Well, I was a doubter.

If he pulls it off and translates it all to real games, I will be happy to have been wrong.

snowman wrote:

I don’t know why a coaching staff would wait until the regular season to play his defense for real. And Williams has been in coaching a long time, opposing teams know what he does on defense anyway.

If we are doing something unique on defense, Williams should take it for a test drive in the preseason. See if it works. See if his players can execute it. Why wait until September to find out?

But then, on the other side of it, yes Wms has been coaching a long time, and he thinks he can do it differently than we want him to. My bet is if he were wrong about how to approach it, he would have figured that out by now.

I will say this. I have complained before that a Rams team was not in sync and not ready for the season. That was the McD offense in 2011. It was clear from the get-go that they were out of sync, not sure what they were doing, unconfidant, and just simply unprepared.

rfl wrote:

I don’t believe they can rely on just flipping the switch and suddenly competing when the season begins.

But is that the only alternative?

Seems to me that the normal way to approach preseason is to make a real showing of it in games 2 and 3, then turn game 4 into a glorified scrimmage.

Fisher does not game plan games 1 and 2, and instead uses them to see players under certain conditions. Get some film on them.

He then gameplans a little for game 3, and takes game 4 seriously–he uses it the way most teams use game 3.

If all that’s true, and I think it is, then, we’re worrying over nothing.

They intended all along to rehearse the starters more in game 3 and then use game 4 to do the same thing.

Fisher on all this:

This is the time you typically continue to evaluate the bottom half of your roster

…that’s the one key thing that you look at, it’s the matchup, the 1-on-1 matchups and the athletic abilities as you’re evaluating the younger players.”

there’s no urgency as far as that’s concerned. We look at it from an individual standpoint across the board and look at every player. Although you want to win games, it’s important, you want to play well and be productive and score points. I think the thing that’s most important is just the individual improvement

…opening day in the National Football League is a lot different than preseason games from a standpoint of what you do.As long as, in our eyes, we’re continuing to do those things well on the practice field and we elect not to do those things in the game – there’s not a sense of urgency.

Looks to me that, among other things, they’re trying to grade players and rank the best 53. (Which in turn allows them to decide whether they keep 5 safeties or 10 OL…that kind of thing…plus it helps them decide if a potential waiver pick-up is better than their 53rd player, etc.)

An example of caring more about individual performance and improvement than team concepts:

(On if he’s concerned about the run game)
“Well we haven’t necessarily worked against those types of things we saw yesterday.”

In fact they were willing to just see what happened with guys:

“The young offensive line struggled in the fourth quarter. We move (T Sean) Hooey from right tackle to left tackle. He had not played in a game there before and he had his hands full. He graded out very well at right tackle when he was in the game. So, those are the kind of things that you look at.”

They don’t just wait for week 1 to flip a switch. But they do approach pre-season game 2 differently from most teams. But then, the Fisher way is (and has been) to step it up in games 3 and 4 in terms of team concepts and gameplanning and so on.

TackleDummy wrote:

FYI: I usually don’t read what you write.

C’mon guys let’s keep it just a bit more civil. Fair enough? One mod (Mack) has already said something.

The board rules: http://theramshuddle.com/topic/board-rules-policies/

At this point, we have 2 different views of how to weigh the pre-season. That’s an eternal debate.

I know what you mean, I doubt he gets picked up IF (and we don’t know) he gets waived then PS-ed.

However at least this much is true: equal rights means equal opportunity, and he did get his opportunity. If he doesn’t make it, it won’t be because he let himself down in any way. It will be because the Rams are just crazy stocked on the DL, and Westbrooks did extraordinary things coming back from an injury in OTAs to play like a madman. (That is, if that holds up for the next 2 weeks.)

There are many years left for Sam either way…who knows how it all looks next year.

And, we all (I think) believe the Rams will make purely football decisions in all of this. That is actually something to be proud of.

As for this:

there’s absolutely no damn reason he shouldn’t be playing on Sundays and if Sam hits the waiver wire, teams should be lined up to claim him and I sincerely doubt any teams will. Notta one…

Yeah I agree. The Rams gave him a shot, in all likelihood the league won’t. If it plays out that way, then, sad but true.

.

InvaderRam wrote:

well maybe that’s where james comes in. sure looks ugly when it isn’t being run right.

To be fair, some teams that were running it have dumped it.

JL calls shifts too in reaction to different fronts.

And some look at the glass as half full and some see it as broken, shattered, with pieces spread all over the kitchen (don’t let the dog in the kitchen). (That;s just me teasing.)

In the 2nd half of the season last year the run D settled down and in both yards and YPC was 1st in the league. That includes games against Seattle and SF.

You can’t say one thing tells us what they are and the other doesn’t. You have to figure out why it’s both things, last year. Or why it was first one than the other. Cause they are certainly capable of what they did after the Tenn. game.

GreatRamNTheSky wrote:

I watched Donald, in fact focused on his play and I was not that impressed. Is this guy everyone is raving about in camp?
If so, when is it going to translate to games?

Grits

Because what you watched isn’t Donald. What you watched was Donald taking Brockers role in the defense with Brockers out. Donald isn’t Brockers, he wasn’t drafted to play that role, and he wasn’t going to look good doing it.

I thought with Donald last night they just sent him out there to take some hard reps as part of a learning curve.

When they use him the way he was drafted to be used, we will have more to judge him by.

Basically it was like asking Rod Perry to play MLB. Rod Perry not being able to play MLB doesn’t mean he can’t play what he is supposed to play.

TrenchRam wrote:

missed the entire first half yesterday thanks to DirecTV. My fancy new receiver told me last week that it could be set to record any Rams game and then didn’t work.

Fwiw (and maybe you know this), according to my channel guide the game will be rebroadcast Weds. at 3 AM.

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