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I am always optimistic till the bullets are flying (then I become more of just a hopeful realist). It all just seems natural to me. Just the way I see stuff.
But it’s qualified. For one thing I don’t do predictions…over the years, even I have learned that the most powerful thing in the world of predictions is the unpredictable
…and that (surprise!) you learn about the unpredictable after the fact. “There’s always the unexpected isn’t there.” Rams fans optimism to me just means you can see reasonable grounds for expecting the team to be good or better than it was.
So what do I think those grounds are this time?
* Coaches. Unlike many I like Schott. That’s a whole separate discussion in itself. Waufle and Boudreau are beyond compare. Fisher will field a fiesty group. Wms. really does improve defenses.
* Secondary. They were painfully young and probably misused. Wms will get the best out of them. Or I see him as capable of that, anyway.
* Front 7. This is a new era in Rams football, where the DL (and to an extent LBs) take the lead in determining games. Greatest Sacks on Turf.
* OL. If everyone is healthy, the OL has the potential to be absolutely first-rate. It has the depth to be good enough anyway, even with major injuries (though as I keep saying, past a certain point OL injuries just take a toll.) Really, I think the worst case scenario (barring catastrophic multiple injuries, something sadly enough a Rams fan can’t rule out….)
* TEs, WRs. Some good things there (Kendricks, Austin, maybe Bailey) but this is more a case where the coaches have to manufacture it out of scattered raw parts. So, it’s up to the coaches to weekly invent new ways to get something out of these guys, depending on the opponent. Obviously it would be better if they had a consistent, productive “The Guy” type guy to work with.
* QB. Based on my own quirky way of doing this, I think Bradford has already made it as a tier 2 qb. I base that on his production under Fisher when the Rams had both a reasonably healthy OL and a running threat. IMO if he doesn’t continue at that level, he has regressed.
* RBs. Not sure if they have a 16 game stud, but, they have lottsa guys who can run the ball. (I don’t know about Stacy for 16 games.)
* special teams. Best in the league.
Now what do I PREDICT based on that? I don;t know. When was the last time a young team emerged in a “best division in football” it shared with 2 consecutive conference champs? I am sure it has happened, but those are stern odds. Given that, there ARE reasonable grounds for optimism, but it’s also a young team with quite a few units in transition.
BUT. If a few of the things I think are good hold up, they should be better immediately.
I do NOT have a “3 year thing” though. I think Fisher has more than 3 years…he looks to me to be Stan’s Guy for the long haul.
Am I trying to have it both ways? Hopefully, yes. The realist in me sees how tough the situation is, and I am patient with that. The optimist in me sees plenty of places where they will be anywhere from good enough to exceptional.
I do think a team that can massacre three division winners with Clemens at qb (like they did last year)is on the rise.
,,,
2013 Offensive Line Rankings
https://www.profootballfocus.com/blog/2014/01/13/2013-offensive-line-rankings/3/
13. St Louis Rams (26th)
PB: 17th, RB: 9th, PEN: 26thStud: Many, ourselves included, wondered if Jake Long (+25.8) was done. He’d enjoyed a great start to his career in Miami but two so-so years left a lot to be desired. Well, this was the year he came back with a bang, and it’s a horrible shame his season ended with an ACL and MCL tear.
Dud: He may be a former first-rounder but Chris Williams (-21.8) is just a liability as a lineman. Far too much pressure, not enough good run blocking, and he’s the team’s weak link on offense.
Analysis: A step forward but perhaps not as much as they would have like to see. They nailed it with the pickup of Long and got surprisingly good play from Joe Barksdale, Shelley Smith and Rodger Saffold at guard. That would suggest a higher finish, but the interior trio of Williams, Harvey Dahl and Scott Wells really didn’t play up to the level that was needed of them.
Neandertal trait in early human skull suggests that modern humans emerged from complex labyrinth of biology and peoples
Washington University in St. Louis
Summary: Re-examination of a circa 100,000-year-old archaic early human skull found 35 years ago in Northern China has revealed the surprising presence of an inner-ear formation long thought to occur only in Neandertals.
Share ThisThe Xujiayao 15 late archaic human temporal bone from northern China with the extracted temporal labyrinth superimposed on a view of the Xujiayao site.
Credit: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Science
The Xujiayao 15 late archaic human temporal bone from northern China with the extracted temporal labyrinth superimposed on a view of the Xujiayao site.Re-examination of a circa 100,000-year-old archaic early human skull found 35 years ago in Northern China has revealed the surprising presence of an inner-ear formation long thought to occur only in Neandertals.
“The discovery places into question a whole suite of scenarios of later Pleistocene human population dispersals and interconnections based on tracing isolated anatomical or genetic features in fragmentary fossils,” said study co-author Erik Trinkaus, PhD, a physical anthropology professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
“It suggests, instead, that the later phases of human evolution were more of a labyrinth of biology and peoples than simple lines on maps would suggest.”
The study, forthcoming in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is based on recent micro-CT scans revealing the interior configuration of a temporal bone in a fossilized human skull found during 1970s excavations at the Xujiayao site in China’s Nihewan Basin.
Trinkaus, the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor in Arts & Sciences, is a leading authority on early human evolution and among the first to offer compelling evidence for interbreeding and gene transfer between Neandertals and modern human ancestors.
His co-authors on this study are Xiu-Jie Wu, Wu Liu and Song Xing of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Beijing, and Isabelle Crevecoeur of PACEA, Université de Bordeaux.
“We were completely surprised,” Trinkaus said. “We fully expected the scan to reveal a temporal labyrinth that looked much like a modern human one, but what we saw was clearly typical of a Neandertal. This discovery places into question whether this arrangement of the semicircular canals is truly unique to the Neandertals.”
Often well-preserved in mammal skull fossils, the semicircular canals are remnants of a fluid-filled sensing system that helps humans maintain balance when they change their spatial orientations, such as when running, bending over or turning the head from side-to-side.
Since the mid-1990s, when early CT-scan research confirmed its existence, the presence of a particular arrangement of the semicircular canals in the temporal labyrinth has been considered enough to securely identify fossilized skull fragments as being from a Neandertal. This pattern is present in almost all of the known Neandertal labyrinths. It has been widely used as a marker to set them apart from both earlier and modern humans.
The skull at the center of this study, known as Xujiayao 15, was found along with an assortment of other human teeth and bone fragments, all of which seemed to have characteristics typical of an early non-Neandertal form of late archaic humans.
Trinkaus, who has studied Neandertal and early human fossils from around the globe, said this discovery only adds to the rich confusion of theories that attempt to explain human origins, migrations patterns and possible interbreedings.
While it’s tempting to use the finding of a Neandertal-shaped labyrinth in an otherwise distinctly “non-Neandertal” sample as evidence of population contact (gene flow) between central and western Eurasian Neandertals and eastern archaic humans in China, Trinkaus and colleagues argue that broader implications of the Xujiayao discovery remain unclear.
“The study of human evolution has always been messy, and these findings just make it all the messier,” Trinkaus said. “It shows that human populations in the real world don’t act in nice simple patterns.
“Eastern Asia and Western Europe are a long way apart, and these migration patterns took thousands of years to play out,” he said. “This study shows that you can’t rely on one anatomical feature or one piece of DNA as the basis for sweeping assumptions about the migrations of hominid species from one place to another.”
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Washington University in St. Louis. The original article was written by Gerry Everding. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
I thought we were going to get to the part where you accused X of reading peoples PMs..
That;s alright, I already did.
And now you are just in taunt/fight mode?
If so movc on. That’s a direct mod statement.
My summary. YOu should not have over-reacted to one line by me in email when I was blocked. If you didn’t know I was blocked you were negligent…a ghost admin is not supposed to take out a board mod on the basis of some ancient grudge. That;s bad management on your part. I apologize for calling you a dick that one time when blocked. That’s not very professional. However, I didn’t do that because I was blocked–I did it because I was frustrated because #1 I naturally assumed you had blocked me, and #2 didn’t get why you were doing that instead of just raising whatever issue you presumably had. Or, if you’re going to give in to your apparently considerable temper, you could have just banned me and given notice to the buzz posters (instead of shutting it down and re-directing posters to ROD).
My bet is, yOu won’t apologize for heavy name-calling in this thread, for reasons anyone can speculate about. Running around on the Rams board with all those (several) little (now deleted) childish attack posts was beneath you (and that’s why you were banned…not because of this thread). To emphasize: you were not banned because of THIS thread. You were banned because you took it to the Rams board and kept putting up little TheRamsWon style flames, which I deleted. IMO, an owner with high aspirations for his own great site should not be acting like a PD board style flame warrior on someone else’s site.
We expect fake handles to show up here, but as long as they obey the rules they’re fine, and when they try to re-raise the old huddle wars it’s easy for everyone to spot.
If you think all your (as yet unposted) emails and PMs somehow take the onus off of you for dumping a site without notice, fine. Think that. My view is, if you thought I was a problem long before the 28th, you should have just banned me THEN and given the buzz posters notice.
That’s it. Thread closed. It’s now a repository for posts fighting about the take-down of the buzz and which also violate the rules (though I am going to draw a line on that, because some could take advantage and start writing attack posts just so I will move them here. I don’t intend to encourage that.)
I edited this to make it less “heat of the moment.” Substance is the same.
