Vinny and that’s something that we’ll continue to strive to do.”(On red zone situations today and TE Gerald Everett’s progression in that part of the game)
“I think that’s where he’s done a nice job. You see the size, you see the ability in terms of being about to have great body control for a man of his size with the ball skills. He does a nice job in the red zone and when the ball’s in his hands he was excellent running after the catch. I think being able to see him get touches in live action when he can truly get tackled you’ll really appreciate some of the things that you really to see in him in college too at a high level. He’s continuing to grow and get better every single day as a more complete tight end. One of the plays that excited me the most that he did today was where he’s inserting through the line of scrimmage a lead blocker. He offers a lot of versatility for us at that tight end spot and been very pleased. I think (tight ends coach) Shane Waldron our tight ends coach has done a great job with him.”***
Rams QB Jared Goff – August 16, 2017
(On what it’s like to have WR Sammy Watkins out there)
“It’s been great. I think I said it the other day after the game, he’s still picking things up obviously – he’s brand new to some of the stuff. But you see the first play of live team there – the way he ran through that ball is something I don’t think we’ve seen in a little while. It was pretty special the way he plucked it and ran through it. It was obviously a special play and a special player.”(On if he allows himself to step back and say, ‘Wow’ after making a great pass and seeing a great catch)
“I did, I did a little bit. You try not to, but then kind of turn around and look at everyone like, ‘Everyone see that? Alright.’ But yeah, it was good catch and hopefully something that won’t be quite a surprise anymore.”(On what he can do off the field to build chemistry with a player like Watkins)
“The last couple days, just try to speak some plays to him and just have him verbalize them for me and then have him spit back what he’s doing. He’s been sharp, man. He’s been sharper than I expected and that’s not saying anything negatively about him, but just a new system for anybody. He’s been on it. He’s been sharp. It’s been a really pleasant surprise.”(On the mistakes he’s made over the past couple of practices and how he overcame those struggles today)
“I think I was being a little bit aggressive the past couple of days and some plays I can’t make and just learning. I’m still learning, still growing. You should test your limits a little bit, I think, but at the same time I have to be smarter than that. I have to take care of the ball better than that and I will. It’s just, in practice you try some things sometimes you may not try other times, but at the same time, you have to be smart with it.”(On what WR Josh Reynolds brings to the table)
“Yeah, I think yesterday in particular, (WR) Josh (Reynolds) had a great day. He made a lot of good plays and showed some stuff that we hadn’t seen yet and it was really good to see some of the stuff down the field. He was obviously fresh but, good player, smart. He’s done a good job.”(On the set of weapons he has at the tight end and wide receiver position all of the sudden)
“So far it’s been good. I think (Tight End) Gerald (Everett) has done a good job down at the goal line. I’ve been very happy with what he’s done and just keep getting those guys the ball and they’ll make plays.”(On if he’s looking forward to playing back in Northern California)
“Yeah, it’ll be nice. It’ll be my first time back there since college, playing at least, and got some family and friends coming. It’ll be good.”(On how many of his people he’s expecting to be at the game Saturday)
“I have no idea. A bunch of my friends are coming, but I think they’re on their own for tickets this week and I’ll get them for Thursday Night (Football) against San Francisco.”(On what he’s trying to build on coming out of training camp)
“Yeah, obviously I’ll probably get a little more playing time and have a chance to build a little bit of a rhythm. That’s what I look forward to doing, is just getting out there and string a few completions together and get a little bit of a rhythm moving the ball and hopefully get us in the end zone a couple times.”August 17, 2017 at 12:03 am in reply to: Day 15, camp, tweets n vids n articles & info n stuff #72697znModeratorTraining Camp Report: Everything You Need to Know From Day 15
Kristen Lago
The Rams held their 15th practice of 2017 training camp on Wednesday afternoon. The pads were back on for today’s practice and overall it proved to be a fun and spirited session for the entire team. After tomorrow’s morning workout, the Rams will pack their bags and head up to Oakland to face off against the Raiders in Week 2 of the preseason.
Here’s everything you need to know from the Rams’ penultimate day at UC Irvine:
TOP TAKEAWAYS
Participation update
Wednesday saw the return of wide receiver Nelson Spruce to the practice field. Although Spruce was limited in the amount of reps taken throughout the afternoon, he had some solid catches in the 11-on-11 and 7-on-7 drills and should see some game action in Saturday’s matchup.
There were, however, a few members of the Rams’ secondary missing from practice today. Cornerbacks Nickell Robey-Coleman, Mike Jordan, and Kayvon Webster watched from the sidelines as a variety of other defensive backs were worked in along the outside. Head coach Sean McVay said keeping them off the field was “really just precautionary” at this point.
“Because of where we’re at, we want to be smart with those guys,” McVay said. “A lot of the time it ends up just being some of those nagging injuries that those skilled players, those receivers and those corners you have to be really careful with.”
A number of veteran players also took the day off as part of the team’s “maintenance program” under director of sports medicine and performance Reggie Scott and the rest of his training staff. Center John Sullivan, left tackle Andrew Whitworth, left guard Rodger Saffold and linebackers Mark Barron and Connor Barwin were held out in an effort to keep them healthy coming into the regular season.
“It’s about being able to do that while also giving some younger guys a chance to maybe get some reps that they wouldn’t get otherwise,” he added. “I think it’s worked out well for us throughout the course of training camp and so far, so good.”
Looking toward Oakland
One question heading into Saturday’s matchup with the Raiders is how much will the Rams’ starters play? After practice, McVay addressed that question saying that the first-team offense and defense will work on field through the end of the first quarter. The Rams’ newest addition, wide receiver Sammy Watkins, will be included in that first team lineup.
“We’ll play our starters — the goal is a little bit more,” McVay said. “We’ll see how that goes, but Sammy’s going to be a guy that is a big part of our plans offensively and we expect to get him involved on Saturday.”
After two days of padded practices, Watkins has increased his reps with the first- and second-team offense. Though he said on Monday that it “would take him about a week and a half” to fully grasp the offense, he has proven to be a quick learner.
“Just what a great person he is, a great communicator, how quickly he’s picked things up,” McVay said. “He’s able to articulate his role and responsibility within the framework of some of the things we’re asking him to do and he’s been very impressive in that regard. He did a great job, so it was good to have Sammy today.”
As Wednesday’s practice went on, he looked more and more comfortable with the rest of the offense, catching a couple of deep passes from Goff in the 11-on-11 drills. His quarterback took notice, calling Watkins a “special player” to watch.
“He’s brand new to some of the stuff, but you see the first play of live team there – the way he ran through that ball is something I don’t think we’ve seen in a little while. It was pretty special the way he plucked it and ran through it.”
Tight ends stepping up
Over the last two days of practice, tight ends Gerald Everett and Tyler Higbee have made for a dynamic duo. Both have been impressive in the passing game, showcasing good hands and quick speed, and have provided solid additions as blockers.
McVay was known for his productive use of the tight end position with Washington and brought that tight-end friendly offense with him to the Los Angeles. Everett and Higbee, along with Temarrick Hemingway and Corey Harkey, have been targeted consistently throughout camp and should take on even greater responsibilities in the next few preseason matchups.
Asked whether fans can expect to see Higbee and Everett working together in a ‘12’ personnel grouping, McVay told reporters it’s a real possibility.
“When you’ve got functional players that can both compete in the run and the pass it allows you to be a little bit more multiple offensively,” McVay said. “And that’s why you feel really good about our tight end group and what we’ll hopefully be able to present to defenses.”
Today, Everett looked especially effective in the team’s red zone work, out-jumping his defender to reel in a touchdown pass from Mannion. In Tuesday’s practice Higbee was targeted heavily by Goff, while Hemingway made some impressive grabs in traffic. All in all, the tight end group should be an exciting position to watch develop throughout the rest of August.
FIELD-LEVEL OBSERVATIONS
– Ball protection drills were featured as a point of emphasis for the third consecutive day of training camp. McVay said that after the five fumbles occurred in the preseason opener, protecting the football would be a primary focus on the practice field.
“You look at it and it starts with me — I’ve got to do a better job of emphasizing it and it’s like we talked about too, you try to mimic and emulate those game like situations, as much as possible in practice,” McVay said of the drills. “We’ve got to be mindful of protecting, especially in those congested areas. Looking forward to seeing how we improve on Saturday.”
– Cornerback Trumaine Johnson recorded the first interception of the day rising up to pick off a pass from Goff in 11-on-11 drills. Dominique Hatfield recorded his second-straight interception in the last two days, picking off a pass from Dan Orlovsky towards the end of the day.
– Day 15 also gave fans a preview of the Rams’ depth at a selection of different positions as many veterans had the day off from practice. Tackle Darrell Williams, center Austin Blythe and guard Cody Wichmann stepped in on the offensive line, while defensive end Matt Longacre took reps with the first-team defense.
PLAY OF THE DAY
Today’s play of the day was really more of a “portion of the day” and came from a selection of exciting grabs in Wednesday’s one-on-ones between wide receivers and cornerbacks.
The first came from Cooper Kupp, who put a nice move on Johnson at the line to bring in a touchdown pass from Goff. The second happened just moments later when wide receiver — and birthday boy — Mike Thomas jumped up to grab a lobbed ball from Mannion, gliding his feet in for the touchdown in the back corner of the end zone.
Birthday boy getting himself one 👀 @_MikeTeee | #RamsCamp pic.twitter.com/TWcDtmRm4D
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) August 16, 2017
PRESS POINTS
After practice McVay spoke to the media about Everett’s progression thus far in training camp. Catch up on his most interesting points from Day 15:
SEAN McVAY:
On Gerald Everett’s progression in red zone situations: “I think that’s where he’s done a nice job. You see the size, you see the ability in terms of being about to have great body control for a man of his size with the ball skills. He does a nice job in the red zone and when the ball’s in his hands he was excellent running after the catch and offers a lot of versatility for us at that tight end spot. I have been very pleased.”
znModeratorWhat they can do is takes his 1.8m, convert 1.1m to signing bonus over the length of the contract.
Couldn’t they do this? He has a 2017 salary of 1.8 M and a pro-rated bonus of 1.4. Since the cap doesn’t care, you take that entire 1.8 + 1.4 M, and convert it all a new pro-rated bonus. That keeps 3.2 M on the books for the 2017 cap, but at the same time hands him a 19.2 M bonus. You then guarantee 40-50 M in the next couple of years, sometimes in roster bonuses, sometimes in salary.
Either way, the idea that they don;t have cap space, as I know you know, is just dead wrong. The writer of the above article doesn’t seem to get that.
,,
znModeratorWatkins making people notice in camp, including quarterback Jared Goff
RICH HAMMOND
IRVINE — Heads turned when receiver Sammy Watkins made a catch on the run during the first play of 11-on-11 practice drills Wednesday. Rams fans noticed and chattered. So did the guy who threw the ball.
“I did a little bit,” quarterback Jared Goff said. “You try not to, but I did kind of turn around, like, ‘Everyone see that? All right.’ It was a good catch and hopefully something that won’t be quite a surprise any more.”
That’s the plan, anyway. Watkins, acquired from Buffalo in a trade last week, practiced for a third consecutive day at UC Irvine and, for the first time, jumped into full-team scrimmage drills. Watkins, a former 1,000-yard receiver, looked comfortable and made a few impressive catches.
Watkins likely will get work with the first-team offense when the Rams play a preseason game at Oakland on Saturday night.
“When the ball is in his hands,” Coach Sean McVay said, “you can feel his speed and his juice down the field. I thought it was good to get him out here. We was comfortable with the things we were asking him to do, so it was great to have Sammy out there and get him in the mix.”
It certainly helped Goff, who threw five interceptions in practice on Monday and Tuesday but looked sharper overall on Wednesday and made better decisions with the ball.
McVay said Goff had “a better day” but also praised the Rams defense for disguising coverages and making things tougher for the quarterback. Goff also benefited from the fact the Rams practiced without injured cornerbacks Kayvon Webster, Nickell Robey-Coleman and Mike Jordan.
It’s also fair to note that the Rams practiced Wednesday without three starting offensive linemen, who rested, yet Goff showed improvement.
“I was being a little bit aggressive the last couple days,” Goff said. “Some plays I can’t make. I’m still learning and still growing. You should test your limits a little bit, I think, but at the same time I have to be smarter than that and take care of the ball better than that, and I will. In practice, you just try some things you might not try other times, but you still have to be smart with it.”
Now it’s on to Oakland, for the second of four preseason games. Goff, like most NFL first-teamers, almost certainly won’t play in the final exhibition, so chances are running short for Goff to get some work in before the Sept. 10 season opener against Indianapolis.
Goff was on the field for only eight plays in Saturday’s preseason opener against Dallas, but he completed 3 of 4 attempts for 34 yards.
“I’ll probably get a little more playing time and have more of a chance to build a rhythm,” Goff said. “That’s what I’m looking forward to doing, just getting out there to string a few completions together and get in a little bit of a rhythm moving the ball, and hopefully get in the end zone a couple times.”
The Rams’ starters are expected to play a full quarter against the Raiders, and that includes Watkins, McVay said.
That’s a pretty quick turnaround for a receiver who hasn’t yet known his new quarterback for a full week. But Goff and McVay both praised Watkins’ work ethic and his ability to pick up the new offense, and Goff said he also has been working with Watkins on off-field chemistry.
“The last couple days,” Goff said, “I’ve just been trying to speak some plays to him, and have him verbalize them for me and have him spit back what he does. He’s been sharp, man. He’s been sharper than I expected, and that’s not saying anything negative about him. For him to be in a new system, he’s been on it. He’s been sharp and it’s been a pleasant surprise.”
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