Rams receiver Tavon Austin isn’t so sure about 100 catches this year, but the more touches the better

Vincent Bonsignore, Los Angeles Daily News

http://www.dailynews.com/sports/20160610/rams-receiver-tavon-austin-isnt-so-sure-about-100-catches-this-year-but-the-more-touches-the-better?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

OXNARD >> Given the full context, the slant pass Tavon Austin took to the house on Friday shouldn’t illicit more than a casual nod of approval.

Like everyone else on the Rams organized team activity practice field, Austin was in shorts, jersey, cleats and helmet. Which tells you all you really need to know about the limited physicality during the 11-on-11 portion of practice.

This was two-hand touch, NFL style.

So digest the play as you will.

The door you just heard open is the exit opportunity the pessimists will likely take advantage of right about now.

The optimists might want to stick around a bit.

See, by the time Austin made the catch just a few yards off the line of scrimmage, a group of defenders began converging on him. All it would have taken was one of them getting a good solid hand on Austin and the play would have been over.

Never happened.

A twitch here, a juke there and Austin was beyond the first couple of Rams defenders. Then a lean, a jab step and whoosh, he exploded past the second group on his way to open grass.

In his wake, flailing arms, disbelieving looks and genuine frustration.

And a chorus of oohhs and aahhs from his offensive teammates.

In a very imperfect version of football, this was as legitimate an explosiveness play as you see.

And it was Tavon Austin, defined.

Get him the ball, by any means necessary and at any point on a football field, and let the havoc ensue.

“The one thing we know about Tavon is, he’s a special playmaker,” said Rams offensive coordinator Rob Boras.

Which is why the Rams have made it an objective to get Austin the ball more this year, a quest that began last season when Boras took over as offensive coordinator the last four games and has carried over during the offseason.

“Any way you can get an explosive guy like that the ball, we’ve got to get creative and do it,” said Boras, who is concocting ways to do exactly that along with new Rams passing game coordinator Mike Groh.

Rams head coach Jeff Fisher let that little nugget out of the bag a couple of weeks ago when he predicted Austin could double the 52 catches he had last year to 104 this season.

“This offense has been re-designed to make sure he gets touches of the football,” Fisher said. “He’s going to have a big year this year.”

Still, the 104 catches seems extraordinarily ambitious for a player who’s averaged 41 catches per season over his first three years. Especially with rookie Jared Goff likely to be the starting quarterback.

If given the chance to explain, Fisher would probably amend his prediction to Austin doubling his offensive yardage production across the board.

Not just through pass receptions.

Austin did his best the throw Fisher a lifeline on that one Friday.

“I don’t think he means 100 catches,” Austin said, smiling. “That’s hard to do. This is the NFL.”

On the other hand, Austin isn’t about to quibble with the overall intent.

“Anytime your coach says he wants to get the ball in your hands more, that’s great,” he said.

Austin averaged 6.5 offensive touches per game last year, with 52 catches and 52 rushing attempts for a total of 907 yards and nine touchdowns.

There is no question the Rams can jack that touch count up. Maybe not double it, but elevating it to 10 per game from the line of scrimmage not only gives him a better chance to produce the big yardage Fisher hopes for, but it also forces defensive coordinators to account for him so much he becomes almost as valuable as a decoy as he does with the ball in his hands.

If the Rams establish Austin as an even bigger focal point, that means less focus on running back Todd Gurley and perhaps more space for fellow wide receivers to operate in.

But mostly it means the ball in the hands of Austin more, and for an offense that scored the second-fewest points in the NFL last year and was among the worst in most other offensive categories, that is essential.

The trick is figuring out creative ways to do that. Boras made it clear he is considering all options, so expect Austin to line up in a variety of different positions and for the ball to get in hands by all means available.

“Obviously, as a receiver, everyone wants to talk about catches he gets. But we can line him up in the backfield as we’ve done in the past, we can get him the ball on the perimeter on screens and reverses,” said Boras.

Austin is one of the most talkative Rams on the field, but admittedly quiet off it. Don’t expect him to make any demands one way or another.

“However it happens, whatever they need me to do, I’ll do it,” Austin said. “But for the most part, I don’t pay too much attention to all the numbers.”

Mackeyser wrote:

I recognize the conservatism of Nixon and Reagan because I grew up with it and I was part of that for a time.

I don’t recognize any conservative ideology in current Republicanism

William F Buckley in the early 60’s nearly single-handedly used the power of persuasion to cast out the Birchers and argue against anti-Semitism. Prior to Buckley, the Republican Party couldn’t have cared less about Israel. People don’t know that.

The current rise of anti-Semitism can’t stand with those who support Israel (that came out more nationalistic than I meant it).

In math, there are these problems: solve these equations with N number of variables and N unknowns. Interestingly, whereas in math, we can’t typically solve these if the number of variables is greater than the number of unknowns, in economics we can because they’re not pure unknowns.

In the old days, even if you disagreed with the degrees or amount, the conservative solving of the equation dealt with the 3 variables, the poor, the middle class, and the rich.

Now, it deals with the rich and the middle class are a symptom of dealing with the rich. It’s the poor people’s fault for being poor so they get no consideration. And we see this in lots of policy proposals recently that would never have been proposed in 1982.

So instead of having variables X, Y, and Z, we have X, X1 (which will be a basic function relating to X like if X gets 100 units, X1 the cube root of that amount). There is no Y, because what the middle class gets is a function of what is given to the rich. And there is no Z. And unsurprisingly, this is a much easier equation to solve with plenty of wealthy people who like the solution.

Elimination of unemployment insurance
Elimination of workmans compensation
Elimination of the minimum wage
Elimination of Welfare

This list goes on

Now note that last one was accomplished by a center right corporatist Dem with a Republican House that realized that by having a DINO in the White House, they could actually swing farther to the right than if they had a figure held that would be held to account. And they did.

Nixon gave us the EPA and nearly gave us a single payer health insurance system modeled on Kaiser Permanente… Which is actually MORE to the left than what Bernie Sanders was proposing, which is government paying for the private delivery of healthcare. THAT was a conservative idea THEN.

To not acknowledge this is to not acknowledge the political road we’ve been traveling.

One last thing. We hear about Conservative Dems or Blue Dog Dems. Remember when there were Liberal Republicans? There were! CA, MA and other typically liberal bastions birthed them, but also places like Wyoming where party was family.

The Republican Party is no more the Party of Lincoln anymore than it is the Party of Reagan. Not in any measurable way.

Conservatism has gone to far and needs to find its way back with ideas that affect everyone positively.

Basically you’re talking about neo-liberal economics and its effects, right? Or no?

I’m talking about commodity in the capitalist sense.

Yes but the commodity as a form pre-exists capitalist economies. And, pre-capitalist modes of commodification co-exist within the era of capitalist markets. So the fact that art includes a heavy element of just sheer craftsmanship. That;s always true.

The whole idea of the “mass market” as merely a thoughtless pleasure of the masses, actually, IS a capitalist-era ideology. It is meant to disdain “the masses.” As such that view follows in the wake of earlier views which simply disdained popular cultural forms generally (like carnival, or popular music and the ballad, and so on.) Meanwhile, I have very quirky tastes–something I embrace as it happens—and so I am pleased by the interesting energies of some novels and films some others regard as “mere commodities.”

See I don’t make those divisions. I notice that they don’t always hold up. That really what we get is a mishmash of different, sometimes mutually oblivious markets. I personally like to be (to echo a phrase) an art consumer without borders.

My thinking is, there’s all kinds of ways to do things, and I like to be open to surprises. An interesting example of this is television. As a rule, people are so used to thinking of tv as degraded mass spectacle, that they cannot even tell you what peculiar aesthetic strengths belong pretty much exclusively to tv type narratives. People will enjoy tv, but in their own minds dismiss that pleasure, and what they will LIKE about TV will turn out to be among the things that are unique to the medium. But then they won’t be able to name those things…as if they didn’t exist. And you want to know how quirky this gets? Having said all that, I am not a tv guy. I will Tivo certain things…rarely tv shows in the ordinary sense (usually tv documentaries)…and when friends talk about the shows they like, I don’t even know about them. So someone who really doesn’t watch tv just said televisual narratives have unique aesthetic properties you tend not to find in other media (like film or prose fiction or stage drama).

I never bought the “real art” argument. To me that’s a regime of taste. It is meant to quixotically distance the people who buy into it from their own time and place and culture and history.

And that is said by someone who is married to a woman who made a living much of her life playing classical music for a living in europe. In fact she played opera. Something I rightfully admire.

Honestly, I am among those who SEES there are (and always have been) competing and different regimes of taste and does not really belong to any of them.

But I don’t think of myself as shallow. I also don’t think of myself as “deep.”

Billy_T wrote:

. It’s the complete rejection of 2700 years of plot line that pisses me off. Not “change,” per se. But the trashing of the original in the process.

Well…I don’t see changing as trashing it. I just respond to all that differently.

Take history. I like, in a rather unsophisticated pure pleasure way, Brit historical dramas. The King’s Speech. Elizabeth. The Queen. Rob Roy. The Madness of King George.

I don’t know if you enjoy those at all, but I do. And they absolutely MASSACRE history.

Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s so flagrant I laugh out loud in the theater. For example, in Elizabeth, it is set up so it looks like Walsingham poisons Mary Queen of Scots in Scotland. When her death is revealed, I just couldn’t help laughing (actually Mary was executed for treason by Elizabeth’s advisors, and she was in their hands because she was living in exile in England). Anyway here’s this shocking moment in the film, we discover the elegant and noble Mary dead, and I am the only person in the theater laughing.

In The King’s Speech, it;s more subtle–Churchill backs George and supports him in the face of Edward’s abdication. Actually Churchill supported Edward and argued publicly against abdication.

I register all those things, but in the end, it doesn’t detract from my pleasure in that kind of film. In fact it’s kind of interesting to notice the ways the filmmakers think they have to alter history.

That’s an analogy but it does kind of speak for how I see all this. So I just think we approach all this in completely different ways.

Billy_T wrote:

You don’t like The White Album, Abbey Road and their last album, The Beatles?

You are one twisted spinal cracker, without his mojo filter.

;>)

Then there’s this:

So I get that. I just don’t get change for change’s sake, especially when the original is much better and more powerful (Homer, Aeschylus, Virgil, etc.)

Well, we are talking about cinema. Cinema is not written literature. They are different animals. Their historical contexts are different. Re-imagining from one medium and era to another is fine with me. I actually didn’t mind Troy at all and personally didn’t get the complaining about it. (Well except for Brad Pitt. But then he’s good in other things and he handled their version of Achilles’s death very nicely.)

Cinema can’t be lit and vice versa.

But who are we to tell directors they can’t be interested in trying?

Here’s a good example. The film version of the Wizard of OZ completely changes the story, to its core (including subtracting the fact that in the books, Oz is real, while in the movie, they made it a dream). In many ways they are nothing like one another. But then that also means they are just different things.

I don’t compare them. To me, the movie stands on the fact that for reasons no one could ever possibly explain, Margaret Hamilton’s hammy over-drawn hag portrayal of the Wicked Witch is just one of the great iconic character creations in all of movies.

And then there’s the musical Wicked.

I say, let art throw as much mud at the walls as it can. We know from history that a lot of it sticks.

As for the Beatles? Whenever someone speaks of the Beatles I go into a dream.

,

ZN, again, I’m an artist, from a family of artists. I know what art is, what it does, where it comes from

And I am an historian of art and so I speak to what it has always done.

As long as we’re going to revert to the “argument from personal authority” move.

Art has always, among other things, picked up and re-done prior art. It just has. You personally may not like that, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen, because it always has. Heck for that matter homer is not the “original author” of the troy stories, and many shakespeare plays are re-written versions of other plays, when they aren’t re-written versions of other plays (and tales) that were themselves taken from ovid. Who himself (ovid) was not the originator of most of HIS stuff.

It is just a thing that happens.

And we can do 2 things about it.

One is declare a canon of taste about how we’re “supposed” to feel about that.

And another is my way. See what actually has happened in all its diversity, and just embrace the whole thing for what it is.

You will never approach it my way, probably, but then what I see in your way is A way…not THE way.

There have always been competing doctrines, canons, ideas of art. That’s part of art. Always has been and always will be. In the middle of all that some take sides. Some don’t.

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