laram wrote:

I’m hoping for the pass rush to help the corners look better than they are.

Jenks fundamentals are horrid and Tru is a limited corner in respect to the types of receivers he can cover.

If I were an offense, I would put a big on Jenks and speed on Tru’s side.

You can do that since they don’t travel.

IF you have both you have an advantage.

The thing about Jenkins, though, is that Wms is famous as a teacher. How good was Verner before Wms? (And because I anticipate this question from someone, in their minds if nothing else, I’ve read up on Wms in Tennessee and local beat writers there said he had a big hand in how their defense played last year. They went from 27th the year before to 14th and a solid unit. Fisher himself said that when he watch the Titans on tape to prepare for that game, he could see that Wms’s hand was all over that defense.)

Rambill

VID:The Rams stepped onto the fields at Rams Park for the training camp session of 2014. Sam Bradford participated fully coming off of last season’s knee injury. Video includes practice clips, along with Sam Bradford and Jeff Fisher comments.

Watch Day 1 Practice Report

http://launch.newsinc.com/share.html?ndn.trackingGroup=91130&ndn.siteSection=stltodaystudio_hom_non_sec&ndn.videoId=26456624&freewheel=91130&sitesection=stltodaystudio_hom_non_sec&vid=26456624

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5 takeaways from the first day of Rams training camp

By Ryan Van Bibber

http://www.turfshowtimes.com/2014/7/26/5939539/st-louis-rams-training-camp-practice-report-sam-bradford-greg-robinson

The Rams are practicing football again, and that means were officially counting down to the start of the 2014 season. Sam Bradford and Jeff Fisher spoke to the media after practice on Friday, offering a few tidbits of news and an assessment of the day’s work.

For practice observations from the fans and media on the scene, head over to our report from yesterday.

1. Young, but experienced

The Rams are a young team, for the third year in a row, but the party line this year is that these are an experienced group of youngsters.

” … because of the fact that we have players now in their third year and guys last year in their second, they’re familiar faces, they’ve matured, they have the playing experience,” Fisher said after practice. “So despite the age on paper the team doesn’t act that way, the team acts much more mature and will be much more prepared.”

2. Greg Robinson is doing “fine”

The second overall pick turned some heads over the summer by admitting he was struggling to adjust to the move inside to guard and a more complex playbook that the one he had at Auburn. On the field Friday, Fisher and Sam Bradford spoke highly of Robinson’s day at practice.

Robinson is also working at two positions.

“I thought Greg did a great job,” Bradford said. “Today he played both tackle and guard and when you’re trying to learn a system, you’d really prefer to have to learn one but we’re asking him to learn two because we think he can handle it. I thought he did a great job playing both inside and outside today. I think he is really going to help us up front.”

3. Bradford doesn’t feel the pressure

Is it or isn’t it a make or break year? Is it or isn’t it the second or third or fourth year in a row we’ve heard that?

“I don’t really pay attention to that,” Bradford said. “Every year is a ‘make it or break it’ year according to someone. I think everyone in our locker room feels really good about where we’re at right now and where this football team is going. I think we have a great chance to be really good …”

Bradford was struggling with his throws yesterday according to folks on the scene. Fisher was more confident in his assessment.

“He was fine. He’s doing good, throwing the ball well … he’s ready to go,” Fisher said.

A rough first day of camp doesn’t mean anything, especially for a QB coming off an ACL tear. It’s just practice.

4. Impressive defense

Bradford’s been in the NFL long enough to know what a good defense looks like. And he was talking up the one he saw on the field Friday.

“I think our defense is going to be extremely good this year,” the quarterback said. “There’s nothing easy against those guys, especially up front. That front seven is really, really tough.”

5. Everyone wants to win!

There’s your breaking news development of the day. Fisher and Bradford were asked about fans’ desire to see the Rams put together their first winning record in 11 years.

“I think everyone here wants to win,” Bradford said. “That’s our goal. That’s why we’re out here to play. No one steps on the field to lose. I think we want just as bad as the city and the fans do.”

Fisher had a little more perspective, a little less canned response to the question.

“Well it’s just been before I got here and the day I arrived and it’s going to continue to be that way,” the coach said. “We’re fortunate to have a fan base that has high expectations and remember the good years and they should.”

wv wrote:

The media-celebrities are just not sold on Bradford. They’ve seen Kaperhead and R.Wilson
do big things, but they haven’t seen Sam do big things.

I think thats prettymuch how they analyze thingz.

w
v

I think this is also part of it. No media analyst watches every regular season game to the point where they know the details of how 32 teams played in all 16 games.

Winning teams get watched more. Naturally. Imagine going into a life of sports analysis and you get assigned the “know losing teams only” slot in your group.

National media analysts tend to be kind of less informed about Bradford because they have seen less of him. In fact that fits my (part joking) “one national game” theory. Most people only saw one Rams game–last year’s SF game. The whole team kind of screwed up that game (picture in your head Finnegan running fruitlessly behind a productive Boldin.)

Mort, on the other hand, is a friend of Fisher’s and is on the “war room invitation” list.

.

Time for Rams’ potential to produce

July, 25, 2014

By Nick Wagoner | ESPN.com

http://espn.go.com/blog/st-louis-rams/post/_/id/9867/time-for-rams-potential-to-become-production

EARTH CITY, Mo. — With training camp rapidly approaching, St. Louis Rams general manager Les Snead started to get the football itch. He could feel the time for football was close and he was growing so eager for it to start he actually considered cutting a family vacation short.

Upon returning to St. Louis, Snead walked back into Rams Park with full knowledge that this season must be different from the first two years of his and coach Jeff Fisher’s regime. Under Fisher and Snead, the Rams have won 14 games in two seasons, far better than what they’d done in the five years before their arrival, but still well removed from something more than vague progress.

[+] EnlargeAaron Donald
AP Photo/Jeff RobersonDT Aaron Donald is just one of the many young players the Rams will lean on in 2014.
The third year of any regime comes with a certain amount of inherent expectation but here in St. Louis, Snead openly acknowledges now is the time for a team that has been the league’s youngest each of the past two seasons to move past mediocrity.

“The goal is to win the division,” Snead said Thursday. “We have played San Fran, we’ve played Seattle and we’ve played Arizona and we’ve beat them all in the last two years with these guys. All they’re doing is getting better and more experienced.”

Clearly, the Rams enter the 2014 season hoping that their willingness to allow their many young players to start and play the majority of the snaps will pay off. The potential of the league’s youngest roster must at some point turn into production if the Rams are to elevate to contender status.

Fisher and Snead set about a major roster renovation in 2012 knowing that they would hit their share of speed bumps along the way. They improved to 7-8-1 in that first season after combining a boat load of draft picks acquired in trade with Washington with some big free-agent spending. They followed a similar path in the 2013 offseason, trying to find a few emerging young veterans to complement the youth movement coming via the draft. The result was last season’s 7-9.

In steadfastly sticking to their plan, Fisher and Snead entered this past offseason ready to mostly roll with what they’ve got.

“To get experience you have got to play and to learn how not to spill milk you have got to spill some milk,” Snead said. “So I have always used that analogy. You have got to hope that experience keeps you from spilling milk and now you can pull it up and drink it a lot faster.”

Of course, there’s also plenty of risk that goes with betting big on young, mostly unproven players even players who have played a lot of snaps in their first couple of seasons.

The secondary, for example, has no projected starters with more than two years of experience. At wide receiver, only Kenny Britt has spent more than three seasons in the league. Zac Stacy, entering his second season, is the most seasoned running back on the roster in terms of carries.

While many of the team’s young players have flashed the potential to become solid or better NFL starters, they simply still have yet to prove themselves on a consistent basis. And it seems overly-optimistic to think that all of the players the Rams are banking on will take the necessary step forward to help the team reach the next level.

But Snead believes there has been enough evidence, even if the sample size is relatively small, for many of those players to do what is expected. There’s even an air of quiet confidence that the belief is more than just the usual summertime hopes and dreams of a franchise in need of wins.

“I think that’s the best way for us and the way we were setup to do it,” Snead said. “I always use the example, you saw what Robert Quinn did. So what happens is those guys are maturing too and not only physically but also mentally and psychologically and in their life and in their game and they really want to be good and they had two years or one and they say ‘I did that last year and I was actually kind of nervous. It was my rookie year and now I got this.’ So all those things come into play. You have got to just let them evolve.”

Snead and the Rams are well aware the evolution of a young team into playoff contender is not going to be an easy task. They find themselves in the NFL’s toughest division and will, for the third season in a row, play one of its toughest schedules. If the Rams are to survive the crucible of those two things and come out on the other end still playing in January, they will have plenty of bumps and bruises along the way.

In some ways, they enter this training camp ahead of where they were last year. They have a clearly defined identity on both sides of the ball, even if it’s one that doesn’t promote the promise of Greatest Show on Turf recollections. They have the defensive coordinator in Gregg Williams they wanted all along leading a talented group.

“I think just having an identity, that helps you rally instead of ‘What are we today?'” Snead said.

As they begin camp today, the Rams are still the team hoping the promise that comes with youth turns into the production of a team much older. Where they stand at the end of the season will tell us if they were right.

stlramz

It has to be self defense. Otherwise the Cops are facing an “excessive use of force action” by tasing the guy fighting with Dunbar.

You can’t tase a guy that is defending himself.

Since tasing is only allowed to stop an aggressor basically from injuring himself or others, the police and Dunbar’s story will essentially have to match up.

That’s always a good place to be when you are defending someone.

According to the police reports, Dunbar told arresting officers he was just defending himself.

The arrest affidavits indicated that the defendants (Dunbar and the Greene brothers) were involved in a verbal altercation as they left the Club Dream. Club security and several patrons attempted to keep the parties from fighting by holding them apart.

But a short time later, the three started brawling just south of the club entrance. As Dunbar and Dmetrique were exchanging punches, Donte approached Dunbar from behind and began to punch Dunbar in the head and neck area.
”

If the “three started fighting” with one positioning from behind to later attack, no problem.

2 on 1 = Self Defense.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 7 months ago by zn.

Guardians of the Galaxy Review: Super Sounds of the 70s

James Gunn’s superhero space opera is an old story with a fresh new vibe.

July 25th, 2014 William Bibbiani

http://www.craveonline.com/film/reviews/731209

It doesn’t take long for the new Marvel Studios movie to take us to a desolate wasteland in the far reaches out of outer space and turn into a one-man musical performance of a 1974 pop hit. That’s Guardian of the Galaxy for you: an ecstatic celebration of all the conventional sci-fi tropes, told in a completely unconventional way. It’s full of unforgettable characters and unforgettable dick jokes. It’s Star Wars as told by a lovable a-hole.

And a talented a-hole: Guardians of the Galaxy was directed and co-written by James Gunn, who cut his teeth writing the indie pukefest Tromeo & Juliet and went on give us the kindhearted superhero satire The Specials and the mean-hearted superhero satire Super. In between he contributed to scripts for such formulaic genre flicks as Scooby-Doo and 13 Ghosts. He’s developed a singular storytelling style through experience in the mainstream, the outré, the classical and the nerdy, and he’s combined all of these elements into a single blockbuster experience that plays the same game as all of its brainless competitors but does so with grace and wit and, again, some great dick jokes.

That’s the precise and eclectic résumé necessary to bring Guardians of the Galaxy to the big screen, since unlike Marvel’s Golden and Silver Age creations – which were dramatically satisfying and mostly obvious metaphors (“Can’t control your rage? You’re kind of a hulk!”) – the middle years of the publisher’s sprawling comic book universe were full of a lot of attention-grabbing nonsense. There’s a talking raccoon – with an attitude – voiced by Bradley Cooper. There’s a sentient superarboreal tree voiced by Vin Diesel. Iron Man they are not. If anything, they seem one step removed from fast food mascots.

But that’s what makes Guardians of the Galaxy so great. Our emotional connection to these characters stems not from their universality, but from their distinctiveness. Dave Bautista plays a green-skinned tattooed convict on a mission to avenge his family, but who runs into constant problems because his species doesn’t understand metaphors. And Chris Pratt was abducted as a small child and taken to outer space, where he lives a life of adventurous escapism while still clinging to a mix tape of 1970s tunes that his Mom gave him. Tied to the past without ever technically looking backwards. His attitude is a little Han Solo, but he’s driven by something way more immature.

Along with a repentant assassin played by Zoe Saldana, these selfish jerks find themselves thrust together by a combination of fate and pointless circumstance. They’re in possession of a mysterious orb that could very well destroy the universe. A political dissident named Ronan the Accuser, played by Lee Pace, wants the orb, but our “heroes” want to sell it; or, if that fails, to turn heroic for no other reason than to save their own asses.

The plot is as perfunctory as any typical summer release. There’s a ragtag team of misfits, a MacGuffin everybody wants and a whole bunch of big explosions at the beginning, middle and end. But Guardians of the Galaxy feels special because this course of events brings some wonderfully unique characters together into something more than the sum of their parts. The outcome of the adventure may be inevitable but the connections they make to one another are not, any bond formed between these snarky, cynical jerks has to be earned. Through a combination of witty dialogue, carefully balanced structure and – most importantly – a highly developed sense of fun (remember fun? it’s so much fun), James Gunn succeeds at turning a relatively familiar and kinda dumb story into an impressively emotional and satisfying journey. The details are superb. The grand sweep is merely simple enough to keep the details from being overwhelming.

With a kickin’ soundtrack that may at first seem random, but gradually reveals itself as one of the most important parts of the movie, Guardians of the Galaxy bursts out of the typical Marvel mold and into exciting and bold new territory. The unexpected, the eccentric and a very welcome sense of joy are experienced in practically every scene, but they’re grounded in smart, winking humanity… even from the rodents and plants. It’s a spectacularly entertaining space opera and a guffaw-worthy comedy. It’s a thoroughly pleasing ensemble piece with a great cast, amazing visual effects and exciting action. It’s certainly one of Marvel’s best movies, and quite possibly their most fun. .

Welcome aboard, mcdah!

There’s free pie.

wv wrote:

I guess Westbrooks and Sam are the top contenders
for that last DLine spot?

Sam has the edge now, one would think.

w
v

I think Harlan is a contender too.

I think they will stash Westbrooks on IR.

I also think other things, for example I think I will save all that for another post.